YouTomb Joins Chilling Effects In Tracking Takedowns
from the tracking-the-takedowns dept
The DMCA lets copyright holders send takedown messages to various sites, demanding allegedly infringing content be taken offline. It's been rather successful in doing that. A few years ago, a great site, Chilling Effects sprung up to track all sorts of takedown notices (not just having to do with copyright, but any kind of cease & desist threats -- though DMCA takedowns are common). It's a joint effort by the EFF and a bunch of universities, and has been invaluable in tracking the efforts by some to threaten people into taking down various types of content. Now, in a similar effort, MIT is sponsoring a site that will track takedowns of videos on YouTube. The site is creatively named YouTomb. This isn't to say that the copyright holders are wrong in sending the takedown notices -- but it's important to collect information and data on how often these tools are being used and by whom to get a better understanding of whether the system really makes sense.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: chilling effects, copyright, dmca, mit, takedowns, videos, youtomb
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
two words
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: two words
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: two words
We don' need no steenking due process! (Cue Lily Tomlin's Ernestine up and over: "We don't have to care. We're the phone company.")
Actually I'd settle for indemnifying people whose postings were mistakenly targeted by DMCA notices -- for example in cases where the companies demanding the DCMA takedown didn't actually own the copyright or the posting was clearly fair use.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Neat!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
not involving copyrights but
YouTube and other hosting sites are often very quick to comply when the demands come from these groups, but not always when complaints arise about pro-Islam posts. Maybe it has something to do with how mean the non-Islamists appear?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
TechDirt just keeps getting farther off track
The very notion of "copyright" is a harmful farce. "Copyright holders" are merely greedy, delusional parties supported by corrupt government fiat. And while it may not be wrong for such parties (regardless of their mental problems) to send a "takedown notice," it's counterproductive for anyone to respond to them, rather like feeding trolls.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: TechDirt just keeps getting farther off track
I think techdirt would have said that patent and copyright are mostly unneccessary.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]