An example of fraud that attempts to remove inconvenient articles from the Internet by abusing copyright infringement applications
Foreign media Tax Policy Associates has reported that someone is conducting a large-scale censorship campaign that exploits the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in order to delete articles and sites that are inconvenient for them from search results.
The epidemic of fraudulent DMCA takedowns
A series of censorship campaigns using a large number of DMCA applications was discovered in November 2023 when Tax Policy Associates published an article about the fraudulent advertising company ``Mogul Press'' active on SNS.
Tax Policy Associates later discovered that someone had submitted a DMCA request to Google regarding the article in an attempt to have it removed from search results.
The method was to copy the entire text of Tax Policy Associates' article on a fake site and then complain to Google that Tax Policy Associates had plagiarized their article.
The DMCA filings targeting Tax Policy Associates were filed by unidentified companies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United States. In addition, both applications had almost the same text, using the phrase 'completely infringing.'
The phrase sounded like an amateur trying to act like a lawyer, so Tax Policy Associates
As a result, we found that there were 180 DMCA applications that included 'Media Corporation' in the applicant's name and 'completely infringing' in the text. At the time of article creation, the number has increased to 194.
The applicant name is a company name with 'Media Corporation' appended to a random person's name, such as 'Arthur Media Corporation,' 'Louis Media Corporation,' or 'Tessler Media Corporation.'
Similar methods have been reported in the past, and in the past, a Spanish company called Eliminalia that tried to suppress reporting on corruption cases by abusing the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was reported by the non-profit organization
It is unclear whether the censorship campaign discovered by Tax Policy Associates is due to Eliminalia or another company hired by Mogul Press.
Tax Policy Associates has reported that requests to take down various articles on the Internet, including articles about sexual crimes, reports about alleged political donations, and articles alleging that a student is anti-Semitic, have been submitted to Corporation. Additionally, we have occasionally seen applications from entities that appear to be rivals regarding gambling sites.
In response to inquiries from Tax Policy Associates, Google said: 'We have robust tools and processes in place to combat unauthorized removal attempts. We also have robust tools and processes in place to combat unauthorized removal attempts. 'We use a combination of automated and human reviews to detect signals of fraud, including well-known techniques.'
However, Google does not verify the identity of applicants, and has accepted clearly fraudulent applications such as multiple applicants claiming copyright infringement for the same article.
From this point of view, Tax Policy Associates commented, ``Unfortunately, Google's attempts to prevent fraudulent applications do not seem to be working.''
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