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The Fallout From a Flickr DMCA Takedown
Maddog Batty writes "Dave Gorman, UK comic and Flickr user, recently received a DMCA takedown notice for one of his own pictures which had become rather popular — 160,000 views + lots of comments. The takedown was in error (from a porn company) and Flickr allowed him to repost the image. However, the fallout is that all the original comments are now lost and the many links to the original picture are now broken. Sure, Flickr needed to remove the image, but shouldn't there be a way to reinstate it while keeping all the original comments and links?"
I suspect the porn company is not liability limited and probably has lots of cash. Sue them, and let them sort it out with Flickr.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Most cases in games, for example they put a place holder picture, saying waiting for review or something. They could have done that. Then put the picture back when it was straightened out. No loss of comments etc.
This precisely. The safe harbor provisions are for the ISP. If the takedown notice was in error, and there was no good faith basis for it, I am sure there are several avenues of damages available. The question is quantifying them. It would be better if Flickr had some sort of not shown due to DMCA status, that would just remove the same database entry.
Sure, Flickr needed to remove the image
Is that actually true? From various YouTube DMCA stories, it seems like YouTube just hides the video content and renders an error message when you try to view it. If the takedown is reversed, they re-instate the video at its original URL; the uploader doesn't have to upload it again. Surely Flickr could implement a "hidden" flag as opposed to deleting an image outright?
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Because if Flickr doesn't remove it, they lose their safe harbor protection under the DMCA. If the photograph turns out to be posted without authorization, then the rights holder can sue Flickr for damages.
Blame the DMCA and the corrupt congressmen + President who signed it into law.
The DMCA does not require that Flickr take the images down. Only that they respond appropriately to the DMCA takedown notice. A perfectly reasonable response would be to pass on that notification to the user, and allow them to challenge it BEFORE you take it down.
Don't blame the poisonous that doesn't bite you for the idiot doctor that removed the leg before checking to see if the snake actually bit you.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Better yet, go after the company that issued the false takedown. While I'm all in favor of legitimate rights holders defending their property, we've seen too many erroneous takedown notices issued with cavalier disregard for the rights of owners who prefer to share their intellectual property with the world. This has to stop. As long as takedown notices have no risk to the issuers, don't expect the errors to stop.
This is a boring sig
Must have cost too much to have a coder put [Disable] somewhere, so something could be taken from public view and then reinstated as necessary.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Because those are the terms of the DMCA.
I suspect the porn company is not liability limited and probably has lots of cash. Sue them, and let them sort it out with Flickr.
Sue both of them. It should also be possible to work out some kind of libel claim in there ("They were alleging I was a copyright pirate, your honour, yet I have enormous respect for all forms of IP as it is a key part of how I earn my living!") Now, Gorman's a UK citizen and is resident in the UK, so using a UK court to pursue a libel claim is A-OK. Heh heh...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
I'm sorry, what?
Shouldn't Flickr repost? what?
why the f... didn't they just # out the post and related data, and then re-instate it?
and why oh why does this s#it even effect anything outside the legal bounds of the US?
~men are from earth. women are from earth. deal with it.~
Screw the cloud. They have their goals, you have yours. Hosting photos isn't that hard. Posting comments isn't that hard. We can figure this out. But as long as we use these for-profit, economies-of-scale cloud intermediaries, there's not going to be the resilience, freedom or security that you get with an open source, user owned, user operated platform.
WordPress works. EtherPad works. We can't do spreadsheets. We can't do video (easily). We can sometimes do community (Diaspora, Appleseed, etc; status updates; BuddyPress).
Get hacking.
Yes, Flickr is convenient but posting your images on sites you do not own... well they can remove them. Or worse are sites, I think picasaweb, have fine print that says images posted become "property" of them and not you. I forgot specifically which photosharing site but a pro photog says he rarely posts his work on such sites except his own domain because fine print says person given up ownership.
Though Flickr provides means for people to post comments which can be great fun when you have something that resonates with the public, but don't want to spend time moderating every comment. Sure is terrible Gorman lost all those comments, there must have been some real doozies of sorts posted.
mfwright@batnet.com
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Better yet, go after the company that issued the false takedown.
I believe that this is the best approach. You won't make much money ffrom this sort of action, but I am pretty sure that there are some fairly strict rules about issuing false notices and the penalties for doing so. He wouldn't make too much from it, but the company that issued it would surely be in a world of hurt. Perhaps this is a great opportunity for the EFF or someone similar to take up the cause and do it on behalf of the photographer?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
This is the problem with DMCA take downs. They force websites to take down the material even if it isn't certain that it is infringing. Websites don't have the resources to police the content, so sometimes they even have to resort to faulty automated systems (Youtube) that generate false-positives, or (even worse) give copyright holders the power to remove content (which will, again, be abused).
All this does is hurt the little guy. It's guilty until proven innocent, and if you don't have the resources to fight them, you're doomed.
This is what would happen everyday if facebook *did* really erase pictures that people delete.
But I agree, they should at least keep it *some* time.
The only libel is against all comics in suggesting that Gorman is among them. The man's awful.
some sort of not shown due to DMCA status
Funny, that's what MegaUpload did. And look what happened to them...
They didn't need to DELETE it, just BLOCK access to it.
Only delete it if there was no DMCA re-instatement in a reasonable time.
By DELETING it they are unable to RE-INSTATE access, and are LIABLE for THAT under the DMCA.
Allowing a reposting is not the same thing, even after one gets the right to repost one has to re-upload the content and the comments, original file name, etc are lost.
Also, not following the DMCA takedown procedure just denies you an automatic safe harbor, you aren't automatically guilty, just not automatically innocent. Of couse, most judges and juries are idiots so being in front of either is usually bad unless you are a plaintiff. Judges and juries only feel they are doing "justice" when they award damages.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
What damages?
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
Fashion doesn't have IP protection. You should have used a car analogy.
+0 Meh
All they'd need to do would be to replace the image with a placeholder "Temporarily removed due to DMCA action" image at the same URL, and maybe hide the comments. When the DMCA request turns out to be faulty, they either restore the image, or have the owner re-upload it and point the page at the new image, with all the comments and links remaining intact.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
'How' they implement the DMCA is up to them. 'How' they repost the content is also up to them. I don't believe there's anything in the DMCA about where that content needs to be located beyond posted by the people who previously took it down so Flickr has covered their requirements.
The important question, is why isn't Flickr doing the grand gesture of simply restoring the content from BACKUPS. They have to have backups of the damn content, they didn't have 160K comments residing in memory...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Maybe they actually take "delete" requests seriously and permanently remove the data, unlike every other social networking site that continues to possess, mine, and sell your data after you've "deleted" it.
If the takedown notice was in error, and there was no good faith basis for it, I am sure there are several avenues of damages available.
Actually, the only thing you can do under the DMCA is try to get a prosecutor to indict them for perjury.
*gigglesnort* yeah right, a prosecutor ever going after the MafiAA...
The real point of this story is not some minutiae of how flickr's back-end is organised wrt take-down notices.
The real point is that this image only went back because it was Dave Gorman - who is a pretty well known person (in the UK at least). These take-downs occur all the time aimed at "normal" people, who have no profile, and thus their protests are ignored. I hope Dave realises this and works out that he should be championing the little guy (which he generally is good at doing).
but I am pretty sure that there are some fairly strict rules about issuing false notices and the penalties for doing so.
No. Not really. And that is the whole problem with this one-sided legislation. Zero penalties for false take downs.
Because virtually all of congress is in the pocket of big media, there is almost zero chance of getting this fixed any time soon.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
While that's one approach, the real problem is the DMCA law which enables this. The courts system can rule a law "bad" and can limit or even revoke a law. What has to be done to prove it's a bad and highly abused law? Surely there's more than enough evidence that it is being abused on a global scale.
Because if they don't remove it immediatly, they become liable. Their role under the DMCA isn't to decide if the claim of infringement has merit - their role is to get it down as fast as possible, and then let the poster and complaintant sort it out in court between each other. This actually makes more sense than might at first be apparent - do you really want companies with no experts and no interest in law to make decisions as to what is infringing?
On the other hand, you can be confident that if the upload were by someone with a lot of money and influence, flickr would have found some way to stall - if not, the official Disney channel on youtube would have been pulled a hundred times over by activists fileing fraudulent takedowns just to prove how easily the system can be abused. It's the same old legal situation as it has always been: The law is written to protect all equally, but in reality it protects you a lot more if you've deep pockets and friends in high places.
There is certainly a case to be made that the issuing company should serve a penalty for making a false or mistaken claim, but its hardly their fault that Flickr have a completely brain dead way of reacting to takedown notices, so I doubt that any court would agree that they are responsible for the loss of comments or broken links - Flickr knows that the DMCA exists, they have an established process for dealing with violation notices and they know that there is a grace period during which a counter claim can be made.
The loss of data and links here is entirely Flickr's fault - their DMCA process should never result in the mess that it did, because there are always going to be situations where counter claims are successful.
The police don't summarily execute everyone they arrest when an allegation has been made, and thats basically what Flickr did here.
Why did Flickr need to remove it again? I think due process should apply to this along with everything else. This whole idea that we can destroy data first, then figure out if the person is in the wrong seems to be one of the main issues with current tactics and future legislation that is trying to be pushed through.
Go read 512: "remove or disable access to" - 403 is just fine. You don't actually have to rm.
What they appear to be accusing MU of is having deduplication and therefore knowing that there were multiple links to the same file, only taking down the links actually identified in a DMCA 512(c) takedown, and having actual knowledge that other links to the same file were also copyright-infringing and doing nothing about it.
Whether that is actually illegal under US law has never, to my knowledge, been tested, although clearly the Department of Justice think it is in that particular case.
Unfortunately, just appearing before a judge and jury is fantastically expensive. Even if you win, you lose.
Sites you "own" can be taken down too, if you've been paying attention to the news lately.
"The question is quantifying them. "
100 billion US dollars should work, the RIAA and MPAA can claim such absurd numbers, why cant this guy?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The question is does flagging a file "deleted" satisfy the legal requirements of a DMCA notice. If it does, then why didn't Flicker implement this method. If is does not, how does the law expect files to be restored when a DMCA notice is challenged?
Basically this is just another example of why DMCA is such crappy legislation and why we don't need more like SOPA.
Or worse are sites, I think picasaweb, have fine print that says images posted become "property" of them and not you.
No Picasaweb explicitly states that you continue to own pictures you put on Picasaweb. And you can remove them, and mark them private.
Google's pretty good about following that policy.
If you mark it as public, or submit it for inclusion in Google Earth or Images for Google Maps, they reserve the right to use those even after you delete them from your picasaweb account. You submitted them explicitly for that purpose.
Your Content in our Services
Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.
When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.
Specifically, Picasaweb allows you three choices of privacy: Public on the web, Anyone with a link, Private.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Or worse are sites, I think picasaweb, have fine print that says images posted become "property" of them and not you. I forgot specifically which photosharing site
You mean Flickr. Picasa's terms were, when I read them, that you gave them a revocable license to the image for the sole purpose of displaying the image in the manner that you choose. They had been different at a much earlier state, but the terms were changed when people spoke up. Flickr's terms were "irrevocable, world-wide, perpetual, sub-license-able" license meaning they could redistribute the file to anyone under any terms they choose, completely ignoring what terms you choose to distribute the photo under. They couldn't claim to be the owner of the copyright, but they could sell the picture without recompense.
Maybe that's the future definition of a professional vs amateur photographer: pros either understand the law enough to not get bitten by crap like this or have a lawyer to help them, while amateurs complain about laws they don't understand and don't want to deal with.
No, it isn't the whole problem. It is only part of the problem. Another part of the problem is that it allows takedowns BEFORE any "due process" has been undertaken. (A statement of "this is an infringing post" does not qualify as "due process".)
The whole takedown notice scheme needs to vanish from this country. Completely. Things need to go back to the way they were before, when someone actually had to demonstrate a violation in front of a court before expression could be suppressed.
The porn company infringed his copyright and now he cannot be made whole again. The posts and discussion are gone and links around the world are broken. He deserves $200,000 in statutory damages from the porn company. That should reduce these false take downs.
And what an apt name, "Wasteland."
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
No. They didn't. They could easily have asked the account holder about the image before completely fucking up.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The takedown process of the DMCA is one of the better things to happen to the Internet. It provides genuine safe harbor. Without the DMCA, for example, YouTube would have been stillborn.
The problem is Flickr's handling is just not graceful. They are required to take down the item when a notice is received. The user files a counter claim, Flickr can then restore the image and send the user's info to the complainant, who must then sue the user directly, and Flickr remains protected until it is adjudicated by a court, even if they image stays up.
There have been a few nice cases where the folks that issued a false takedown notice ended up being given some interesting punishments. It's not a level playing field, but it's not totally utterly one sided.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Well in principal I agree, but "Due Process" is a slippery term. Essentially passing a law stating what the requirements are becomes the definition of "due process" in that context. But further It only applies to actions of governments.
Clearly fairness is at issue here.
With virtually every web user able to upload photos, writing, music, and video, the rights of the actual IP holders of those items was swamped by the masses. There aren't enough courts in the land to handle these issues. It could never be handled in the court system.
If you had to individually sue every person who posted your copyrighted short story or picture, you could go broke trying to enforce your rights.
Under the prior law there was, in effect, zero protection for the rights holder. As a small artist or writer, there was really nothing you could do against people who posted your work without your permission. There was even less you could do against the individual downloader of your works.
The current situation flips that on its head, handing the big hammer to anyone who cares to make a claim of copyright violation. There is some recourse in the law for the poster to prove the takedown was invalid, but there is no penalty for filing a false claim.
The only solution that is workable without totally swamping the courts would be some sort of (rapidly escalating) penalty for a false take down notice. Both a fiscal penalty, and perhaps a "Rights" penalty. Abuse your right to bear arms and you lose the arms (and perhaps your liberty). Abuse the right to issue take down notices, and you pay a fine, continue to abuse it, and you lose the right to issue take down notices (and, effectively, your copyright).
You probably still need a way to prevent people from posting an entire 60 million dollar movie on the web somewhere. A quick take down should be available in this case without going to court in every jurisdiction in the world.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Actually, the summary is slightly in error—it wasn't the porn company, it was on behalf of the porn company, an IP troll called Degban. Like Righthaven, only way, way more stupid and aimless. Degban claims to have been hacked, on top of that. Pretty sketchy, I gotta say.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
What they appear to be accusing MU of is having deduplication and therefore knowing that there were multiple links to the same file, only taking down the links actually identified in a DMCA 512(c) takedown, and having actual knowledge that other links to the same file were also copyright-infringing and doing nothing about it.
Uh, no, they didn't know (at least, not legally) that the other links were infringing.
If I take a picture and upload it to e.g. Flickr, and then someone else downloads it from my profile and uploads to his, that copy is infringing and mine isn't, even though it's the same file.
Whether a file is infringing depends on its colour, not just on its bits.
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To elaborate: Money; Time; Stress; Interference with your life; potential for losing even when you are in the right.
Avoid the US court system by any means practical -- it is corrupt, biased, unfair, and in the final analysis, unjust.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Ron Paul. Best choice by far.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No, Flickr did NOT need to take down the image. When they receive the take down notice they then need to present that to him and get his response. If he says it is his original artwork then they go back to the person sending the take down notice and give that response to them.
And if not legally, let them know that false claims will cause them at least 1 year of not able to claim. If another comes up.. 2 years, 4 years. And so on. There should be a mechanism to avoid those takedown bombs.
Ok, now you're just teasing us with a dangling, forlorn hope. No more blurry videos of idiots, nowhere for the dumbest comment writers on the planet to spew their endless misspellings and mangling of grammar and pop-culture bewilderment? Un-possible!
No. Just, NO. Youtube will always be with us. "Shall not infringe" will always mean "infringe all you want"; and we have always been at war with Eastasia. Uh, drugs. No wait, with the children. For, I mean. Well, you know. Stuff.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
(Removal) != (deletion + loss + additional unnecessary harm)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Wasteland sells used clothes.
Summary:
The takedown was in error (from a porn company)
The clothes probably aren't that used at all. But I suppose that depends on one's point of view: I think of gimp masks and strapons as wearable equipment rather than clothes, and I imagine those are well used.
(Someone shoulda read TFA a little closer. ;)
Shouldn't you be asking Flickr? Yes, there SHOULD be a way to restore it, assuming Flickr designed their system to account for that possibility. Of course, if the company policy when responding to DMCA requests is to simply delete the image and all associated references (including comments), then that is their policy and something you may wish to consider when posting something there in the first place. If anything, this should entice hosting companies to amend their user policy to include what happens in situations like this. Add a few more lines to a very long document that nobody ever reads anyway. Ultimately, if you want control over content you think belongs to you, then you need to host it yourself and not rely on other sites to do it for you.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Fashion wasn't the issue, pictures were. Question remains, at what point does a picture end it's copy-write life?
A bogus take-down notice can be much more damaging than actually putting up infringing files. Yet putting up an infringing file can result in the dismantling of the company that put it up, the company hosting it, and imprisonment or even death (if arrest is resisted) for any real person involved.
The lack of appropriate and equitable punishment for wrongful take-down encourages recklessness and fraud on the part of alleged rights-holders or their agents. There have been multiple examples of fraudulent claims by bogus rights-holders, as well as by those who would trample fair use and criticism. All this has been done without any real consequence to those who issued the false take-down notices.
Sue all three. The porn company for employing a company that was grossly negligent (because by doing so, they implicitly assume liability for that other company's actions on their behalf), the IP troll company (which probably has no assets) for making the false claim, and Flickr for failing to correctly reinstate content after a fraudulent DMCA takedown.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Whatever happened to that?
Has that ever been enforced?
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
I suspect the porn company is not liability limited and probably has lots of cash. Sue them, and let them sort it out with Flickr.
Under US copyright law, unless Gorman had already registered his copyright on the picture in question, he will be limited to suing only for real (IOW minimal) damages, not punitive damages. It doesn't look like there is much, if any, in the way of real damages here. He would have to have been actively selling the picture, or using it in some other way to directly generate revenue.
Under the US and other WIPO compliant countries (most of them), creative works are copyrighted at the moment of creation. But in the US, if you want the protection of being able to sue someone's pants off for a copyright violation of your pic/book/song/painting/sculpture/computer program, you need to pony up the $65 fee and register your work with the US Copyright Office.
Actually, the only thing you can do under the DMCA is try to get a prosecutor to indict them for perjury.
The DMCA doesn't contain a provision holding them harmless. They can still be liable for causing the takedown.
Also, "flickr informing the author they can repost" the material doesn't meet the requirements for the safe harbor to apply
Well put, my friend.
If I had mod points, I would spend them all modding you up.
I think you are referring to statutory damages. While that would be a nice avenue to have in this case, I don't think it is absolutely necessary in this case, even though there wasn't much money lost.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The the damages are the cost to Flickr of restoring the post to exactly the way it was before any of this shenanigans started and to maintain all the posts that occurred after the takedown along with attorneys fees. Like the GP said sue them and let them sort it out with Flickr
Does this count for non-US folks though? Does the law apply that way for things published from another country on a service that's running in the US?
I had a feeling there were exemptions to registration for that sort of situation.
This seems to be their defence :
Hello Dave
I do apologize for the inconvenience, we have been victim of a phishing/hacking attack, which was aimed at reducing our credibility
among clients and the public as you can see how, I truly am sorry
that you were effected as such, but allow to humbly suggest that
you channel a part of your anger at those holier than thou hackers
who effect users like yourself by such irresponsible actions
we are working hard to fix the matter, but alas we can not do much
as the size of the attack was larger than we could have expected
I am hoping you can manage to get back your traffic and are never
affected by such issue ever again
Yours
Taban Panahi
Degban Ltd.
I don't even know where to start with this.... so many targets. I was going to put (sic)'s in, but I gave up after the second line. It looks like it has gone through a spellchecker, I'll say that much.
"But further It only applies to actions of governments."
It doesn't actually say that anywhere, but even if it did, that is irrelevant because a takedown amounts to a de facto seizure of property, without due process, as a requirement of the federal law. So even if "due process" only applies to government action, it still applies in this case, because Congress authorized the seizure of valuable property (whether text, images, or other works) without any "due process" whatever. This is antithetical to some of the most basic principles of American law.
"The only solution that is workable without totally swamping the courts would be some sort of (rapidly escalating) penalty for a false take down notice."
Nonsense. It is by no means the "only" solution. Repealing the takedown clauses of the DMCA would solve the problem as well. The problem did not exist before the DMCA. Remove the relevant clauses from the DMCA, and the problem goes away, and we are left with the much more sane system we had before, which actually worked.
"You probably still need a way to prevent people from posting an entire 60 million dollar movie on the web somewhere. A quick take down should be available in this case without going to court in every jurisdiction in the world."
I disagree 100%. The advantages are still with the rights holders, even without the DMCA. A person should have to be accused and convincingly shown to have broken the law before action is taken against him. That is the way American law has worked in almost every situation prior to the DMCA. That system did work and created a situation in which the rights of all parties were pretty fairly balanced. The same cannot be said of today, post-DMCA.
Keep in mind that infringement (in the vast majority of cases) is no crime. Nobody is "stealing" a 60-million-dollar movie. Further, the actual statistics say that downloading has not harmed actual music or movie revenue. On the contrary: after a short-lived slump that was almost certainly due to a slow economy, total music and movie sales set yet another record last year. Even in the "slow" years, their total revenue still increased from year to year; far better than many other industries fared.
From Degban Ltd's website terms of use :
This website uses cookies to monitor browsing preferences. If you do allow cookies to be used, the following personal information may be stored by us for use by third parties: [insert list of information].
They've found me!
Unauthorised use of this website may give rise to a claim for damages and/or be a criminal offence.
The sun may not rise this morning, too.
Throughout the website they write their emails as "Lumiere at Degban.com", "Chopin at Degban.com" and "Gutenberg at Degban.com". I wonder why they don't just use lumiere@degban.com, chopin@degban.com, or gutenberg@degban.com?
I consider all my information very confident what do I do?
I'm not sure, is your information aggressive and/or overbearing, too?
Yeah, when I read the title of the post, "The Fallout From a Flickr DMCA Takedown", I was really, really hoping that the fallout was for the company that issued the takedown. Finally! But no, sadly, the fallout is still for the victims and not for the big companies claiming false copyright on other people's intellectual property. Will someone please sue those people? Claiming copyright on someone else's work, to me, is far, far worse than just copying someone's work. Imagine what would happen if I went to a record store and said "this song by Beyonce is actually mine, I made it, so you must remove it from your store at once".
What can Flickr do to investigate? They have no way of knowing who the copyright holder is. It may well be that someone else took that photo, and that he was reposting it without permission.
Theyre NOT required to remove it - they can disable access to it, instead.
The DMCA procedure probably has some flaws in the area indicated.
For example,
Demanding all copies of a file called "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" be taken down would not be specific enough. I was writing an article on that subject, I would hate to lose that file. A non-infringing file could even be a video, there would be Fair Use provisions for use of excerpts from the movie, a parody of the movie or even the entire movie if say I worked at Warner Bros and used MegaUpload for my own personal locker. (whether I would get the sack for having this in my locker and making it public is another matter).
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I agree, the porn company is not responsible for Flickr's stupid implementation of the takedown.