Hollywood studios Warner Bros. and NBC Universal have asked Google to remove Kim Dotcom’s Mega from its search results. If Google complies, the cloud-storage site which uses an encryption method to ensure security (amongst other things), would have its homepage removed from all search results.
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However, Google receives upwards of a million takedown requests every week, which are often automated, never mind the fact that many requests are not checked for validity by the copyright holders.
This results in what is called questionable takedowns, and it appears this particular example could fall into that category as Mega’s homepage doesn’t contain any links to files.
The DMCA notice sent by Warner Bros. claims that Mega is providing pirated copies of the Ryan Gosling film Gangster Squad, while NBC Universal believes the homepage is linking to an illegal copy of its film Mama.
Kim Dotcom is evidently not a happy man:
“The Warner Bros. and NBC Universal requests to Google are censoring our entire homepage. This is in line with the unreasonable content industry behaviour we have experienced for years,” Dotcom tells TorrentFreak.
He continues: “The shutdown of the entire Megaupload site remains the ultimate illegal takedown by the content industry.”
He states that during the Megaupload days around one in five takedown notices were “bogus” – or automated by implication.
“The constant abuse of takedown rules and the ignorance of DMCA obligations by the content industry are based on the confidence that the current U.S. administration is protecting this kind of behavior. The political contract prosecution of Megaupload is the best example,” said Dotcom.
It seems Google agrees, and is viewing this as a wrongful takedown request – to date it has not removed the Mega homepage from its search results. For all its intentions, wrongful takedown requests affect the availability of legal content on the internet, and copyright holders should recognise that “enforcers” such as Google will not just oblige, given the sheer number of incorrect or automated requests.
