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How The DMCA Affects Search Engines
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Apr 25, 2004 02:21 PM
from the details-and-semantics dept.
from the details-and-semantics dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Here is an interesting article regarding the application of the DMCA safe harbor provisions to search engines. This is what causes Google to remove links from its search results and to put a disclaimer at the bottom of the page stating "In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed [x] result(s) from this page." The article is published in the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology, and there is a direct link to a pdf version of the article."
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what i love though... (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, search for Kazaa Lite [google.ca] and look at the DMCA link at the bottom. The notice lists the URLs which they've had to remove.
Google's way of fighting the man?
Re:what i love though... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you really want the infringing content, you can get to it, but you at least have to scroll through the claim tha tit's infringing and move the URL to the address bar yourself rather than using a hyperlink. Seems like a fair enough deal to me....
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Re:what i love though... (Score:5, Funny)
I type porn keywords so often that and I cunt spell right either.
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Re:what i love though... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:what i love though... (Score:4, Funny)
I wonder if the rights holder can copyright their C&D letter...
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Re:what i love though... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:what i love though... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:what i love though... (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically, when you search for Tetris [google.com], you get some friendly information on how they had removed the link because of DMCA. They give you more information here [chillingeffects.org].
And here is a screenshot [metlin.org] of the said search.
What i love even more is (Score:5, Informative)
Chilling Effects Clearinghouse A joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, and University of Maine law school clinics. Do you know your online rights? Have you received a letter asking you to remove information from a Web site or to stop engaging in an activity? Are you concerned about liability for information that someone else posted to your online forum? If so, this site is for you. Chilling Effects aims to help you understand the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws give to your online activities. We are excited about the new opportunities the Internet offers individuals to express their views, parody politicians, celebrate their favorite movie stars, or criticize businesses. But we've noticed that not everyone feels the same way. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some individuals and corporations are using intellectual property and other laws to silence other online users. Chilling Effects encourages respect for intellectual property law, while frowning on its misuse to "chill" legitimate activity.
Nothing like educating the public about the dangers of the DMCA/etal by linking them to EFF and the like :).
Parent
Re:What i love even more is (Score:4, Interesting)
They should do like what "Le Canard Enchaine" did during WWII.
What they did was whenever the Nazis wanted an article censored (which, given the nature of the newspaper was very often) instead of replacing it with another article they simply cut it out and left the space blank (except for a character with a huge pair of scissors representing the censors). The blanks in it were more telling than the remaining articles in that you knew how much the Nazis didn't want you to know (but not what of course).
Instead of putting the DMCA link at the end Google should put the search result where it would normally have been except replaced with:
"Due to a complaint(link to complaint containing the censored link) from $company citing the DMCA(link to more info) we cannot show you this result"
Or: "$company doesn't want you to know about that link so they invoked the DMCA(link) to silence us. Here is the complaint(link) where the tell us which links they don't want you to know about"
Or similar.
Still, what they do already is cool.
Parent
Sort of like... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sort of like... (Score:4, Interesting)
And really, that's what a DMCA Takedown notice equates to... "We swear that we own the copyright to this and we want it taken down right away." The ISP doesn't have to comply, but they have to serve that notice to the user, or be liable for contributing to the infringment. They also have to put it back if the user swears back that they do have the right to put that piece of work up, which will also shield the ISP for being responsible and put all the responsiblity on the user, who has now steped forward and identified themselves for easy suing...
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DMCA Counter-Takedown letters... (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, in a majority of the times, the copyright holder is correct and this actually prevents a needless cause from going into the overworked court systems. The makers of Kazaa Lite could send Google a counter-notification to get back into the system, and then Shawman Networks would be in the uncomfortable situation of having to file a US-based lawsuit, despite trying to otherwise stay out of US jurisdiction.
Re:DMCA Counter-Takedown letters... (Score:5, Interesting)
95%+ used for illegitimate activities
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We don't prosecute the makers of rolling paper just because people roll joints. Plenty of pre-rolled cigarettes are available at low cost.
We don't prosecute Aldrich, the primary provider of sodium cyanide, even though its product is deadly.
What legal grounds do you think you have to prosecute Kazaa? They don't advocate drug use or murder. File-sharing? OOOOOOH! Lord save society.
Parent
Re:DMCA Counter-Takedown letters... (Score:3, Insightful)
Pre-rolled ciggarettes make me feel sick and the rolling tobacco I buy is a fraction of the cost of even the cheapest pre-rolled ciggarettes that I can buy here.
I think your analogy would be more accurate if rolling paper had drug dealers phone numbers printed on them.
Just thought I'd point that out.
Re:DMCA Counter-Takedown letters... (Score:3, Interesting)
R>I.P. 321 Studios
Re:DMCA Counter-Takedown letters... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I wrote a paper about this (Score:4, Funny)
Phew! (Score:5, Funny)
Law out of control! (Score:5, Interesting)
Know why asian economies are leaping ahead by leaps and bounds? You just go out and do things, without millions of lawyers and others trying to leech of the whole business.
Re:Law out of control! (Score:4, Insightful)
The sad fact is that the parasite-to-"honest"-host ratio is almost the same in society as it is nature: pretty damn high.
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Next thing you know... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm turning in my two-week notice tomorrow. How about you?
I disbelieve this horse-patooey.
Crap Like This (Score:5, Insightful)
It's crap like this that absolutely works to destroy the usefulness and wonder of the Internet.
Backwards? (Score:3, Interesting)
This seems backwards. Kazaa can search for "kazaa" on Google and find "non-kazaa" material, so they tell Google to take it down? Since when is the search engine responsible for the content they generate by just following links on the web (forgive me if I'm unfamiliar with how Google crawls the web)?
Why not send notices to the websites directly? Oh, wait, that would mean that they would have to spend the time and find the people who are actually "breaking" the copyrights and prosecute them directly. That's too much work.
It's the same thing that the RIAA is doing -- going after the end-user in court because it's easier that way. I wonder what happened to the racketeering charges that were brought up.
Re:Backwards? (Score:5, Informative)
Since the DMCA. It's now illegal to link to illegal material. Read the article or see the past cases [dmoz.org] for more information.
Parent
Re:Backwards? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Backwards? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be just as silly if people in the US couldn't do searches on certain words because my country thinks it's not OK for the search engine to provide such results.
If they want filterning then they should run such filters on google.com only. I can't see how the DMCA should apply to google.it or google.com.ar or any other such domain.
Diego Rey
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Gotta Love Google (Score:5, Interesting)
1. People are made aware of what the DMCA does
2. People from the Free World where the DMCA does not apply can still access the information
I still think prohibiting search engines from linking to certain materials is a bad idea, though.
Re:Yeah right, (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Yeah right, (Score:3, Informative)
Nice troll. The USA is not the only country with freedom of the press and elected government. In fact, it's not even that democratic if you consider there are only two parties that can really compete for power, both of which depend heavily on corporate funding for their campaigns. With the press under control of large corporations, and the pol
Re:Yeah right, (Score:5, Insightful)
And since we can vote, we can work to get rid of it.''
Attacking this point specifically:
Yes you can vote, but you may not be able to get rid of the DMCA. To do that would require there being a party that would abolish the DMCA, and that party getting elected (or at least powerful enough to abolish the DMCA). Since politics is about much more than the DMCA alone, such a party would likely have other things in its programme that you don't like. And that others don't like. And then either not get enough votes to kill the DMCA, or introduce other laws that you would not want to have.
Since the US' political system is ill-suited to more than 2 parties, the chance that you (plural) can vote for a party that 1) will abolish the DMCA, and 2) otherwise suits your tastes is quite slim.
The issue is that you can't vote for or against one issue, you vote for a party and it's entire programme.
Did I mention that the corporations will probably try to influence public opinion in such a way that they become more powerful?
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Thumb on the scale of justice... (Score:5, Insightful)
No wonder most companies, when confronted with a DMCA Takedown letter choose the path of least resistance.
Remember Kazaalite and Scientology? (Score:4, Insightful)
While some here cheer that Google put a reference to the the Kazaa Lite pages removed (or rather to the DMCA notice which includes the URLs of those pages), effecly nullyfing the effect, it is worrying me instead.
Fact is that Companies and Organisations can force the removal of Links from Search Engines, and if those Engines don't act as smartly as Google here (be it due to fear of lawsuits from those Organistions or due to simple lazyness) we might not even notice it....
Re:Remember Kazaalite and Scientology? (Score:4, Funny)
Fact is that Companies and Organisations can force the removal of Links from Search Engines
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Yet I still can't remove the references returned by Google propagated by some script kiddie with my mail address as an index token.
I'm fscked..
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Slashdot users violating SCO's IP (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Slashdot users,
If you would like permission to legally view the content of search engines such as Google, contact SCO licensing [mailto] where we can provide individual licenses for only $699 per search engine or a bulk license of $10^699 for all search engines.
If you do not comply I will publicly brand you a Linus long-hair and GNU hippy, and will ask Microsoft for money to sue you with.
Yours faithfully,
Darl McBride,
CEO SCO Inc.
All this proves... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm sick of America being bullied around by the corporations. We are the people. We have the power here.
Fight with you pockets...and your _paper_ ballots (unless of course Diebold has their way with the government.)Genuine question (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Genuine question (Score:5, Informative)
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The short version (Score:4, Insightful)
It may affect search engines (Score:4, Interesting)
If one is interested in studying a "taboo" topic they'll join mailing lists as well. Especially in the case of religion and potential cults, nobody with any sense is going to just talk to one group. You're going to talk to members, ex members, and do your own studying.
You need to join message/news groups for that and the DMCA has no effect on those. The DMCA can't control what somebody sends to my e-mail account in response to a request for information.
Ben
The DMCA is a BAD law. (Score:3, Interesting)
It stiffles progress. MOST everything in existence is the result of people taking things apart and improving upon previous designs.
DMCA puts that practice to a dead halt.
The DMCA should be abolished ASAP....
Re:The DMCA is a BAD law. (Score:3, Interesting)
It scares me that the US could have actually passed and implimented somthing like the DCMA. Even if we dont end up following big brother, I would be suprised if companies creating DCMA complient devices and tecnologies for the American market could be bothered to take the time to those "features" for non US markets.
Re:The DMCA is a BAD law. (Score:3, Interesting)
Please, I beg you, do more than that! After that Federal Court of Canada ruling [canoe.ca] (that file/music sharing is legal within Canadian copyright law) the Heritage Minister changed her tune all of a sudden... gee I wonder why? A stroke of pity for the CRIA [www.cria.ca], no doubt. What happened in the US and EU is slowly happening here in Canada too. Let's fight it, because really these government measures are meant to give the industry
Re:The DMCA is a BAD law. (Score:3, Informative)
So what we really need... (Score:5, Interesting)
Some questions (Score:5, Interesting)
1) If I link to a site that links to a site that has DMCA violating speech, does that mean my site is violating aswell? what about google? If so, how far does this chain go?
2) What if someone links to a google cache?
3) Can I say DMCA violating things to my lawyer? What about to a public court?
4) If I violate the DMCA outside America, will the FBI trick me into going to Rome and then drug me and take me back to the USA?
5) If I say something that violates the DMCA on national TV will viewers be breaking the law by watching, and will Tivo be breaking the law by recording it? will these people also require a trial?
6) If I wear DMCA violating clothing can the police confiscate it if it means i would be breaking public nudity laws? (ie it could be underwear too)
7) Im i allowed to violate the DMCA while engaged in sexual intercourse in the state of Florida? What if its consensual?
8) When praying, is it ok to attempt to tell God that the shift key will disable some CD copy-protection systems?
9) On violating the DMCA, certain evidence would be submitted to court, such as video/audio tapes containing said violation. Who owns this evidence, who can see it and how does the freedom of information act apply to it?
10) I thought of a way to circumnavigate X device, am I liable under the DMCA if the thought is in my head? what would happen if i talked about it in my sleep? Could i write about it in a private diary? an online journal? a letter?
Re:Some questions (Score:3)
Too far.
2) What if someone links to a google cache?
Same thing.
3) Can I say DMCA violating things to my lawyer? What about to a public court?
No and none.
4) If I violate the DMCA outside America, will the FBI trick me into going to Rome and then drug me and take me back to the USA?
Possibly.
5) If I say something that violates the DM
I wrote the article... (Score:4, Interesting)
Use right-wing tricks against them (Score:3, Funny)
say "Enemies of free speech and opponents of a free press in your governmnet blah blah blah"
This message brought to you by a left-wing liberal openly opposed to the current order.
Re:AS USUAL... (Score:5, Insightful)
File sharing programs are by no means illegal, sharing files isn't illegal either, just some files whose "owners" don't want anyone to have without giving them money and eff will debate that
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