A Ukrainian TV channel named TRK has mistakenly reported its own URL as an infringing one to Google and asked it to be removed.
The concerned URL was the localhost, pertaining to its own server. And since it was deemed a mistake, Google cannot takedown the URL. Also, the company is having a bad reputation for detecting infringing URLs.
Spotting Self URLs as Illegitimate
With a number of digital pirates out there constantly scraping and distributing unauthorized content for free, copyright holders have pushed for more effective rules and regulations in taking them down.
One among them is the DMCA policy, where an aggrieved copyright holder can file a DMCA takedown request to the concerned platform for removing the objecting content.
While this is serving fine, many copyright holders often point out legitimate URLs as illegal, by mistake mostly, and Wanted them to be removed by Google or any other search engine in their DMCA notices.
We’ve seen the case of Toomics earlier, and now comes the Ukrainian TV channel – TRK. The channel’s anti-piracy wing, Vindex has filed a DMCA notice with Google spotting a localhost URL of theirs!
As per the takedown request, Vindex mentioned 127.0.0.1:6878/ace/manifest.m3u as an infringing URL and wants it to be removed. This localhost URL pointed towards a playlist file, which is for its P2P streaming platform Ace Stream.
While TRK being stupid here, Google ignored the request of taking down the said URL. Well, it can’t do so even if it wanted to. May the Vindex have to review its infringement detecting bots and policies, as it’s having a bad reputation for sending false DMCA notices.
And regarding the latest notice, Google only removed slightly over 10% of the listed URLs from its search engine results.
