Industry predictions that Google may have bought itself a whole heap of copyright trouble when it recently acquired YouTube for a modest $1.65bn, appear to be coming true as media companies worldwide move to protect their assets from illicit online dissemination.

According to Reuters, the Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers - which represents 23 media companies including TV networks and movie distributors - has successfully lobbied for the removal of 29,549 files from the website.

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Microsoft has agreed to remove links to articles in Belgian newspapers from its search engines and news aggregators, rather than fight it out in court with Belgian publishers.

Copiepresse, the industry body for French and German language newspaper publishers in Belgium, had sent the software giant a cease and desist letter, instructing it to remove snippets of articles from its search pages.

In a similar case against Google, a judge agreed with CopiePresse's argument that posting such snippets does violate copyright, even if it also drives traffic to the sites. The ruling was recently upheld by an appeals court.

In a move that will likely bolster Google's search dominance, the company late yesterday unveiled the Google Custom Search Engine, equipping anyone with the ability to set up a free, tailored Google-powered search engine on any Web site -- and make money in the process.

Users may hone the content focus of their search engine, be it fishing or phishing, Playdough or Plato, bass (the fish) or bass (the musical instrument), Spam (the meat product) or spam (the e-mail blight), etc. They accomplish this by choosing which Web pages they want to include or exclude in their index, as well as how content should be prioritized.