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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.""
In a world where executives of companies that lose money expect as a matter of course to be paid millions of dollars of bonuses, it is a given that a tool such as the DMCA **WILL** be abused to silence opposition or competition...
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?
There was a time when music was sold as sheet music. Somehow Joplin was making a $100,000 a week in the 1920's, even though it's fairly trivial to simply hand-copy someone-else's work.
I know I'm preaching to the choir on this one, but copyright law is increasingly working more against society than in its interests, and this story just goes to prove that yet again. When laws hurt more than they help, they need to be changed or abolished.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
DMCA notices are filed under penalty of perjury. Has anybody, ever, even a single case, been punished for filing a false takedown?
*crickets*
Do you know what makes money the root of all evil? It[']s love.
Could mean "Love, in general, is the answer to the question" or "Love of money is what makes it bad."
See? Its absolutely possible to make a sentence where, when the apostrophe is misused, it's presence or absence matters.
U r right, it really dusnt matter how u spell. Its not like their are standards to maintain. Or that its just plane irritating to sea.
(Pedants aside, a large proportion of Slashdot readers are programmers whose brains sound an alarm bell when a sentence doesn't parse correctly.)
Hoist by thine own petard. By the way it's "ought to". See, we can all be pedantic grammar nazis too.
It's easy. And yet... so pointless. Language is a means of communication. For millennia, it had no agreed, defined structure. Then along comes Dr Johnson, the world's first grammar nazi, and spoiled things for everyone by stifling creativity. Shakespeare, a man who -- you know -- was and is, widely renowned for being quite good at English, used to make words up all the time, and bend others to his will. You'd have him shot, no doubt. Or his books burned for grammar crimes.
Did you understand what the summary meant? Yes, you did. So... shut up.
Intesting isn't it? I reckon if a whole lot of countries stopped pursuing free trade agreements with the US and instead pursued China and pegged their currencies to the Euro, the US would be jumping through hoops to woo back countries like New Zealand and Australia. It would be the end of draconian copyright laws and a whole bunch of other ills.
I just don't get why everyone is still dealing in the greenback given the financial crisis. Sure it used to be dangerous to switch to euros (think 1st gulf war dangerous) but these days, who cares? Especially if China and Europe benefit from a switch, it may even force the US to finally pull it's head in.
But it'll never happen....
I don't therefore I'm not.
The content of the Google submission to TCF can be found here. Some of the other submission (including the Auckland District Law Society and the Radio New Zealand submissions) are worth a read.
I get that wrong all the time even though I'm fully aware that the possessive of "it" is "its". It's not that I'm bad at English, I just don't give a fuck about that particular apostrophe.
In fact, if it wasn't for the squiggly red lines I wouldn't care to correct my mistyping. I just can't stand those awful squiggles, it's like they're Satan rising up from ashes to haunt me with the terror of a thousand mad-libs...
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Um, have you been paying attention? We have been moaning about this for the last year, some of us (me, maybe not you) wrote to our electoral candidates asking what they would do about it, and now the National government has suspended the enactment of the law for review. Seems like moaning about it is all we can do, but at least it is having an effect!
mediocrity rules, man
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"
Now show me one sentence where the meaning becomes different depending on which way you spell it(')s. Any sentence. Don't have one? Still feel like you know something important?
I feel it's nuts.
The perjury clause is so useless as to be limited. I could send a DMCA request to anyone's provider, claiming that file X on their website infringed my copyright on work Y, and as long as I actually owned work Y, I would not have committed perjury -- even if I knew damn well file X had nothing to do with it.
Congratulations, your organization is a DMCA abuser. DMCA takedowns are for copyright violation, not trademark violation.
Indeed, it is helpful -- for abusers. The people abused, on the other hand, are shut down with no recourse other than to involve lawyers at substantial cost; the counternotice basically says "Meet me at high noon in Federal Court". Furthermore, if the abuser does sue, the DMCA provides the equivalent of an automatic restraining order, which, given the length of court cases, means the abuser essentially wins regardless of the outcome.
Now show me one sentence where the meaning becomes different depending on which way you spell it(')s.
Never drink wine before its time. (Don't drink pre-vintage wine)
Never drink wine before it's time. (Don't drink before 12pm)
Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
And believe you me, it was not easy finding a way of phrasing that that gave me the opportunity to mess them both up. =P
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.)