Google makes a good show of supporting intellectual property rights. I have been a believer but I just had my faith shaken when I discovered a sleazy trick Google perpetuates when it removes materials from its search engine as a result of an intellectual property complaint (DMCA). After you use their Webmaster tools to report URLs that link to violating materials, Google goes through the process of checking the links, and then reporting that they are removed from their search engine.
What Google isn’t saying is that it puts not only the report of the removal of the take down notice to Chilling Effects, it also includes the link itself. That is, the link to the actual location where the abuse is taking place. Now Google could claim that they aren’t posting it, that Chilling Effects is. However providing the actual link to Chilling Effects merely propagates the violation on yet another site.
Many copyright holders make requests to Google because the sites containing the copyrighted materials are located in countries where copyrights have very little meaning. Sending take down notices mean nothing, other than giving those sites an extra email address to spam.