In a twist of digital drama, two major film studios have called upon Google to scrub links to their own takedown requests aimed at combating film piracy. The requests, made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), are part of Google’s routine handling of approximately 20 million takedown notices each month, all of which are made public.
Recent appeals from Fox and Universal Studios have included demands to erase prior takedown notices, a move met with silence from Google. These notices target specific web addresses hosting unauthorized content, seeking their removal from Google search results. While Google’s transparency in publishing these notices aims for accountability, critics warn that this practice inadvertently flags locations of pirated material, potentially aiding pirate search engines.
Take Down Notice Database
While producers of content have a clear right to keep others from profiting from their work without their permission, according to an article on Lumen, a database of takedown type notices, copyright is in some cases being “weaponized” for reputation management. The web site’s about page had this write up in March of 2024:
Conceived, developed, and founded in 2002 by then-Berkman Klein Center Fellow Wendy Seltzer, the project, then called “Chilling Effects”, was initially focused on requests submitted under the United States’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act. As the Internet and its usage has evolved, so has Lumen, and the database now includes complaints of all varieties, including trademark, defamation, and privacy, domestic and international, and court orders. The Lumen database grows by more than 40,000 notices per week, with voluntary submissions provided by companies such as Google, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Counterfeit Technology, Medium, Stack Exchange, Vimeo, DuckDuckGo, aspects of the University of California system, and WordPress. As of the end of of 2021, the project hosts over eighteen million notices, referencing close to four and a half billion URLs. In 2021, the project website was visited over nineteen million times by over one million unique users from virtually every country in the world.[25]
Enjoy Legal Zero Piracy Music
You know, I love music. If I want to hear a particular song, I’ll typically go and look for the official video of it on YouTube these days. Sometimes I will enjoy radio stations from around the world on ( radio.garden [1] ). If you have the urge to download music, rather than participating in any online piracy, which I can not condone, I suggest you realign your musical desires to enjoy downloading free non-commercial music. There’s almost endless great art by lesser known artists out there to discover. Several websites in the citations below offer a variety of music genres and tracks for free and legally downloadable content.
Citations
[1] http://radio.garden
[2] https://www.soundclick.com/
[3] http://bt.etree.org/
[4] http://stereogum.com/
[5] http://www.unsignedbandweb.com/
[6] https://indierockcafe.com/
[7] https://www.dmusic.com/
[8] https://soundcloud.com
[9] https://www.mysmartprice.com/gear/free-legal-mp3-music-download-sites-and-apps-mobile/
[10] https://altsds.co/
[11] https://archive.org/details/audio
[12] https://www.jamendo.com/
[13] http://www.stereokiller.com/index.cfm
[14] http://3hive.com/
[15] http://www.itsfreedownloads.com/
[16] https://mp3.com/
[17] http://www.purevolume.com/
[18] http://www.last.fm/music/+free-music-downloads
[19] https://www.classiccat.net/
[20] https://www.noisetrade.com/
[21] https://www.nanowerk.com/20-Best-Free-Legal-Music-Download-Sites.php
[22] https://www.lifewire.com/free-music-downloads-1356648
[23] https://www.mac-dvd.com/top20-legal-free-music-download-websites.html
[24] https://beebom.com/legal-and-free-music-download-websites/
[25] https://lumendatabase.org/
