Google is about to begin cracking down on websites that validate copyrights based on complaints they receive. It appears by reading this blog post and following some links that the majority are torrent sites who typically host a lot of software, movies and videos. The sites who are determined to have valid copyright removal notices will be rated lower and lower based on these notices.

Here is more from their blog post:

"Since we re-booted our copyright removals over two years ago, we’ve been given much more data by copyright owners about infringing content online. In fact, we’re now receiving and processing more copyright removal notices every day than we did in all of 2009—more than 4.3 million URLs in the last 30 days alone. We will now be using this data as a signal in our search rankings."

It is hard to say why they are doing this but it seems like they are either making sure they have no problems with the RIAA and large film studios and\or limiting their liability by pointing people to copyrighted content. Sounds like a good idea but we will see if it is implemented correctly.

Stay tuned.