DMCA Abuse Widespread

Doc Ruby writes "Via TechDirt, the news that despite the intent of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's very popular to abuse the law by using it merely to compete, without legal basis: 'Supporters of the DMCA claim that only an occasional improper takedown notice gets through. Some new research suggests otherwise. Over 30% of DMCA takedown notices have been deemed improper and potentially illegal.'"

Comments

Power to abuse?

[Dubpal]

If you asked those Swedish guys over at thepiratebay.org (a search engine for .torrent files), I'm sure their data would show higher than 30% abuse.
Their legal threats page is a hoot.

On a more serious note, laws like the DMCA that put (arguably) too much power at the hands of copyright holders were always going to be susceptible to abuse. Remaining on the subject of torrent search engines, lokitorrent.com pulled its site down after threats from the MPAA who cited the DMCA, without even going to court. (They later went to court, where it was ruled that the domain owner release all visitor data to the MPAA.) With power like that, where's the incentive not to abuse it?

Re:Power to abuse?

[richwmn]

Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely Lord Acton, a British historian of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Used as the basis for Animal Farm by George Orwell

Chilling Effects

[Misch]

ChillingEffects.org keeps a library of submitted DMCA takedown notices.