Brain asks Google 86 percent more often to remove URLs

Stichting Brein submitted 4.4 million URLs removal requests to Google last year, 86 percent more than a year earlier. Most of the removal requests were related to the websites Torrentz.eu, 4shared.com, and Filestube.

While Stichting Brein still wanted 2.4 million URLs removed in 2013, there were already 2 million more last year, according to Google’s transparency report. Brein wants to have the URLs removed on behalf of affiliated members, such as film distributors and record labels. “Our rightholders have submitted more titles to have them removed”, director Tim Kuik of Stichting Brein explains the increase.

Last year, the average number of takedown requests was 84,000 per week; a year earlier that was still 45,000 times a week. Many removal requests were made, especially in the spring and summer. In total – between September 2012 and Friday morning – Brein ordered Google to have 6.9 million URLs removed.

Although it concerns requests for 4.4 million removals, it is not known how many URLs were ultimately removed; Google may decide not to remove content. “But our bounce rate is quite low,” Kuik claims, although he cannot name a concrete number. “Often URLs are not removed because another party has already reported the URLs,” said the Brein director.

If Google agrees to a takedown notice, references in the search engine’s search index to those URLs will be removed. This is also happening more and more in an absolute sense: while the number of takedown requests in 2011 was not far above one hundred thousand per week, it now amounts to millions of requests per week. Google removes links to copyright infringement to prevent the search giant itself from being held liable.

The removal requests are not submitted manually. “We have techniques for that,” says Kuik. “We automatically search for protected material.” This includes precautions to prevent false positives, search results that are actually not copyright violations at all, he says. For example, the organization does random checks.