How to nuke websites you don't like: Slam Google with millions of bogus DMCA takedowns • The Register: "Which of course raises the question: Why? And the answer is three-fold:
1] There is no reason not to. Once a company has created an automated script to throw out URLs and send them automatically to Google, it is extremely easy and fast to do so. But perhaps more importantly, there is no mechanism for punishing abuse of the system. Companies can send millions of requests and there is no comeback. They can send millions the next day. And the next.
2] They will occasionally get one right. A 0.03 per cent success rate would ruin any other business, even spammers, but to IP lawyers, getting any positive result ever is a good outcome. Especially since they are paid by the hour.
It focuses Google's attention on specific websites. In one respect, Google is to blame for this abuse of the system. In talking about its system for handling copyright infringement and DMCA takedowns, the company's legal director for copyright, Fred von Lohmann, told a Congressional hearing on the copyright issue not only that Google "relies on copyright owners to inform us" of infringing material, but that "Google has been demoting sites based on the number of takedown notices they receive from copyright owners." It would have taken big corporations' IP lawyers about three seconds to realize that sending millions of requests – even completely fake ones – for particular websites was likely to achieve their main goal of downgrading them from the first few pages of a Google search. And so that's what they have done." 'via Blog this'
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