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RIAA: Google's 1.3 Million Link Take-downs Not Enough

Posted by: , 19:23 AEST, Thu May 31, 2012

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RIAA accuses Google of limiting the number of DMCA notices it can file, an accusation Google denies, while the music industry trade body wants Google to be more proactive in identifying and removing links
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Following Google's release of data showing that the search giant removes as many as 1.3 million infringing links from its search indexes every month, the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) has responded by saying that it's not nearly enough, and that Google's limited actions "perpetuate the fraud wrought on copyright owners".

Even though Google notes that 97% of take-down notices are complied with, the RIAA says that Google must do a lot more before it can get into the good books of rights owners. 

Among the RIAA's chief complaints is that they say Google's systems places an "artificial limit" on the number of removal requests that rights owners can submit. While Google admits there are "technical safeguards" that prevents the accidental flooding of the submission system when combined with an automated submission tool, a Google spokeswoman denied that there were any limits to the number of submission that can be made. 

Google's own stats seem to prove the RIAA's assertions, at best, have been exaggerated. The top submitter of DMCA complaints, Microsoft, has managed to submit 10 times as many take-down requests as the RIAA without running into any issues of "artificial limits".

Another RIAA complaint is that this endless game of whack-a-mole is made worse by the ability of website owners to quickly duplicate content on different links when one link is removed. But instead of realising the pointlessness of DMCA take-downs in a world where hundreds of thousands of new infringing links are created daily, the RIAA blames Google for not doing enough to remove these "duplicated content" proactively, despite the DMCA clearly stating that service providers like Google bear no responsibility to proactively identify and remove infringing content.


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