LOLTT: Copyright holders asking Google to take down their takedown notices

Every now and then a story comes along that makes you laugh out loud. For me, this is certainly one of those stories. Google has started receiving takedown requests of pages that contain a copyright holder's original takedown request. These robotically-generated requests are submitted because the original takedown request features the URL that was originally taken down.

It's rather hilarious and also ironic. In the picture above, you can see one of the takedown requests submitted by Fox asking for a ChillingEffects.org link to be removed. That link points to a previous Fox takedown request.

The system is clearly broken. Google is now handling over 20 million takedown requests per month and it shows no sign of slowing down. But just how we fix the DMCA isn't clear. Both Google and the movie studios have their own ideas and they are, of course, mostly contrary to each other.