DMCA Copyright Takedowns To Google Increased 10x In Just The Past Six Months

by Mike Masnick

Back in May, we wrote about Google adding a section in its Transparency Report focused specifically on all of the DMCA copyright takedowns it receives. That tool has provided a bunch of interesting data and information, mainly highlighting abuses of the DMCA process. It also shows the scale of DMCA takedown activity with Google. The latest is that Google has put out a blog post noting that when they launched that report, they were receiving approximately 250,000 DMCA takedowns a week. Today, it's up to 2.5 million per week. That's in just six months. Because that's insane, I'm going to repeat it: in just six months, the number of DMCA takedowns that Google receives has increased by a factor of 10 from 250,000 per week to 2.5 million.

The company also claims that it does the ensuing takedown in an average of just six hours -- even with having someone review each and every takedown, and even rejecting a few. They reject about 2.5% of takedown notices. Again, when you think about it, this remains incredible. They're actively reviewing 2.5 million takedowns a week, and not just reflexively removing all those results from search, but doing at least a quick reality check on them. There are still plenty of bogus takedowns, so the effort isn't perfect, but it is fairly incredible. Given how many times we see copyright maximalists complaining that Google doesn't take DMCA takedowns seriously, I wonder if anyone else out there processes so many DMCA notices in such a short period of time. I doubt it.

Also interesting: they're now making all of the data available for download, so perhaps we'll start to see some interesting research come out of this.

Either way, this should highlight just how ridiculous the current system is. When one company is processing over 10 million takedowns per month, the system is clearly broken. Maybe it's time to look at why -- but, of course, Congress just wants to stick its head in the sand instead.