An MPAA takedown request backfired on it this week. After demanding that Google wipe the nearly dead subreddit Full Length Films from its search results, the piracy subreddit sprang to life and began seeing more visitors than it ever had before. The takedown request was picked up by the piracy-focused publication TorrentFreak, which seems to have directed a flood of people to Full Length Films. As noticed by Motherboard, the subreddit's creator published traffic figures afterward showing that visitors almost tripled to around 6,000 people in a single day.
"I forgot I even made this place," the subreddit's creator, user jaredcheeda, wrote. The subreddit was originally meant to collect links to where you can watch complete films online, legal or otherwise. But after seeing the takedown request, the subreddit's creator changed its policies to only allow legal links and brought on a few moderators to clean the place up. To that end, the MPAA may just be getting what it wanted, albeit through a fairly roundabout way. But at least for a little while, its notice was only directing people to a new resource for piracy. At the moment one of the top posts on the subreddit reads: "The MPAA told me about this awesome sub! Thank you!"
Traffic figures released by jaredcheeda.