Google announced that it will implement a new ranking signal into its search algorithm from monday. The search engine will start taking the number of “valid” copyright removal notices it receives for a site, into account when ranking content.
Copyright removal notices are nothing more than accusations of copyright infringement. No court or other umpire confirms that the accusations are valid. Demoting search results – effectively telling the searcher that these are not the websites you’re looking for – based on accusations alone gives copyright owners one more bit of control over what we see, hear, and read
Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney, John Bergmayer said:
It may make good business sense for Google to take extraordinary steps, far beyond what the law requires, to help the media companies it partners with. That said, its plan to penalize sites that receive DMCA notices raises many questions. “Sites may not know about, or have the ability to easily challenge, notices sent to Google. And Google has set up a system that may be abused by bad faith actors who want to suppress their rivals and competitors. Sites that host a lot of content, or are very popular, may receive a disproportionate number of notices (which are mere accusations of infringement) without being disproportionately infringing. And user-generated content sites could be harmed by this change, even though the DMCA was structured to protect them..
It will be interesting to see how Google’s new policy holds up to abuse.