Google Blocked Times (London) Articles About Businessman Mason Soiza, Apparently Based on Unjustified DMCA Demands
· Reason
Here's what happens when I search for "mason soiza spammer with a gold lamborghini"; that headline is the title of a Times (London) article:
Visit h-doctor.club for more information.
The article thus doesn't show up in the search results, though other items that point to it do show up. I get similar results when I search, without a site:thetimes.com limitation, for "web entrepreneur faces inquiry over online sale of painkillers" (another article about Soiza). And I get similar results when I search for site:thetimes.com "mason soiza":
The DMCA complaint specifically targeted, among other items, these Times pieces:
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/web-tycoon-mason-soiza-24-faces-inquiry-over-online-sale-of-painkillers-3jhjzd5kz
https://www.thetimes.com/business/companies-markets/article/mason-soiza-spammer-with-a-gold-lamborghini-58gxblv9c
The claim in the DMCA complaint was that the Times articles infringed the copyright in an OnlyFans page, https://onlyfans.com/angiestonex. That claim appears not to be accurate, yet Google did indeed deindex articles in a major newspaper based on the claim. (The newspaper would presumably be able to file a DMCA counternotification and get the matter reconsidered, but they may have been unaware of the situation.)
Interestingly, the DMCA complaint also targeted one of my posts, ttps://reason.com/volokh/2018/11/10/forged-uk-court-order-aimed-at-vanishing/ ("Forged U.K. Court Order Aimed at Vanishing Newspaper Article About English Businessman Mason Soiza"), but that post has not been removed from Google search results.
The post Google Blocked Times (London) Articles About Businessman Mason Soiza, Apparently Based on Unjustified DMCA Demands appeared first on Reason Magazine.