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Google's Information On DMCA Takedown Abuse
Binestar writes "According to a PC World article, Google has submitted a brief to New Zealand about its proposed copyright law (section 92A). "In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.""
57% are from businesses targeting competitors, and only 37% are invalid? What does that mean? 1.) That up to 20% of notices are from businesses who are catching their competitors in the act? 2.) Or is it not 37% of total notices? 3.) Or am I getting mixed up on something?
DMCA notices are filed under penalty of perjury. Has anybody, ever, even a single case, been punished for filing a false takedown?
*crickets*
Have you ever copied sheet music by hand? It's a pain in the ass. So it's no surprise that in a time when a photocopier did not exist people would willingly pay a small amount to avoid that tedium. I know my high school almost got in trouble for photocopying sheet music. We spent a day in the music room pulling all the copies and tossing them in the garbage. The extreme high cost of sheet music during my school days was a major contributing factor in copyright infringement. Gee, where have I heard this before?
-- Will program for bandwidth
This is exactly how people used to write. The use of a punctuation marker between words didn't catch on in Latin until sometime between 600AD and 800AD. A lot of punctuation marks, and grammar in general, is a relatively recent fad.
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
I find a huge amount of sadness in this, after hearing for years and people saying:
KIDS! Learn music!
While the people producing sheet music reply: Only if you pay us one hundred, million dollars...
The sad thing in that, is part of the reason why the local middle school near me killed their music program. When I went through(more then 15yrs ago) everything was photocopied in some form. Now it only seems that the highschools have a music program which is a terrible shame, and even those are on the verge of dying for the same reason.
I know of a few preforming orchestra's here in Canada that are now dead due to the ever-ever-ever increasing costs of sheet music as well.
Om, nomnomnom...
On every search page where they've removed results due to the DMCA, the following is placed (the only editing I have done is to the link that would link to the actual notice - it's different for each notice, but Chilling Effects doesn't always have the notice on file):
In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.
Linking there does not seem to be supportive of the DMCA. Chilling Effects is surprisingly neutral, given it's project by several law schools and the EFF, but it's far from blind supportiveness from what I can see.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, nor am I American, so I may not know as much about this as someone else here.)