In recent months Google has received dozens of copyright infringement warnings from Columbia and Paramount Pictures, MPAA-affiliated movies studios. While most of these notices are directed at users of Google’s public Wi-Fi service, a few also appear to be directed at employees at Google’s headquarters. The movie studios are not amused and warn the search giant’s offices that they might get disconnected from the Internet. (…)

The copyright holders have an interesting procedure to track down people who share protected titles on BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks. They hire companies that join the swarm of filesharers and request copyrighted footage from others. When someone shares a piece of the file with them, they log the IP-address, look up the ISP and send out an infringement notice automatically.

Most of the notices are sent out to the larger ISPs who are then asked to forward them to the customers in question, but search giant Google has also been receiving quite a few, since Google offers Wi-Fi hotspots in some cities. Most of the infringers are not actually sharing material from the Google premises, but from a Wi-Fi spot. However, in some cases an IP-address from Google Headquarters appeared. Some warnings seem to be aimed at Google employees. 

It will be interesting to watch this story. Many times, this type of notice letters to consumers end up in the recycle bin. The notices are nothing more than a warning, and they hardly ever lead to legal action. MPAA directs their ‘suspects’ to the website www.respectcopyrights.org, and offers step-by-step instructions to ensure that your Internet account is not being used to violate the copyright laws. In this case MPAA might not turn a blind eye. This is an awkward situation for Google, as they are in fact trying to help out the entertainment industry, and have even revealed a censorship policy towards certain BitTorrent-related terms. 

What could be the consequences? Formally, there is the threat of cutting Google of from the web. The letters about copyright infringement that were sent to Google state: “Copyright infringement violates your ISP’s terms of service and could lead to limitation or suspension of your Internet service. You should take immediate action to prevent your Internet account from being used for illegal activities.” This is a standard tekst, intended for average consumers, but in this case the customers work at Google.

It seems a long shot to try and disconnect Google from ‘their’ internet. But, the discovery of a few Google employees downloading illegal movies is certainly an interesting opportunity to raise awareness for the problems of illegal downloading 

Source: TorrentFreak