Who complains loudest about Google linking to infringing content in its search results? The movie and music industries, of course, who absolutely delight in taking whacks at the search engine. But thanks to a huge new trove of data released today by Google, we know that the worldwide top takedown requestor—by far—is actually Microsoft.
Anatomizing takedowns
If content owners claim that a Google search result links to infringing material, Google will remove the link. But just how many times does this happen—and who is making all the requests? Google today rolled out an upgrade to its "Transparency Report" that shows private copyright takedown information in addition to the usual government requests for user information or for censorship.
In the last month, Google's search engine has received requests to remove links to 1.13 million URLs hosted on 23,000 distinct domains. (Takedown requests to YouTube and other Google properties are not covered under the current data release.) I spoke to Fred von Lohmann, senior copyright counsel at Google, who said that the company does in fact remove 97 percent of the requested links after running them through both algorithmic and human review to catch mistakes or bad faith notices. The average turnaround time for a takedown is 11 hours, which von Lohmann called "the best in the industry."
from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com
