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Scammers Hit Pirate Game Sites With 'Irreversible' Google Takedowns

posted by chromas on Tuesday December 11 2018, @06:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the [deleted] dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Every single day, rightsholders and their representatives scour the web for references to pirated content, which aren't hard to find. These links are then reported to various online services, such as Google, requesting their operators to remove the allegedly infringing content. This system works well in theory but it's being abused by scam-artists as well.

One of the most recent scams we've seen targets various popular game piracy sites[...] The notices in question are seemingly sent by prominent names in the gaming industry, such as Steam and Ubisoft. However, the sudden flurry of takedown requests appears to be initiated by scammers instead.

[...] The end result of these fraudulent notices is that thousands of URLs have been wiped from Google's search results by what appear to be scammers. In some cases, Google has rejected the requests, but many have been honored.

What certainly doesn't help is that the allegations are not incorrect per se. Pirated games often circumvent DRM. However, the scammy notices are sent out for a different purpose.

Source: https://torrentfreak.com/scammers-hit-pirate-game-sites-with-irreversible-google-takedowns-181130/

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  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday December 11 2018, @07:52AM (4 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 11 2018, @07:52AM (#772792) Homepage Journal

    When I got googles notice I figured I'd been pwned but no those URLs were never at my site. I also checked wayback.

    I filed a counterclaim with a very oblique worded letter in hopes that they sue me. If they do I'm going to press a barratry complaint against their ambulance chasers

    The "plaintiff" was a corporation that was formed specifically to own the rights to a certain season of some TV series

    I read their notice at chilling effects. It listed hundreds of URLs. My guess is that my two 404s were a stale pointer bug in their bot

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @08:23AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @08:23AM (#772796)

    That doesn't make it any less illegal. Sue em.