<p>Technology companies regularly make Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown requests for valid copyright infringement claims regarding various types of content being shared illegally online. Unfortunately, as we saw yesterday with the censorship of news sites and even the US government, the situation is seriously getting out of hand. Even more ridiculous than the story on the weekend is this one: half of the DMCA requests this year asking Google to remove Bing links have come from Microsoft.</p><p>Google's 2012 Tranparency Report for bing.com paints a hilarious picture. 16 requests have been made to remove one or more bing.com links, eight of which have come from Marketly, a company representing Microsoft:</p><p>Digging deeper, let's look at two of the takedown requests, courtesy of Chilling Effects: May 16, 2012 (998 links) and May 23, 2012 (1,000 links). The first is for Windows 7 Ultimate and the second is for Microsoft Office 2010, but both ask Google to remove the same Bing link: a video titled "Microsoft Office 2010 Activation Serial Keygen Download Free" (I'm not including the link to it for obvious reasons).</p><p>If that doesn't show you the ridiculousness of it all, this will. Google has removed the link from its index: if you search for it, you can't find it. Microsoft, however, still has the link on Bing.com:</p><p><a href="http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/10/08/automated-dmca-takedown-requests-are-awful-microsoft-asked-google-to-delete-bing-links-and-it-did/">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/2011365/microsoft-copyright-takedown-targeted-bbc-cnn-and-wikipedia.html">Microsoft copyright takedown targeted BBC, CNN, and Wikipedia</a> (TechHive (blog))</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=dmDv_PwVy43CBhMpsDGbSo8F3ZdZM&ned=us">24 additional articles.</a></p>