What's amusing is that the takedown notices are a matter of public record, so it's not like the URLs are actually disappearing from the Internet.<p>Here's a recent example:<p><a href="http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512c/notice.cgi?NoticeID=367515" rel="nofollow">http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512c/notice.cgi?NoticeID=...</a><p>Someone should create a searchable database of these URLs, so that you can search for pirated content that's already been validated as authentic by RIAA/MPAA lawyers. Perhaps that would put a "chilling effect" on Internet censorship.
What a fascinating window into this hidden yet enormous neverending game of whack-a-mole.<p>I was initially surprised that Microsoft dwarfs the RIAA in requests, but of course their software sells at much higher prices than albums. I wonder how popular an artist has to be for the RIAA to consider it worth paying someone to find links and submit requests...<p>It also sounds like an enormous burden (read: barrier to entry) for search engines. I'm sure Google is constantly optimizing just how much of the process it can automate. (ex. If a submitter has had X requests approved for Y domain, remove it automatically?) I love how they let webmasters know about it, though, to remove fears of false positives.
"As a percentage of site's URLs" is a disingenuous statistic. Google has a notion of which URLs on a site are <i>germane</i>; for instance, how likely they are to come up in searches. Reported URLs on TORRENTZ.EU as a percentage of germane URLs will probably tell a different tale than "<0.1%".<p>Put differently: you'd have to be made of stupid to have a ratio of infringing URLs to overall URLs that looked unfavorable; all you have to do to minimize that metric is to spray crap all over some portion of your site that nobody but Googlebot cares about.
I had to dig into the FAQ [1] to find what I wanted:<p>"We removed 97% of search results specified in requests that we received between July and December 2011."<p>It doesn't say anything about how the requests must be formatted and if they are legally enforceable. i.e. Can just anyone submit a request? Does it have to include any kind of evidence?<p>[1]<a href="http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/faq/" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/...</a>
Link for the lazy like me, who couldn't find the page, initially:<p><a href="http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/</a>
I'm building an app that will have a lot of user generated content. How much should I worry about implementing something similar to this on our system before going on air? This sounds extremely cumbersome and expensive to operate. I don't think we could afford this initially.<p>Should we only bother with it after it becomes a problem (hopefully by then we'll have enough revenue to afford this)? Or is it too risky to launch without such system and get brought down ourselves?