Google copyright takedown requests jump to 76 million in past month - CNET

Google is busier than ever putting the kibosh on search results that link to material that allegedly infringes copyright.

The company reported Monday that over the past month it received more than 76 million requests to remove from search results URLs that point to such content. That's more than double the number of requests it received in the same period last year, or around 34 million, according to the search giant's updated transparency report.

Google is the way most people find things on the Inteet from other websites, whether it's searching for specific products or information in general. Many of the sites that tu up in search results are legitimate, but a sizable percentage are pirate sites, which copy material from other websites and present it as their own. Such sites can result in lost revenue and a diminished reputation for the actual site owned by the copyright holder. Pirate sites can be a source of malware as well.