Faulty DMCA Takedown Notice Makes American TV Network Unfindable in Google

American free-to-air TV network Mega.tv has had its homepage stripped from Google due to a dubious takedown request. The apparent mistake is tied to an overbroad DMCA notice sent on behalf of the European football organization UEFA. The issue has gone unnoticed for more than a year and persists today.

mega tvRegular readers will be familiar with the cloud storage platform Mega, but Mega.tv might not ring a bell right away.

Mega.tv is a relatively small free-to-air TV station with headquarters in Miami and Puerto Rico. The company is owned by Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS) and is available in several U.S. states.

Mega.tv Disappeared
Trying to find information about the TV network through Google can be confusing as Mega TV shares its name with a Greek TV network. But that’s not the only problem. As it turns out, the Mega.tv homepage is not listed by the search engine at all.

When we search for “mega.tv” on Google, a notice appears at the bottom of the results page informing us that one result is missing. Apparently, a copyright holder intervened claiming that Mega TV is an infringing website.

“In response to a complaint that we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page.”

mega removed
When we looked at the takedown notice, which Google published in the Lumen Database, it became clear that this takedown notice was sent by OpSec Online, acting on behalf of the European football organization EUFA.

Illegal EUFA IPTV Streams?
Like many other sports organizations, UEFA is gravely concerned about the continued rise of online streaming piracy. Pirate IPTV and streaming services, in particular, are seen as a direct threat. And according to the notice, Mega.tv falls into this category.

The notice in question alleges that Mega TV is an illegal IPTV service that’s “broadcasting UEFA audio-visual content without permission.” While we can’t confirm or deny that the network ever broadcasted EUFA content, it’s certainly not a pirate IPTV service.

This takedown request isn’t exactly new. It was sent to Google more than a year ago. This means that Mega.tv’s homepage has been unfindable in Google all this time.

We reached out to the TV network requesting a comment on our findings, but the company has yet to respond. The same is true for OpSec, which is listed as the sender of the notice.

Not The Only ‘Error’
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time that this DMCA notice has appeared on our radar. We also flagged it last year because it targets pages from several other legitimate sites, including Virgin Media, DIRECTV, Best Buy, and Star TV.

The results of these major brands were not removed from the search engine, as Google caught the mistakes before they were processed. However, Mega.tv wasn’t that lucky and remains unfindable to this day.