In a report released on Thursday, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sharply criticized Google's (GOOGL -1.40%) recent work to combat Internet piracy and copyright infringement. Google announced last August that it would begin taking copyright removal notices into its search result rankings.
Half a year later, the RIAA believes the policy hasn't been fulfilled. The association came out with a list of grievances, including claiming that sites it analyzed remained near the top of search rankings, even with copyright infringements. It's no small claim, given that studies have shown that 94% of Google users do not scroll past the first page of results, according to the RIAA's release.
"In other words, whatever Google has done to its search algorithms to change the ranking of infringing sites, it doesn't appear to be working," the RIAA's statement said.
The RIAA further criticized Google for promoting sites with infringement notices in saying, "...a site for which Google has received thousands of copyright removal requests was almost 8 times more likely to show up in a search result than an authorized music download site."
The association similarly condemned Google's anti-piracy and infringement-fighting push last year, while also criticizing the company's transparency reports.
