How Google Fights Piracy report details how war on piracy will reach unprecedented heights

Google has released a report with detailed information about how it battling copyright-infringing activity online. Photo / HBO

Your days of downloading the latest Game of Thrones episodes might be short lived if Google has anything to do with it.

In the tech giant's updated How Google Fights Piracy report, it announced its war on piracy is being taken to unprecedented heights.

The report gave detailed information about the robust programs, policies and technologies it is using to battle copyright-infringing activity online.

CONTENT ID

Proving it takes protecting creativity online seriously, Google made mention of its implementation of Content ID - a system copyright owners can use to easily identify and manage their content on YouTube.

"Videos uploaded to YouTube are scanned against a database of files that have been submitted to us by content owners," Google wrote.

"Copyright owners get to decide what happens when content in a video on YouTube matches a work they own."

The choices copyright owners have are to track, block or monetise the infringing content.

Google claim that since the implementation of Content ID, it has been responsible for more than 98 per cent of copyright management on YouTube, with the remainder being handled through copyright removal notices.

PROVIDING NEW REVENUE STREAMS FOR CONTENT OWNERS

While Content ID gives copyright owners a number of different options, Google said 90 per cent of claims result in monetisation.

"YouTube has paid out over $2 billion to rights holders who have monetised their content through Content ID since it first launched," Google wrote.

"The music industry chooses to monetise more than 95 per cent of their claims, opting to leave the content up on the platform - half of the music industry's YouTube revenue comes from fan content claimed via Content ID."

CONNECTING FANS TO BETTER LEGITIMATE ALTERNATIVES

Battling piracy is not rocket science and Google know this.

Instead of focusing purely on infringing content, Google is partnering with the content industry to build and enable convenient, legitimate alternatives.

"Through YouTube and Google Play, Google is in the business of helping users legitimately discover, purchase, and enjoy music, movies, books, magazines, and apps," Google wrote.

"Thanks to these platforms, Google Play has paid out more than $7 billion to developers, while YouTube has paid out more than $3 billion to the music industry.

"Today, Google Play also makes music available in 62 countries, movies in 105 countries, and books in 75 countries."

FIXING SEARCH RESULTS

Google's engineers have been working hard to ensure the majority of search queries only return results to legitimate sites.

"For any problematic links that may appear for rarer "long-tail" queries, our systems for processing copyright removal notices handle millions of URLs each day, in less than six hours on average," Google wrote.

"And when we get a large number of valid notices for a site, our search ranking algorithms demote that site in future search results."

FLEXING ITS POWER

Understanding websites specialising in piracy are commercial ventures, Google has detailed its plans to cut off their money supply.

As Google is a global leader in online advertising, it is using its power to remove its advertising services from piracy websites.

"Since 2012, Google has black-listed more than 91,000 sites from AdSense for violating our policies against copyright infringement, the vast majority caught by AdSense's own proactive screens," Google wrote.