Google said on Friday that an error caused the search engine to remove The Pirate Bay from its search pages.
"Google received a (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) take-down request that erroneously listed Thepiratebay.org, and as a result, this URL was accidentally removed from the Google search index," Google said in a statement. "We are now correcting the removal, and you can expect to see Thepiratebay.org back in Google search results this afternoon."
Later, Google updated its statement: "The removal appears to be an internal error and not part of a DMCA request."
Separately, The Pirate Bay's site appeared down Friday afternoon at 1:15 p.m. PT, at least in many U.S. areas.
Google didn't provide any details about what caused the error but at this point it doesn't seem to be some kind of orchestrated effort to bring down The Pirate Bay--at least on Google's part. According to Google, it was just a goof.
The DMCA's safe-harbor provision is designed to shield Internet service providers from being held liable for copyright infringement committed by users. But the provision has a certain set of requirements that ISPs must meet, and one of them includes promptly removing infringing material.
The case is a bit ironic, in that it's well-established that The Pirate Bay does not store any unauthorized copies of films, music, TV shows, or other content.
Indeed, the service can help people find pirated content, but so can a lot of search engines, including Google. The notion that the Pirate Bay would be pulled down because of a single copyright claim is sort of humorous.
If that's all that was needed to have the site kicked off, it would have happened years ago. The music and film industries, as well as other copyright owners, have complained about The Pirate Bay for years.
Peter Sunde-Kolmisoppi told Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagblated that The Pirate Bay's attorney sent a letter to both Google and the companies that are suspected of being behind the allegations and demanded that the Pirate Bay be returned to Google's index. The Pirate Bay accused Google of censoring a competitor and of stifling free expression, the paper reported.
This article was first published as a blog post on CNET News.
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