Google Adds Copyright Removals To Transparency Report

Google launched its Transparency Report two years ago in order to show the world exactly what data was being collected and what was available on its various services. One of the first features was the ability to view government takedown requests, and another was traffic patterns across Google's products. Now the search company has added a new copyright section to the Transparency Report.

The new section will detail how many takedown requests Google receives from copyright owners. Google says that search results are removed due to copyright claims more than any other reason, and wants to provide information on who is requesting the takedowns, as well as how often they're doing so.

Google will be offering data starting from July 2011. The stats so far are staggering: 1.25 million URLs have been requested to be removed by 1,296 copyright owners, and Google says that 250,000 requests are received every week. That's more requests than Google received during the whole of 2009.

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise as to who is requesting the takedowns, and who is being targeted. Microsoft sits at the top of the league, followed by the British Phonographic Industry, plus NBC Universal and the RIAA. Sites targeted include torrent sites such as KickAssTorrents and Torrentz EU, plus online locker services like 4shared.

[via Google]