Google to lower rankings of sites with 'valid copyright removal notices' to battle piracy

Washington, Aug 11 (ANI): Google will now downgrade the ranking of websites that have received a high number of valid copyright removal notices in search results.

Websites subject to frequent copyright removal notices will start appearing lower in Google search rankings in a new effort to crack down on piracy .

Announcing the new policy on its blog, Google said that sites with "high numbers" of "valid" removal notices would be affected as the search company tries instead to "help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily.

The new Google policy could limit access to movies, songs, books and other digital documents often peddled illegally online, Politico reports.

Google said that it has received over 4.3 million copyright removal requests in the past month, about 97 percent of which are valid.

Many of the domains that are targets of the most requests are file-sharing and torrent sites.

According to the report, those sites would presumably appear lower in Google search rankings and therefore be harder to find.

Meanwhile, public-interest advocates like Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out that Google's new plan is ambiguous.

They say those "valid" takedown requests aren't often valid, and they fear some legal sites could be caught in the fray. (ANI)