Every semester, Google publishes its biannual transparency report.  This semester, the focus was on the increase of the number of user data requests issued by government agencies.  The press communicated a lot on this topic.

I prefer to analyze the URL removal requests.  They are requested by content owners and governments.   The picture displays the URLs requested to be removed from Search per week.  It clearly highlights an explosion on the number of requests in the last month.   Compare with the same snapshot captured on September 3.

The top organisms requesting removals were Degban (a company specialized in multimedia copyright protection), RIAA and BPI (British Recorded music Industry).   The top copyright owners concerned by the takedown URLs were RIAA, Froytal Services Ltd (a porn producer!) and BPI.  The affected domains were mainly a search engine for cyber lockers and of course torrent sites (the iconic Pirate Bay was not among the top sites!)