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

Re:Power to abuse?

[PunkOfLinux]

anyone with half a brain (sometimes less) can realize that the DMCA was only passed because the copyright holders felt they needed a way to 'protect' themselves. So, they pay the gov't to make a new law that really ONLY protects the copyright holders.

A helpful guideline:

[meringuoid]

Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're lying. They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible.

cf: DMCA, Patriot Act, Prevention of Terrorism Act (UK), Enabling Act (Weimar Germany)...

Re:A helpful guideline:

[anopres]

I've been following this story quite closely, and I've never heard anyone call Jack Murtha a terrorist. For some reason, people think that if a person served honorably in a prior war, that they know how to conduct the current one. I find it even stranger that we look to Vietnam war veterans for guidance, when you could easily make the argument that they knew how to loose that war, maybe they can help us loose this one. Jack Murtha is a stand-up guy. I think he is one of our better statesmen. On this issue, he is just wrong.

Re:A helpful guideline:

[meringuoid]

(Amazingly enough, Blair used the "if terrorism changes the way we live then they've won" speech in a justification of curtailing civil liberties in the name of anti-terrorism!)

That was funny, but the most entertaining piece of hypocrisy on this issue is this:

On the 90-day internment law: Blair says that the police want to be able to imprison people without charge for three months for investigation and interrogation. He says that on this matter the police know best and we should listen to them and give them what they need to make us safe.

On the late opening law for pubs: police representatives say that it will be a disaster and lead to even greater alcohol-fuelled public disorder and random violence. Blair completely ignores them and goes right ahead with changing the law so that (starting today) we British people are free to drink all night if we see fit to do so.

I'm not sure quite how these two Mr Blairs manage to live together in the same skull. Libertarian and fascist in one. Or maybe he's hoping that we'll all be to pissed in the pub to get pissed at him...

Definition of occasional as used by DMCA enforcers

[jurt1235]

SARCASM ON: From the rules and regulations of the DMCA user group (Not publicly accessible, so this will cause a take down notice):
Article 2b:
Wrongful notices.
An notice is considered wrongful if the party who send the notice is sued for this notice, and the highest court willing to hear the case decides that the notice has been send wrongful.
Article 2c:
Allowed wrongful notice percentage.
If not more than 60% of the notices gets rejected by a court, the sending of these notices will be considered as an occasional mistake due to the murky nature of the person or company who got the notice initially. :SARCASM OFF

Re:Power to abuse?

[meringuoid]

Used as the basis for Animal Farm by George Orwell

I'm not certain that's quite what happened. The Animalist Revolution was corrupted not by power per se but by Napoleon. Had the Revolution remained under Snowball's leadership it would probably have been rather more successful; however, Napoleon and Squealer (who were already complete stinkers) took every opportunity that came their way.

It wasn't so much that power corrupted, as that power attracted the corrupt and gave them even greater scope within which to practise their corruption...

The ESA vs HoTU

[spyrochaete]

The ESA (Entertainment Software Association), a body representing many software companies, sent a threatening letter to Home of the Underdogs a few years ago, demanding that they cease the sale of all copyright materials from their website. They state to be standing behind the DMCA.

IDSA is providing this letter of notification pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and 17 USC =A7 512 (c) to make you aware of material on your network or system that infringes the exclusive copyright rights of one or more IDSA members.
...
IDSA has a good faith belief that the Internet site found at theunderdogs.org infringes the rights of one or more IDSA members by offering for illegal sale one or more unauthorized copies of one or more game products protected by copyright...

Anyone who has seen this website knows that they do not sell games at all and never have. They provide abandonware downloads - games that have been out of print and not for sale for many years - in the interest of the preservation of culture.

Just another example of clueless bullies hiding behind the DMCA, seemingly for financial gain, but for properties not even for sale! Read the full letter and the webmaster's commentary for full details. http://www.the-underdogs.org/partdeux.php

Partisan tactics

[headkase]

I don't get you US consumers. What can you do to resist? Slashdot is great for bitching and whining but other than awareness-of does little to correct the issues. I don't need to yet in my country (Canada) but you guys from my point-of-view need to engage in some armed insurrection. Not physical arms of course, somebody might get hurt. Instead how about organizing and really using the first box in the defense of liberty, the soap box?

Here's the quote about boxes if I remember it right:
There are four boxes to defend liberty with: the soap box, the jury box, the voter box and the ammo box. Use in that order.

Re:The DMCA is only a symptom.

[Anonymous Coward]

They even let the lobbyists and corporate reps participate directly. This sort of freaked me out when I read it:

1988. It is 2:30 in the morning. I am sitting in the House Commerce Committee room with four or five congressional staffers and only three or four lobbyists/lawyers. The final mark-up for the DMCA is the next morning in the Full Commerce Committee. The Bill had already passed out of the Judiciary Committee but it had a sequential referral to Commerce which needed to approve it before we went to the floor for House Passage. And we were hung up....And several of us, including most importantly by that time, the Committee Chairman who had heretofore been opposed to the Bill, wanted to get it done.

That was written by the RIAA's Hillary Rosen. Here she is, participating on the creation of the bill! Maybe that's not an unusual practice in Congress, but it sounds shady to me.

Re:Power to abuse?

[tylernt]

I think you have a while to wait. Usually lots of people have to get killed before a revolution is born.

Don't atack the DMCA, attack the root

[argoff]

Attacking the DMCA is like attacking the leaves of a vine, and not the root of it. No matter how hard you pluck off those leaves, they will always grow back in some other form untill you attack the root.

The root of the problem here is societies own belief in copyrights. The DMCA is simply taking it to it's logical conclusion, along with the continuious extensions, and all the other abuses associated with copyright. People need to stop looking at copyrights as ever being a benefit, but rather as a burdon that was bearable 25 years ago when the biggest issue was copy machines and copyrights only lasted a few years. Not anymore. The burden copyrights require is too much to bear in the information age. Contrary to the hype, copyrights don't help many artists, and are anti free market. They are moral sewage that has robbed our culture and given it to hollywood, and they make it so that software companies who would otherwise strive to serve us - strive to controll us. The copyright system needs to die and take it's place on the trash heap of history.

The Solution: Report the Attorneys!

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously since I'm a third year law student currently looking for a job :)

The solution to this is actually pretty straightforward; Report the attorney to their state bar association for a ethics breach. In sending out as takedown notice the signing attorney needs to sign the statement stating that there is a good faith belief that there is copyrighted content on the website. If it's patently obvious that there isn't such work then the signed statement is false. Realize that while attorneys represent their clients they are required to make a good faith effort to make sure that any statements they make to the court or on legal documents aren't false. Most likely one or two complaints won't do much, but a flood again an individual attorney might get them sanctioned.

"Safe Harbour" conflict with Anti-Spam/Virus!

[lkcl]

A service provider must satisfy the following critical elements in order to qualify for the "safe harbor" or protection from liability provided by subsection 512(a) (note that subsection 512(k)(1)(A) defines "service provider" as used in subsection 512(a)):

  (e) The service provider must not modify the communication selected by the Internet user [512(a)(5)];

so, if you "modify" the email to put "X-Spam" tags in it, you no longer qualify for the "safe harbor" provisions.

in fact, if you put ANY headers with the message, then the communication is "modified".

DMCA victim

[romka1]

I fall in those 30% for sure, the hosting companies when recieving DMCA notice will not bother to validate it and will not bother to hear a counter argument in your defence, its easier for them just to unplug your server, even though the law states that they have to allow for a site owner to defend against the take down notice.

Especialy if the content of the site is somewhat questionable and the company issuing the take down notice is big (like microsucks)