Nearly One Third Of DMCA Takedown Notices Are Improper
from the only-one-third? dept
It's no secret that plenty of companies have misused the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act, for those who haven't been paying attention) mostly for anti-competitive reasons, rather than a legitimate complaint about infringement. However, a big question is just how often is the DMCA misused in this manner? Supporters of the DMCA claim that only an occasional improper takedown notice gets through. Some new research suggests otherwise. Over 30% of DMCA takedown notices have been deemed improper and potentially illegal. In most of those cases, the notices demanded information be taken offline when it had a perfectly legitimate argument for remaining online. So, can we talk about reforming the DMCA yet, or is that still off limits?
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Erm.
First rule of DMCA:
Don't talk about DMCA
MjM
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No Subject Given
You DO NOT TALK about the DMCA.
Seriously, talking about the DMCA is a potential copyright violation of the DMCA. Please ceast and desist, and buy more crappy DVDs and CDs.
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a study weakness
Since the takedown notices are private communications, we have no idea of what the real numbers are.
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Re: a study weakness
Yes, we make the point that the self-reported notices are likely to be from folks who at least _think_ they're frivolous. However, most of the notices are from Google, which sends all notices it receives, good, bad and ugly.
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Re: a study weakness
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Re: a study weakness
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it has served a purpose
The legislation really should be looked at again since it has been some 5 years, but the industries are terrified that their use of the DMCA will come back to haunt them when considering changes or replacement legislation. So they pay big money to keep it off the front burner for politicians. Let's hope the rootkit fiasco brings it up again because most people think it is a bunch of college kids pushing for DMCA reform/review.
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