Google: Most But Not Every Regulatory Outfit Is Googley
August 22, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
When Google started it earned its revenue by selling advertising. While Alphabet Inc. diversified its portfolio, a large portion of its profit is still generated by advertising via Google. Unfortunately Torrent Freak explains that many of these ads are “pirate” links: “Google Search Asked To Remove One Billion ‘Pirate’ Links In 9 Months.” From the beginning, Google faced issues with copyright holders and it developed policies to be a responsible search engine. The easiest way Google and users address copyright infringements are DMCA takedown notices.
Google records its DMCA requests and began publishing them in 2012 in its Transparency Report. In August 2023, Google posted its seven billionth DMCA takedown notice and it is less than a year after its six billionth request. It took twice as long for Google to jump from five to six billion requests. Most of the DMCA takedowns were from a single copyright holder to stop a specific pirate operation. Who is the main complainer?
“Around the start of the year MG Premium began to increase its takedown efforts. The company is an intellectual property vehicle of the MindGeek conglomerate, known for popular adult sites such as P*rnHub. One of MG Premium’s main goals is to shut down ‘unlicensed’ sites or at least make when unfindable. Last year, MG Premium scored a multi-million dollar damages win in a U.S. federal court against pirate ‘tube site’ Daftsex . This order also took down the main .com domain, but that didn’t stop the site. Daftsex simply continued using alternative domains which remain available to this day.”
MG Premium has a vendetta against pirate links and is nursing a DMCA takedown never before witnessed in history. MG Premium averages more than two million requests per day.
While MG Premium is the biggest reporter of the moment, there are more complainers. Google sells ad space to anyone with the funds but the even bigger question is who is buying ad space on these pirated Web sites? Google automates most of its advertising sales but where are the filters to prevent pirate links?
Whitney Grace, August 22, 2023
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