Google: 'PHL' site among top 10 sites hosting pirated material

A site with a .ph (Philippine) domain is among the top 10 websites with the most requests for removal from search giant Google's search results since July 2011. In its latest Transparency Report, Google said KAT.ph was the fourth most targeted domain in the requests for removal supposedly because of its pirated content. KAT.ph, which stands for "Kick-A** Torrents," was accused of hosting content of 609 copyright owners, as reported by 187 organizations.

A screenshot of the site indicated it offered torrents of movies, music, games, and apps for download. The site ranked fourth behind Filestube.com, Torrentz.eu, and 4shared.com in terms of the number of URLs requested removed from Google's search results. Google said it had received requests to remove at least 1.246 million web pages for containing allegedly pirated material. "Google regularly receives requests from copyright owners and reporting organizations that represent them to remove search results that link to material that allegedly infringes copyrights. Each request names specific URLs to be removed, and we list the domain portions of URLs requested to be removed under targeted domains," it said. The search giant said it had received requests to remove 1,246,713 URLs from 24,129 domains. It added the requests came from 1,087 reporting organizations and 1,296 copyright owners. Copyright owners listed in the requests included Microsoft Corp., NBC Universal, Recording Industry Association of America Inc. member companies, Froytal Services Ltd., Sony Music Entertainment, and even adult sites BangBros.com. The top reporting organizations included Marketly LLC; NBC Universal; Degban Ltd.; British Recorded Music Industry Ltd.; DtecNet; Takedown Piracy LLC; Recording Industry Association of America Inc.; and Removeyourcontent LLC. A separate article on CNET said Microsoft, the top complainer of copyright infringement, asked that 2,544,209 URLs be removed. CNET quoted Google as saying it granted 97 percent of all requests between July and December 2011. "As you can see from the report, the number of requests has been increasing rapidly... These days it's not unusual for us to receive more than 250,000 requests each week, which is more than what copyright owners asked us to remove in all of 2009. In the past month alone, we received about 1.2 million requests made on behalf of more than 1,000 copyright owners to remove search results," it quoted Google's senior copyright counsel Fred von Lohmann as saying in a blog post. YouTube, Blogger not included Google noted requests for other Google products such as YouTube or Blogger, are not included in the stats. It said it plans to update the numbers everyday, include a removal notice in the search results, and share all copies of copyright removal requests with Chilling Effects, a nonprofit organization that collects these types of notices. "If a URL has been removed, Google said the user responsible can submit a counter-notice if they believe the removal request was incorrect," CNET said. Von Lohmann said Google was starting with search "because we remove more results in response to copyright removal notices than for any other reason." "As policymakers and Internet users around the world consider the pros and cons of different proposals to address the problem of online copyright infringement, we hope this data will contribute to the discussion," he added. — LBG/TJD, GMA News