Hollywood studios ask Google to censor Kim Dotcom’s Mega

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A couple of the major Hollywood studios have asked Google to remove the homepage of Kim Dotcom’s Mega from Google search results. This includes NBC Universal and Warner Bros, who are claiming that their copyrighted content is hosted on the URL (http://mega.co.nz) and want it taken down. Dotcom is naturally disappointed by this news and has pointed out that the constant takedown abuse is restricting access to legitimate files:

“This is in line with the unreasonable content industry behavior we have experienced for years.”

There are millions of DMCA takedown notices send to Google every week, in which they are hoping to make pirated movies and music even harder to find. But these requests are not always correct. The number of automated notices and the fact that copyright holders don’t check the validity of all requests, which results in questionable takedowns. This is one such questionable takedown, because while a file stored on Mega may or may not be a pirated copy of a show or movie, the homepage itself definitely does not have any pirated content (unless Hollywood has some inside knowledge that we don’t).

For those that don’t know, when it comes to file locker/storage websites like Mega, typically only the specific infringing URL is censored — not the homepage of said website. That is what makes these takedown requests so laughable.

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NBC Universal believes that Mega’s homepage is linking to their film Mama which is being infringed and Warner Bros claims in a DMCA notice that Mega is making pirated copy of Gangster Squad available to the public. As you probably guess, Dotcom is not happy with the attempts at censoring his site. He also points out that this is not the first time he has fallen victim to this kind of abuse.

[via TorrentFreak]

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