An international music body has urged Google to show more respect for copyright law and take meaningful actions to curb online copyright infringement.

Having sent 100 million piracy notices to Google, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) published a letter, making five requests to the world’s largest search engine.

• Fulfill the admirable promise to demote sites receiving extensive numbers of piracy notices.
• Make sure that the “take down” of a song is effective and does not mean temporary removal, to be replaced 2 seconds later.
• Better help consumers to find legitimate sources of music – for example by using an icon to indicate authorized sites
• Change the way the auto-complete search function works so that it no longer directs users to pirate sites
• Make sure your stated policy on repeat offenders has teeth – why is it that, after millions of copyright notices to the same site, this is not having an impact on search results?

Frances Moore, CEO of the IFPI, said in the letter that “[Google] is supplying links to sites providing copyright infringing music that pay nothing to artists, songwriters or record producers. And this represents only a fraction of the infringing links supplied by Google, because the search engine caps the amount of piracy notices that rights holders can send.”

The revenues of the recording industry have fallen by 40% in the last decade to US$16.5 billion, according to Moore.

Google said in 2012 that it would take into account the number of valid copyright removal notices it receives for any given site leading them to be potentially placed lower in search results.

“The truth is that, whatever Google’s claims to be helping tackle infringement, they are not showing convincing results. Research indicates that search engines are a major gateway to illegal music.”

She said that “it is also harming the more than 500 licensed digital music services worldwide that offer up to 30 million tracks to internet users.”