4shared says rights-holders are wasting time submitting "bogus" take-down requests to Google
File sharing provider 4shared has defended itself after the site recently surpassed 50 million removal requests via Google's DMCA take-down tool.
While 4shared clearly hosts a sizable amount of pirated content, a record the company is not proud of, it also provides one of the best anti-piracy take-down tools for sites of this nature.
Speaking to TorrentFreak, 4shared expressed their dismay at rights-holders choosing to use Google's take-down system as opposed to their own, more efficient and direct system.
"Complaining to Google is not effective if your goal is to remove a file asap,” 4shared’s Mike told TorrentFreak. "It only removes the link from search results in Google, while sending a complaint directly means a quick block of the link itself."
The same rights-holders have also complained to the U.S. government about 4shared, getting the site added to the the "notorious piracy markets" list.
4shared also expressed their frustration at the high number of take-down requests submitted to Google, explaining that many of them are simply bogus and point to pages on the site that does not provide any downloads.
"What we can see is that numerous complaints provide a redundant volume of links that look like some machine-built template as well as a large amount of non-informative links to various parts of the 4shared website," says Mike.
"The organization APDIF do Brasil, which is the top reporter, submits absolutely meaningless complaints where obviously a bot cycles some keyword through all possible variations of search requests without leading to any specific file which may be copyright-protected."
Of the 50 million plus URLs requested to be removed from Google, APDIF do Brasil's submissions account for 70% of these.
4shared says other anti-piracy firms, which rights-holders outsource the work of identifying and removing pirated content to, are also guilty of the same practice.
4shared urges rights-holders and agents acting on their behalf to deal directly with the site.
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