Site Copies Content and Uses the DMCA to Take Down the Original Articles

First time accepted submitter ios and web coder writes "From the article: 'A dizzying story that involves falsified medical research, plagiarism, and legal threats came to light via a DMCA takedown notice today. Retraction Watch, a site that followed (among many other issues) the implosion of a Duke cancer researcher's career, found all of its articles on the topic pulled by WordPress, its host. The reason? A small site based in India apparently copied all of the posts, claimed them as their own, then filed a DMCA takedown notice to get the originals pulled from their source. As of now, the originals are still missing as their actual owners seek to have them restored.' This is extremely worrying. Even though the original story is careful not to make accusations, I will. This sure smells like a 'Reputation Defense' dirty trick."

Comments

If this can happen ...

[gstoddart]

If this can happen it points to the fact that the entire DMCA process is utterly broken and open to abuse.

No proof is required on the side of the claimant, but the accused can immediately lose their stuff.

This is a side effect of a process which was designed by content owners to get stuff taken down with minimal effort and red tape. It has the effect of random idiots being able to take down stuff without any oversight.

What needs to happen is the content owners need to have some higher burden of proof that they are the copyright holders, and that there's real infringement going on.

Re:If this can happen ...

[Shagg]

The only purpose of the DMCA though is to bypass the courts and due process. Rather than pass another law to make the DMCA process require courts and due process, you'd be better off just getting rid of it.

US Presence

[Luthair]

To me this indicates that DMCA claims need to have some sort of US presence; the only disincentive for abuse of the DMCA is the potential for lawsuits for invalid claims, if the claimant doesn't have a US presence then they're entirely free from reprisal. Leo Laporte has frequently mentioned that foreign companies spuriously claim copyright on his Youtube videos in order to run ads on his content.

Perhaps DMCA ought to even require registering for copyright as a minimum for filing take down notices.

May we burn her?

[TheAngryMob]

"She's a witch...I mean copyright violator!"

Different century, same methodology.

Re:Why would the originals be missing?

[Cajun Hell]

um, missing from their website, where else?

Actually, the key here, is that it's not missing from their website. It's missing from Wordpress' website. They don't have a website of their own. If they did, then they (not Wordpress) would have been the one who received the DMCA notice, and the decision to pull or keep the "infringing" article would have been in the hands of someone with actual knowledge of the situation, rather than a frightened fold-by-default middleman.