Google Improves Copyright Protection

Anyone who has found that their content has been stolen (or scraped) online faces the decision of either letting it go (and using best practices that help Google rank things correctly) or dealing with the cumbersome task of filling out a DMCA  infringement notice. Those who are falsely accused of copyright violations have to deal with the equally cumbersome counter-notice process. Today, Google announced on their public policy blog that they’ll be launching improved tools for both to make these processes easier and to better protect copyright online (beginning with Blogger and Web Search). They’ll be implementing these tools, along with several other related features “over the next several months”.

Other changes they’ll be making include:

• Acting on copyright takedown requests within 24 hours.
• Preventing terms “closely associated with piracy” from appearing in autocomplete.
• Improving AdSense anti-piracy review.
• Experimenting with surfacing authorized preview content in search results. This would enable searchers to preview content that requires registration or payment for the full version. Google has already begun this with music, and the likely next form of media is video (possibly as an extension of Video Sitemap galleries).