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Dodgey DMCA Use May Lead To 'YouTube Veto Power'
BillGatesLoveChild writes "Bob Cringely reports that an interview potentially embarrassing to Steve Jobs was taken off YouTube. The interview was from Cringely's 1990s show Triumph of the Nerds. YouTube said it responded to a DMCA complaint made by NBD Television Ltd in London. Trouble is, NBD is not the copyright holder. They have nothing at all to do with the show and don't even sell it. PBS, who made and holds the copyright said they knew nothing of the complaint. Cringely tried to contact NBD Television Ltd who wouldn't respond. Neither would Youtube, who only speaks by form letter. 'Why did NBD Television make the complaint? Why did YouTube blindly enforce it? Is Steve Jobs behind this, or is it just another media company misusing the DMCA, at that, not even with their own copyrighted material? Why should a London-based company be able to issue DMCA takedowns, yet not be liable when they abuse the law?'"
I'm beginning to wonder if anyone, and I mean ANYONE, could fire off a DMCA request and get something taken down. I bet it'd be fairly easy, since many of these things would come by e-mail, and spoofing a domain in the From field is trivial. And i seriously doubt that most organizations bother to check the validity of such requests. They likely get them, read them in a cursory fashion, and then take the referenced content down.
And perhaps it's time to test the system, preferably on the content of the big media companies and politicians, especially the latter. Once those who support the DMCA find out how easily it can be misused in a way that harms them, then you'll see then have a miraculous awakening to its problems.
this smells like class action material for any attourney enterprising enough to gather the needed client base.
though i know better on the front of private winks and nods, the public position of the government is that any invalid/abusive DMCA C&D is supposed to be punishable by perjury and/or other penalties (forgot exactly what those penalties were but they were pretty stiff--on paper).
This said, the practice of "keyword trolling" the internet with a bot that then generates DMCA takedown notices without any reasonable investigation could and should be targetted for class action.
If i remember correctly, however, the EFF tried to do this once before and was dismissed via some rather underhanded interpretations of what constitutes "legal standing".
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
That's not the 'Potentially embarassing' part Cringely refers to, which is Steve Job's "Good Artists Copy, but Great Artists Steal" quote. Mildly inconvenient if you're in a Patent Law suit. But there is a funny story behind the part you cite. Jobs *did* feel embarrassed about that (for different reasons), and called up Gates to apologize. It went like this:
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Jobs: "Bill I'm calling to apologize. I saw the documentary and I said that you had no taste. Well I shouldn't have said that publicly. It's true, but I shouldn't have said it publicly."
Gates: "I'm glad you called to apologize, Steve, because I thought that was really an inappropriate thing to say."
Jobs: (smirking uncontrollably) "You know it's true, it's true you have no taste."
Andy Hertzfeld (Original Mac Programmer) was there when the call was made: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/transcripts/00
Here in Canada, someone either supporting, or associated with the opposition Liberal Party is apparently using copyright claims to remove pro-Conservative Party videos:
e ral-party-activists-censoring-youtube-videos-criti cal-of-stephane-dion/
http://www.thepolitic.com/archives/2007/03/30/lib
Although I'm a Tory myself, it wouldn't suprise me at all to see a Conservative or Dipper engage in the same behaviour.