Google becomes the main target in India’s copyright issues
Google has long been the world’s largest Search engine platform, used by billions of users around the world every day. However, not all content displayed on Google is controlled, and as a result, there has been a lot of content that violates the copyright rights of other parties, and other legal violations. Accordingly, Google has recently become the main target in India’s copyright conflict and get thousands of pieces of content removed from this platform.
According to Google’s monthly transparency report that this platform published every month, in July, Google has taken down enormous numbers of content – 95,680 pieces of content in response to 36,934 complaints from users in India.
The number of contents removed from Google has increased at a dramatic speed, increasing from 71,132 pieces in May, to 83,613 pieces, and recently, 95,680 pieces in July 2021.
Furthermore, the number above is only the contents removed from the user’s complaints, not the actual number of contents removed each month in India.
In July, the report has shown that over 600,000 pieces of content from its platforms in India during July, in which there are 576,892 content pieces removed by Google’s automated tools and 95,680 pieces removed based on complaints from users.
Nonetheless, the real problem here is the number 95,680 pieces, not the overall 600,000 pieces of content removed. Because nearly 600,000 pieces of violated contents were detected by bots and removed automatically and there are no consequences. However, the 95,680 numbers of contents removed by the user’s complaint mean that Google hasn’t completely done its duty and responsibility to rights holders and these ‘late detected’ contents cause the most damage to them.
This makes us wonder is there any more violating content that is not detected by bots and users on this platform? And if so, how many?
Most of the content reported was for copyright violations. Of the 95,680 Google content removed in July, 94,862 were due to complaints of copyright infringement, accounting for 99.1% of the total. Legal requests, trademark protection, court orders, graphic sexual content, impersonation, and other legal requests accounted for only 0,9%. Interestingly, Google received only two removal requests from India during July for removing graphic sexual content, an issue that has plagued platforms worldwide.
Expert opinions
Aditi Verma Thakur, senior partner at Ediplis Counsels in Bangalore stated about the mechanism behind these numbers: “Google also mentions in its report that a unique URL identified in a user’s complaint gets treated as one item. So there could be several unique URLs containing different or identical content pieces in a report. For instance, one copyrighted content may be copied 1,000 times and included in different unique URLs and that would get counted as 1,000 infringing content pieces by Google. Having said that, online piracy in India is rampant because pirates find it easy to amplify their digital content and get traction online by copying others’ copyrighted content.”
Stating about India’s new IT Rules that require digital platforms and social media intermediaries in the country with more than 5 million users such as Google to release monthly compliance reports indicating complaints received and the corresponding action is taken to address such complaints, Aditi Verma Thakur said: “By the introduction of the compliance process, it does not seem that the intention of lawmakers was to check the rate of intellectual property violations. Nonetheless, to a certain extent, the compliance process would lead to awareness indirectly about IP rights and their online enforcement and takedown actions by active enforcers and the internet giants respectively.”
***Other Articles***
– You could see Procedure of Trademark in India here.
– You could visit here to see Required documents of filing trademark in India.
Contact AAA IPRIGHT: Email: [email protected]
Or sending your inquiry by filling the form:
