Censoring The Net With A Hotmail Account 286
Alex Bradbury writes "Members of the Bits of Freedom group conducted a test to see how much it would take for a service provider to take down a website hosting public domain material, and have published their results. They signed up with 10 providers and put online a work by Dutch author Multatuli, who died over 100 years ago. They stated that the work was in the public domain, and that it was written in 1871. They then set up a fake society to claim to be the copyright holders of the work. From a Hotmail address, they sent out complaints to all 10 of the providers. 7 out of 10 complied and removed the site, one within just 3 hours. Only one ISP actually pointed out that the copyright on the work expired many years ago. The conclusion of the investigation is definitely worth reading. The three providers who didn't take down the material are XS4ALL, UPC and Freeler. The company that came out the worst was iFast, who forwarded all the personal details of the site owner to the sender of the fake takedown notice without even being asked to do so."
It shouldn't be that easy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I would say (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know how representative this would be of US ISPs, as all the ISPs mentioned in the article are
iFast breaks all EU Data Protection Laws (Score:2, Interesting)
(answer: nothing, these agencies exist to suck money and do nothing)
Now that's interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't help but wonder, is this consistent with iFast's user privacy policy? I can't tell, I don't speak Dutch...
Sadly, had to request a takedown once (Score:5, Interesting)
Within 20 minutes of his posting it, I politely asked the ISP to take it down (was about midnight), and they had it taken down by morning. Someone obviously got hold of it and hacked a few of our players' accounts, but the source+assets itself never resurfaced.
Re:I would say (Score:1, Interesting)
Not the same thing... (Score:4, Interesting)
The next day, my site was taken offline. PayPal didn't even look at the content: they chose to contact my ISP, which didn't even put up a fight, and to put a hold on my account, without any sort of consent on my part.
About XS4ALL (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm glad that there are companies out there who are willing to stand up for their users when they are right, going so far as to take the heat in court. XS4ALL won the case, too, and the Fishman Affidavit is still hosted there for all to see.
Re:Censorship, or just cautious commercial entitie (Score:5, Interesting)
Could this be used AGAINST the DMCA? (Score:5, Interesting)
A bunch of motivated slashdotters all go to their local libraries (or anywhere else they can gain anonymous internet access) and create hotmail or yahoo email accounts. Then, they send copyright violation notifications to various ISP's across America, so that a huge number of legitamite sites get taken down.
The resultant customer rage would get media attention, and the ISP's would mention the DMCA as they speak in their own defense. This would bring the harmful effects of the DMCA into the public eye.
Of course, I am not advocating any such thing. Just reflecting on the possibilities.
--AC (emphasis on the C in my case)
Re:I would say (Score:2, Interesting)
tell me again exactly what law was broken by this group?
Erm..
Perjury?
When you send out a take down notice you are making a legal claim that is not true.
My experience (Score:3, Interesting)
DIY (Score:4, Interesting)
Granted, I'm still dependent on someone else for connectivity itself, but I found a pretty good DSL provider with terms I can live with, so as long as I keep my systems are zombie free and I don't do anything stupid enough to get an actual court order sent to my DSL provider, I'm pretty safe from this kind of crap (at least more than I was before). And I got broadband service to my house in the process.
I realise it's not an option for a lot of people, but if you want something done right...
Re:It's logical XS4ALL did not budge : (Score:3, Interesting)
proud (to be paranoid) XS4all customer since 1997
Re:Texan-style! (Score:4, Interesting)
It probably means "hang first, ask questions later", as in cheesy western movies.
Re:I would say (Score:3, Interesting)
It's probably more about the terms of service (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think that being free really has much to do with it, although there could perhaps be a correlation. Probably what matters is the terms of service that you agree to. Even if you pay for the service, virtually all terms of service will contain a clause that states the provider can yank your access or hosting or whatever they provide on a whim at their own discretion.
Clearly it might not hold up in court, and it's perhaps even less likely to hold up if you're paying for a service and they don't have reasonable grounds for not providing it... regardless of what's in the terms of service. But they could still potentially get away with claiming that they don't have time or resources to follow up complaints and have to protect their liability, and it still means going through the court system. The latter is a huge disincentive when it's normally much easier to just find a different provider.
It's not worth it for the ISPs. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It shouldn't be that easy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It shouldn't be that easy (Score:1, Interesting)
It is worrying that the majority didn't even slightly check the complaints origin as I would imagine it's going to get more and more common as time goes by that petty online arguments will result in people sending annymous complaints to ISP's to try and get peoples websites shut down.
Can You Blame Them? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I'm not saying this is right. But there has to be a better incentive than "the good of all humanity" to protect fair use.
Re:It shouldn't be that easy (Score:5, Interesting)
Can they afford to lose a client so easily?
Let's see - $30/mo or a liability in the six figures. That's a tough call.
Re:Erroring on the side of safety (Score:3, Interesting)
Supposedly, they have to attest, under oath, that the letter they send is factual...I think if it becomes too big a problem that ISP's will get the courts involved FOR their customers when the time is right.
Right now, they all know too many people are trying to get away with posting stuff they shouldn't ...they consider themselves "lucky" to "only" get noticed for takedown and not told to "police" their servers for "illegal" content. When things settle down that will change...
Isn't that what they are supposed to do? (Score:3, Interesting)
Change the system through the system (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the guilty (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It shouldn't be that easy (Score:3, Interesting)
In the USA.
There's a reason why the European branch of the RIAA is settling their lawsuits against consumers for way less than 2000 dollars; if they asked that much, the accused might as well take it to court, and at least have a chance of winning. (And, IIRC, some are indeed waiting for the court case. Which will presumably never happen, in case European judges would declare file-sharing legal, like a Canadian judge did.)
Re:I would say (Score:2, Interesting)
They sell everybody they can to save themselves, without any serious research, and certainly without thinking of the consequences.
They have no idea of freedom of speech, privacy. Mainly because holland has no culture of professionals. About 40% leaves school at the age of 16 to 18, those that choose to study, choose for very low levels, and meaningless degrees.
The people that choose for something higher, choose for economy and other vague and contradictive educations combined with economy, like hyped studies with an IT factor that's reduced to utter insignificance and a mockery.
In many other countries youngsters pursue a professional life, not in holland. In holland they all want to be 'manager'.
Without a professional attitude things get political, like in backstabbing political. They find every excuse to get rid non-dutch people, even when the non-dutch have a much better grasp of any work at hand.
Re:One of the guilty (Score:2, Interesting)
It is true that we have to decide which one we believe, the complaint, or the customer. We always work together with our legal dep. if there is any doubt whatsoever. We always try to only work with evidence, because in the end we may have to show everything in court. However, this rarely happens since the laws in The Netherlands are much different then the laws in the USA. For instance, the complaints of the MPAA and RIAA are mostly dismissed since we can only act if the material is on our own servers. The privacy of customers is very important and we are not allowed to check the contents of a customers computer. Only when they use a public service (web server, ftp) we can check the contents, in every other case it would be an illegal form of hacking and only the Dutch authorities have the right to investigate this. This is also true about p2p trafic, so the complaints about sharing have no way to be found illegal, because we don't have any real evidence. The complaining party doesn't give us any evidence because if they did, it would have been illegal and can not be used in the courtroom. Changes are going to happend because the copyrights issue is being heavily discussed in the european union. I fear the day that we have to give the customers name and adress to complaining party, but this is just my own opinion. The company will only do what the laws tell us and try to protect the privacy of our customers as best as it can, simply because doing otherwise will make a lot of people go to other ISP's and it will cost us a lot of money.