Warner Bros. & NBC Universal Ask Google To Remove Mega From Its Search Results

[J.Stash]

Warner Bros. & NBC Universal Ask Google To Remove Mega From Its Search Results

The two studios claim that Kim’s Mega is already hosting their copyrighted content, and needs to be removed from Google’s search results as soon as possible.

In response to their request, Kim said that:

“This is in line with the unreasonable content industry behavior we have experienced for years.”

After receiving no less than 20 million take-down requests last year, Google remains under huge pressure from the entertainment industries, as it’s continuously being urged to remove infringing URLs from its search results.

The sad part, however, is that plenty of these requests are bogus, like for example when HBO asked Google to remove HBO.com from its results. These “mistakes” occur mostly because of the high number of automated notices and because rightsholders fail to check the notices’ integrity.

As for Mega, NBC Universal claims in its take-down request that Kim’s new baby is linking to an unlicensed copy of its movie “Mama”. Warner Bros. had done the same (read their request here), but for “Gangster Squad”.

“The Warner Bros. and NBC Universal requests to Google are censoring our entire homepage. This is in line with the unreasonable content industry behavior we have experienced for years,” Dotcom told TF.

“You will recall the illegal takedown of the Megaupload song by Universal Music and the attempts to censor our Mega radio ads. The shutdown of the entire Megaupload site remains the ultimate illegal takedown by the content industry.”

Fortunately for the German entrepreneur, Google acknowledged the mistake (in this case) and kept Mega in its search index.

“During the Megaupload days over 20% of all takedown notices were bogus. We analysed big samples of notices and most were automated keyword based takedowns that affected a lot of legitimate files. The abuse of the takedown system is so severe that no service provider can rely on takedown notices for a fair repeat infringer policy,” Kim continued.

He went on to highlight that these faulty take-down requests had often had an extensive damaging effect on portals that linked to legal content.

“The constant abuse of takedown rules and the ignorance of DMCA obligations by the content industry are based on the confidence that the current U.S. administration is protecting this kind of behavior. The political contract prosecution of Megaupload is the best example,” Kim said.

“The White House doesn’t appreciate that the DMCA was the biggest contributor to a thriving Internet economy in the U.S.”

“From my experience the only people who are acting like criminal lunatics are the copyright extremists who think that the DMCA doesn’t matter. Their agenda is war against innovation. The kind that forces the content industry to adjust an outdated business model.”

“History repeats itself and Innovation always wins,” Kim concluded.

At the time being, Google is still showing Mega on its results. Will it stay that way?

Stay tuned to find out!