The Truth About Removing Information From The Internet And Google

We hear from a lot of people, “I hear it’s not possible to remove information from the Internet.”  This is a common misconception created mainly by reputation management companies that don’t want to make the extra effort in actually removing information from the Internet.  Granted, it is not an easy accomplishment to remove information online.  There are countless ways to remove information from the Internet.  Google even has a whole page about how you can try and get information removed.  Google recommends contacting the publisher aka website owner to try and have them remove the information.  

Depending on the circumstance this can be very effective and inexpensive.  In cases where the website owner is non-responsive or you are not able to track down the owner, there is still other methods to remove information from the Internet.  The DMCA or Digital Millennium Copyright Act a law introduced in 1996 was created to help individuals and corporations in protecting their copyright ownership rights.  If someone has stolen material that you have a copyright on you can hire a lawyer to get the IP address of the poster.  You will be required to get a temporary or permanent injunction against the poster.  Once you have obtained this, Google and Chilling Effects will remove the content from their search engines.  However there will still be a link at the bottom of the page showing the content once existed.

This is an example of what is shown at the bottom of Google after a DMCA takedown is performed.

 

So what is protected under copyright law?  Unfortunately just because someone writes something negative about you or puts your picture on the Internet, this does not necessarily mean it is going to be protected under copyright law.

The six rights in areas where an author retains exclusive control are:

(1) the right of reproduction (i.e., copying),
(2) the right to create derivative works,
(3) the right to distribution,
(4) the right to performance,
(5) the right to display, and
(6) the digital transmission performance right.

Infringement occurs whenever someone who is not the copyright holder (or a licensee of the copyright holder) exercises one of the exclusive rights listed.

Depending on how serious the offense is there are always options to explore in removing information from  Google and the Internet.  As a reputation management company, overall we always recommend using the suppression technique to battle false slander and to help protect yourself or your company from future slander.  We also always attempt to remove what we can from the Internet.  Many times tracking down the website owner proves to be the most difficult aspect of getting information removed.  Most website owners are open and willing to remove content, they are just not easy to get a hold of.

We take a different approach than most reputation management companies in that we work hands on with our clients and make every attempt of removal that we can while at the same time suppressing information.

Reviewed by author: Ashley Adams

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