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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."
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.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
We really have to start requiring the DMCA takedown notice sources to bring the burden of proof, or this will just become business as usual. Particularly as you don't even have to be resident in the country to abuse the system.
Alternatively, HUGE fines for incorrect takedowns and use of the perjury provisions for submitting an incorrect takedown notice need to be assessed / used. Actually, in a just world, this would be in addition to requiring burden of proof from the takedown notice source.
Nothing less than our entire culture is at stake.
"You DO have a backup, right?"
Could this also be a case of anti-DMCA activism, where someone is fabricating this scenario just to demonstrate how abusable the system is?
Of course if it's not, I'm sure this will give some people that kind of idea.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
This is absurd. It clearly looks like the Reputation Firm hired by this guy works with some nameless organization in India. For WordPress to honor this DMCA take down request blindly makes me more reluctant to ever use them. Sure I see blog posts hosted by them all the time but seriously why would a reputable organization (if you can call WordPress that) would remove the content without first checking with the blog owners or verifying the claims, then they are truly the bad guys here.
Is this something where the wayback machine could help?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Because that's how they keep from getting sued themselves.
If they take down on request, they keep their safe harbour. If they ask for details or proof, they can become more involved than they'd like.
The system is set up to favor the claimants, with no consideration for any burden of proof other than "because I said so". Because the lobbyists who paid for this law wanted it that way.
But it completely goes outside of most legal things like due process and judicial oversight -- guilty until proven innocent.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
What reputation? This guy is living in more denial than the GOP if he thinks his reputation is positive. This is like throwing a bucket of water after the house has already burned down, the embers have cooled and been cleared away and there's a McDonalds built where it used to be.
now what you have to hope is those indian doctors/engineers didnt do the same on their exams
Sadly as somebody who is a CS graduate student at a university whose CS graduate program is dominated by Indian students, I can tell you that this is absolutely the case. They see no problem with cheating, even after the professor has told them that he knows they are cheating and explains the consequences. Doesn't matter if it was homework, projects or tests they always cheat.
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.
Yes, it is well known that Indians are different from everyone else in that they are the only country with citizens willing to cheat on their exams. Elsewhere, cheating is so unusual we have to read Indian textbooks to understand what it means.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Free speech zones. 'Border' checks within 100 miles of the border. Assassination of citizens. Extraordinary rendition. Guantanamo. Suspension of habeus corpus when they see fit. Warrantless wiretaps. Domestic spying against citizens. Drone surveillance of citizens. Blimps over Washington. 'Homeland Security' enforcing copyright.
Do you really think that it's hyperbole anymore??
When any other country does this, Americans scream fascism and freedom -- and completely miss the fact their own government does it. Sorry, but this is Soviet era stuff, and most of it is supposed to be unconstitutional.
But, as long as American Idol keeps playing, Facebook and Twitter are online, and you can buy a jumbo sized meal at McDonald's nobody cares.
For WordPress to honor this DMCA take down request blindly makes me more reluctant to ever use them.
This is standard operating procedure for every major website right now. Doing due diligence can land you in legal trouble with the DMCA. The industry wrote the law, why would they add a concept of checks and balances? That's something the congress would have to do, but that's not going to happen when the industry is there reminding them about how expensive elections are and now easy it is for a few major news outlets to pump up some other candidate to oust you in the primary. Many won't even need a reminder because that's how they got the seat in the first place.
I read the internet for the articles.
"She's a witch...I mean copyright violator!"
Different century, same methodology.
Don't just game, Dungeoneer
It's not cheating....it's "crowdsourcing."
Don't just game, Dungeoneer
While this is certainly outrageous behavior, could this lead to the demise of the DMCA? If this practice becomes common, you can certainly see court challenges against the DMCA in the future. If the DMCA can be portrayed as taking away original speech, that would be a direct violation of the freedom of speech in the United States. All it would take is a court to determine that it does not sufficiently safeguard the First Amendment and it could be struck down. It could be re-written, but it wouldn't be as easy to mass issue takedown notices. While I do acknowledge that there is a corporate mindset in the American judiciary, the First Amendment is a very explicit right and this would be an infringement on the property rights of the original creators.
This is another good example of abusive DMCA take down requests circumventing due process. RIAA and MPAA abuse the law to suppress our creativity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4
and are destroying our cultural heritage.
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2001/11/48625?currentPage=all
To top it off, their outdated business model unfairly reimburses the artists for their hard work.
http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/
Copyright needs to be reformed. Some changes that I'd like to see are:
* Abolish the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
* Intellectual property should be taxed like real property. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-weaver20feb20,0,1675278.story It is an asset with a value, right? If you no longer make enough to pay your taxes on it, it goes to the state.
* Copyrights are supposed to be an incentive to create. One that lasts unto your grandchildren are a dis-incentive, because not only are you not creating any more once you are dead, neither are your descendants. Copyright should last half a working lifetime (20 years), so that you have to get off your ass and make new stuff.
* Someone who makes copies without permission should pay a fine, but it should be at the regular royalty rate for the item x copies made. So upload a song, it's iTunes price x number of downloads, with perhaps a factor of 3 penalty to discourage doing it, not $150,000 per copy.
If you feel the same way, you can make a difference by donating to the EFF
https://supporters.eff.org/donate
or at least signing this petition urging reform.
http://www.fightforthefuture.org/fixcopyright
"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."
-Abraham Lincoln
The Streisand Effect is starting to kick in.
Frankly, "reputation management" firms seem to be slime of the lowest form.
I think you missed the point in the topic header "say it isn't so!" I realize that this is the case but again, the DMCA law is written to either remove or disable the content. That's what it says BTW, remove or disable. The latter for those ISPs/website operators who take a bit of time to at least give the content owners a chance to wrangle over the information or indeed take a quick look and say "hey, this takedown notice is BS." It's also worded specifically that if they don't act they may lose their liability protection under the DMCA. So yes, "ohh scary things will happen with lawyers. We may even get *gasp* another letter if we don't act in 5 minutes."
My point is that now this kind of case comes up, where we have a Researcher who is now going back trying to erase embarrassing things about himself via proxy and now you have hoards of folks in the third world ready to send DMCA letters to just let him do that. The DMCA is shameful, written by the entertainment industry. It's a travesty that laws passed (or lack thereof in the 112th congress) nowadays are just rubber stamped by legislators as "their own." There should be a DMCA for plagiarism of laws or at least "do you own work" should be the mantra rather than this endless supply of industry focused legislation that seems to be more and more prevalent in DC and in State Legislatures.
In the original issue here, WordPress which is almost synonymous for blogging took down damaging articles about proven research fraud. This is valuable and embarrassing information to subject and represents a distinct departure vs. printed news. So now if I post some code on a site, that shows an example on how to do something, I can have some nameless guy from India call my ISP and say that it's his and my stuff will disappear? Yeah deep down I knew that was a possibility (especially if I don't pay my ISP bill) but again, WordPress should have merely disabled the content, contact the owner and said "you have 7 days to let us know why we shouldn't delete your content/disable your site." That's allowable under the DMCA and it shows that the host of the content is trying to be reasonable to all parties involved.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
"Reputation defense" on Wikipedia has become an issue. Here's a wash cycle on Wikipedia, carried out on behalf of Michael Milken, one of the notorious financial crooks of the 1980s. ("Biggest fraud case in the history of the securities industry." back in 1990.) He has a self-admitted paid editor on Wikipedia editing his article to make him look good.
My question is...
Why in the world is a company listening to a foreign company on a DMCA complaint?!?!?
I mean, this is a US law...so, it should be able to be used by a foreign company should it?
I mean, if DMCA, which has often been brought to light on this list and not affecting foreign countres....why is it able to be used by THEM to put forth claims on the US and US companies?
So if I murder a foreigner while they are visiting the US, the US murder laws shouldn't apply?
The real problem we should be focusing on is the "takedown first, ask questions later" approach.
Battlemaster--Game with friends in medival realms
DMCA Denial of Service, that is.
The real problem we should be focusing on is the "takedown first, ask questions later" approach.
But that is handled already. The site takes down the material and asks questions later, because that is exactly what they need to do to be involved in any copyright lawsuit. On the other hand, the lawmakers realised that this opens the door to mischief, and therefore sending a DMCA takedown notice when you are not the copyright owner or their agent is a criminal offence that can put you into jail. If India has similar laws to the USA, then there is a good chance that a request for extradition would be successful. If not, then these guys from India better never travel to the USA.
I always wondered how the Indian's got to North America first, now I know they cheated.
Back in school they told me it was because they had reservations.
No brain, no pain.
One of the major selling point of that wholly remarkable travel book, the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, apart from its relative cheapness and the fact that it has the words Don't Panic written in large friendly letters on its cover, is its compendious and occasionally accurate glossary. The statistics relating to the geo-social nature of the Universe, for instance, are deftly set out between pages nine hundred and thirty-eight thousand and twenty-four and nine hundred and thirty-eight thousand and twenty-six; and the simplistic style in which they are written is partly explained by the fact that the editors, having to meet a publishing deadline, copied the information off the back of a packet of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it with a few footnoted in order to avoid prosecution under the incomprehensibly tortuous Galactic Copyright laws.
It is interesting to note that a later and wilier editor sent the book backwards in time through a temporal warp, and then successfully sued the breakfast cereal company for infringement of the same laws.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I nearly learned the hard way years back that whenever you host a site anywhere, you need to make sure you have local backups. In my case, it was a web host who was "struck by a worm" that took their servers down for a week. The fix to the worm was: 1) reboot server, 2) apply patch, 3) reboot again. So a week+ to fix their servers seemed fishy to me. I was lucky and managed to access the SQL servers and get a local backup. Others weren't so lucky when the company just vanished a couple of weeks later.
I now have a few self-hosted WordPress sites. Of course, even these aren't immune to this kind of attack. If the reputation management company stole my content and tried to knock my post offline, my host could go in and delete my site. Of course, if they did, I'd just restore my backup and my post would be back online. (I'd then leave that host, of course.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
This is yet another example of why the DMCA is ***BAD LAW***
A law should not be capable of victimizing others. The DMCA, through mistake or malice can and often is used in ways which harm people.
Let's not focus on who is doing it. There will always be many thousands out there who are willing to take advantage of bad law. Take down one and two more will spring up. It's the law which is the problem. It's time it was repealed.
The actual article is a bit sketchy on details - the *real* standard procedure is not 'blind takedown' -
because blind takedown can land you in trouble on the 'defendant' side as well if not done
correctly, and the host can end up being sued by the customer - instead,
Usually SOP for DMCAS goes like this*:
1) Recieve takedown request
2) Notify party of recieved takedown request, wait some time period for counter-claim (usually 2 business days or similar)
3) if no counter claim submitted by the customer within time period, then proceed with takedown per the DMCA
4) if counter claim is recieved after takedown occurs but prior to legal proceedings, reinstate content per the DMCA
5) if legal proceedings resulting from counter-claim result result in judgement of infringment,
further request will be made and takedown will occur after verifying with court that records
are real.
*: worked at a major web host for 2 years in the dept that handles DMCAs
So - from the article we have no idea here if steps 2-4 occurred or not.
Yes, DMCA is not good law because it makes ISP's into 'law enforcement',
without proper court proceedings, but it isn't as simple as
'DMCA means anyone can simply takedown your site with one request OMG!!!'
because there is a counter claim mechanism which usually scares off bogus complaints
from ever seeing legal proceedings.
This issue is nothing new - I would get many of this exact scenario
(content theif submits DMCA against content author)
from 'article writer' sites and other 'web spam producers' in the day -
In this case - Could be that the person never checked their email/phone/etc for the DMCA complainant
notification -
sorry charlie should have checked your email.
Could be that the person didn't file a counter claim:
sorry - thats the law
If wordpress lost the content between initial takedown and counter claim, then thats another
story - wordpress goofed bad.
However, I'm sure they have language about keeping your
own backups, etc. so.. always keep backups. lesson learned.
Kind of silly to me that this person *let* this happen - you're publicizing someone who
essentially committed fraud by way of falsified medical research - you should be expecting
shady and nefarious dealings in return and protecting yourself accordingly.
That being said, doesn't mean that DMCA is great or that the situation doesn't stink.
In my experience it's only the top caste Indians that habitually cheat. They feel it's their right. In some American schools that might be all the Guptas.
Back in India their parents would send a lower caste boy to school with their son as a 'helper'.
Over hear the trick is to hire the former 'helpers' not the 'Top Brahmen'. I flush them out during interviews by pretending to be a Eurotrash blue blood. That always gets the brahmen to out themselves, with talk of how important their family is. I then don't hire them.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
sending a DMCA takedown notice when you are not the copyright owner or their agent is a criminal offence that can put you into jail
Has that ever actually happened? Ever?
No, it is more like if you murder an American (or anyone else) outside the US, then no, US law shouldn't apply, it would be the law of the country it happened in.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I had that problem in my CS grad school as well. Half the students were Indians, and they seemed to be helping each-other a lot. So, half the TAs where Indian as well and that led to Indian students passing whatever they submitted (to be graded by TAs). For example I know for a fact that while I got a 90% for a project to do with queries of a given db database, an Indian girl got 100% for submitting a java program that instead of querying the db had simply hard-coded answers to the sample test queries...
There were some great Indian students of course, but they were the minority (at least in that environment).
Anyway, the great fun was a year or two after I finished. There was an Indian guy who was copying during a midterm. The professor caught him and gave him an F for the midterm. At the final, the guy needed a good grade I guess, so he tried to copy again. The professor catches him once more and tells him that he will get an F for the course (which is a big bummer if you were counting on financial aid), so this brilliant character turns and says "Why F just for me when all the others submitted the same course project". The professor retrieved the projects from the TAs and indeed there were some dozens of identical submissions... There was talk about expulsions, but in the end the students got an F in the class, and I guess some US professors realized not all cultures have the same academic customs (and possibly that you have to do some stuff yourself, not just drop everything to the TAs)...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
This may be an isolated indecent but my company recently hired a Cisco engineer that had quite a few recent Cisco certifications and was previously employed doing router and switch work for a similar sized company. By the third day it was obvious he was TOTALLY clueless, he had no concept of routing or switching. We got rid of him a few days later when he took down our test lab with an STP issue. His initial interview with us about a month earlier was via a video conference at one of our remote US offices and he spoke perfect English. After he was let go it occurred to us that the person we actually just let go spoke broken English. We were we duped.