Back in August 2012 Google released their DMCA algorithm penalty, also known as the Google Pirate penalty. It basically looked to downgrade site’s rankings where those sites received a large amount of real DMCA complaints. As far as I know, they updated the algorithm once in October 2014.

Since then, no one really talks much about it. Google probably doesn’t refresh it and sites hit by it probably are stuck worse than those hit by Penguin.

That being said, Google spam fighter Eric Kuan gave some advice in a Google Webmaster Help forum related to it. Let me quote him:

The sad part, it seems like it can take a really long long time for any site to recover because algorithms need to be refreshed, I think at least this one does.

I’ve only heard of a handful of sites impacted by this update and I think most of those abandoned the sites to do other things.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.