DMCA As Censorship: Site Reposts Articles About Disgraced Researcher, Claims Copyright, Has Originals Removed
from the incredible dept
I first heard about the excellent site RetractionWatch via a segment on On the Media. The RetractionWatch site, put together by Reuters Health executive editor (and doctor) Ivan Oransky and Anesthesiology News managing editor Adam Marcus, does what you'd expect from the name. It covers scientific research that is retracted. Since there have been an increasing numbers of stories of academic research fraud exposed, and the pair felt that the "retractions" often were buried, despite questionable circumstances, they started collecting such information. It's a really useful site.Yesterday, however, they pointed to something odd happening. They were alerted, via their hosting company Automattic (who runs WordPress.com), that it had received a DMCA takedown notice concerning ten posts they had done about researcher Anil Potti. They found that odd, considering that the content they write is original. WordPress has removed all ten posts. When RW asked for the details of the DMCA notice, they received the following (with the URLs to be taken down removed to keep it readable):
As the folks at RW note, while their content was, in fact, also showing on NewsBulet.in, almost everything else is suspect. The content was clearly originally from RW, and reposted to NewsBulet.in. As they note:First Name: Narendra
Last Name: Chatwal
Company Name: News Bullet
Address Line 1: Plot No 15 & 16, Express Trade Tower
Address Line 2: Archana Complex
City: Noida
State/Region/Province: Utter Pradesh
Zip/Postal Code: 201302
Country: India
Telephone Number: 8953171759
Copyright holder you represent (if other than yourself):
Please describe the copyrighted work so that it may be easily identified: Hello WordPress Team,Myself Narendra Chatwal Senior editor in NewsBulet.In, a famous news firm in India. All the news we publish are individually researched by our reporters from all over India and then we publish them on our site and our news channel. Recently we found that some one had copied our material from the category Medical Reviews and published them on their site. So we request you to help us in protecting our content and copy right.
Thanks & Regards,
Narendra Chatwal
NewsBulet.In
Location (URL) of the unauthorized material on a WordPress.com site (NOT simply the primary URL of the site – example.wordpress.com; you must provide the full and exact permalink of the post, page, or image where the content appears, one per line) :[list of 10 URLs]
If the infringement described above is represented by a third-party link to a downloadable file (e.g. http://rapidshare.com/files/…), please provide the URL of the file (one per line):
I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.: Yes
I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.: Yes
Signed on this date of (today’s date, MM/DD/YYYY): 02/02/2013
Signature (your digital signature is legally binding): Narendra Chatwal
In other words, NewsBulet.In is violating our copyright; we are not violating theirs. That’s driven home by the fact that the site did not exist until October 2012, according to a WhoIs search. All but one of the Retraction Watch posts they cite appeared before they even existed.While all of the links to the NewsBulet.in site in the original DMCA takedown now lead you to a 403 Forbidden error message, it's pretty clear that the site copied all of RW's content and then filed a DMCA takedown to get the originals down.
John Timmer, over at Ars Technica, dug into the story and provides significant background information that suggests what is likely to have happened. Timmer's story notes that RW had published a bunch of stories (22 in all) about Potti, and much of it is about his downfall and disgrace:
One of the cases they followed was Anil Potti, a cancer researcher who, at the time, worked at Duke University. Potti first fell under scrutiny for embellishing his resume, but the investigation quickly expanded as broader questions were raised about his research. As the investigation continued, a number of Potti's papers ended up being retracted as accusations of falsified data were raised. Eventually, three clinical trials that were started based on Potti's data were stopped entirely. Although federal investigations of Potti's conduct are still in progress, he eventually resigned from Duke.However, Timmer also points out that Potti has since been hired at the University of North Dakota and (perhaps more importantly) has hired an "online reputation management" firm to try to clean up his name. That company has been trying to get "positive" stories to show up higher in searches for Potti's name:
No longer do the majority of top search results for the former Duke cancer researcher detail allegations that he falsified his resume and produced faulty research that has been retracted from renowned medical journals and led to the termination of three clinical trials. Instead, more than a dozen websites and social media accounts created in the months following Dr. Potti’s November resignation contain solely positive information about his research and medical experience.Of course, a current Google search on Potti's name shows that the Retraction Watch stories are actually very prominent these days, even beating out that anilpotti.com site that the reputation management firm helped create. Here's a screenshot:
“During his time at Duke, he had a special interest in taking care of patients with lung cancer and contributed to the development of several programs in cancer,” reads a section of AnilPotti.com, which does not discuss the terminated trials that a top Duke official has since said should never have been conducted.
Of course, what's not clear is who actually posted the content to NewsBulet.in and what the plan is. But, it certainly suggests some very questionable behavior from someone who wanted the stories about Anil Potti on RetractionWatch to disappear. RW's Oransky is hoping that it's all just some big mistake, rather than an intentional plan to sabotage RW. As he told Timmer: "We can only hope that this isn't an attempt to keep us from reporting on retractions and scientific fraud." Somehow, I get the feeling this story isn't over yet...
In the meantime, however, RetractionWatch has filed a counternotice, and one hopes that as this story gets attention, Automattic will speed up their review process and restore the original stories in a shorter timeframe than the required 10 business days. As of the writing of this post, the originals are still down, which is unfortunate.
Either way, this is exactly the kind of thing that concerns us about making it easy to take down content with copyright claims. It is bound to be used as a censorship tool, because it becomes too easy for many to abuse the process to take down content they just don't like. Considering the ability to hit back at false takedowns is extremely limited, we're just going to see more and more examples like this.
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Filed Under: adam marcus, anil potti, censorship, dmca, ivan oransky, reputation management, retraction watch, takedown
Reader Comments
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Should that be "counterclaim"?
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No, it should be "counter notice".
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Dah! Autocorrect... :)
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Perjury?
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Re: Perjury?
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Re: Perjury?
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Re: Perjury?
Because it's too costly?
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Re: Perjury?
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Re: Perjury?
You have to parse that very carefully. The perjury part ONLY applies to whether or not they're authorized to act on behalf of the person claiming to hold the copyright... which is why it's useless.
Also, as others have noted, it's costly to go after them for this and being outside of the US there are jurisdictional issues.
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New Techdirt project perhaps? =)
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False DMCA request need to start being dealt with more harshly. As it stands today you can flood the system with them with pretty much zero risk to yourself.
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Re: Re: Re: Perjury?
No, that's the sneaky part. The perjury claim is only to the *REPRESENTATION* part. That's it. Do they officially represent this other person.
Whether or not that other person actually holds the copyright is a separate issue.
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Re: Re: Perjury?
The exact wording of the law states "...under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."
Yes, I did parse that carefully. But this is one of those rare cases where it applies. The law says, the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. It does NOT say, the alleged owner of a right that is infringed. Ownership of the right IS covered under the penalty of perjury section. Given the circumstances here, they could not have reasonably believed they owned the copyright.
Yes, there are jurisdictional issues. But this was malicious.
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*sunglasses*
...Potti from the start.
YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
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The person who signed this is guilty of perjury, and we should seek extradition of this Narendra Chatwal.
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> notice under US law that explicitly says
> "under penalty of perjury", you are submitting
> yourself to the jurisdiction of US courts.
Yes, there's legal theory and then there's practical reality.
The legal theory is all well and good, but good luck getting any US Attorney or federal judge to start waging some kind of extradition war with the Indian government to try and get their hands on a guy in Uttar Pradesh for falsifying a DMCA claim. No one in the U.S. government is going to expend their limited resources for something like that.
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Kind of makes you think perhaps there needs to be some restrictions on who can file a DMCA claim (Maybe only US firms, so we can get our hands on those who perjure themselves) and perhaps filing incorrect takedowns should be immediately fined, say $100K per link. That should about do it.
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If they have the resources to seek extradition for Richard O'Dwyer for doing something legal where he lived, then why wouldn't they have the resources to go after this Chatwal? The copyright supporters keep telling us that the law is the law and it must be upheld, otherwise the global economy will collapse, all creative content will vanish, dogs and cats living together, etc.
If they don't seek extradition and threaten him with the maximum sentence, then it is evidence of selective prosecution, and of course the government would never, ever, ever do that.
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> for Richard O'Dwyer for doing something legal
> where he lived, then why wouldn't they have the
> resources to go after this Chatwal?
Well, for one thing, they were extraditing O'Dwyer from Britain, which stupidly signed a treaty with the US requiring them to turn over their own citizens to the US whenever we demand it. So extradition was (at least intially) a done-deal. There's no such sweetheart treaty with India. Any extradition attrempt there would have to go through the full (very expensive) process.
Second, O'Dwyer was being accused of a felony. DMCA misrepresentation is at best a misdemeanor. No one seeks extradition from halfway around the world for a misdemeanor charge. Hell, I usually can't even get the US Attorney's office to pay for extradition from a neighboring state for anything less than a major felony. Good luck with getting them to go to India for a guy so he can get two months in the clink for DMCA perjury.
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Oh? But they can spend those "limited resources" (protip: the govt has UNLIMITED resources in practical terms to bring to bear against whomever they decide to target) to go after someone for downloading a few songs, or who has a website with links TO (but not actually containing) infringing and non-infringing content. In those cases, there is no restraint whatsoever to the response of the govt.
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"If you can't Dazzle them with Diamonds, Baffle them with Bullshit."
Well Potti doesn't have much in the way of diamonds, but his "Reputation Management Firm", is doing a bang on job with the baffle them with bullshit part.
Problem is every now and again you run into people that don't mind shoveling the shit away to show what is underneath.
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I know, right? Best just to get rid of copyright all together. People are also sending fake bomb threats via email. We should probably get rid of email too just to be safe.
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You could make it more difficult to send in bomb threats so that fake threats are reduced, but there doesn't seem to be a rash of fake bomb threats to make doing so worth either the risk or even the effort. The DMCA on the other hand, is abused so regularly that it might as well just be tossed out, but perhaps it might be fixable.
Please, tell us how it can be fixed rather than be eliminated. That would be how you could be a productive commenter, rather than idiot you seem to want to be.
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DMCA Takedown
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I can only hope that some evidence will come out that leads back to Potti and/or his rep management firm, and the appropriate parties thoroughly piledrive the real instigators in court. If not, it highlights just how much of a joke this part of the DMCA is. :-(
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Plan to reform the DMCA
Make a team of foreigners send a DMCA takedowns on US congresmen webpages.
The reform will follow in two weeks :)
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Re: Plan to reform the DMCA
The reform will follow in two weeks :)
Either that or we get some new law declaring that foreigners sending DMCA notices to US state officials equals "cyberterrorism" and must be punished with drone strikes.
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Re: Plan to reform the DMCA
The first to publish a DMCA template to take down will be king of the hill.
Remember there are no strong penalties in the DMCA, is ripe for abuse and people should use that to show it to everyone.
Abuse the American legal system, use that system to do a little harm and annoy the hell of American media companies or any other company to show that the DMCA as written is a tool for frivolous action and not something good.
Troll the trolls I say.
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Wordpress domain?
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Getting your own still leaves you subject to the whims of your hosting company anyway, and they are still likely to follow the DMCA...
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http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6777/125/
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You see how that goes both ways? Sure. But which group is using their money and power against the other - for more money and power? Right. That's what I thought too.
There's been a shit-ton of bad law since this intertubes thing and a shit-ton of bad government. I think we need new waste treatment facilities. A bottom-up kind of thing vs an out-the-bottom one.
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That Indian guy didn't just commit perjury he stole the rights and thus the property of others, since he took the right of others over the content and took ownership, now that is theft of intellectual property, if anything should be considered theft is the taking of others rights.
The Indian dude also gave people a way to fight back against copycrap.
We all know that the DMCA is BS, it has no safeguards and by exploiting those weakness one can surely abuse that system and get away with it without punishment.
All foreigners that their government don't have treaties with the US, should start filling DMCA notices to every asset to every American company they could possibly find, just to show how annoying that crap is.
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The lack of due process, the assumption of guilt before innocence.. If copyright actually followed the normal course of the law many of the current issues would not exist.
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Backfire
So DCMA and where to host are not necessarily issues, since attempts to censor legitimate information are not only temporary, but also ineffectual, because the information remains available in various caches. So keep posting folks, that is how you beat censorship.
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A Sham website
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GoDaddy
Moved server to Canada.
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