Rather Than Attacking Section 230, Why Aren't Trump Supporters Angry About The DMCA That's Actually Causing Issues?
from the you-guys-got-it-all-wrong dept
A few weeks back, we wrote about how one of Donald Trump's tirades over Twitter "moderating" him, in which he blamed Section 230, was totally misplaced. The actual issue was about copyright and Section 512 of the DMCA. That was a case where a copyright claim took down a Trump campaign video after a copyright holder claimed it infringed.
Last week, we saw copyright again cause trouble in Trump world -- and again, Trump's fans blamed Twitter and Section 230 rather than the problems of the DMCA instead. This time, it involved a well-known Trump mememaker going by the name Carpe Donktum, who makes generally lame "MAGA memes." Early last week, Twitter permanently shut down his account, and all the Trumpalos went nuts. A writer for the Federalist, Mollie Hemingway, laughably called it "election interference" by Twitter:
Except, as you can even see in that very screenshot that Mollie (who apparently can't even read the screenshots she's posting), Twitter shut down his account for repeated infringement under the DMCA. Twitter later confirmed exactly that.
“per our copyright policy, we respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by a copyright owner or their authorized representatives. The account was permanently suspended for repeated violations of this policy.”
Donnie Jr. got similarly angry, and had an odd interpretation of what "public domain" means:
Now, we can argue whether or not the copyright claim was valid. I think for most memes, even Donktum's incredibly stupid ones, he would have strong fair use claims. But as we've seen in cases like the BMG v. Cox case, courts are now saying that the repeat infringer policy is not for proven infringement, but merely alleged infringement.
Even worse? In the Copyright Office's recent report on Section 512 of the DMCA, it supported that viewpoint, that the DMCA not only requires a repeat infringer policy, but that it should be based on repeated accusations of infringement, even if those accusations are not accurate.
Given that, Twitter has little choice but to shut down Donktum's feed, and people blaming Twitter or Section 230 for this (or idiotically calling it "election interference") have misplaced their blame. They should, instead, be concerned about Section 512(i) of the DMCA and the series of recent cases that say it is based on accusation, and not on any adjudication of infringement. And, similarly, they should also be asking why the Copyright Office recently supported this censorial definition in the years-long study it did on Section 512 and just released a little over a month ago. From that report:
... any definition must be consistent with the statutory criteria that repeat infringer means repeat alleged infringer, not repeat adjudicated infringer.
And then this week, we had yet another example, in which Twitter removed an image from a Trump tweet after the NY Times filed a DMCA takedown notice:
The original tweet by Trump issued on June 30, showed a meme that read “In reality they’re not after me they’re after you I’m just in the way” with Trump’s picture in the background.
The background picture was taken by a New York Times photographer, to accompany a feature article on then presidential candidate Trump in September 2015.
Twitter now displays the message “This image has been removed in response to a report from the copyright holder,” in place of the tweet.
You can see what it looks like now:
As I write this, the usual crew hasn't freaked out yet, but I fully expect that when they do, they're likely to blame Twitter or Section 230, neither of which are even remotely responsible here.
But while Trump's fans in Congress are running around trying to change Section 230 with a new bill every other day, why aren't any of them looking at fixing this part of the DMCA that is actually leading to censorship (unlike what's happening with 230)?
Filed Under: carpe donktum, censorship, copyright, dmca, dmca 512, donald trump, notice and takedown, repeat infringer, section 230
Companies: twitter
