Google Faces 2 Million Copyright Removal Requests per Week

Google regularly receives requests from copyright owners to remove search results that link to copyright infringing material. In the week of November 5, Google received 1.98 million such requests, an all time high and a tenfold increase from one year ago.

Among the top reporting organizations are the Recording Industry Association of America, the British Recorded Music Industry, NBC Universal and several companies that have specialized on copyright protection. The RIAA alone reported more than 4.5 million infringing URLs to Google.

In August 2012, Google announced a change to its search algorithm that would penalize domains that have been validly accused of infringing copyright. While content owners welcomed the decision, others were sceptical and feared that many websites could be de-ranked based on unjustified copyright claims.