Censoring The Net With A Hotmail Account

Alex Bradbury writes "Members of the Bits of Freedom group conducted a test to see how much it would take for a service provider to take down a website hosting public domain material, and have published their results. They signed up with 10 providers and put online a work by Dutch author Multatuli, who died over 100 years ago. They stated that the work was in the public domain, and that it was written in 1871. They then set up a fake society to claim to be the copyright holders of the work. From a Hotmail address, they sent out complaints to all 10 of the providers. 7 out of 10 complied and removed the site, one within just 3 hours. Only one ISP actually pointed out that the copyright on the work expired many years ago. The conclusion of the investigation is definitely worth reading. The three providers who didn't take down the material are XS4ALL, UPC and Freeler. The company that came out the worst was iFast, who forwarded all the personal details of the site owner to the sender of the fake takedown notice without even being asked to do so."

Comments

Re:It shouldn't be that easy

[Rikus]

When you're too busy trying to avoid getting sued, you don't have time to check up on the minor details, like whether a claim is actually valid.

Re:Censorship, or just cautious commercial entitie

[erick99]

Put a simple process in place. When someone makes a copyright claim send them an email asking for written proof of who they are and evidence that they do have a legitimate copyright ownership. The party making the request should do all of the work, the burden is on them. They would then have to mail all of this, by certified mail, to the ISP. If the party making the request does all of this properly than a takedown decision can be made. A legitimate party with a legitimate claim should have no problem complying with such a request/process.

I'm not surprised . . . becuase we prosecute ISP's

[StateOfTheUnion]

I'm not surprised . . .ISP's have to protect themselves because they are being subject to subpoenas, injunctions, lawsuits for what they host . . . I think this is the root cause of the problem.

For example, if the public library was responsible and liable for all material that was copied on it's self service photocopy machine, then most libraries would probably ban use of the copier or manage and log its use very closely and be willing to share this information with anyone that threatens to sue the library. This would be done to protect the legally liable library. The library would be attempting to shield itself from liability by cooperating with those that were alledgedly infringed and by pointing the finger at the person that actually made the copies. Of course libraries are not liable, the person that uses the copier is liable. This is why photocopy machines are normally self service. This prevents the library from being legally liable.

Unfortunately the same doesn't seem to be true for ISP's. ISP's can be legally liable if they don't provide information about an alleged copyright violator or if they don't remove the allegedly copyrighted material from their servers in a timely fashion. It is unfortunate that even though the ISP may not knowingly endorse infringement or actively participate in the infringement, they could still be held liable (or at least named as an infringing party in an expensive lawsuit).

Unfortunately ISP's have not been afforded legal protection similar to that granted to libraries with respect to photocopiers. It is the system that attempts to hold ISP's liable that is the problem. ISP's are merely reacting to this and trying to protect themselves.

So much for innocent into proven guilty.

[Maestro4k]

This is just sad, ISPs are probably overwhelmed with takedown notices but failing to even check the page in question before disconnecting a customer is a bad move. Why? No matter how restrictive the TOS for an ISP may be, shutting down a customer's site without checking the validity of the complaint, or even the validity of rhe complainer (i.e. is this a real company/person/rights holder) is likely to leave them wide open to a breach of contract lawsuit. While the courts have their problems, I doubt a court would look kindly to this type of action in light of a contract for service. If this happened to a business it could really be bad for the ISP.

Tie this in with the RIAA/MPAA's apparent automatic search and send bots (that are programmed moronically to boot, a 30kb file's supposedly a movie?) and you also get the potential to take down large chunks of the web illegally. Just wait till the lowlifes out there start doing DoS's using bogus takedown letters instead of packets. Things will probably get mighty ugly.

Erroring on the side of safety

[LostCluster]

The current setup of copyright laws establishes that there's a steep penalty for not taking down a copyrighted work, but no penalty at all for wrongly taking down public domain work... No wonder the businesses involved reach for the trigger instead of stopping to think. Delaying when it's valid exposes them to risk, tripping over a false positive does not.

Re:It shouldn't be that easy

[spottedkangaroo]

It is really not up to the ISP to check the validity of anything. That is what court is for.

What they should do is simply leave the site up and refuse to give out any personal details until they receive a court order compelling them to take an action.

Until you vote

[iminplaya]

the people responsible for these kind of things out of office, this is the future you can expect.