Google Adds False Takedown Requests to Transparency Report

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—In a welcome move that adds a valuable piece of data to an already-valuable tool, the Google Transparency Report, which launched this May, now contains data that shows when takedown requests submitted to it are false. While the new data point is an essential piece of information that helps paint a more complete picture of the accuracy of takedown requests, the new level of transparency should also provide a greater incentive for accurate reporting by copyright owners and third-party services, some of which fully automate the takedown process instead of adding a more expensive and time-consuming human layer of evaluation. As shown in this example, false reports are identified as 'no action taken' with the full URLs listed in the report. The new data was added this week, according to TorrentFreak. "Previously," the site reported, "it was very hard to find out what happened with these requests, but with the extra data added by Google it’s now easy to see how many and which URLs were not removed from their search results." Torrent Freak also lauded Google for undertaking a task made that much more difficult due to the fact that "hundreds of thousands of URLs are reported per day," but added somewhat cautiously, "Whether the data will motivate copyright holders to make their takedown systems more accurate has yet to be seen."