In a new blog entry, the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), the music industry's trade lobby, has labeled the current DMCA takedown system unworkable, and wants revisions made to digital copyright laws to speed up the takedown process.
The RIAA's proposed changes would see search engines like Google taking on more responsibility in detecting and removing potentially infringing content.
Under the current DMCA system, which the RIAA says is inadequate, the onus is on rightsholders have to identify and notify service providers like Google of any infringing content. Rightsholders would have to do this on a link by link basis.
But as the RIAA has found, the process of "cleaning" the net of infringing links may be an insurmountable one. With every link removed, many more pop up in its place, often hosting the same digital copy of the music in question. And while the RIAA has successfully asked Google to remove more than 20 million links, more and more links are still showing up every day. The RIAA says the current process is like using "bucket to deal with an ocean" of pirated downloads.
Instead, the RIAA says, sites like Google should do more to "stop the same files from being reposted", especially after takedown notices have been sent to the same website for the same file multiple times.
This latest post may represent a renewed effort by the RIAA to put pressure on the current Congressional review of the DMCA laws. The RIAA feels that the current laws, which were "passed before Google even existed" should be updated to reflect the current situation. "It's time to rethink the notice and takedown provisions of the DMCA," the blog post concluded.
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