WTF?! Google regularly receives a consistent stream of requests to remove infringing URLs from its search results and web indexes. While Mountain View is quite willing to collaborate with third-party companies and law firms, a recent surge in these removal requests has been attributed to just one company, causing confusion.
Google provides a regularly updated transparency report regarding web content removal due to copyright violations. Law firms and other organizations can submit a DMCA notice to the company, detailing the infringing URLs. Google can then "delist" these URLs by removing them from its web search results. While the DMCA takedown process is well-established, some companies are taking advantage of Google's cooperative approach by flooding the platform with an excessive number of takedown requests.
As of October 2022, Google had taken down some six billion URLs. It took web companies and more than 326,000 rightsholders a decade to reach this point, with the top 10 most active organizations submitting nearly 2.5 billion URLs – accounting for over 40 percent of the total requests. The latest transparency report highlights a rapid and substantial surge in takedown requests attributed to MG Premium, the parent company of PornHub.
According to Google's updated report, MG Premium Ltd. has sent over 866 million DMCA notices in less than a year. The company is actively combating "unlicensed" websites that exploit official content from PornHub, which led to a significant increase in takedown requests starting around the beginning of 2023. Last year, MG Premium won a legal case against Daftsex in a US federal court; however, the site has continued to operate despite the legal victory.
After its main .com domain was taken down, Daftsex simply started using alternative domains that are still active today. In just a few months, MG Premium sent more than a quarter of a billion DMCA takedown requests related to dsex.to, daft.sex, and other alternative domains associated with the Daftsex lewd streaming service.
During its takedown spree, MG Premium was responsible for sending Google an average of two million DMCA requests per day. While the volumes have since decreased, the company was undeniably a significant contributor to Google's recent milestone of seven billion URL removal requests. This figure pertains to URLs reported to Google, encompassing duplicates or even web pages that were not part of the company's web index.
To avoid crawling infringing, non-indexed URLs in the future, Google maintains a special "watchlist." Despite reaching the seven billion milestone, the company rejects millions of takedown requests when they fail to provide clear links to infringing content. These rejections also encompass legitimate URLs from platforms like Netflix, NASA, the White House, or even the FBI, which were incorrectly flagged as copyright violations.