A new online copyright protection service has launched a petition calling on Google to introduce new measures protecting the copyright of the content creators that it indexes.

In an open letter to the search giant, the beta service Myows sets out a "three-pronged approach" to creating more respect for copyright online without removing the benefits of search and browsing the web.

The Dear Google petition, which has 116 signatories at time of writing, asks for the following moves to be made by 11 November 2011:
  • Penalties for pirate sites that sell illegal copies of other people's material (images, designs, templates, text, music etc);
  • Discouragement for non-attributing content scrapers that profit from traffic generated through stolen content (images, text, artwork, video, data etc);
  • Where available, copyright information displayed in search results for all web pages and sites (including owner, date and author details).
"We are creative people. We are developers, photographers, bloggers, designers. We are artists. We create for a living. We create for love. Piracy and intellectual property theft harms us daily. Illegal copying dilutes our reputations and siphons our income. If left unchecked, creative kleptomania threatens to commoditise creativity and reduce the true value of creators online. We would like to work together to make it harder to steal using Google," the letter begins.

Google and other search engines have been criticised by some news groups and publishers for hosting elements of their content in search results, such as headlines and snippets, for free. Some publishers have blocked Google from indexing their sites and News International has removed the Times' pages from being listed by Google News as part of its new paywall strategy.

Supporters of search engines like Google have argued that despite concerns over copyright infringement many news organisations are investing heavily in search engine optimisation and receive a significant proportion of their web traffic from Google.

The petition has not yet been formally presented to the company but will be when it has more support, brand strategist Chris Human told Journalism.co.uk. So far 30 per cent of visitors to the Dear Google site have also signed the letter, he said.

"We would like to get this letter out to those creatives who, until now, haven't considered protecting their creative work and haven't considered copyright issues in general, specifically with regards to the need for a culture of respect - one which Google is very well placed to help us create," said Human.

Human said he hopes the format of the letter and petition will create a conversation with Google rather than a discussion of copyright framed and hindered by "isolated complaints and group gripes".

"To put this letter in context, copyright in the digital age is a highly dynamic area of law and one that is constantly being revisited. It is largely governed by the Bern convention internationally but different countries differ on points and there remains a considerable number of grey areas - especially when it comes to the world wide web.

"Bringing the law and creativity together for us is more about creating a culture of copyright consciousness - as touched on above. It is not about resorting to expensive and protracted legal mud-slinging.  We hope this letter serves both to open dialogue between Google, 'the content finder', and the global creative community, 'the content creators'. We also hope that it will serve to educate and empower creatives around their rights - a difficult but not impossible challenge."
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