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DMCA Takedown Scandal, Part Two
pmdubs writes "Following up on our earlier discussion, Michael Freedman updates us on experience with dubious DMCA takedown notices. As a result of the publicity his initial post received, the Video Protection Alliance has dropped Nexicon, the company to which they had outsourced infringement detection. In this case, while there may be little legal recourse to issuing invalid DMCA notices, the threat of bad press seems to have reined in highly questionable practices."
And there is no need for any other coverage, really. If you send out a DMCA takedown and do not hold copyright to the material you are demanding be taken down - and have not been authorized to "act on behalf of the copyright holder" - then by having filed the DMCA takedown notice you have perjured yourself.
It's not hard to understand - this does mean, however, that every bad DMCA Takedown is prosecutable under extremely well-known law.
I agree that the DMCA is wrong, but if it won't go away, then abusing it (including using it negligently) needs to carry a lot more risk than it does now.
A good start for a copyright reform would be a rollback. Copyright of everything created to date is rolled back to expire when it would have expired under the law as it was at the time of creation. While I'm sure many would complain bitterly, they wouldn't actually have much to hang their complaints on legally or philosophically. They will have exactly the boon that was to encourage the creation of the work in the first place. Their only "loss" would be the ill gotten gains from bribed lawmakers.
The rest can come from there.
Exactly. Current copyright durations are far too long and the extensions clearly do not serve the purpose of encouraging publication.