New Google Algorithm To Thwart Copyright Piracy: Keep Reporting Infringement!

Google will begin actively making it harder to find copyright pirates using its search service starting this week. Google made the announcement in a blog post last week. Google has traditionally handled infringement through its DMCA (digital millennium copyright act) takedown notice procedure. I wrote about this procedure on Trademarkology back in August in the context of trademarks that are also subject to copyright. The new tweaks to Google's algorithm will intentionally demote sites that traffic in copyright infringement, as reported to Google through the DMCA takedown process. Google will also remove these infringing sites from autocomplete predictions to make it harder for searchers to find the sites.