Google Took No Action Against Links In 9% Of Takedown Requests

Google, the world's biggest search engine, receives vast quantities of takedown requests, where individuals and entities can request that Google take down a link containing allegedly infringing content in 2013. The number of takedown requests has grown exponentially over the years, having hit 235,000,000 links said to violate copyrights. Of these, Google decided to discard 9-percent of the requests, amounting to 21 million Web addresses.

The reasons for ignoring takedown requests are numerous: the requests may not be valid, the links could be duplicates of previous takedown submissions, and more. These numbers contrast with the vastly lower numbers from just a few years ago. In 2011, for example, Google received under 10 million links in takedown request, a number that rose to in excess of 50 million in 2012.

Obviously, then, 2013 has seen a huge spike in these sorts of takedown submissions. The folks over at TorrentFreak decided to dig into the numbers (regarding 2013) and found that the RIAA and the BPI, both entities of the music industry, accounted, collectively, for more than 70 million of the links. Expanding on that, Microsoft, 20th Century Fox, and Froytal Services accounted for just a touch under 50 million of the links.

When it comes to the no-action links, the majority of that subset was submitted by Lynda.com, which had 57-percent of the more than 1 million links it sent in discarded. BPI, with in excess of 520,000 of the links it submitted being discarded, followed closely on its heels. Both Warner Bros. and NBC Universal also had substantial percentages of requests discarded.

SOURCE: Torrent Freak