TorrentFreak | Record Label Asks Google to Censor Artists’ Twitter Accounts

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Spinnin’ Records, one of the largest independent dance music labels, has been sending several unusual takedown requests to Google. The record label asked the search engine to take down the Twitter pages of several of its own top artists, including Afrojack, as well as its own account. Google, thus far, has refused to help out with this blatant attempt at self-censorship.

 

In an effort to make it difficult for the public to find pirated content, copyright holders send millions of takedown notices to Google every week.

 

Unfortunately not all of these requests are accurate.

 

Because of the high number of often automated notices and the fact that copyright holders don’t check the validity of all requests, questionable takedown requests are quite common.

 

This week we stumbled upon a prime example in which dance label Spinnin’ Records asked Google to remove the Twitter accounts of some of their own artists, including the popular DJ Afrojack.

 

The DMCA takedown request in question lists links to the official Twitter accounts of Afrojack, Vato Gonzalez and 4 Strings. The same notice also includes the Twitter handle @afrojack, which is not related to the artist, as well as the account of another DJ, Omar Sherif.

 

Twitter takedowns

 

Spinnin’ Records’ DMCA notices are sent by Topple Track who, it turns outs, have a habit of targeting perfectly legitimate content on Twitter. Just two days ago they sent a takedown notice on behalf of Spinnin’ Records asking Google to censor the label’s own Twitter account.

 

This self-censorship is not limited to Spinnin’ Records either, as similar notices are being sent out on behalf of many other labels.

The good news is that Google appears to have white-listed some domains, as the Twitter links listed in these requests were not censored. However, this is not always the case. For example, one recent Billboard article about Afrojack was removed from Google’s search engine based on a false notice.

  Billboard article disappeared

 

As we have mentioned before, these mistakes show how much can go wrong with automated and badly reviewed DMCA notices. For the targeted websites this can cause trouble in the long run, since Google down-ranks sites based on the number of DMCA notices it receives for them.

 

Perhaps it’s now time to penalize copyright holders and DMCA senders who continue to make these easily avoidable mistakes.