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Overzealous Enforcement Means Even Legit Music Blogs Deleted

Posted by timothy on from the let-god-sort-'em-out dept.

AnotherUsername writes "Recently, many [Google-hosted] music blogs were deleted for hosting mp3s of songs by various artists. The problem? The music blogs in question had been given permission to host the songs, and often, the older links to mp3s were often broken intentionally by the bloggers in order to save bandwidth. From the article: 'You're reading this right: Five years of Lipold's labor of love was deleted, in part, because he posted a track with full permission of a label, and the track apparently wasn't even online by the time the IFPI filed its complaint.'"

5 of 240 comments (clear)

  1. Anonymous Robot? by russotto · · Score: 4, Informative

    accused blogger must file a counter-claim or, after an unquantified number of complaints -- valid or otherwise -- the law forces Google (or any other blogging platform) to terminate the accounts of "repeat offenders," even if their only mistake was not to file paperwork against the accusations of an anonymous robot -- sad and wrong, but mandated by current law.

    Unless the law has changed recently, all DMCA notices must contain the signature of the complaining party. So it can't be an _anonymous_ robot. If Google has agreed to an expidited, unsigned, automated, takedown process, it's not the law's fault.

    If they are signing them, the fact that the law doesn't make false DMCA notices explicitly illegal is the problem.

  2. Re:This will keep happening... by tomhudson · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you're going to invest years into something, there's no reason why you can't also invest a few dollars a month into a hosting plan.

    There are plenty of plans out there that let you do a one-click install of whatever sort of content management or blogging software you could reasonably need, and you get to customize it. And one-click backups and restores, for both the database backend and the site itself.

    Plus you get your own domain name.

    And you don't have to worry about "someone else already has that email / user name" crap.

  3. Re:This will keep happening... by gnasher719 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, contrary to your claim there will be very serious repercussions if the blogger takes this case to court.

    When you file a DMCA complaint, you declare that you are the copyright holder or an agent of the copyright holder, and that there has been a good reason to suspect copyright infringement. If that is not the case, then the DMCA complaint is actually a criminal act. And since the blogger claims that he had the permission of the copyright holder, it seems that a criminal act happened (assuming the blogger is telling the truth). And I think damages would be awarded against the complainant anyway if the complaint was not justified (that is if the complainant had good reason to believe there was copyright infringement, but turned out to be wrong).

  4. Re:what's this whole do no evil thing? by icebraining · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's not how DMCA works. They have to take it down right away:

    Common Misunderstandings

    It is sometimes stated that the ISP needs to give the alleged infringer ten days notice before acting. This is incorrect: the ISP must act expeditiously. The ten day period refers to the counter notification procedure described in Section 512(g) after the infringing material has been removed, offering them an opportunity to counter the allegations presented to the ISP not during the stage of the so-called "take down" procedure.

    So Google is not at fault here.

    --
    Dilbert RSS feed
  5. Re:This will keep happening... by sjames · · Score: 3, Informative

    If that is not the case, then the DMCA complaint is actually a criminal act.

    Which has never in the history of the DMCA seen a single enforcement in criminal or civil court.