Vanishing of Stories Mentioning Congressional Candidate Michael Carbonara, Due to “Bogus Copyright Complaints”

WLRN (Daniel Rivero) reports:

A string of bogus copyright infringement claims have been filed to Google over the course of several weeks, demanding that the search engine giant de-list articles about Carbonara’s data center connections from search results. The complaints, filed by different entities with little information online, fraudulently claim that the articles are using copyrighted material.

WLRN has found that the effort largely paid off, making it nearly impossible for the public to find information about Carbonara’s data center connections or other critical coverage of the candidate through a basic Google search….

The takedown efforts are allowed through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed by Congress in 1998. Social media companies, search engines and web hosts simply comply with all complaints as soon as they are filed, out of fear of being held liable for legitimate copyright violations….

Two days after WLRN published an article last month entitled “Candidate running for Project Tango district is embroiled in Michigan data center controversy,” a company allegedly called Reynolds Media Group, based in the United Kingdom, sent a complaint to Google falsely claiming that the article was stolen from the Times of India. No information about the UK-based Reynolds Media Group can be found online, but it alleged that it represented the Indian newspaper in the complaint sent to Google. The company that owns the Times of India is The Times Group.

“We demand the immediate removal of this infringing material from Google search results to safeguard our intellectual property,” reads the complaint.

The article was immediately removed from Google search results, WLRN found….

The WLRN article has many more examples and other details. See also South Florida Sun Sentinel (Susannah Bryan) and Miami Herald (Claire Heddles), which discuss the story; the latter notes that “Carbonara insisted his campaign had no role filing those complaints.”

For more on various schemes for vanishing material from search engine results, see Shenanigans (Internet Takedown Edition); I briefly discuss the DMCA takedown schemes at pp. 300-01.