Wordpress Takes A Stand Against Abusive DMCA Takedown Notices; Others Should Pay Attention
from the platforms-shouldn't-just-be-takedown-remailers dept
Automattic, the company behind blogging platform Wordpress, continues to prove that just because the issuing of DMCA takedown notices has largely been handed over to automated processes, the response doesn't need to be similarly robotic.
Its latest transparency report shows it has rejected 43% of the DMCA notices it has received as either incomplete or abusive. Contrast this to almost any other platform where the initial response is to take down content/links first and work backwards from there. (Contrast this further to services like YouTube and Soundcloud, where content is subjected to automated pre-screening that seems to result in just as many illegitimate "removals.")
Automattic's DMCA process is anything but.
We carefully review each notice to ensure it’s formally complete, and includes all information required by the DMCA, before taking action. Notices that don’t meet the requirements of the statute are included in ‘notices rejected as incomplete.’In an effort to keep the worst abusers "honest" (or at least warn others performing the same intermediary functions), Automattic continues to maintain a "Hall of Shame" highlighting issuers of bogus takedown notices.
We also may decline to remove content if a notice is abusive. “Abusive” notices may be formally complete, but are directed at fair use of content, material that isn’t copyrightable, or content the complaining party misrepresents ownership of a copyright.
So, there's at least one major platform that has its users' backs -- something it has taken as far as the filing of lawsuits against serial abusers. And it's one of the few that will actually try to determine whether or not the usage of the disputed content falls under fair use. Automattic seems to have learned from its past mistakes, and now it's attempting to hold rightsholders and their representatives to the same standard it applies to itself. If content is going to be removed, the person(s) making these demands need to hold up their end of the bargain.
DMCA abuse isn't likely to stop anytime soon. The process to issue notices continues to become more streamlined, which puts even more non-infringing content at risk. On top of that, the automated processes used to compile lists of "infringing" URLs continues to be error-prone. This wouldn't be an issue if the companies providing these services to rightsholders spent a little (or any) time giving the notices a once-over before sending them out. The failure to do so not only has the potential to remove non-infringing content, but also to screw the same people they're supposed to be protecting -- not just in terms of reputation, but also financially.
A brief perusal of DMCA notices issued to Google finds multiple examples of non-infringing content being targeted by flaky automated processes. It also shows rightsholders are being billed for largely useless takedown requests filled with URLs covered in previous requests by the same company.
This recent request by IFPI Latin America contains 237 URLs --- 236 of which were already delisted in response to earlier requests.
This is far from uncommon and pretty much amounts to double billing. Even in cases where rightsholders pay a monthly or yearly fee rather than per DMCA takedown, it's still wasted money. While it's obviously easier to let machines do the work and humans to collect the paychecks, nothing about an automated copyright takedown notice process contributes anything towards healthier respect for the idea itself, or the creations protected by it.
Automattic, on the other hand, will continue to gather respect from its users and potential customers around the world simply by refusing to lay out a WELCOME mat for our new DMCA robot overlords.
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Filed Under: copyright, dmca, dmca abuse, transparency report, wordpress
Companies: automattic
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This is Why We Need Much Stricter Copyright Laws
It is too much to expect intellectual property owners to bear all the burden of looking after their property. The Internet has a moral obligation to help us. After all, they are the technical experts, what is so hard for us should be childishly easy for them, they just don't want to do the work. Unlike normal property, intellectual property needs to be treated very specially and carefully, with lots of extra legal restrictions, because it so easily gets thefted otherwise.
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Why should they have to do your work?
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Imagine the conversation where they ask why the hell are we paying you to demand the same pages be delisted, after you managed to get them delisted?
On the upside, this is more sunlight on the issue of bogus takedowns and it is nice to see a company doing something obvious to highlight the BS in the system. Explanations so simple even a Congresscritter can understand them. Getting them to fix it is a huge uphill battle but if you pile up enough evidence of a broken system perhaps that can trump the "contributions" and promises of future employment.
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Well, the reason it's easier is because these bots are badly programmed and merrily skip through basic logical checks without resistance. A human being would generally not be so stupid as to let addresses like 127.0.0.1, their employer's own websites or things like imdb and Wikipedia reference pages get added to the list. They certainly would be capable of doing some due diligence on the URLs they're reporting, and at least have a glance at them to ensure they're really infringing and not a completely unrelated product.
I can understand the initial discovery of URLs being automated, but the sad fact is that it's only "easier" because people let them get away with it. If there were real penalties for false DMCA notices or real danger of them losing contracts over the regular mistakes made, they'd be employing people to manually vet each list before submission very quickly. Sadly there isn't, so they pass the costs on to everyone else while the usual parade of morons cheers them on.
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Having the DMCA impact their election campaign would get them to notice the problems being caused.
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So much for "outliers"
That's actually at the low end of the spectrum. If you consider an "invalid notice" to be a notice on content that has already been taken down, that figure jumps to 57%.
It shows, in no uncertain terms, that DMCA abuses are not "outliers."
Now, to find out if other service providers or search engines (like Google or Bing) are taking down/delisting those same abusive notices. This should be possible if they send those notices to Chilling Effects.
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If you're so concerned with your rights, you should pay better attention to the paperwork you need to fill out.
Then you wouldn't get a 43% rejection rate.
And you wouldn't look foolish.
Like you do now.
BTW, do you have a citation for that "0" you put in as far as Google is concerned? Because if you looky here:
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/requests/
you'd see a column titled "% of URLs not removed" - here's where that tricky mathy thing comes in (I know you IP maximalists LOVE math - so much that you manipulate it in ways that defy the laws of bullshit) - if that percentage of URLs not removed is greater than 0 (you know, 1, 2, 3, etc...), that means there was something wrong with the request.
If there was something wrong with the request, then your claim of "0 invalid requests" is, like 43% of the ones sent to Wordpress, invalid.
Is your comment yet another "anomaly?"
But then again, thanks for showing up on cue, Dipshit!
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Wishes
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