Putting Together A Database Of Bogus DMCA Takedowns
from the interesting-move dept
Over the years, we've written many, many stories of completely bogus DMCA takedowns. It's a pretty common occurrence. Sometimes it's done accidentally by clueless bots (or clueless humans). Sometimes it's done maliciously. We just had a case that appeared especially egregious, involving a site copying another sites' articles, then claiming copyright over the originals in order to take down the original stories (which just happened to paint a professor in a very poor light for allegedly faking parts of some high profile research). That story inspired David Weekly (founder of PBWiki, HackerDojo, SuperHappyDevHouse and a few other things) to do something: he set up the site DMCAInjury.com, which is just a simple Google spreadsheet input form at this point, but hopefully can become something much more.David has pointed out that it would be handy to have some more cases in which the filers of bogus DMCA notices are actually punished for their actions under section 512(f) of the DMCA. As we discussed last year, it's very difficult to win a 512(f) claim, in part because the language is so vague and so far courts have interpreted it pretty narrowly.
However, as David points out, there have been some successful cases, including the case that the EFF ran against Diebold nearly a decade ago. David was actually one of the plaintiffs in that case. If you don't remember, someone had leaked some internal documents from Diebold (makers of e-voting machines) which showed the company was well aware of massive security problems with their machines. Diebold first tried to claim the documents were fake and then used the DMCA to claim they were covered by Diebold's copyright and that it could issue takedowns on them. As you might have noticed, those two claims would contradict each other. Either way, a judge pointed out that:
"no reasonable copyright holder could have believed that portions of the e-mail archive discussing possible technical problems with Diebold's voting machines were protected by copyright."The problem, of course, is that there just aren't that many such cases (there are a few scattered ones, including the Lenz case we've been talking about recently). So finding such cases, and actually having them go to court could be useful -- though I still think strengthening the ability to punish bogus DMCA notices would be helpful (well, and changing the entire DMCA takedown process, but that's another post for another day). Via email, David admits that this is just a "trial balloon" to see if it turns up any interesting cases of bogus takedowns that might make for good 512(f) cases. And that would be good, though the weaknesses of 512(f) still make it pretty difficult to find ideal cases, even as we see DMCA abuses all the time.
Even with that being the case, if this effort doesn't turn up bogus takedown notices for new cases, at the very least, perhaps it will create a useful dataset to explore the nature and frequency of bogus DMCA takedowns.
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Filed Under: 512f, bogus takedowns, copyright, dmca, takedowns
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3 strikes
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Re: 3 strikes
"You file 3 allegedly> bad DMCA claims and you are cut off from ever filing again."
Let's see how they like it.
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Re: Re: 3 strikes
It's supposed to be like this:
"You file 3 allegedly bad DMCA claims and you are cut off from ever filing again."
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That is more in line.
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Re: Re: 3 strikes
No. This:
"You file 3 allegedly bad DMCA claims and you lose your copyrights."
Losing your copyrights isn't as bad as losing your internet access. Internet access is a human right. Copyrights are a privilege.
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Re: Re: Re: 3 strikes
Fair is fair. They should just lose their Internet access. That way they can't file more false DMCA's.
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Why don't you ever discuss legitimate take down notices? I don't get why you hyper-focus on a few illegitimate notices without discussing the millions of legitimate notices. Would a little bit of balance and perspective kill you? I guess so. I've never seen you come close to discussing anything in a fair and evenhanded manner. Extremist is as extremist does. It's a shame that you're so far gone. I think you could bring something to the table if only you'd sit down at it.
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Notice (via simple searches) that Techdirt isn't anti-copyright, just rather against the components of it used to stifle the pubilc's interest (see list above).
The basic argument is if the system violates human rights, innovation, and the public interest in general (especially when other financial options are availble to copyright holders), then the laws need to change.
Using DMCA notices to censor should be illegal and punishable as that violates the 1st Amendment. Patent trolling (and even corporation warefare over patents) stiffles small innovators, improvements on old technology, and competition making (bad) patents in need of review.
Shall I continue or have I hit a good enough reason for Techdirt/Mike (et al) and the articles they publish. Not that there really is any reason to justify any of it. It exists and operates the way it does. Deal with it.
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What is there to discuss? That would be the system working as intended.
The problem only exists when the system does not work as intended. Hence the focus on the failings of the system.
A programmers analogy: that would be like having a bug tracker where 70% of the bug reports were "Hey, I pressed this button and it worked exactly as expected! Great job dev team!".
"I don't get why you hyper-focus on a few illegitimate notices without discussing the millions of legitimate notices."
I think that once we pass the threshold where someone actually considers building a database of bogus DMCA claims we can no longer consider those cases to be "few". A database implies "lots and lots", not few.
Also, did you not see the most recent DMCA hilarity? Here you go:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/02/site-plagiarizes-blog-posts-then-files-dmca-takedown-o n-originals/
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Why doesn't the nightly news do stories on law abiding citizens who didn't drive drunk and cause an accident? Oh, the bias!
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except, it's not perfectly acceptable, and god forbid it's 10%. so, if you want to focus on correct actions by... police or correctly applied take down notices, feel free to start a site devoted to that.
I'm more interested in being aware of abuses of power, the twisting of logic, effectively keeping an eye on an ever more powerful and irrational legal body.
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1. There is a real copyright infringement.
2. Copyright owner files a real and legitimate DMCA claim and gets content removed.
3. The infringer does not respond.
What is there to discuss?
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it's called hypocrite.
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As expected with any copyright laws: guilty until proven innocent until you flip the coin back on the attacker, then it's innocent until proven guilty.
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the key word here being "reasonable", something the more stringent copyright supporters are anything but.
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I have a sad case. Contact me if you need case studies. mrosich @ gmail
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Contiue to receive baseless DMCAs
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