Google's Information On DMCA Takedown Abuse

Binestar writes "According to a PC World article, Google has submitted a brief to New Zealand about its proposed copyright law (section 92A). "In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.""

Comments

Content of Submission

[Rangataua]

The content of the Google submission to TCF can be found here. Some of the other submission (including the Auckland District Law Society and the Radio New Zealand submissions) are worth a read.

Re:Are those overlapping percentages?

[JeanPaulBob]

Aha! I found the info here, through a link provided in someone else's comment. TFA is a bit off, it seems to me. The 37% figure is notices about sites outside America. And there were three other types of "flaws":

In this study, we traced the use of the Section 512 takedown process and considered how the usage patterns we found were likely to affect expression or other activities on the Internet. The second level of analysis grew out of the fact that we observed a surprisingly high incidence of flawed takedowns:

• Thirty percent of notices demanded takedown for claims that presented an obvious question for a court (a clear fair use argument, complaints about uncopyrightable material, and the like);
• Notices to traditional ISP's included a substantial number of demands to remove files from peer-to-peer networks (which are not actually covered under the takedown statute, and which an OSP can only honor by terminating the target's Internet access entirely); and
• One out of 11 included significant statutory flaws that render the notice unusable (for example, failing to adequately identify infringing material).

In addition, we found some interesting patterns that do not, by themselves, indicate concern, but which are of concern when combined with the fact that one third of the notices depended on questionable claims:

• Over half--57%--of notices sent to Google to demand removal of links in the index were sent by businesses targeting apparent competitors;
• Over a third--37%--of the notices sent to Google targeted sites apparently outside the United States.

[bold added]