Microsoft ‘accidentally’ sends copyright takedown notices for BBC, CNN, and US Government

For those that don’t know, companies will normally send Google a list of links they want removed out of search results due to those links either hosting or linking to copyrighted material. Well, this time, Microsoft apparently sent takedown notices for certain sites on accident.

In the latest Microsoft DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) complaint to Google, Microsoft apparently asked the search engine giant to censor AMC Theatres, the BBC, Buzzfeed, CNN, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, RealClearPolitics, Rotten Tomatoes, SciVerse, The Washington Post, Wikipedia, and even the US Government. According to the claim, there are a total of 587 links of copyright infringement for Office 2010, 155 links for Office 2007, 66 links for Windows 8 Beta, and 33 links for Office 2013. Now heres the odd thing. Some of these links are being targeted simply because they reference the number ’45’ as seen in the example of the AMC Theaters link, which simply displays a description of the recent movie The Dark Knight Rises. Microsoft has yet to respond to this computer generated ‘mishap’ but we think its funny. Head over to the source link to view other sites that are on Microsoft’s accidental naughty list.