Music industry body BPI has sent Google more than 50 million take-down requests to have copyright-infringing content removed.
The organisation’s all-time number of requests stood at 50,013,109 as of 15 November.
According to the body, the first request was sent in June 2011 with 44,125,880 requests submitted in the last 12 months alone.
BPI research showed that 77 percent of first page search results for singles and 64 percent for albums all pointed to copyright-infringing websites, suggesting that Google needs to do more to combat illegal behaviour.
Geoff Taylor, BPI chief executive, said: ‘Google leads consumers into a murky underworld of unlicensed sites, where they may break the law or download malware or inappropriate content, because it persistently ranks such sites above trusted legal services when consumers search for music to download.
‘Google knows full well, from millions of notices and from court decisions, which sites are illegal. Yet it turns a blind eye to that information and chooses to keep on driving traffic and revenues to the online black market, ahead of legal retailers.’
Further figures from the BPI showed that crawling tools created by members of the organisation’s Anti-Piracy Unit have located over 12m links pointing to infringing content across a variety of websites so far in 2013.
The list of infringing websites is sent to the IFPI which works to remove illegal web content.
The organisation’s all-time number of requests stood at 50,013,109 as of 15 November.
According to the body, the first request was sent in June 2011 with 44,125,880 requests submitted in the last 12 months alone.
BPI research showed that 77 percent of first page search results for singles and 64 percent for albums all pointed to copyright-infringing websites, suggesting that Google needs to do more to combat illegal behaviour.
Geoff Taylor, BPI chief executive, said: ‘Google leads consumers into a murky underworld of unlicensed sites, where they may break the law or download malware or inappropriate content, because it persistently ranks such sites above trusted legal services when consumers search for music to download.
‘Google knows full well, from millions of notices and from court decisions, which sites are illegal. Yet it turns a blind eye to that information and chooses to keep on driving traffic and revenues to the online black market, ahead of legal retailers.’
Further figures from the BPI showed that crawling tools created by members of the organisation’s Anti-Piracy Unit have located over 12m links pointing to infringing content across a variety of websites so far in 2013.
The list of infringing websites is sent to the IFPI which works to remove illegal web content.
