Slashdot Mirror

There is one flaw that I see in the Safe Harbor provisions, and that flaw is simply that there is no recourse against a false claim of infringement. Processing these requests does cost time, money, and at least some period where content can be made unavailable.

Au contraire, subsection (f) of the various safe harbors states that:

Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section--
(1) that material or activity is infringing, or
(2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys' fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner's authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.

This provision was used in Online Policy Group v. Diebold in an order finding Diebold liable for misuse of the DMCA (Diebold settled). Then there is the ongoing case of Stephanie Lenz. Last August the court kept her 512(f) claim against Universal open, but it is not clear whether the court will find Universal liable and, if so, for how much.

Perhaps it should be necessary to post a bond for the maximum amount of "claimed damages" prior to sending the notice, just to prevent damage to innocent non-infringers?

It is an interesting idea. Of course, laws generally are supposed to be, and should be, neutral with regards to the parties who bring claims. A bond requirement would probably hurt those with empty pockets more than those with deep pockets. Moreover, if a bond had to be posted for every notice submitted, then all copyright infringers would have to do to multiple the amount of money required up front would be to post the infringed work on many different sites (doing that already has the effect of making it difficult to find all infringing copies of a work).

If I had to guess I'd venture that Ian's email address is actually IRamage - at - omm.com. You know, should anyone care to send an email. His profile can be found at http://www.omm.com/ianramage/

http://www.omm.com/sanfrancisco/

BTW, the lawyer's name is Ramage - quite appropriate in my opinion.

tr.v., rammed, ramÂming, rams.

      1. To strike or drive against with a heavy impact; butt: rammed the door with a sledgehammer until it broke open.
      2. To force or press into place.
      3. To cram; stuff: rammed the clothes into the suitcase.
      4. To force passage or acceptance of: rammed the project through the city council despite local opposition.

Check out this awesome new web site I found!

I think we should all go visit it! I mean, maybe even click a few links....even wget some pages over and over again. ;)

are you talking about OMM or OMM?

Think about it. The best sites with the most traffic have the highest bandwidth costs. Since they cost the most to maintain, they're the first to close.

Then, you bookmark the not-as-great site, but so do the other 100,000 people. Soon, THEIR bandwidth costs are too high, and they have to close.

Then you go to the somewhat-crappy-site, and the closings go on...

Eventually, the only gaming sites will be on Ziff Davis-type sites, which will rate and evaluate all games on a scale of 85%-100%.

OMM is the only site on the web I would donate to.