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Piracy Movies Entertainment Technology

Hundreds of Thousands of 'Pirate' Sites Disappear Following Takedown Notices (torrentfreak.com) 43

An anonymous reader shares a report: Every week millions of these requests are sent to hosting platforms, as well as third-party services, such as search engines. Quite a few of the major players, including Twitter, Google, and Bing, publish these requests online. However, due to the massive volume, it's hard for casual observers to spot any trends in the data. Researchers from Queen Mary University of London and Boston University aim to add some context with an elaborate study covering a broad database of takedown requests. Their results are now bundled in a paper titled: "Who Watches the Watchmen: Exploring Complaints on the Web."

The research covers all takedown requests that were made available through the Lumen Database in 2017. The majority of these were sent to Google, with Bing, Twitter, and Periscope as runners-up. In total, more than one billion reported URLs were analyzed. Most takedown requests or 'web complaints' were copyright-related, 98.6% to be precise. This means that other notices, such as defamation reports, court orders, and Government requests, make up a tiny minority. The researchers report that the complaints were submitted by 38,523 unique senders, covering 1.05 billion URLs. While that's a massive number, most reported links are filed by a very small group of senders.

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Hundreds of Thousands of 'Pirate' Sites Disappear Following Takedown Notices

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  • by kimgkimg ( 957949 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @12:07PM (#58672350)
    "Hundreds of Thousands of 'Pirate' Sites Re-appear with Different Names the Day After Takedown Notices"
  • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Wednesday May 29, 2019 @12:21PM (#58672404)

    The problem is how many of these sites are actually following Fare Use, But the copyright holder is just wielding the cheap to do take down notice.
    I am all for Copyright protection but it is cheaper to say Take this down in bulk, suffer minimal if any consequences for bad decisions, gives too much power to the Copyright holder to wield, and is abused, especially when the Copyright holder has enough money to cover any little guy who tries to hold their guns and sue back,

    • Why is the word "pirate" in scare quotes in the original article? Are they or are they not pirate sites?
      • by suutar ( 1860506 )

        TFA does not say one way or another, because that's not their focus. Their point is that a lot of sites that are alleged to be pirates wind up shutting down. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't, but they're gone now.

      • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
        Well they haven't really boarded any ships and their attitude towards parrots and eyepatches is still in doubt.
        • by Anonymous Coward

          But all of the movies on those sites were rated "Arrrrr"

    • The problem is how many of these sites are actually following Fare Use

      Fare Use? I guess the ones that pay Apple's fees are following "Fare Use"...

      Oh, wait! You meant "Fair Use", didn't you?

      Is it too much to ask that people with 16+ years of schooling can actually spell?

    • The problem is how many of these sites are actually following Fare Use

      The ones that sell train & plane tickets?

    • The problem is how many of these sites are actually following Fare Use

      Only the sites that figured out how to use the fare are likely to reappear.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    The tighter you close your fist, Vader, the more websites slip through your fingers.

  • My personal website features a complaint about my local electricity supplier. How can I find out if they have ever complained about me??
    • My personal website features a complaint about my local electricity supplier. How can I find out if they have ever complained about me??

      You'd probably have to sue them for doing it, and then during discovery they'd have to tell you if they really did. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.

  • There are companies that specialize in issuing takedown requests. I work for a company that has many end users connecting and trusting us with their money, so a lot of scammers make look-alike pages to try to trick people. We employ a company that monitors lots of sources (for example SSL cert creations and spamtraps) for attempts to phish our brands, and issue takedowns. Works well. The company has lots of clients. I imagine it counts for only one "sender".

  • Listen to practically any song you want, usually with no ads. Some have been up for 9 years, maybe longer.

    Loads of movies, and TV shows as well.

    I pointed this out to KimDotComm on twitter. KimDotComm replied: "when do google execs get their homes raided?"

    I think that is a fair question.

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