Testing ISP Censorship

ryants writes "As part of a research project, Christian Ahlert ran an interesting experiment. He posted John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, which is clearly in the public domain, on different ISPs. He then sent the ISPs phony copyright violation notices. The results are troubling, with ISPs "acting as judge, jury and private investigator at the same time.""

Comments

The results themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

The actual results are presented in detailed form in a PDF file:

How 'Liberty' Disappeared from the Internet

Or see the Google text version.

they EXIST! Re:Checks and Balances

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

"Perhaps some sort of law that defines a procedure for preventing things like this, maybe?"

There is a clearly defined procedure in the DMCA for ISPs ... on receipt of the complaint, they MUST notify the site owner and MUST take down the material within a certain time.

On their part, the site owner MUST file a reply to the takedown within a certain time. When the ISP gets the reply, which is a legal document swearing to the ownership of the material, they MUST restore the material or allow its reposting (the ISP's part is over).

The complaining party (the claimant to the copyright) MUST at this point either file a formal copyright infringement suit in the federal court closest to the web site owner's place of business or shut up. Repeat complaints are NOT allowed.

Re:Sample Size? Two.

[geoffspear]

Dear slashdot admins,

I own the copyright to all messages posted by your user "hackstraw". Please delete his account and everything in it immediately.