A recent copyright takedown notice from the UK's BPI revealed that the music group has been demanding that Google take down links not just to precise URLs where music is hosted on cyberlockers, but rather more generally referencing the entire site. Now it appears that IFPI, the BPI's big brother, is trying a similar strategy, this time with The Pirate Bay.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is the UK’s main recording industry trade body. It represents many hundreds of companies but it’s most well known members are Warner, EMI, Sony and Universal. It is at the forefront of copyright enforcement and lobbying in Britain and was largely responsible for the dismantling of the famous OiNK BitTorrent tracker.

Yesterday Techdirt asked the question: Is BPI Trying To Setup Google For Copyright Infringement Lawsuit?

The article centered around a June 11, 2010 takedown notice sent to Google from the UK’s BPI. Groups such as the BPI, IFPI and MPAA send these notices on a regular basis and in a normal set of circumstances they’re so prevalent that they would hardly make news. However, Techdirt noted an interesting angle to this particular takedown demand.

Rather than supplying very specific URLs where infringing material could be located as is the norm with these type of requests, the BPI provided whole site URLs such as http://megaupload.com, http://sendspace.com and http://hotfile.com.

“My guess is that this is trying to set up Google, so that Google is officially ‘on notice’ that these nine sites host infringing content, and while Google will almost certainly take down the links to the specific files listed, it’s quite likely that similar files will quickly be found elsewhere on those sites — and BPI may then try to claim that Google should automatically know how to block those other files,” wrote Masnick.

Now, in a June 10 takedown request sent to Google, it seems the IFPI could be trying a similar tactic with the search giant, but being rather more clear about it, this time in connection with The Pirate Bay.

In a fairly lengthy preamble, the IFPI describes The Pirate Bay as “an internet-based service that facilitates copyright infringement on a massive scale” and one which provides access to “several hundred thousand infringing content files, including movies, games and software as well as copyright sound recordings owned by IFPI.” It also describes the guilty verdict handed down to the four Pirate Bay individuals in their 2009 criminal trial and references legal action to have the site blocked in Denmark and Italy.

A huge list of specific URLs which link to torrents is attached to the request and Google is asked to remove these from their search results – but IFPI goes further.

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. [emphasis ours]

IFPI continues with:

In sending this letter we are seeking to ensure that infringing content is made inaccessible or removed from the Internet as quickly as possible through your cooperation. However, 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.

Could this be similar situation to the one Mike Masnick referred to in his BPI article, but this time laying the ground for The Pirate Bay?

“Part of the DMCA safe harbors is that you need to remove content if you have ‘specific knowledge’ of the content,” he wrote. “This is at the center of the Google-Viacom lawsuit. Google claims it needs to know the specific files that are infringing, while Viacom claims that once Google knows that ‘content x on YouTube’ is infringing, it should be required to find and block all such content x’s, even if Viacom has not informed Google where they are.”

It remains to be seen how Google responds to this request but since attempts to take down The Pirate Bay have been an almost complete failure, removing it from the world’s most important search engine could be the next best step.