Google highlights advances in copyright protection

Google, which has faced intense criticism for years over copyright issues, said it has made progress on four copyright-protection initiatives it outlined in December.

The company has finished building tools that now allow it to act on average in 24 hours or less on valid complaints from copyright owners -- the so-called "takedown notices" -- that their content is appearing without permission on Google sites, starting with Blogger and Web search. The tools simplify the process of submitting these complaint notices, which cite the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) when requesting that their works be removed from websites. "We built the tools earlier this year, and they are now being successfully used by more than a dozen content industry partners who together account for more than 75 percent of all URLs submitted in DMCA takedowns for Web Search. Our response time for these partners is now well below the 24 hour target," said Kent Walker, a Google senior vice president and general counsel. In coming months, Google will make the tools more broadly available to copyright owners that have a track record of "valid" takedown requests.