The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), a supposedly representative voice of the UK recorded music business (Rights Holders), has issued a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice complaint to Google. The 11th June letter demands that Google remove links to several popular file sharing (P2P) websites from its index because they are alleged to contain unlawful copyright infringing files.

"Infringing webpage(s)" identified by the BPI
1. http://hotfile.com
2. http://usershare.net
3. http://2shared.com
4. http://4shared.com
5. http://mediafire.com
6. http://megaupload.com
7. http://sendspace.com
8. http://teradepot.com
9. http://zippyshare.com

The letter itself was revealed by the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, which aims to help people (predominantly those who reside in the USA) understand the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws give to online activities. CEC is a joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFE) and several USA universities.

It contains an extensive list of links (about 40) that supposedly go to downloads of unlawful copyright music tracks from authors such as Eminem and Dizzee Rascal. We assume from the context that the BPI has requested only these specific links to be removed and not the hosting website itself.

The letter exposes these links to the public (clever move :glee:) and as a result we have decided not to offer a direct link to the message itself, even if it is easy to find. Many of the links still appear to be active, though some have already been removed by the hosting sites.

Google is known to receive many similar DMCA requests but doesn't always act upon them. Many copyright holders are also angry at Google for indexing a website that indexes links to P2P BitTorrent file downloads. Ironically Google is planning to launch a subscription-based music service of its own in the very near future.