Warner Bros has been fiercely trying to prevent pirated copies from popping up on various piracy sites, so much that they have shot themselves in the foot unknowingly. The company has been highlighting some links on search results that infringe its copyrights to Google, and it seems they have overlooked something and they have also put themselves as a link that infringes copyright.
Tougher piracy measures have been advocated for by mega movie companies and other concerned parties from Google. The movie industry has been at loggerheads with the search engine for the piracy measures. Warner Bros and other movie making companies say that Google makes the search for pirated content easy on the search giant. The movie industry would prefer it if Google entirely removed pirating sites such as the Pirate Bay and others from all their search results entirely.
Movie companies have decided to take their own action, and Warner Bros has been reporting pirated content to the search engine so that they could remove it from the search index. The movie increased its efforts in this regard over the past few months and they have allegedly reported four million links which infringe copyright data.
The term allegedly is used because not all reports about their actions have not been accurate lately. This week, the company actually made some glaring errors pertaining recent reports about URLs which infringe copyright that they made.
Warner, which has been working with the anti piracy partner Vobile, gave Google a warning to block some of its own URLs believing they also infringed copyright. Warner Bros highlighted link to its 2008 Batman movie, the Dark Knight as part of the links which they think is part of piracy.
In the same notice, the company also listed another of its own links which showed the sci-fi classic, the Matrix. Acting on behalf of the movie company, Vobile asked Google to remove the links because they believed they contained copyright material.
Apparently the problem is not a one time issue, because just a week earlier, another takedown notice which was submitted indicated that the Warner Bros website itself also contained pirated material. The notice indicated that the page which hosts the link for the Lucky One was infringing copyright.
Problems such as these only go on to hurt Warner Bros itself, because they tend to limit the exposure of the site at the time. The bad news is that Warnerbros.com is not the only website domain that is being targeted with the reports. Links to legitimate websites such as Amazon and Sky movies were also targeted. Links for buying or renting copies of the Batman: Dark Knight rises movie on Amazon were reported. Batman Begins was also targeted in the Sky movie store, and the official page of the film on reputable movie site IMDb.
In a way it will become harder for users and online surfers to find links to Warner Bros in the near future. The company is at this point unintentionally making it hard for users to find content and links to their movies. Even the legitimate content would be difficult to find if it continues like this.
Luckily, Google managed to see the problems and highlighted them to Warner Bros. They also decided to not take any action on the links which were highlighted by the company. However, the links to the websites for Warner Bros are still under investigation, and no one knows why. Maybe to teach the company a lesson.
