Chilling Effects DMCA Archive Censors Itself

An anonymous reader sends this report from TorrentFreak: The much-praised Chilling Effects DMCA archive has taken an unprecedented step by censoring its own website. Facing criticism from copyright holders, the organization decided to wipe its presence from all popular search engines. A telling example of how pressure from rightsholders causes a chilling effect on free speech. ... "After much internal discussion the Chilling Effects project recently made the decision to remove the site’s notice pages from search engines," Berkman Center project coordinator Adam Holland informs TF. "Our recent relaunch of the site has brought it a lot more attention, and as a result, we’re currently thinking through ways to better balance making this information available for valuable study, research, and journalism, while still addressing the concerns of people whose information appears in the database."

Comments

I smell a rat

[Crashmarik]

Just what are they trying to balance ? People's right to know about abuses of the law with ?

Re:I smell a rat

[sumdumass]

Well, they were on double super secret probation after all.

Re:I smell a rat

[hey!]

Well, there actually is a legitimate issue here.

Not every takedown notice in the Chilling Effects database is bogus. By putting the text of legitimate notices in a searchable database, Chilling Effects can be used to find infringing content. For example I didn't see "Interstellar" when it was in the theaters near me. Using Chilling Effects I very easily found a number of sites offering bootleg downloads.

If Google removes an infringing link from search result, having the takedown notice copy stored at Chilling Effects appear in Google search result effectively nullifies the takedown. The offending URL is right there in the takedown text.

So what is being balanced here is Chilling Effects' mission -- serving as a database for researching takedowns -- vs. the legitimate copyright interests of the people issuing the takedowns. It won't stop legitimate or illegitimate users of the Chilling Effects database, but it won't guide casual search engine users to infringing content either.

Of course this won't satisfy intellectual property interest groups, whose only mode of operation appears to be "scorched earth".

Re:I smell a rat

[Crashmarik]

Well I can see that argument but if you go to the site, there isn't anything there. So if they just wanted to not be a pirate bay 2.0 they could have removed the links. Either way I doubt this has much effect on piracy one way or another. Before you mentioned it, I would never have thought to use chilling effects to search for downloads. The sites that specialize in such things do a much more thorough job of providing downloads.

Not always Free Speech

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not always about Free Speech, sometimes it's just copyright infringement.

A huge amount of notices on chilling effects are obvious and blatant copyright infringement notices of movies, films, music.

There are some that are real Free Speech issues when someone uses DMCA to stop others from speaking, but that's a minority. This minority is the one that must be fought.

If all notices are treated as a whole, making no distinction between real freedom issues and pirates abusing the system, the battle will be lost.

Re:Not always Free Speech

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not always about Free Speech, sometimes it's just copyright infringement.

Go on, tell us when it's permissible for copyright infringment to trump free speech. I'll buy this argument only in the straight-up "somebody distributes copyrighted material which I own and does so without my express permission".

In particular I don't buy this argument for just about everything else, like "oh that looks like it might be our copyright so we'll issue some takedown requests, in fact we'll automate that process entirely for our convenience."

Moreso because the applicable law contains rather specific wording that seek to put the culpability for misdetermining the applicability (ie whether the claimed copyright is actually the owned copyright) on the complainer. Start with rigorously enforcing that provision, especially on the big copyright holding companies and the surrounding cottage industry, and you may start to have an argument.

If all notices are treated as a whole, making no distinction between real freedom issues and pirates abusing the system, the battle will be lost.

This implies that (you think) publishing copyright infringment takedown notices themselves are copyright infringment. What inherent right to obscurity does complaining about infringment have? Why is this different from, oh, court records, that by default are open? In fact, we can see in recent court history that many times requests for sealing are dubious at best, especially when asked for by (and too often incongruously granted to) large parties with something to hide, like the government, or large corporations. That is, lack of transparency and thereby guaranteeing lack of accountability is rather bad for the rest of us.

And if you wonder why that is bad, you may peruse this discussion of copyright and the US constitution for some roundabout enlightenment. The copyright monopoly isn't a right, it's a privilege, with a distinct goal that is not remotely equal with "making lots of money for big corporations".

Re:Not always Free Speech

[DarkTempes]

The "battle" was lost a long time ago.

The war on drugs couldn't even be "won" and that had physical products with high costs and prison sentences.
How does anyone possibly think they can stop information, right or wrong, on a system that is designed to facilitate moving information?

It's honestly a waste of time and humanity would be much better served spending the resources/time/money/man hours elsewhere.

Re:Not always Free Speech

[allo]

Piracy Links are free speech.

an illegal download ... is illegal.
But a link to this download on the google page per se is free speech. Now a DMCA censors this free speech of google to link this page for the correct search terms. That's what chillingeffects records.

Re:Not always Free Speech

[HiThere]

Actually, I'm willing to believe what he says, i.e. "most of the complaints are about actual copyright infringement", without proof. That these don't get reported is what one would expect to see, and given how easy it is to make a direct copy, one would expect that to happen often.

So what? How much harm does an instance of copyright infringement do compared with censoring one instance of free speech. Even the great predominance being valid complaints would not suffice to justify this act, and in particular the requirement of difficult proof on the part of the poster rather than on the part of the complainer. (Additionally it should be relatively easy to prove genuine copyright infringement in any clear case, whereas proving that it isn't copyright infringement is likely to require purchasing something that may not be available, and in any case would enrich the unjust complainer.)

The law as written is grossly and intentionally unfair, and I cannot accept that ANYONE who uses it is doing so in good faith without extensive proof.

Re:Not always Free Speech

[russotto]

Aww, poor baby copyright holders, have to give their legal address to have someone else's URL suppressed. Never mind that the DMCA _counternotice_ requires not just a legal address, but an invitation to sue. And the legal address part has been used by false claimants to commit terrorism

Re:Not always Free Speech

[SuricouRaven]

How do you calculate that 400% figure as relating entirely to going after pirates?

Identify the software, and I will find you a cracked version. I'll even time how long it takes me.

Re:Not always Free Speech

[fustakrakich]

You're looking at it from the wrong angle. First off, there's big profits in prohibition. Second it provides pretext for the police to raid your house and kill your dog. Think of them as 'speed traps' for revenue.

analogous to "constructive dismissal"

[Shadow of Eternity]

If the only way to find something is to already know it's there and exactly how to get to it then effectively it doesn't exist for anyone else because they'll never be able to find it on their own.

Censorship is bad. Mmmkay?

[houghi]

Many people think that censorship is only censorship if it is done by the government. That is not the case.

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.

So where are all these people who say that free speech is important? So how imporatnt is it for you? Enough to press 'like' on Facebook? Enough to actually talk to people in person? Enough to go on the streets for and demand change? Enough to die for?

My guess it stops at the Facebook stage. I know I am guilty of that.

The censoring of free speech

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some that are real Free Speech issues when someone uses DMCA to stop others from speaking, but that's a minority

No matter how small that minority is, a censorship of free speech is A CENSORSHIP OF FREE SPEECH, much like what those motherfucking Islamists did in Paris

If we cowed to those fuckers then we might as well wave goodbye to the Western culture which celebrates freedom and liberty, at least as it has been portraying itself to be

Re:The censoring of free speech

[fustakrakich]

Copyright is a weapon, being used to attack free speech. You are wrong. DMCA is evil, all of it.

Is there such a thing as a P2P search engine?

[Karmashock]

Because we appear to need one. And I don't mean an engine that search P2P torrents or something but rather one that is like google or Bing but run P2P sort of like Tor or something.

It doesn't need to be fast. It just needs to work.

Re:Is there such a thing as a P2P search engine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes there is. See here: http://yacy.net/en/index.html

Re:Is there such a thing as a P2P search engine?

[Karmashock]

Very cool. That may be what we have to shift to if they keep fucking with the search engines.

Chilling Effects Firefox extention?

[lhaeh]

Seems like a firefox extention would be a good way to solve this.

Somebody should mirror the site

[russotto]

Mirror the site, add links to each page back to the original, and make the mirror indexable. The site can't be so fast-changing this is impractical.

Re:This is how DMCA takedown works at Google

[CanEHdian]

Remember, your DMCA letter contains the juicy content, like weblinks to pirated and other copyrighted material.

1. Copyright holder sents DMCA letter to Google. 2. Google takes down copyrighted content. 3. Google sends your DMCA letter to ChillingEffects. 4. ChillingEffects posts your DMCA letter to its website. 5. Google caches the ChillingEffects website. Your copyrighted material is NOW back on Google.

6. We check *alleged* copyrighted content.
7. Content appears to be a self-made movie of birds singing, instead of the copyrighted work.
8. *Claimant* on behalf of "Copyright holder" still gets away with this act of vandalism scott-free, but we can put another mark on the bench