<
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/05/24/copyright-as-censorship-abuse-of-the-dmca-to-try-to-delete-online-news-is-rampant/>
"Online platforms often give access to digital material that is under
copyright. If any of that content is infringing, then potentially the platform
would be liable as well as the person who uploaded it. Online companies
naturally want to be immune to the consequences of any copyright infringement
committed by their users. However, companies in the copyright industry also
demand the ability to protect their copyright material.
To address this tension, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
provides online companies with a “safe harbor” in the US, provided they fulfil
certain conditions, which includes taking down infringing material when they
are made aware of its presence on their servers. This “notice and takedown”
system allows the copyright industry to seek out material on sites, and send
notices to the relevant Internet companies claiming that there is an
infringement, and demanding that it should be taken down. The person who
uploaded the material can make a counterclaim under the DMCA. This may trigger
a lawsuit from the company claiming copyright. If it doesn’t, the material will
be put back up.
Although the safe harbor approach is designed to provide a balanced solution to
the requirements of both the copyright industry and the online service
providers, it masks a deeper inequality that is typical of the copyright world.
Takedown notices are generally sent by lawyers or specialists who carry out
this operation all the time, often thousands of times a day, using automated
systems. They know the details of the law. Under the DMCA they are only
required to provide a statement that they have a “good faith belief” that the
use of the copyright material is unauthorized.
The recipients of takedown notices are usually ordinary members of the public.
They are unlikely to have any legal training, and yet must respond to a formal
legal notification if they wish to make a counterclaim. In addition, their
counterclaim must include contact information – probably the last thing that an
individual wishes to hand over to a company threatening them. Finally, and most
problematically, the counterclaim must include a statement “under penalty of
perjury” that the material was taken down by mistake. This is in contrast to
the much weaker “good faith belief” that the original takedown notice requires
from the notifier. Many will quail at the thought that they risk being
convicted of perjury. The end result is that most people will simply accept
that their material is removed, even if it was legal, for example under fair
use.
This unbalanced nature of the system makes it ripe for fraud, whereby people
falsely claim to be the owner of copyright material in order to get it removed
from a Web site."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
