Anti-Piracy Outfits Think Megaupload, Demonoid & BTjunkie Are Still Alive
During the past few years the world's largest entertainment companies have regularly complained that Google isn't doing enough to reduce accessibility of infringing content via its search service.
Context & Ripple Effects
This story lands mid-argument. Since Google started censoring BitTorrent and file-sharing terms in its autocomplete in January 2011, the major entertainment companies have kept up steady complaints that search still makes infringing content too easy to find — a grievance isoHunt sharpened in March 2011 by arguing in court that Google is effectively the largest torrent search engine.
TorrentFreak's contribution here is an audit of the enforcement side: takedown notices submitted by anti-piracy contractors still list Megaupload, Demonoid and BTjunkie — all shut down — as live and accessible. The pickups across Gizmodo, Techdirt and Softpedia show the finding resonated well beyond the torrent press, because it undercuts the 'Google isn't doing enough' framing with evidence that the notices themselves go unverified.
First-order effects
- Google must process removal requests targeting domains that are already offline — Megaupload, Demonoid and BTjunkie notices are pure overhead inside a takedown pipeline whose volume the studios keep pushing higher.
- Rights holders take a credibility hit: if their contractors flag dead sites as alive, Google gains a concrete rebuttal to charges that it is lax about honoring notices.
Second-order effects
- If Google starts spot-checking or deprioritizing bulk submissions to filter dead targets, legitimate URLs swept into the same automated batches face greater false-removal risk — accuracy problems become collateral damage for unrelated sites sharing patterns with flagged content.
- Entertainment companies and their anti-piracy vendors have an incentive to audit their own lists before the 'search is a pirate's paradise' argument loses force, shifting pressure toward blunter site-level remedies where notice precision matters less.
Third-order effects
- Enforcement is migrating from per-site legal raids — the Megaupload seizure model — toward industrial-scale notice submission aimed directly at search indexes; whoever validates that firehose acquires de facto power over what stays findable online.
- Persistent inaccuracy in URL-level notices gives both sides ammunition for the coming policy fight over whether search engines should be required to remove entire infringing domains rather than individual pages.
The trend: Copyright enforcement is shifting from shutting piracy sites down to flooding search engines with automated takedown notices, turning notice accuracy — not just volume — into the contested battleground between rights holders and Google.