The Pirate Penaltymany Popular Sites Will Escape it not Just Youtube

First of all, you may be wondering what is this pirate penalty and how will it work? Well, there is no need to worry as we have you covered and can explain everything that you need to know. First of all let’s start with the pirate penalty it’s self.

So, What Is The Pirate Penalty?

When people first heard about this “Pirate penalty”, it sounded like the sites who had many copyright infringement complaints filed against them with Google, for example those ones listed in the Google Transparency Report, would be at risk under this new pirate penalty which Google will begin to impose as of this week,so ensure all your content is unique before this penalty system is imposed.

YouTube And These Copyright Infringement Notices

Yesterday an author from Search Engine Land was speaking with Google and was provided with more details it that hadn’t been shared before. The main piece of detail though has to be the following:

If this was the case however, Google’s own YouTube would have a unique and perhaps unfair advantage over the rest of the sites out there. This is the case as copyright infringement notices filed against the site are handled through a completely separate system and would not count against the website in the way that other websites would be hit under this forthcoming penalty.

“Google have said that any notices which are filed against YouTube through the separate YouTube copyright infringement reporting system will be combined with those filed against YouTube through the Google Search reporting system.”

After that information was given it makes you wonder, how many infringements in total will YouTube face? Will this go beyond the tiny 650 URLs that were requested for removal, which were filed through the Google Search system over the past 18 months? Google, however, are still refusing to give an exact number, saying only that it’s “magnitudes” beyond those with the Google Search.

YouTube & The Others That Are Likely Not To Be Hit

There is a very high chance that YouTube may very well have a lot more copyright infringement notices filed against it (and then upheld by Google) than any of the other sites which are likely to be targeted through what can now be known as the Google Search takedown list. Despite all of this however, Google have repeated its earlier statement that it isn’t expecting YouTube to be hit and here is that previous statement:

“We’re treating YouTube like any other site in search rankings. That said, we don’t expect this change to demote results for popular user-generated content sites.”

This is confusing a lot of people out there as they are wondering how is YouTube able to escape a penalty that seems to be specifically designed to impact the sites out there with a lot of copyright infringement notices.

More Than Just The Number Of Notices Counted

Today, Google have said that this new “pirate penalty” will look beyond the number of notices that are being given to websites. They have said they will also take into account a number of other factors, however Google being Google, they won’t reveal these. Simply put, the end result is that YouTube, along with many other popular websites beyond YouTube, are not expected to be hit whatsoever.

Now you may find yourself asking, what other sites? Some examples that Google gave include Facebook, IMDB, Tumblr and Twitter. They stressed that these websites are not on some type of “whitelist” of sites. Rather than this, Google have said that this algorithm automatically assesses various factors or signals to decide if a website with a high number of copyright infringement notices against it should also face a penalty.