Spotify requests the removal of sites with misleading promises of Premium Services for Free:
The streaming platform Spotify filed DMCA takedown procedures, aiming Google’s removal of the indexing links from websites that promised users access to Premium Services for free, without the need to subscribe to the platform. In total, 20 requests were filed for Google to remove more than 60 links that contained versions of Spotify’s modified Android data package (“APKS”) which allowed free access to unlimited and ad-free use of the platform.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown is a procedure established by United States law that makes it possible to blame both those responsible for the breach of intellectual property as well as those responsible for disclosure, which would result in Google being penalized in the event of not removing indexation from its search engine.
In this regard, Spotify based it’s claims on the fact that the sites containing the misleading promises, in addition to suggesting false support and sponsorship from Spotify, would still be using intellectual property without authorization, which leads the platform to believe that creators of these sites aim to use these programs as a fraud mechanism.
According to the analysis of Torrentfreak, a blog dedicated to reporting the latest news and trends in the BitTorrent protocol as well as file sharing, some links have already received anti-virus fraud alerts. In addition, all links already disclosed that promised the same practice were removed from indexing by Google, making it impossible to find the URLs when searching in their search engine.