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Google asked to remove over 1 million sites from search due to copyright violations

Photo of Google's search engine on a phone

Google has received requests to remove and de-list over one million websites that may infringe copyright, the tech giant has said. It regularly receives requests to remove content that may infringe copyright. As part of the process, the company releases a “Transparency Report” that provides data on requests to remove Search results that link to such material. Over 2.1 billion URLs have been removed since the program started in March 2011.

The goal of the report is to show the impact that copyright has on available content through transparency. When a report is submitted to Google, the company first verifies that the person or group making the request is the copyright owner. The takedown notice is analyzed for accuracy and completeness before being passed on to be authenticated.

If Google determines that the site has violated copyright rules, it will remove the URL from search results and notify the administrator, who is then able to appeal the decision.

Some notable sites that have made repeated requests to remove their content are The White House and The U.S Department of Justice, as well as NASA, Netflix, the BBC and The New York Times.

This is part of Google’s larger effort to “clean up” the internet, with the company announcing last month that it took down more than 1.7 billion “bad ads” in 2016.

Source: Google

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