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."

Comments

Will google ever get into real trouble?

[fireboy1919]

I've been wondering about this for a long time. They cache possibly illegal content, and are certianly distributing some stuff that the authors aren't giving them permission to, as well as possibly linking to sites which violate DMCA (and if they recieve too many letters about this, it could take forever to take down all the sites that are apparently violating the act).

It seems that Google might be breaking some of the current laws, or may break some in the future. IMHO, this is a good thing, because there are so many people who think that Google is an innocent, noble and pure search engine. The law may just be changed so that Google no longer violates it. I would certainly hate to see such a mechanism slip quietly into the night.

Google DIDN'T pull the pages

[somethingwicked]

Just to be clear, Google DID NOT pull the pages. They simply removed the challenged results that would normally appear in that search...

WHY???

Because they were following the law to the T...

They are only protected by the Safe Harbor provision if they honor the Notification letter.

And it can be simply reversed by a Counter-Notification.

This REALLY is the most logical way for this to work. It moves the responibility off of the indexer and puts it on the party publishing the information vs. the party claiming the info is copyrighted.

If "the man" ever shows up at Google's offices, they just whip out the documentation from each party and a copy of the law and say "goodday" to the badge.