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How Copyright Law Is Being Misused To Remove Material From the Internet (theguardian.com)
London-based resident Annabelle Narey posted a negative review of a building firm on Mumsnet. She noted in her review that her ceiling fell down in an upstairs bedroom. The Guardian reports about what happened to her in the aftermath of posting that review. Building firm BuildTeam sent a letter to Mumsnet, which the site passed on to Narey. According to Narey, BuildTeam found Narey's comment defamatory and untrue, and asked for the removal of the comment from the website. The original comment saw several other users also post similar grievances, though many of these users pulled their comments in response to the legal threats from BuildTeam. Narey wanted to keep hers up. Then things got even weirder, reports the Guardian. Narey says BuiltTeam staff visited her apartment, and instead of offering any apology, asked her to remove the comment. Mumsnet received a warning from Google: a takedown request under DMCA, alleging copyright infringement. This led Google to de-list the entire thread. From the report: No copyright infringement had occurred at all. At some point after Narey posted her comments on Mumsnet, someone had copied the entire text of one of her posts and pasted it, verbatim, to a spammy blog titled "Home Improvement Tips and Tricks". The post, headlined "Buildteam interior designers" was backdated to September 14 2015, three months before Narey had written it. BuildTeam says it has no idea why Narey's review was reposted, but that it had nothing to do with it.The Guardian deep dives into what is wrong with the copyright system, the issues Google faces in dealing with them, and the consequences many users are facing because of this.
She wrote all her own stuff; the company she reviewed bitched about the bad review; someone in Pakistan copied it to his blog and backdated it several months; and then Google got a DMCA take-down.
In other words: the copyright claim is fraudulent.
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"someone in Pakistan" - AKA the guy at BuildTeam using TOR to make his DMCA claim look legit enough for Google to reject any appeals from the original poster.
Funny thing is, the Streisand Effect will most likely kick-in hard for them, especially once it made the papers there.
Seriously - a multinational corporation can put up with bad press and survive, but most smaller businesses cannot.
Given that this is a UK company, I'm rather surprised that they didn't reach for the libel laws - even if the lady was absolutely correct and true, the legal costs would have likely ruined her faster than a DMCA takedown would have.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The problem here is that the attorney's fees and court costs associated with due process are often cost-prohibitive.
"I'm rather surprised that they didn't reach for the libel laws"
They did. Mumsnet told them not to be so silly and kept the post up. Then BuildTeam sent the boys round to her place to demand she delete the post. At that point she should have told them to go fuck themselves and called the police on them for doorstepping harassment.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Checking Google reviews... Most telling is that Build Team is removing negative posts and people that say they did a bad job are routinely labeled as fakes or malcontents. Build Team states that they "hunt" people down on Google. Build Team seems surprised when projects take much longer than promised, when sub-contractors aren't working well, or when Build Team violates local ordinances. This is the worst kind of passive-aggressive PR management that I have seen. Now the real question is what other reviews and information is Google hiding from the public?
Please Build Team, don't sic your legal team on me. The comments above are entirely my own, until you backdate it and post it elsewhere. Knowing your PR strategy, you will probably report me for terrorism...
From Google reviews... (until they remove them)
(All one star reviews)
Martin Martin
Martin Martin
5 months ago-
Previous review disappeared.
Shoddy company - AVOID AVOID AVOID
Response from the ownerin the last week
This is a fake review by an individual purporting to have been a client of Build Team. We will report this to Google.
James Mcmillan
in the last week
Warning: DO NOT USE BUILDTEAM. I had one of the worst experiences with them. Very awful standard of customer service and of building. The company has many shoddy practices, and they're trying very hard to hide this from reviews. Please use someone else!
Response from the ownerin the last week
This is a fake review by an individual purporting to have been a client of Build Team. We will report this to Google.
David Murray-Thwaites
David Murray-Thwaites
a year ago
AVOID! We had a very bad experience. Build Team are well marketed but frankly awful group to deal with. Extortion is not too strong a word
Response from the ownera year ago
Build Team have not worked for this client, and having undertaken a Google search we cannot trace the individual. We have contacted Google to report the review as spam.