Overzealous Enforcement Means Even Legit Music Blogs Deleted

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.'"

Comments

Artificial Scarcity of Distribution models

[Anonymous Coward]

What? You thought this had anything to do with their "intellectual property"?

This has everything to do with crushing alternative distribution methods.

This will keep happening...

[SharpFang]

...as long as there are no repercussions for frivolous DMCA.

The only provision limiting the scope in DMCA is to own copyright on whatever you claim someone infringes upon.

So, I have copyright on MyDumbSong. And I am totally free to file DMCA against _anyone_ and everyone_ and _anything_ and _everything_, claiming it infringes on my rights to MyDumbSong. And then it's their burden to prove they don't. And taking content down is so much easier than proving its legality.

Re:This will keep happening...

[gnasher719]

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).

This is exactly the spirit of the law

[damburger]

The laws in question are basically a way of saying 'the music industry controls music. There shall be no music without our say so' whilst appearing to be a justified set of rules to make the industry fair. Even if this were the first example (it really, really is not) then nobody ought to be at all surprised. Few service or hosting providers have the balls to actually look into the matter when a legal-sounding letter arrives; they just err on the side of not being taken to court and comply immediately, which is exactly the kind of environment the content industry has sought to create.

Rather than there being a presumption of innocence for those publishing on the web, and the rights holder having to prove guilt - there is a a presumption of guilt and the publisher has to prove innocence, normally with far fewer legal funds available than the rights holder. There is also no consequence to the service/hosting provider for taking content down.

In a society so thoroughly and openly corrupt, how can this be a surprise? If the entire government and legal system is open to the highest bidder (true in every western nation I can think of) then naturally the intent of all laws will be to keep entrenched elites in place.

Re:This is exactly the spirit of the law

[Thoreauly Nuts]

It's completely ass backwards and results in a total thwarting of creativity.

I compiled some research recently to assess creative work ethic amongst musical artists from the 60s to the present. It had nothing to do with copyright originally, but the data can easily be arranged to show some interesting things about what effect increasing copyright lengths may or may not have on creativity.

Using album lengths of studio albums for these artists I came up with a figure I called CPY, which just stands for content per year, which is measured in minutes. For this post, I took my data and divided the artists between 2 groups: Pre 1978 & Post 1978. Jan 1, 1978 is when the 1976 Copyright Act took effect BTW.

The Pre 1978 group had an average CPY of 42.55 minutes
The Post 1978 group had an average CPY of 30.6 minutes

This is about a 28.1% reduction in creative output after the copyright act took effect. Now, correlation does not imply causation, so it can't necessarily be said that this dramatic drop was caused by the copyright act. However, it can certainly be said that the copyright act definitely is NOT causing an increase in creative output. There is no evidence of such in the data whatsoever. In fact, creative output has held close to the margin of error from the 80s onward in my data.

Another lesson from this

[JoshuaZ]

Keep backups of everything. If it isn't on your server you don't know when you'll lose it. If you keep backups you can just move elsewhere if there's a problem.

Anonymous Robot?

[russotto]

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.

Achilles Heel.

[headkase]

By the way, I refuse to cooperate in the slightest until I get at least one thing: a functioning public domain. Not this pretend one where perhaps after I'm long dead, maybe, just maybe - assuming no more extensions: my grandchildren will get to copy Steamboat Willy. There is no public domain if it doesn't happen in my lifetime: fact. Without my public domain I unilaterally declare the whole of copyright null and void, "they" broke it first so no agreement until "they" come back and deal in good faith. Because apparently politicians do not believe that Citizens need to be consulted for their positions to bargain with at the copyright table. Guess they're just too damn busy stuffing the money into their pockets as fast as possible under the table. It's a Sonny situation. Heh.

Re:New tagline/category needed

[rockNme2349]

You sir, do not understand Web x.0

His blog was hosted in the Cloud! A super place where data is impervious to destruction and can never be lost!

Re:Fake it until you make it?

[RichardJenkins]

Step 1. Rebuild the Berlin wall.

Welcome to the Corporate States of America

[Newer Guy]

Welcome to the Corporate States of America-where coroprations have all the RIGHTS of citizens-and more-with none of their RESPONSIBILITIES!

Want proof? Here it is! http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/realestate/article1072632.ece

If a human being had done this, we'd be charged with the felony crime of breaking and entering-BUT after all Bank of America isn't a human, are they? Personally, I think that when stuff like this is done they should arrest the President of the corporation, process him and then throw him in a cell with the derelicts (make sure you do it on a long holiday weekend so he suffers for a few days).

You might think that this is off topic, but it really isn't. Corporations have WAY TOO MUCH POWER-mainly because they have been able to BRIBE our corrupt government into letting them have it!

Re:Freedom

[couchslug]

People have the insanely naive, stupid idea that when they have someone else host their content that they will still have control over that content.

You voluntarily surrender everything when you have someone else host your shit

The good side is that when they nuke it your poor planning becomes an example to others.