IFPI Sends DMCA Notice To Google Demanding It Stop Linking To The Pirate Bay... Entirely

from the here-comes-the-lawsuit dept

In light of the serious violations of copyright facilitated by The Pirate Bay service, and in accordance with Google's policies (see http://www.google.com/dmca.html andhttps://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=58&ctx=sibling) we are asking for your immediate assistance in removing from your index, or otherwise disabling access to via your search engine, URLs linking to the website for The Pirate Bay including but not limited to the URLs specified in the attachment to this notice.

Our use of a notice in this form, as required by Google, is meant to facilitate Google's removal of search results linking directly to infringing web pages and we neither admit nor accept that Google is a 'service provider' for the purposes of the DMCA or that it is necessary to serve, or that Google is entitled to be served, a notice in compliance with the DMCA. IFPI itself and on behalf of the IFPI Represented Companies expressly reserves all rights in this regard.

Please note that we do not admit that we or the IFPI Represented Companies are responsible for detecting infringing material and notifying you of it.

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We just wrote about a DMCA takedown notice from BPI to Google that appeared to be setting Google up for a future lawsuit, and now it looks like the IFPI, of which BPI is a part, is going even further. TorrentFreak, following up on our post about BPI, noticed an even more direct takedown notice from the IFPI demanding that Google block any link to The Pirate Bay.Yup. They are directly asking for a blanket ban, which clearly goes way beyond what the DMCA was intended for or allows. But, of course, the real goal here is to set up Google for a lawsuit, which IFPI makes clear later in its letter:Nice trick here, right? So even if the courts decide (say as in the Viacom case) that Google needs to have direct knowledge of what's infringing, the IFPI wants to reserve the ability to claim in court that Google isn't even a service provider and doesn't fall under the DMCA's safe harbors. Of course, Google has dozens of judicial decisions on its side, but why should that stop the IFPI.Then there's my favorite line of all:Yup. The IFPI is blatantly coming out and saying that it doesn't believe it needs to figure out what's infringing and what's not -- that's what Google has to do. Of course, there is nothing in the actual law or in the case law that supports this position. It just looks like the IFPI is taking a flier and seeing if it can drastically overreach on the DMCA and get Google to stop linking to the entire Pirate Bay (something that Facebook has already done), and if Google (hopefully) refuses, then it seems likely to file a lawsuit.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, linking

Companies: bpi, google, ifpi, the pirate bay