Tech giant Microsoft, a protaganist for the introduction of rules and regulations in regards to content piracy on the net, sends a lot of requests for content removal on a daily basis.
However, data recently published has shown that the copyright infringement requests are wrongly requesting the removal of content from some prominent sites.
A list, revealed by Chilling Effects, shows that erroneous requests were automatically placed with Google to remove pages on the BBC website and Wikipedia.
The requests seemed to target the mention of the number 45, leaving many baffled as to the dynamics of the robot responsible.
Other pages targeted by the software program included numbers hosted by the US Government, Huffington Post and Techcrunch.
All of these sites were unaffected though, thanks to their appearance on the search engine’s approved list.
However, SEO workers on sites including AMC Theatres and RealClearPolitics would have been left perplexed by their pages being removed.
Many have ridiculed the information, with popular blog TorrentFreak stating:
“Microsoft and other rightsholders are censoring large parts of the internet, often completely unfounded, and there is absolutely no-one to hold them responsible.
“Websites can’t possibly verify every DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] claim and the problem will only increase as more takedown notices are sent week after week.”
It went on to call for wrongful takedowns to be punished.
The list from Chilling Effects, a Harvard and Stanford backed website recording online activity complaints, did show that majority of requests were against sites well known for hosting illegally gained content.
Microsoft has so far not commented on the findings.
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