Warner Bros. and NBC Universal have contacted Google to request that Mega, the file storage and sharing service founded by Kim Dotcom, be removed from all of its search results.
Torrent Freak points to a takedown request filed by NBC Universal on April 24, which claims copyright infringement over the film Mama, directed by Andrés Muschietti.
Warner Bros. filed a similar request on April 15 over the film Gangster Squad. While Mega is listed in the URL list for both Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) notices, it isn’t featured exclusively. Other prominent file-sharing services, such as GetMediafire.com and Freakshare, are also listed among the thousands of accused infringing links.
Notably, both parties have also asked Google to de-list Mega’s homepage from its search index. As Torrent Freak reports, the basis for this request is a little odd given that the Mega.co.nz landing page itself doesn’t include any file links.
Kim Dotcom, who also founded the file sharing service Megaupload, has hit back at the action reportedly taken by Warner Bros. and NBC Universal. “The Warner Bros. and NBC Universal requests to Google are censoring our entire homepage,” he said. “This is in line with the unreasonable content industry behavior we have experienced for years.”
Dotcom pointed to the takedown of the Megaupload song, requested by Universal Music and the shutdown of the Megaupload site as “the ultimate takedown by the content industry.”
“The constant abuse of takedown rules and the ignorance of DMCA obligations by the content industry are based on the confidence that the current U.S. administration is protecting this kind of behavior,” he added. “The political contract prosecution of Megaupload is the best example.”
Earlier this month two of Dotcom’s lawyers, Robert Amsterdam and Ira P. Rothken, published a white paper defending the Internet entrepreneur against a criminal prosecution issued by the US government.
The document later called on the on the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, as well as the Office of Professional Responsibility of the U.S. Department of Justice, to open an investigation into how the Megaupload prosecution was handled by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Update: This post has been corrected. We originally cited MediaFire as one of the services accused of infringing links, when it is actually GetMediaFire.com, which has no relationship with MediaFire. We’ve heard from a MediaFire spokesperson that “The site “getmediafire” is a rogue site that we are pursuing legal action against for trademark infringement, and are working with our partners in the industry to get this site removed immediately. It should be noted that none of the links that getmediafire uses are hosted on any of our servers.”
Image Credit: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images
An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that the director of Mama was Guillermo Del Toro
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