Microsoft targets false positives in copyright censor spree

Use of automated tools to track and report copyright infringing material has led Microsoft to issue removal notices for legitimate news sites such as BBC, CNN, the Huffington Post as well as to its own search engine, Bing.

File-sharing news site TorrentFreak reported notices had been sent automatically to Google under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) demanding the removal of links to the news sites as well as Wikipedia, movie reviews site Rotten Tomatoes, Science Direct and US Government sites.

The notices were aimed at preventing the unauthorised distribution of Microsoft's Windows 8 beta software.

Google's Transparency Report showed Microsoft had also asked the rival search giant to remove 11 links to its own search engine, Bing.

Google is believed to have added domains such as the BBC and Wikipedia to a whitelist, TorrentFreak reported, so the results were not censored despite Microsoft's requests.

Microsoft is one of the largest users of the DMCA process to remove links to content it believes its infringing. To date, Microsoft has requested Google to remove nearly five million links from the search engine's index.

The Windows developer uses intermediaries to send the notices to Google including Marketly, LeakID and DtecNet, the copyright notice company which provided evidence in the recent trial between film studios and Australian ISP iiNet.