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Google Publicizes DMCA Takedowns
dmarti writes "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."
(Posted AC, so I'm not whoring...don't need it anyways, but I expect the site to die soon)
Attention DMCA lawyers: Try to remove a web site from Google's index and you'll probably just make it more popular.
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.
This is the perfect response from google. It's about time people learned what the internet is all about, and stop whining that their crappy stuff somehow made it on the net in the first place.
I mean come on.. google creates a crawler that goes out and finds stuff, they list on their site what they find, and now clueless morons want to make them responsible for having links to that information?????
Security through obscurity.. yeah.. that'll keep em out!
---
" - anonymous
The letters from the Church of Scientology are on chillingeffects.org
What a bunch of goobers...
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.
I love how the publicly available complaint has a complete list of what they want to "block". Oops!
sulli
RTFJ.
now xenu.net is fighting a losing battle. I work at an ISP and am waiting for their page to load. The site has a lot of links to various public resources, like an alt.religion.scientology archive, the recently de-classified FBI files on L. Ron Hubbard, and various Scientology documents. I guess Scientologists don't want factual information about their group in one easy place for people to see. It also has Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit, from The Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark which is an excellent book.
I tried that trick (searching for "xenu.net scientology" in google). The link to xenu.net is up and there was no message about the DMCA.
That's because there is plenty of material at Xenu.net about Scientology that doesn't infringe and wasn't taken down. That, and you did the query wrong. It's "site:xenu.net scientology" to find all pages mentioning Scientology at Xenu.net. Your query turns up mostly other sites and Usenet posts where people are writing ABOUT the Xenu/Scientology battles.
Now that you've got the query right, look at the bottom of the search results list. There's the DMCA takedown notice, with links to the complaints.
Edith Keeler Must Die
The link is at the bottom of the page. It is the same as for the American version of the site. After all of the links you will find the DMCA notice.
-ryan
If the author of a webpage doesn't want that webpage cached or linked on google, then the appropriate entry in robots.txt will take care of that problem. End of story.
As for delinking by the author's request/demand, I imagine its a process they deal with daily. They have a straightforward method for removing links, and respond quickly the one time a stray link resulted in them caching files I didn't want them to.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Google Query here ya go. The DMCA notice is at the bottom of the page.
-ryanSlashdot doesn't stand up to anybody. They've removed Scientology posts, they've removed my personal posts and I'm sure they've removed others. Financially this may be the right thing for them to do of course, but don't attribute any particular backbone to them.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
They sent obnoxious mail. I taped it to cinder blocks with "addressee unknown, please return" on their mail. The US PS was happy to charge them $20 or so to return those.
Unlikely; the post office probably just threw it away.
Believe it or not, something _very_ similar came up on slashdot about a year ago. Basically, a person had a complaint about his local building code. He made a website and posted the building code for his town. Soon after, he got nasty grams from the Southern Building Code Congress International Inc. The bill in question was copyrighted by the group before it was sent to the local legislature, so the wording of the law belongs to them.
Sadly, 2 judges on a 3 judge panel agreed with the SBCC, and I don't know what happened after that.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
I'm no expert on the House/Senate rules, but I believe you still get a record by voice vote. At least one is listed for the senate on S.2037 (105th Congress) .
In the House, however (HR.2281), it appears that it was put up for unanimous consent, and there is no record, but basically that means that you can assume that everyone voted for it.
Here ya go...
;-)
105th Congress, H.R. 2281
Click on "Bill Summary & Status File"... then "All Bill Summary & Status Info"
8/4/1998 2:26pm:
On motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill, as amended Agreed to by voice vote.
Actually, a voice vote is the "normal method". The voices are cast, the chair takes an opinion (Of course, this opinion need not be based on the voices in the house he hears, though usually the chairperson will.) If there is any objection, an electronic vote is taken (roll call vote).
Watch C-SPAN. It can be interesting. For about 5 minutes.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
The Scientologists have a right to practice their religion as they see fit.
I do agree, in principle, that people have a right to practice their religion, whatever that might be. I have respect for all of the faiths - Christian, Jewish, Islam - all varieties.
But Scientology isn't a religion - it's a con, a scam, a fraud. It's not about spiritual matters, but all about extracting the maximum dollars from it's convert dupes, giving them _nothing_ of any spiritual value, filling their heads with garbage, leaving them the same as before, only poorer. Scientology scammers should be hunted down like rabid dogs.
Sort of. The thing is though, you have to put the word Scientology in the link. That way Google will increase the weight of associating the word Scientology with http://www.xenu.net/. I'm running that link on the bottom of about 2400 distinct pages. Hopefully that added to the weighting. It's also in every .sig of mine on slashdot as shown below.
Opinion: Scientology is a cult you should avoid. Follow the
I see...so then by linking Xenu.net under the name Scientology, I can increase raise the ranking of Xenu.net in Google's Scientology search pages. Wow! What a great way to stick it to the Church of Scientology and the Scientologists! I wonder what such famous Scientologists as John Travolta and Tom Cruise would think of that?
Finding God in a Dog