At what point do we admit that the DMCA simply isn’t working? That endless cat-and-mousing is great news for companies like Google, and a horrible reality for content owners?
On Thursday, Google decided to release information related to the volume of copyright takedown notices it receives every week. It shows that takedown requests have more than doubled in less than a year, and are now approaching 300,000 url removals a week.
This is a sharply escalating problem – not just for music, but software, video, books, and other intellectual property.
As you’d imagine, the recording industry is one of the biggest copyright enforcers, but they’re not alone. Others, including giants like Microsoft, are constantly wrangling to get stuff removed. It’s basically an exhausting game that requires immense maintenance and resources, with rather fruitless results.
