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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.'"
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?
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
- George Orwell
Shocked and dismayed.
cf: DMCA, Patriot Act, Prevention of Terrorism Act (UK), Enabling Act (Weimar Germany)...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
SARCASM ON: From the rules and regulations of the DMCA user group (Not publicly accessible, so this will cause a take down notice): :SARCASM OFF
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.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
The real disease is the fact that the USA's elected lawmakers are, in many if not most cases, susceptible to pressure and/or bribery by the industry. This is how many of these asinine laws originated.
Unlimited legal campaign contributions, indeed!
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
What I find most disturbing about that statement is that it implies that something a bit less than 70% of DMCA takedown notices are not improper and not illegal. That is a law that is far over-reaching, draconian, and designed for abuse. I guess that's what happens when one lives in the good 'old U.C.A (United Corporations of America).
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
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
With the fall of the Canadian Liberal government coming on Monday, Canada will be safe from Bil C-60 the Copyright Act amendment until at least the early Spring. This gives our American oppressed neighbours time to find a job north of the 49th, and spend time backing up their "content protected" CD collection to hard drive, or iPod without fear of abuse from the local constabulary.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I mean, does anyone here really think that if a law puts that much power into the hands of an organized business cartel, that it's NOT going to be abused? Did anyone here NOT see this coming? Frankly, with a law as broad and Monopoly empowering as the DMCA, it was only a matter of time. And not a very long amount of time either.
Now, keep in mind, this is coming from a registered N.Y. State Conservative Party member, who listens to Rush Limbaugh every day, and voted for W. TWICE.
The amount of Individual Freedoms this law steals from people is abhorrent. It offends every Freedom loving, Patriotic bone in my body. Unfortunately, Most people don't see this as a priority. Like many of our laws, it's a "Creeping Freedom Stealer". Much like the old story of the frog in the frying pan, most people won't notice it taking thier Freedom until it's too late.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
The DMCA really is a good thing.
Congress passed the DMCA a long while back (a few years now, IIRC). It's obviously withstood the test of time; if there was something illegal about it, the Supreme Court would have already overturned it. So, I don't see where anyone can complain. Obviously the only people who have problems with it are the software/movie pirates, and piracy is bad, right?
We should all just try to get along with the DMCA instead of constantly badmouthing it. It's obviously a valuable and appropriate used piece of legislation.
However, let's put things in perspective. What is *really* the bigger problem right now - a few (even a few thousand), bad yes, abuses of the DMCA or the completely out of control wanton disregard for copyright law that exists in many internet corners? The defenders of P2P for LEGITIMATE use lose their credibility if they are not equally realistic and aggressive in condemning and thinking of ways to stop illegitimate use.
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.
Shh.
This story just served to remind me how pointless it is to try and enforce law on the internet.
Perhaps the various copyright enforcement agencies would do better if they changed themselves into education agencies.
It doesn't take a genius to understand that piracy kills the product being pirated. Most people like the own the "genuine" article too though (so you make your money in the long run).
Oh hell... this is a big old can of worms. They invent an anarchic network topology (the internet) that is self sustaining and deliberately uncontrollable - then they try to control it.
How stupid is that.
Wellybog
http://www.wellybog.com
I am not an American, so this may not be accurate, but it is my understanding that Washington opposed the idea of political parties altogether - not just the situation that exists when you have only two. He believed that all candidates should stand on their own beliefs, not on a platform that is only a lose fit for their opinions but popular with a large, unthinking, group of the electorate.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
ChillingEffects.org keeps a library of submitted DMCA takedown notices.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
I heard that someone actually had the audacity to put a small piece of tape on the outer edge of one of those DRM'ed Sony CD's to disable the copy protection. What brazen defiance of the DMCA! I'm waiting for the lauch of the ??AA's program of lawsuits to put such vile criminals behind bars where they belong!
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
I demand my unfair share, right now or I'm going back to voting ethically and intelligently.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
When it comes to the legal 'industry' they are IN it.. Not just being bribed.
Thats the beauty of being an attorney, the more stupid laws like this, the more money to go around.
And remember, you get paid even if you lose.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If a weak man foolishly walks into an alley in a bad part of town and gets mugged, he is foolish, true. But that does not remove the blame from the mugger.
d =13964842
If a woman wears provocative clothing in a bad part of town late at night and gets raped, maybe she was foolish for attracting attention, but she is not to blame for the rape. The rapist is.
If you leave your home unlocked and you get robbed, you will probably feel angry at yourself for leaving the house unlocked. The blame for the robbery, however, is purely the robber's.
If the American electorate is overly susceptible to media influences, call them gullible. That does not make the shark-like actions of the corporations any more acceptable. Even using the metaphor of a shark (they shouldn't be blamed; it's in their nature) is a better reason to take precautions against them, not a worse one.
If you're still reading this, I had a previous discussion on slashdot where we talked about some of this:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=167485&ci
The data set falls into two halves -- self-reported takedown notices and takedown notices sent to Google. The Google part of the set is a complete record of all the notices they have received over the last 3 years or so.
One would expect the self-reported notices to have a bias, but it turns out that Google notices shows the same proportion of flawed notices: 30%.
Bruce
(Full disclosure: my wife is one of the co-authors of the paper.)
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.
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.
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.
I think "they" got hold of the same list, and their response plan went something like this:
-- MarkusQ
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".
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)
Visit my site @ http://www.madtorrent.com
I've never seen an apropriate DMCA notice, but in the 2004 election, I took out every web site that belonged to a Texas politicianin the other party - one week before the election. I'll do it again in 2006. I plan to take them out 2 months before the election, and file suits to stop them from coming back up.
Life is good, politicians are helpless, and lawyers are too slow to do anything.
God bless Texas!
Andy Out!
The view that I take on this is what you might call "Populist Libertarianism".
On the traditional political-spectrum chart as taught in political science classes, you have two axis - one of economic freedom and one of interpersonal freedom. Turning the chart on its corner, the "left" is liberalism, high interpersonal and low economic freedom, culminating in a purely socialist direct democracy; on the "right" is conservativism, high economic freedom and low interpersonal freedom, culminating in a purely capitalist complete dictatorship. This is the normal left/right spectrum we usually hear about, and both extreme ends of it have obvious problems with them.
On the "top" is libertarianism, more of all freedoms (as nobody can tell anybody else what do do), culminating in anarchy; on the "bottom" is populism, less of all freedoms (as everybody has some control over what other people do), culminating in tyranny.
When I speak of "Populist Libertarian" I'm basically saying "moderate", but in a way most people don't think of it. People think of moderates in terms of the left/right schism but completely ignore that while we're maintaining some equilibrium between the left and the right, we're sliding gradually toward tyranny on both sides. Tyrannical liberalism becomes Stalin's communism, and tyrannical conservatism becomes Mussolini's fascism. The libertarians have a good point that we need to move away from such tyranny, but as you point out if you go too far in that direction you wind up in anarchy, which has just as many problems of an entirely different sort.
The solution I envision is a system which acknowledges that factions and groups will exist, and allows them to exist, and allows them to form larger groups of groups, and so on and so forth, but applies to every group or meta-group the exact same set of standards as are applied to individual people. The same rules that properly govern interaction between groups of people should apply equally well to groups of groups, and so on. The same kind of standards which apply to a parent running a household should apply to a president running a country, and vice versa. If they don't, there's a problem somewhere in there - either you're governing your household or your country wrong.
As for what exactly those common rules are, I believe in what are more or less the libertarian interpersonal ideals (you can do whatever you want, except do unto others what they don't want) with semi-socialist economic ideals - basically free-market capitalism overlaid with a 50% redistribution of wealth within the group, i.e. half of what anybody brings in is divided up evenly amongst the group. The specific way I encapsulate this is with two pairs of freedoms/responsibilities:
- the freedom of liberty (to do what you want) and the responsibility to respect the liberty of others
- the freedom of security (not to be done unto as you don't want) and the responsibility to respect the security of others.
- the freedom of public property (you can do what you want with anything that's not owned by someone else) and the responsibility to respect public property (not to depreciate its value, which also encompasses environmentalism)
- the freedom of private property (you can control the things you create or acquire) and the responsibility to respect private property (i.e. no theft or vandalism).
The first and third of these are the usual emphasis of liberals, while the second and fourth are the usual emphasis of conservatives. I think they're all equally important.
As to who actually enforces these laws, i.e. who "the government" is, each group has a directly elected triad of leaders, each tasked with a different area of responsibility. The Councillor's job is to oversee the internal working of this group, applying the rules to interactions between the people (or sub-groups, if this is a meta-group) within this group. The Governor's job is to oversee the interaction between this groups and other groups of the same level and act as a
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Don't try to paint it as something new enabled by P2P. What IS new is the idea that sharing files without making a profit is the domain of hardened criminals. What you are witnessing is the same thing lawmakers witnessed during prohibition. Copyright law has been transformed into complete and utter bullshit and everyone knows it. These are just the same law abiding people doing the same things they always have. As much as you might like to paint a different picture, most people who download music are not the same people who casually shoplift. The law is wrong. Obviously it needs to be repealed. Read all about it:
Fuck you very much President Clinton AND both houses of Congress for going with the monied interests instead of the intellectuals when dealing with "Intellectual Property" laws.
The defenders of P2P for LEGITIMATE use lose their credibility if they are not equally realistic and aggressive in condemning and thinking of ways to stop illegitimate use.
No they don't. They have issues with the DMCA and the NET Act and your definition of legitimate, along with the majority of America. "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Obviously, we don't consent. When teenagers are being dragged into court on criminal charges for sharing songs, when Girl Scouts have a list of songs that are illegal sing around the campfire, and when I cannot legally sing Happy Birthday to my niece at McDonald's, something is terribly wrong with the law. It's time our lawmakers got tough on the corporate criminals stealing our culture from the public domain.