What is the DMCA Algorithm – Copyright Law

For the first time in a long while, Google has introduced a worldwide available and improved version of the DMCA anti-piracy guide. SEO experts equate this update with the Penguin and Panda updates. This is because it was in development for a full two years, during which a large number of requests were collected from users. Just in the year 2013, Google received over 220 million notices claiming some rights were violated. Excluding 2 million claims, all requests were reviewed, and websites that violated the rules faced punishment.

Interestingly, many organizations are not pleased with the fact that only six hours pass from the moment a violator’s claim is submitted to the imposition of strict restrictions on them. Let’s delve into what DMCA is to be more competent in this matter.

DMCA or the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a law that plays an important role in the field of copyright and forms the basis of legislation in the USA. In its drafting, all possible opportunities achieved in today’s world of data expansion and copying have been considered. This law covers several areas at once. According to it, sites and their owners that violate copyrights by copying someone else’s information are subject to sanctions. Moreover, this law proposes penalties for those who create and bring to market technologies that help bypass various technical methods of protecting authors’ rights. The sanctions for copyright violations on the Internet are quite strict, but providers remain protected – they are not responsible for users’ actions.

On the severity of the penalties for copyright infringement, you can also read in the GDPR rules collection (General Data Protection Regulation).

The DMCA instruction was first learned about in the summer of 2012, and it was then that constant complaints about the ineffectiveness of the anti-piracy algorithm began to come in, which could protect a person’s rights to authorship. A perfect example is the clash between media mogul Rupert Murdoch and Google. Google made available a white paper consisting of 26 pages, detailing how the battle against piracy occurs and what methods are applied.

To the question about the effectiveness of the anti-piracy algorithm, the popular web resource called Pirate Bay responded. It became known that this guide had no effect on their traffic whatsoever, as they already had quite a few visitors from Google. However, direct traffic increased significantly.

There is no way now to accuse Google of harboring pirate pages. The update has already influenced and will continue to have a greater impact on resources with movie, TV show, music content, and any torrents.

The Searchmetrics blog noted that just a few days after the update became available, requests on free streaming and downloading of music or movies decreased almost by 100%.

This update currently only affects that part of the network containing content in English. Nevertheless, the update is spreading worldwide, so all pirate resources will face the same punishment soon.