Chilling Effects On Chilling Effects As DMCA Archive Deletes Self From Google
from the transparency-never dept
Over the weekend, TorrentFreak noted that the website Chilling Effects had apparently removed itself from Google's search index after too many people complained.This week, however, we were no longer able to do so. The Chilling Effects team decided to remove its entire domain from all search engines, including its homepage and other informational and educational resources.
“After much internal discussion the Chilling Effects project recently made the decision to remove the site’s notice pages from search engines,” Berkman Center project coordinator Adam Holland informs TF.Meanwhile, Chilling Effects founder, Wendy Seltzer, seems to insist that this was an implementation mistake and that the team never meant to remove the whole domain:
“Our recent relaunch of the site has brought it a lot more attention, and as a result, we’re currently thinking through ways to better balance making this information available for valuable study, research, and journalism, while still addressing the concerns of people whose information appears in the database.”
[....]
“As a project, we’ve always worked to strike that balance, for example by removing personally identifying information. Removing notice pages from search engine results is the latest step in that balancing process,” Holland tells us.
“It may or may not prove to be permanent, but for now it’s the step that makes the most sense as we continue to think things through,” he adds.
Either way it seems like a massive blow for transparency, and in many ways is a "chilling effect" of its own. It's no secret that many legacy copyright system supporters absolutely hate Chilling Effects and the transparency it brings. Sandra Aistars, of the Copyright Alliance, referred to the site as "repugnant" in Congressional testimony just a few months ago. Yes, providing transparency on censorship is "repugnant." Says a lot about the Copyright Alliance, doesn't it?
Others have made similar statements in the past. A few years ago, a lawyer tried to block Google from forwarding DMCA takedown notices to Chilling Effects, arguing that passing along those notices makes Google "potentially liable for the infringement" in passing on the notices. Others have argued that the takedown notices themselves are subject to copyright and have tried to block them from appearing on Chilling Effects.
The concern, they claim, is twofold: First, the details in the takedown notice often demonstrate where infringing content actually is. That's especially true for notices to Google or Twitter (two of the bigger suppliers of notices to Chilling Effects) who are not hosting the content, but are merely linking to it (i.e. they are "information location tools.") In those cases, the links may get removed from the services in question, but remain on the internet itself. The second concern, as put forth by Aistars, is that people issuing DMCA takedown notices are sensitive little flowers, and publishing the fact that they're trying to take down content opens them up to harassment and abuse.
Neither of these arguments survives much scrutiny. The idea that anyone is trawling through Chilling Effects seeking unauthorized content is fairly unlikely. And, really, if people are, those aren't exactly the kind of people who are then going to turn around and start willfully forking over cash to the legacy entertainment industry for that same content. The Chilling Effects haters, no doubt, would argue that this is why it's important to remove Chilling Effects itself from Google, because people searching on Google might not find the originals, but would then find the takedown notices with links back to the originals. Except, that seems unlikely. First, as has been detailed many times, people looking for unauthorized copies of works tend not to use Google that much, since it's not very good for that purpose, and other tools tend to be much more effective. Second, the kinds of information in a takedown notice itself aren't likely to trigger a high result for someone looking for an unauthorized download. Terms like "free" and "download" are unlikely to be found on such documents.
The other argument -- that being exposed for sending takedowns leads to harassment -- also seems bogus. We've seen little indication that people get that upset about legitimate takedowns. It's the excessive, abusive and censorious takedowns that really seem to concern people. And those are the ones that need transparency the most.
Hopefully, the folks at Chilling Effects rethink this decision and stick by their own stated philosophy of working "to provide as much transparency as possible" about DMCA takedown notices. It would seem that blocking a key search tool from accessing the data goes directly against that principle.
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Filed Under: chilling effects, copyright, copyright infringement, dmca, indexing, robots.txt, search, takedowns
Companies: chilling effects, google
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A feature, not a bug
That should encourage them to engage in the much more effective practice of targeting sites that are actually hosting infringing content rather than the awful practice of targeting search engines who have nothing to do with it and aren't violating the law.
I count that as a feature, not a bug.
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Re: A feature, not a bug
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Re: A feature, not a bug
By targetting the messenger they can at least justify their existance to the people they represent.
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Re: Re: A feature, not a bug
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I woke up one day over the holidays to find about 20 thousand spam posts from a manual login but they clearly released a bot once they did. Mostly links to watch crap online.
Once I figured out how to mitgate the issue(which took all damn day with xenforo) I checked my email and noticed I got some ham-fisted bullshit not only in webmaster tools but from my host as well.
A week later I still want to smack someone around about it.
Slightly off topic I know but as I don't know who to bitch at yet I had to vent lol...
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Sounds to me they are just butt hurt because many times Chilling Effects calls note to the mistakes made and believe me there are plenty of them.
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Really!
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I'm picturing people using chilling effects to find free content
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Re: I'm picturing people using chilling effects to find free content
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In the dark 1930s in Russia there was a concept of “smuggling under the cover of criticism.” No matter how you cursed at an ideological enemy (essentially everyone not singing panegyrics to the Leader), if you quoted him/her, you could be prosecuted and sent to a labor camp.
I see the parallels here.
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You know, because secret courts are totally liberal.
Don't worry I'm sure that once that gets into swing NOBODY will be able to connect the dots and work out for themselves where and when takedowns are happening.
"Wahhh Google and Youtube put sad faces in place of infringing videos when they are taken down" - yes, I have heard this attempt to restrict Google's freedom to express what they THINK about takedowns being uttered, too.
And of course efforts to remove Chilling Effects instead of targeting the source of the piracy itself - the websites in question (which they won't do because they secretly feel that enforcing copyright is a doomed policy) will resemble the E.U. disastrous ruling on the right to be forgotten ("don't even TELL the sites you've taken down links!!!!") and will be met with inevitable Streisand Effects and total humiliation.
It's almost as if they get masochistic pleasure out of making themselves look like clowns.
Next thing they'll say is "nobody is even allowed to MENTION "The Pirate Bay" because if you do, that is the same as LINKING to it!!!". They'd be right, you know. Simply mentioning what a pirate website IS makes you a linker and morally liable for infringement.
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The battle for a free and open internet looks more bleak every day.
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I'm sure Viacom has suffered greatly, and has had to seek counseling.
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Re:
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Re: Re:
I'm flattered that you think of me so often, but that's not me you're replying to. I love it when copyright and due process are enforced. Preferably at the same time.
That said, this post of Mike's is just stupid. Particularly, his ongoing personal attack of Aistars. Mike says:That's not fair. She was making the point that gathering all the links that have been removed defeats the purpose of having the links removed. She wasn't talking about transparency. She wasn't saying that providing transparency is repugnant. Give me a break. It actually "says a lot about" Mike that he has to be so hyperbolic all of the time. The transparency argument is a good one, but so is Aistars' argument about gathering links. There's no need to pretend like she was talking about one thing when she was in fact talking about another. It's just childish, bordering on delusional, for Mike to pretend otherwise. Sadly, such nonsense is Mike's stock-in-trade.
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I don't know what goes on in your stupid little head sometimes, the best explanation I can think of is that you're probably on drugs, but that's not what she was saying. Here, let me quote what she said.
"The activities of chillingeffects.org are repugnant to the purposes of Section 512. Data collected by high-volume recipients of DMCA notices such as Google, and senders of DMCA notices such as trade associations representing the film and music industries demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of DMCA notices sent are legitimate, yet the site unfairly maligns artists and creators using the legal process created by Section 512 as proponents of censorship."
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140317/11355726599/copyright-alliance-attacks-chilli ng-effects-clearinghouse-argues-dmca-system-with-no-public-accountability.shtml
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Hell, just do a search. Chicken noises all around the site. Way to make an argument - but then that was never your objective.
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"Love it when due process is enforced", my foot.
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Still searchable
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/80274073/Screenshot%20from%202015-01-13%2007%3A25%3A33.pn g
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https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/10282441
... which includes, among other things, links to IMDB and official Facebook pages for Spider-Man 2 and The Interview. That's why linking to Chilling Effects is so important: it exposes bogus DMCA claims by copyright holders who unfortunately are not held accountable for negligent and indiscriminate, automated takedowns.
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Hydra Effects
Why is there only one site? There should be at least 3. Hopefully soon; every time anyone gives the **AAs an inch, they take a mile. It'll only be a matter of weeks, if not days, before they start banging the "you are not doing enough to fight piracy and are therefore responsible for piracy" drum again to get Chilling Effects to censor itself even further.
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"The activities of chillingeffects.org are repugnant to the purposes of Section 512. Data collected by high-volume recipients of DMCA notices such as Google, and senders of DMCA notices such as trade associations representing the film and music industries demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of DMCA notices sent are legitimate, yet the site unfairly maligns artists and creators using the legal process created by Section 512 as proponents of censorship."
I'll note first that you do not deny that Aistars did not say that "providing transparency" is "repugnant," as her remarks are now being framed. That claim is sensationalist nonsense.
If you're going to quote what she wrote, you should provide more than two sentences:The "activities of chilling effects.org" that she said were "repugnant" were that of gathering links, providing personal information, and maligning creators as "proponents of censorship." She was talking about legitimate notices, which she noted account for the "overwhelming majority" of notices sent. (You left out the footnote to Prof. Boyden's paper.) But what she did not say was that transparency itself is repugnant.
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Re:
The EFF focuses on bogus takedown notices. If a takedown recipient is being supported by the EFF it's most likely because the EFF is trying to defend someone on the receiving end of a bogus takedown notice that doesn't have the resources to defend themselves in the face of a relatively large opponent and a one sided legal and penalty structure stacked against them.
That she would criticize the EFF, who mostly focuses on defending against bogus takedowns, is a strong indication of her real intent. It's to allow for legitimate content to be taken down without resistance.
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She ius claiming that Google sending those noticves to an archive is a repugnant activity. And claiming that publishing DMCA notices is censorship? Kettle, meet obsidian pot.
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So sending google a notice does fuck all as the content is still up right?
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This is a misrepresentation of what Google has said about the takedown notices. What they've said is that the overwhelming majority of DMCA notices are properly filed and not contested.
That's a far cry from saying that they're legitimate.
"Finally, because the site does not redact information about the infringing URLs identified in the notices, it has effectively become the largest repository of URLs hosting infringing content on the internet."
This argument is ridiculous (even if it is accurate, which is possible but seems unlikely). My response is "so what?" If there is such great concern about this, then copyright holders can do what they should have been doing instead of bothering innocent third parties: go after the sites themselves. Then it wouldn't matter one bit of the URLs are publicly available.
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Zealots
One of our users complained in their Facebook account and their community manager ended his not too nice answer with a Peace and love for books that hasn't been well received by people reading it.
Result: their press notes on book releases are not going to be released in our website and the same goes for information about new books. We might lose one or two dollars in advertisements, they are already losing more than that in people who will not be buying any books from them plus the bad publicity from their community manager reply.
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On a different domain. Example https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/111143
To solve this problem China must become the gatekeeper of internets. Only China at no. 88 in Freedom House can do it if anybody can do it.
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Info on "ChillingEffects/Lumen"
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Remove sender name from Lumen database
I want to ask you to delete sender name (only just the name) from lumen database on my DMCA (Copyright) Complaint to Google report.
We can do this?
Thanks,
Lisa
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Attacks
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