You can start to see why copyright holders are getting so frustrated playing “whack-a-mole” with alleged piracy websites. TorrentFreak has compiled data from Google’s transparency reports to show that copyright holders this year have asked the company to purge more than 200 million links to pages that allegedly infringe upon copyrighted material from its search results. Because Google removes roughly 99% of links requested, it seems safe to say that around 200 million alleged piracy links have been removed from search results this year and that it’s done virtually nothing to stop online piracy. In fact, as Google’s graph posted below shows, URL removal requests have only continued to climb this year despite all the removals from Google’s search results.
Trying to kill online piracy is all but pointless
Updated Dec 19th, 2018 8:43PM EST
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Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.
