It is only May 2014, but Google has already been asked to remove a record-breaking 100 million “pirate” search results this year. The rate escalates rapidly, representing a significant increase compared to 2013, with the end of the takedown surge being nowhere in sight.

The rights owners continue overloading Google with takedown notices, trying to steer prospective customers away from illegal websites. The number of such requests is increasing dramatically: 6 years ago, for instance, the search engine received just a few dozen takedown notices per year, while now it has to process more than a million of them every day.

Since this past January, the company has already been asked to take down more than 100 million links to infringing sites. Most of those results have indeed been removed by the search giant. However, the experts point out that massive surge in removal requests is controversial. The problem is that some of the reported pages don’t contain any illegal content, but are deleted nonetheless. Although Google does its best to catch such mistakes, manual review of all links is undoable, so some harmless links are still removed.

In the meantime, rights owners are also not satisfied. While the search does what it can to comply with its obligations under current legislation, some industry groups complain that Google’s efforts are not enough to stop piracy. For example, the RIAA submits a staggering number of takedown requests, which just confirms the notion that this method is not very effective. In response, RIAA suggested that the search engine should start banning entire domains rather than individual URLs.

Google, on its part, is doing its best to address the concerns of rights owners. Several months ago it released a report to describe anti-piracy measures employed, where it fights back, saying that copyright holders are the ones who should do more to prevent piracy.

If people don’t have legal options, it would be hard for the search engine to stop unauthorized copying. Everyone knows that piracy arises when consumer’s needs are not met by legitimate supply. The experience of many legitimate streaming service shows that the best way to fight piracy is with better and more convenient legal services.

Source: torrentfreak.com