Dozens of news stories about Michael Carbonara, a Republican running in Florida's newly redrawn 22nd Congressional District, have disappeared from Google search results after someone filed copyright complaints under company names that don't appear to exist. The removed stories covered Carbonara and other candidates in the district's Republican primary, including reporting on his ties to a Michigan cryptocurrency data center facing a nuisance lawsuit from a nearby elementary school.
The fraudulent complaints were submitted under names including Reynolds Media Group, Pedrick Enterprises, Davenport Enterprises, Juvers Media Corporation, Isper Enterprises and Palker Enterprises, according to investigative reporting by WLRN. None of those entities showed any evidence of legitimate operation or ownership of the news content they claimed to control. The takedowns hit the South Florida Sun Sentinel, WLRN, Florida Politics and other outlets, according to a report by The Detroit News, whose reporter Susannah Bryan wrote about the South Florida Sun Sentinel's own experience with the scrubbing campaign.
Google notified the Sun Sentinel on July 29 that a copyright-infringement report had been filed against its coverage, and sent a second alert on August 5, per the same account. One of the stories flagged was headlined “3 Republican candidates pour $7M of their own cash into their South Florida congressional campaigns.” Sun Sentinel Executive Editor David Schutz said both claims falsely asserted that the newspaper had already been contacted to resolve the issue, and he called for stronger oversight by Google and other search engines. The paper filed an appeal with Google challenging the claim and also republished the removed story so it would reappear in search results.
A Three-Week Pattern Across Florida Newsrooms
A Sun Sentinel review found more than 100 news articles mentioning Carbonara or the District 22 race had been removed from Google over three weeks. WLRN reported separately that its own stories on Carbonara, including one detailing his ties to the Michigan data center, had been pulled from search results. WLRN's Sergio Bustos said the takedowns amounted to a direct attack on the station's ability to share information with voters.
Conservative outlet The Floridian also reported receiving a copyright infringement alert from Google targeting its Carbonara coverage, showing the campaign reached across the ideological spectrum of Florida digital media. Florida Politics founder Peter Schorsch said someone was using subterfuge to black out reporting about a congressional candidate, and he said nothing could realistically be done in time to restore the coverage before the election. Schorsch has since taken the matter to the Secretary of State's office and Florida lawmakers.
The removed stories concerned Carbonara, an entrepreneur running in the Republican primary for Florida's 22nd Congressional District, a newly drawn seat spanning western Palm Beach and Broward counties across the Everglades to Naples. Seven Republican candidates competed for the seat ahead of Tuesday's primary, in a district created after incumbent Democrat Lois Frankel moved to District 23 following redistricting. Carbonara told the Miami Herald his campaign had nothing to do with the scrubbed stories, and a campaign spokeswoman said on August 10 that he was not commenting further on the topic.
Why the Ten-Day Legal Window Matters
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed by Congress in 1998 to stop digital piracy, protects online service providers like Google from liability when they quickly remove flagged content and requires complainants to submit claims under penalty of perjury. Anyone claiming to be a copyright holder or authorized representative can submit a takedown request, and an unknown filer can simply make up a company name when doing so. Under federal law, once a service provider receives a valid counter-notice, removed content must be restored within 10 to 14 business days unless the claimant files a lawsuit — a delay that can keep critical reporting buried through an entire early-voting period.
Anyone who knowingly misrepresents that material is infringing can be held civilly liable for damages, court costs and attorneys' fees, but anonymous filers and shell entities make that accountability difficult to enforce. University law professor Bob Jarvis said the underlying copyright law is outdated because it predates artificial intelligence, which is increasingly used to send large numbers of takedown notices at once.
A Well-Documented Flaw in Search Governance
Google accounts for up to 92% of web searches in the United States, giving its automated de-indexing systems outsized influence over what information voters can find. Adam Holland of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center said several hundred thousand copyright notices are sent to Google daily, and the Lumen Database, founded in 2002 to archive online removal requests, now takes in more than 200,000 notices a week from platforms including Google, Meta and Wikipedia — up from roughly 20,000 a week when the database was still young. The database, which tracks who sends takedown requests, who receives them and which URLs are targeted, now holds tens of millions of copyright complaints.
A study led by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh using Lumen data found that out of 700 court orders submitted to Google for search removals over a four-year period, nearly 200 were fraudulent, forged or highly suspicious, underscoring that fraudulent copyright complaints are on the rise well beyond this single Florida race. Google has said it uses both automated systems and human review to detect fraudulent takedown attempts.
Carbonara has separately faced scrutiny over his campaign finances. Florida Politics reported that he invested campaign funds into cryptocurrency while an entity associated with his former business collected a transaction fee, adding to questions about his business dealings just as reporting on those dealings was disappearing from search results. Hoodline previously covered his FL-22 campaign launch when Carbonara first entered the newly redrawn district's crowded Republican field.
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