Google has released a report titled "How Google fights piracy", detailing the search engine giant's efforts at placating content holders; content holders who have often accused the company of not doing enough to protect their interests.
In the report, Google lists their five main anti-piracy principles: Create More and Better Legitimate Alternatives; Follow the Money; Be Efficient, Effective, and Scalable; Be Efficient, Effective, and Scalable; and Provide Transparency.
For the first principle, Google cites the successes of Netflix and Spotify in helping to reduce piracy, as well as their own efforts via Google Play and YouTube. "Piracy often arises when consumer demand goes unmet by legitimate supply," the report states.
On the money front, Google says they have proactively removed more than 46,000 sites from earning revenue via Google services due to copyright abuse, often before the rights holder are even aware of the abuse. "Google is a leader in rooting out and ejecting rogue sites from our advertising and payment services, and are raising standards across the industry," the report says.
Google has also had some success in efficiently dealing with the 4 million or more takedown requests it receives each week, citing average turnarounds of less than six hours for dealing with each request.
Despite these pro copyright holder initiatives that Google lists, the company also warned against possible abuses of its system. "Unfortunately, fabricated copyright infringement allegations can be used as a pretext for censorship and to hinder competition. Google is committed to ensuring that, even as we battle piracy online, we detect and reject bogus infringement allegations, such as removals for political or competitive reasons," Google notes.
One of the examples of abuse Google notes details one major Hollywood studio's attempt to remove the IMDb page for one of its movies, as well as multiple examples of censorship.
And lastly, Google believes that being transparent about their efforts, including publishing details of takedown requests, all help to inform the ongoing discussion regarding online copyright enforcement.
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