In September 2013 Google received 21.5 million requests from copyright owners or their representatives to delete links from its search index which lead to illegal content. This represents the most requests Google has ever received.

Google: Increase in copyright owner requests to delete links ©-Sergej-Khackimullin-Fotolia
Google: Increase in copyright owner requests to delete links ©-Sergej-Khackimullin-Fotolia

According to the a recent transparency report, 3499 copyright owners and 1881 organisations which represent copyright owners complained to Google. The complaints concerned 36,211 domains. With 967,000 the domain zippyshare.com received the highest number of complaints, followed by dilandau.eu, beemp3.com, filestube.com and rapidgator.net.

The British record label, BPI was the most active, both as copyright holder and as representative of copyright holders, in requesting that Google delete links.

The complaints system was introduced in July 2011. During its first year of operation, the technology giant received 5.4 million requests to delete data, TorrentFreak reports. In 2012 this number had risen to over 50 million.