EFF Rates Which Service Providers Side With Users

An anonymous reader writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has issued a report grading online service providers for how well they side with users over intellectual property disputes. They looked at sites like YouTube, Imgur, tumblr, and Twitter. "The services could receive a maximum of five stars, based on criteria including publicly documented procedures for responses to DMCA takedown notices and counter-notices, how the services handle trademark disputes, and if the company issued detailed transparency reports." Only two sites got a perfect rating: WordPress and Namecheap. tumblr got the worst score, and Imgur was not far behind. The rest of the sites were in between, though the EFF did give a bit of extra credit to Etsy for its educational guides and Twitter for its transparency reports.

Comments

I'd much rather see

[Anonymous Coward]

The big companies that issued these takedown requests. How many they issued, what percentage were denied (most likely from indiscriminate mass takedowns) and how open these companies are to people using their IP in creative ways (parodies, remixes, commentary, etc.)

No NSA bitch rating?

[NotDrWho]

How they respond to DMCA notices is a pretty minor consideration when they all still fall to their knees in response to "National Security" letters and keep all that nice and secret.

Re:No NSA bitch rating?

[Anonymous Coward]

The EFF is deeply involved in the legal fight against National Security Letters. NSL's tie the hands of service providers by their very nature and there is little they can do about any one NSL. But by working with the EFF, they have been able to stand up a strong foundation in the fight to have NSL's declared unconstitutional.

Read the FAQ, and make a donation.

Re:THEY LIVE! Their signal is everywhere!

[NotDrWho]

We have one who can see.

Twitter

[ArcadeMan]

The EFF did give a bit of extra credit to [...] Twitter for its transparency reports.

Yeah but Twitter's transparency reports all looked like this:
iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACAAAAAgAQAAAABbAUdZAAAAAnRSTlMAAQGU/a4AAAAPSURBVHgBY/zPwMAwiAkAMVYgAbG9fX0AAAAASUVORK5CYII=

Re:Twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how many people really understood the joke here.

Re:Twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

The joke was clear to me.

Re:THEY LIVE! Their signal is everywhere!

[ArcadeMan]

OBEY

Youtube got any stars, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

How did YouTube get ANY stars? Is the EFF just going by the pretty documents that they put on their About Us page or something? Do they not view the actual practices?

Re:Youtube got any stars, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Youtube just hands over takedown control to random scumbag companies which then proceed to abuse it left and right.

Re:"...and Twitter for its transparency reports."

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, let's say they start a new movement under a different name for the purpose of increasing journalistic integrity. Time goes by, and some trolls who claim to be part of the new movement issue death threats. There's no way to prevent this, because any such movement obviously isn't going to have strict controls on who is allowed in. Now the new movement is 'poisoned' (the very notion of which is a logical fallacy to begin with) too, and they have to create another.

Using this 'logic', feminism has also been poisoned by a few insane misandrists. But the reality is that people's arguments stand on their own merits.

Re:"...and Twitter for its transparency reports."

[Anonymous Coward]

Using this 'logic', feminism has also been poisoned by vast hordes of insane misandrists.

FTFY