Jerimiah Yap

Google has come up with a way to deal with websites that infringe on copyrights -- bury these pages deep in search results. Websites that violate rights and have been notified by copyright owners will be found in the deep end of the web. Google thinks it's easier this way rather than shutting down websites.

Google wrote in its official blog:

"Only copyright holders know if something is authorized, and only courts can decide if a copyright has been infringed; Google cannot determine whether a particular webpage does or does not violate copyright law. So while this new signal will influence the ranking of some search results, we won't be removing any pages from search results unless we receive a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner," Google said in their corporate blog.

Google states that it has received an estimated 4.3 million notices for copyright removal in the last 30 days.

The top five websites named by copyright owners are filestube.com, isohunt.com, downloads.nl, filesonicsearch.com, and torrenthound.com.

Google aims to "provide a great experience for our users and have developed over 200 signals to ensure our search algorithms deliver the best possible results...This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily—whether it's a song previewed on NPR's music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify."

Websites that have been shut down by authorities due to copyright infringement violations include Megaupload and Demonoid.