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This story was previosly reported here. It seems thet the COS has been messing around with Google for a while now. Read the letter here and some more here. And i tough old stuff was rejected by the /. editors, just beacuse it makes the NYT, does not make it slashdoteable.

I get similar results result for the Italian version but not the German results.

Though I must admit I have no idea what "In risposta ad un reclamo ricevuto ai sensi del Digital Millennium Copyright Act, abbiamo rimosso 2 risultato/i dalla pagina. Se si desidera, è possibile leggere il reclamo DMCA che ha portato alla cancellazione dei risultati." means.

The link is at the bottom of the page. It is kind of hidden... but it is there.

From google... In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 2 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results.

-ryan

I love how the publicly available complaint has a complete list of what they want to "block". Oops!

In an apparent response to criticism of its handling of a threatening letter from a Church of Scientology lawyer, the popular search engine Google has begun to make so-called "takedown" letters public. DMCA-censored pages are now two clicks and a cut-and-paste away from the regular search results.

The full text of two new letters to Google, dated April 9 and 10, already appears on the free speech site chillingeffects.org. "I think it's great that they're calling attention to the way the takedown provision can be used to compromise their search results," said Wendy Seltzer, Fellow of Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and co-founder of chillngeffects.org.

Google is still choosing to take advantage of the Safe Harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows web sites to escape liability for copyright infringement if they take pages down in response to properly formed letters.

In a controversial move last month, Google pulled all pages from the anti-Scientology site xenu.net then restored the site's home page amid Internet outcry, just as Linux Journal readers were on their way to visit Google in person to ask for help finding censored pages about the alien warlord Xenu who is a key figure in Scientology's creation legend.

Only the name and telephone number of the attorney who wrote the letters have been removed from the copies on chillingeffects.org. Both of the new letters originate from the Los Angeles law firm of Moxon & Kobrin, where attorney Helena Kobrin has long been Scientology's standard-bearer against church critics on the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology and other online fora. Kobrin was not immediately available for comment

The letters are also linked to directly from Google search results. When results would have included a DMCA-censored page, the results page now includes a link to the takedown letter that resulted in the page being removed. A search this morning for site:xenu.net scientology produced the message:

"In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 8 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results."

Failing to act in response to a DMCA takedown letter is not against the law. "They can always choose not to take advantage of the safe harbor," Seltzer said. However, only by complying with the letter and taking pages out of their index can Google escape a possible copyright infringement lawsuit.

Finally, Google has expanded its DMCA page to include instructions for Counter Notification under the DMCA. A webmaster who believes that a non-infringing page is being unfairly censored can write the proper legal incantations and have the page put back into the index.

Google is then required to forward this Counter Notification to the original notifier, and then put the page back in the index "not less than 10 or more than 14" days after Google receives the Counter Notification. If your site is pulled out of Google and you're confused, chillingeffects.org has a web form that will generate a correctly formed Counter Notification.

In an apparent response to criticism of its handling of a threatening letter from a Church of Scientology lawyer, the popular search engine Google has begun to make so-called "takedown" letters public. DMCA-censored pages are now two clicks and a cut-and-paste away from the regular search results.

The full text of two new letters to Google, dated April 9 and 10, already appears on the free speech site chillingeffects.org. "I think it's great that they're calling attention to the way the takedown provision can be used to compromise their search results," said Wendy Seltzer, Fellow of Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and co-founder of chillngeffects.org.

Google is still choosing to take advantage of the Safe Harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows web sites to escape liability for copyright infringement if they take pages down in response to properly formed letters.

In a controversial move last month, Google pulled all pages from the anti-Scientology site xenu.net then restored the site's home page amid Internet outcry, just as Linux Journal readers were on their way to visit Google in person to ask for help finding censored pages about the alien warlord Xenu who is a key figure in Scientology's creation legend.

Only the name and telephone number of the attorney who wrote the letters have been removed from the copies on chillingeffects.org. Both of the new letters originate from the Los Angeles law firm of Moxon & Kobrin, where attorney Helena Kobrin has long been Scientology's standard-bearer against church critics on the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology and other online fora. Kobrin was not immediately available for comment

The letters are also linked to directly from Google search results. When results would have included a DMCA-censored page, the results page now includes a link to the takedown letter that resulted in the page being removed. A search this morning for site:xenu.net scientology produced the message:

"In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 8 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results."

Failing to act in response to a DMCA takedown letter is not against the law. "They can always choose not to take advantage of the safe harbor," Seltzer said. However, only by complying with the letter and taking pages out of their index can Google escape a possible copyright infringement lawsuit.

Finally, Google has expanded its DMCA page to include instructions for Counter Notification under the DMCA. A webmaster who believes that a non-infringing page is being unfairly censored can write the proper legal incantations and have the page put back into the index.

Google is then required to forward this Counter Notification to the original notifier, and then put the page back in the index "not less than 10 or more than 14" days after Google receives the Counter Notification. If your site is pulled out of Google and you're confused, chillingeffects.org has a web form that will generate a correctly formed Counter Notification.

In an apparent response to criticism of its handling of a threatening letter from a Church of Scientology lawyer, the popular search engine Google has begun to make so-called "takedown" letters public. DMCA-censored pages are now two clicks and a cut-and-paste away from the regular search results.

The full text of two new letters to Google, dated April 9 and 10, already appears on the free speech site chillingeffects.org. "I think it's great that they're calling attention to the way the takedown provision can be used to compromise their search results," said Wendy Seltzer, Fellow of Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and co-founder of chillngeffects.org.

Google is still choosing to take advantage of the Safe Harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows web sites to escape liability for copyright infringement if they take pages down in response to properly formed letters.

In a controversial move last month, Google pulled all pages from the anti-Scientology site xenu.net then restored the site's home page amid Internet outcry, just as Linux Journal readers were on their way to visit Google in person to ask for help finding censored pages about the alien warlord Xenu who is a key figure in Scientology's creation legend.

Only the name and telephone number of the attorney who wrote the letters have been removed from the copies on chillingeffects.org. Both of the new letters originate from the Los Angeles law firm of Moxon & Kobrin, where attorney Helena Kobrin has long been Scientology's standard-bearer against church critics on the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology and other online fora. Kobrin was not immediately available for comment

The letters are also linked to directly from Google search results. When results would have included a DMCA-censored page, the results page now includes a link to the takedown letter that resulted in the page being removed. A search this morning for site:xenu.net scientology produced the message:

"In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 8 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results."

Failing to act in response to a DMCA takedown letter is not against the law. "They can always choose not to take advantage of the safe harbor," Seltzer said. However, only by complying with the letter and taking pages out of their index can Google escape a possible copyright infringement lawsuit.

Finally, Google has expanded its DMCA page to include instructions for Counter Notification under the DMCA. A webmaster who believes that a non-infringing page is being unfairly censored can write the proper legal incantations and have the page put back into the index.

Google is then required to forward this Counter Notification to the original notifier, and then put the page back in the index "not less than 10 or more than 14" days after Google receives the Counter Notification. If your site is pulled out of Google and you're confused, chillingeffects.org has a web form that will generate a correctly formed Counter Notification.

In an apparent response to criticism of its handling of a threatening letter from a Church of Scientology lawyer, the popular search engine Google has begun to make so-called "takedown" letters public. DMCA-censored pages are now two clicks and a cut-and-paste away from the regular search results.

The full text of two new letters to Google, dated April 9 and 10, already appears on the free speech site chillingeffects.org. "I think it's great that they're calling attention to the way the takedown provision can be used to compromise their search results," said Wendy Seltzer, Fellow of Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and co-founder of chillngeffects.org.

Google is still choosing to take advantage of the Safe Harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows web sites to escape liability for copyright infringement if they take pages down in response to properly formed letters.

In a controversial move last month, Google pulled all pages from the anti-Scientology site xenu.net then restored the site's home page amid Internet outcry, just as Linux Journal readers were on their way to visit Google in person to ask for help finding censored pages about the alien warlord Xenu who is a key figure in Scientology's creation legend.

Only the name and telephone number of the attorney who wrote the letters have been removed from the copies on chillingeffects.org. Both of the new letters originate from the Los Angeles law firm of Moxon & Kobrin, where attorney Helena Kobrin has long been Scientology's standard-bearer against church critics on the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology and other online fora. Kobrin was not immediately available for comment

The letters are also linked to directly from Google search results. When results would have included a DMCA-censored page, the results page now includes a link to the takedown letter that resulted in the page being removed. A search this morning for site:xenu.net scientology produced the message:

"In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 8 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results."

Failing to act in response to a DMCA takedown letter is not against the law. "They can always choose not to take advantage of the safe harbor," Seltzer said. However, only by complying with the letter and taking pages out of their index can Google escape a possible copyright infringement lawsuit.

Finally, Google has expanded its DMCA page to include instructions for Counter Notification under the DMCA. A webmaster who believes that a non-infringing page is being unfairly censored can write the proper legal incantations and have the page put back into the index.

Google is then required to forward this Counter Notification to the original notifier, and then put the page back in the index "not less than 10 or more than 14" days after Google receives the Counter Notification. If your site is pulled out of Google and you're confused, chillingeffects.org has a web form that will generate a correctly formed Counter Notification.

You can read the complaints that the lawyers for the church of scientology made to Google here:
1) Complaint #2 -- April 9
2) Complaint #3 -- April 10

And more importantly, go Google for publicizing the links! Yet another reason why Google is the best search engine around.

You can read the complaints that the lawyers for the church of scientology made to Google here:
1) Complaint #2 -- April 9
2) Complaint #3 -- April 10

And more importantly, go Google for publicizing the links! Yet another reason why Google is the best search engine around.

The letters from the Church of Scientology are on chillingeffects.org

What a bunch of goobers...

For example, Blizzard is not claiming the defendant modified or altered Blizzard copyrighted software.

And Blizzard is not claiming the defendant bypassed anti-circumvention technology. Furthermore, since Blizzard used DMCA provisions to demand an immediate delisting of bnetd by their bandwidth provider, at least they appear to me to have abused the DMCA. According to this: Question: What are the counter-notice and put-back procedures? there is a penalty for ignorantly or wrongfully using the DMCA to remove material which is clearly not infringing on material protected by DMCA. Unfortunately, it appears the penalty is limited to actual damages, so perhaps would be minimal.

I'm hoping this develops into a counter suit either way. This would be a nice precedent against DMCA abuse.

Unfortunately, The Plaintiff only has to file his suit to drain your pockets.

We're going to replace them. To have freedom to live as part of a community, to have the freedom to treat other people decently, you must replace your propriety software with free software, software that lets you have those freedoms.

Isn't he RIGHT?

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

I've been waiting for ages for Blizzard to release this game. Yet Blizzard's actions force me to boycott all of their products until they change their stance.

To re-establish our rights to do with purchased products as we please (without a fight in the courts) do your part by sending a note to change their stance on this abuse of the DMCA and our rights as consumers to Vivendi Universal Publishing's corporate communications contact at:

benoit.liva@vupublishing.net

and



Or - preferably - contact them via snail mail at Blizzard's corporate headquarters and copy Vivendi Universal, and if the 34 cents is too much, fax them - I couldn't find a fax number for the responsible division :-(

Chilling Effects - DMCA and BNetd has the best answers to what Blizzard's use of the DMCA against ISPs, and the DMCA's provisions, really mean to all of us.

UDRP is a good thing!

Our company has lately been a target for two squatting attempts. Most of the WIPO and NAF cases are like ours: Some schmuck registers company.net or company.biz before the company in question, and then tries to extort money for it. As a response, we always file a UDRP complaint.

Let me go through what you need to prove to take the domain name from the holder:

0. That you have paid at least $950 to file the dispute (for a single domain name). It is not free. On top of this you have the lawyer fees.

1. The domain name is identical or confusingly similar to your trademark or service mark. That is, you need to have registered the mark earlier. No one can challenge a name that is not their mark.

2. The domain name holder has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name. If the current holder has legitimate interest in the domain name, there is no case!

3. The name has been registered and is being used in bad faith. Bad faith is defined as (but not limited to) offering to sell it or being in the business of selling domain names, that is, being a domain name squatter. Or, registering the name in purpose of disrupting your business, or preventing the trademark owner from doing business with the name. Or, deliberately misleading people to your website in search of the trademark owner.

The cases in which the respondent has a valid argument are a very small minority. Most of the decisions serve a valid purpose of protecting trademarks.

vivendiuniversalsucks.com is an exception. But in the case filings I see that they did not try to pass as a parody - parody would be protected by trademark law. Remember that you can always challenge a UDRP decision in other courts! That's what this guy should have done, I think.

And for the people who say the UDRP favors big business: Of course it does! But so does trademark law. The biggest companies usually have the most recognized trademarks in the audience. And here the audience is the world. If you select n Internet users at random, and ask them which company they would associate "Apple" to, most of them give Apple computer corporation as answer. This is the reasoning why Apple should own apple.com.

However, in the cases where the respondent is found to have a legitimate interest in the domain name, I think the complainant should pay all his lawyer fees.

What comes to the complainant selecting the judges, that is the way arbitration is usually done. And, let me say it again: if you do not like the decision, go ahead and challenge it in a real court!

UDRP FAQ at ChillingEffects.org

It may not be fair use, but it may also not be copyright infringement. In fact, it's a grey area. According to ChillingEffect.org, deciding whether something is fair use or not involves (among other things):

the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work

And if it is copyright infringement, the owner of the copyright may not be entitled to any remuneration:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/504.html

A reasonable discussion of Fair Use, with considerably more thought and insight than the parent post is available here:

http://www.arl.org/scomm/copyright/uses.html

On February 25, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and four law school clinics announced the launch of a website and project that has been established to educate Internet users about their rights online. The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse provides detailed information about the legal rights of Internet users regarding "cease-and-desist" letters (letters sent from entities claiming violation of copyright or trademark and other grievances and threatening legal action if the violating party does not cease and desist). The project currently provides basic legal information on issues like copyright and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, trademark and domain names, anonymous speech, and defamation.

The Chilling Effects website includes a forum for Internet users to post their cease-and-desist letters to an online clearinghouse. Students at the participating law clinics will review the letters and annotate them with links to explain applicable legal rules. The four Internet law clinics currently involved are Harvard, Stanford, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of San Francisco, and the project is expected to grow to include additional law schools.

Posted letters will remain online in a searchable database that interested parties can consult to find information that relates to their particular situation. "The Internet makes it easier for individuals to speak to a wide audience, but it also makes it easier for other people and corporations to silence that speech," said Wendy Seltzer, Fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, who created the project and website. "Chilling Effects aims to level the field by helping online speakers to understand their rights in the face of legal threats."

I suspect that you do not know what the expression fair use means.

Bull. You are forgetting about fair-use.

Not at all. You have the same fair-use rights with respect to a work licensed under the GPL that you have with respect to any other work. For instance, you have the right to publish reviews of a GPLed work, to quote briefly from it in doing so, etc. Nonetheless, nothing under fair use can give you the right to distribute someone else's work, whole and entire, as a portion of your own, and without that person's permission. That is what is involved in static linking of a library into a compiled program.

If I found a program like 'Netscape' freely available for anyone to download on the internet, is there anything illegial about making a new frontend for it that enhances 'Netscape' (such as Galeon does with Mozilla)? You might say I don't have any right to do that, but it's just not clear if I do or not.

Naturally, there might be several issues involved in what you propose, since what you propose is unclear, and made less clear by the vagaries of your grammar.

Do you propose, for instance, that you may download a copy of a closed-source program, make modifications to it, and distribute your modified version without the original creator's permission? I disagree; that strikes me as an obvious offense against the author's copyright in the work. A comparable offense would be for to take Frank Herbert's Dune, rewrite the ending, and publish the resulting work without the permission of the Herbert estate (the copyright holder).

By mentioning Netscape, Mozilla, and Galeon in particular you seem to be deliberately blurring the issue. Netscape Navigator is a piece of freely redistributable binary-only software (aka "freeware"), but the copyright holder does not give you permission to distribute derivative works. Mozilla, on the other hand, is a piece of open-source software (aka "free software"), wherein the copyright holder gives you limited permission to distribute derivative works. Galeon, as I understand it, is a legally made derivative work of Mozilla and of the GNOME libraries.

The interesting thing about the GPL is that most projects don't FORCE you to agree to it.

"Agreement to the GPL" is not relevant. The GPL is not a contract or "license agreement" which you may accept or reject. It is a unilateral grant of limited permission. If I place a piece of work of mine under the GPL, I am not proposing a contract to you, nor to the general public. I am granting permission to you and to the general public to do certain things with my work which would otherwise be illegal for you to do. The permission I grant is limited; I am not giving away all of my exclusive rights regarding my work. But I am granting you something (my permission) and I am not asking anything in return.

Yes, you read that right: I am not asking anything from you in return. After all, what would you have to give? It is a common misconception that you are "giving" me your "agreement" to only copy or distribute my work under the terms of the GPL. However, your "agreement" in this regard is not necessary. The GPL is the limit around the permission I have granted you. If you stray beyond its terms when copying my work, then you aren't "violating the GPL" -- you are simply copying and distributing a copyrighted work without its copyright holder's permission. In other words, you're violating copyright law. And by agreeing not to violate the law w.r.t. my works, you certainly wouldn't be giving me anything I didn't already have.

To clarify: When I release a piece of my work under the terms of the GPL (in common parlance, when I "GPL my work") I am not giving you the copyright over my work. That I retain. I am not giving you unlimited permission to copy my work. I am not contracting with you, or proposing a contract. I am simply giving you very carefully limited permission to copy and distribute my work.

Of course, I believe that not allowing you to change the GPL license itself (very un-GNU-ish) violates fair use by itself. (It's just a document, as long as you give credit, it should be perfectly legal.)

I suspect that you do not know what the expression fair use means. It does not mean, and has never meant, "I think my use is fair; therefore, what anybody else thinks does not matter." It means that copyrighted works may be used for certain purposes (namely "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship ... research ... [or] [p]arody" according to chillingeffects.org) without infringing on copyright.

For you to create a derivative work from the GPL (which is a copyrighted work of the FSF) and publish it as a license to your software would not fall into any of those categories. Publishing it as a parody or a critique of the GPL might, I would strongly hope (though I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice). But the GPL itself is a copyrighted work, you don't have any right to coöpt the efforts and research of the FSF legal counsel by making knock-offs of the GPL without the copyright holder's permission.

Mind you, if the judgement turns out like I believe it will, I'll be the first downloading all the GPLed software I can, and making it freely downloadable under it's non-binding GPL v2 license!

If you believe that the invalidation of the GPL would allow you to relicense GPLed works under your choice of license, you are deluding yourself. In the absence of the GPL, those works revert to normal copyright protection -- the same as protects Dune and Microsoft Word. If the GPL were ruled invalid, you would be no more justified in distributing copies of GNU Emacs than you would in running off your own print run of Dune.

No, no, no... The other site. You know, the one the article is talking about?

*grumble mutter* ..reading comprehension... *mutter grumble*

Copyright infringement is NOT theft.

Well, since we're talking about chillingeffects.org, it seems appropriate to quote their FAQ:

The purpose of copyright law is to encourage creative work by granting a temporary monopoly in an author's original creations. This monopoly takes the form of six rights in areas where the author retains exclusive control. These rights are:

1. the right of reproduction (i.e., copying),
2. the right to create derivative works,
3. the right to distribution

...and it goes on from there. But it looks pretty clear to me that these legal experts suggest that copyright infringement steals at least the right of reproduction, if not the right to distribution as well. So you may not like the word theft, but I think it was fine for the original post to use that term.