Top 20 DMCA Cease and Desist Senders of 2010

Here is a fun little year-end wrap-up from TorrentFreak about the Top 20 DMCA Cease and Desist Senders of 2010. As a rule of thumb DMCA notices are sent in bulk and dozens are sent on a monthly basis. Using data from ChillingEffects (a clearing house for such orders), TorrentFreak found that 12,000 cease and desist notices were issued in 2010.

According to ChillingEffects stats, IFPI, who represents the international music industry, issued the most DMCA takedown notices in the last 12 months. A total of 1272 were sent to various sites. While that might not seem like a lot, many of these notices contained multiple URLs.

In second place was Clube do Hardware, the largest site in South America to publish tutorials, articles and news on computer hardware. That site issued 303 complaints.

Twentieth Century Fox secured the third spot with 299 cease and desist orders, followed by Magnolia Pictures with 257 complaints. The rest of the list was mostly porn-related, according to TorrentFreak.

TorrentFreak also highlighted Brazil’s Associacao Anti Pirataria de Cinema e Musica, the anti-piracy group;

APCM represents the interests of companies such as Universal, Warner, SonyBMG, Disney, Paramount, and Fox. They took the fifth position on the list.

Covering the adult entertainment market, RemoveYourContent came in 6th with 221 DMCA takedowns.

The RIAA came in 7th place with 203 DMCA takedowns.

So which industry had the most impact in 2010? Here is what ChillingEffects’ Wendy Seltzer tells TorrentFreak: "While the mix changes over time, the most frequent senders of DMCA takedown notices remain the music industry, whose institutional members have sent a combined total averaging roughly 5 takedowns a day," says ChillingEffects’ Wendy Seltzer.