DMCA Abuse Widespread 224
Doc Ruby writes "Via TechDirt, the news that despite the intent of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's very popular to abuse the law by using it merely to compete, without legal basis: 'Supporters of the DMCA claim that only an occasional improper takedown notice gets through. Some new research suggests otherwise. Over 30% of DMCA takedown notices have been deemed improper and potentially illegal.'"
Re:Power to abuse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. To use a phrase I heard some time ago; it's how we ended up with a legal system instead of a justice system.
The DMCA is only a symptom. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlimited legal campaign contributions, indeed!
Re:A helpful guideline: (Score:5, Insightful)
Highly disturbing (Score:3, Insightful)
What I find most disturbing about that statement is that it implies that something a bit less than 70% of DMCA takedown notices are not improper and not illegal. That is a law that is far over-reaching, draconian, and designed for abuse. I guess that's what happens when one lives in the good 'old U.C.A (United Corporations of America).
-S
Re:Power to abuse? (Score:3, Insightful)
"However, in the recent case of ALS Scan, Inc. v. Remarq Communities, Inc., the court found that the copyright owner did not have to point out all of the infringing material, but only substantially all of the material. The relaxation of this specificity requirement shifts the burden of identifying the material to the service provider, raising the question of the extent to which a service provider must search through its system. OSP customers should note that this situation might encourage OSP's to err on the side of removing allegedly infringing material."
The courts that interpet laws are as much of a problem as the Congress that passes them in the first place.
Why is this surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, keep in mind, this is coming from a registered N.Y. State Conservative Party member, who listens to Rush Limbaugh every day, and voted for W. TWICE.
The amount of Individual Freedoms this law steals from people is abhorrent. It offends every Freedom loving, Patriotic bone in my body. Unfortunately, Most people don't see this as a priority. Like many of our laws, it's a "Creeping Freedom Stealer". Much like the old story of the frog in the frying pan, most people won't notice it taking thier Freedom until it's too late.
Re:A helpful guideline: (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes the police deliberately push the envelope on what they consider to be bad laws in order to provoke reconsideration of the law. There's a possibility that this is one such example, by a policeman who doesn't like the totalitarian direction that we are taking. Not all police support the creation of a police state, it gives them more work to do for one thing.
Mountain and Molehill (Score:2, Insightful)
However, let's put things in perspective. What is *really* the bigger problem right now - a few (even a few thousand), bad yes, abuses of the DMCA or the completely out of control wanton disregard for copyright law that exists in many internet corners? The defenders of P2P for LEGITIMATE use lose their credibility if they are not equally realistic and aggressive in condemning and thinking of ways to stop illegitimate use.
Re:DMCA is a Good Thing (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, whatever robot modded parent down needs to have his humor circuit replaced.
Re:Power to abuse? (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally do not feel like attitudes like this will do anything but make things worse for us in the long run.
I'm glad someone is standing up for our rights, but this is NOT going to sway popular opinion in a good way.
Can we maybe find some examples of people that are fighting 'the good fight' and not just using this as an excuse to hide behind and be wee little children?
Re:Power to abuse? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am an engineer, scientist and hacker at heart. and because of the DMCA and patent laws I am forced to be a criminal to continue to invent, engineer and think.
when you make laws that overnight put a wide swath of the populace into the criminal segment then you know that the corruption that is leading towards complete opression is nearing completion.
Personally I cant wait for all of you to look suprised when they mandate that every american is required to have a passport and use it for interstate travel. and I'm betting that it will be here before 2008.
So I simply acknowlege that I must break laws to continue and therefore move myself into the underground. Release the information on webboards in free countries like the Former soviet union under a untraceable psyudonym.
Thanks American Government! The past 8 years have taken all of the countries brightest and made them criminals of the state.
Self Sustaining Argument (Score:4, Insightful)
This story just served to remind me how pointless it is to try and enforce law on the internet.
Perhaps the various copyright enforcement agencies would do better if they changed themselves into education agencies.
It doesn't take a genius to understand that piracy kills the product being pirated. Most people like the own the "genuine" article too though (so you make your money in the long run).
Oh hell... this is a big old can of worms. They invent an anarchic network topology (the internet) that is self sustaining and deliberately uncontrollable - then they try to control it.
How stupid is that.
Re:I used to think Republican = Limited Government (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not an American, so this may not be accurate, but it is my understanding that Washington opposed the idea of political parties altogether - not just the situation that exists when you have only two. He believed that all candidates should stand on their own beliefs, not on a platform that is only a lose fit for their opinions but popular with a large, unthinking, group of the electorate.
Re:A helpful guideline: (Score:4, Insightful)
You are correct - the bouncers ejected (read: assaulted) him and then the police "detained" him under the anti-terrorism laws.
Then to add insult to injury, Blair still tried to push through a law that would allow the police to detain anyone for 90 days without charge, defending it by saying the police were very responsible and would never abuse a law.
This is a prime example of why excessively broad laws are always a bad idea - whilest it may improve the ability to legitimately target people doing wrong it will always be abused by someone as well.
Through all the IRA attacks whilest I was young the constant message delivered by the UK government was that if we changed the way we lived because of terrorism then the terrorists have won... well I guess we know who's won now then don't we? (Amazingly enough, Blair used the "if terrorism changes the way we live then they've won" speech in a justification of curtailing civil liberties in the name of anti-terrorism!)
Re:Highly disturbing (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, that's a standard logical fallacy; it doesn't imply any such thing. Even if the 30% figure were accurate, it can only be a minimum estimate until the cases are settled in court. But most are settled out of court, mostly for financial reasons (the cost of an individual fighting a corporation), so their legal status can never be known. If you want to make an inference like this, you should read it as "at least 30% of takedown notices are invalid".
But note that that 30% only applies to the specific sample studied, and it wasn't at all a scientifically-chosen random sample. The sample was what statisticians call "self selected", so as a statistic, the number is rather bogus.
This isn't a criticism of the people who did the study. If you read TFA, you'll find that they didn't claim that 30% of DMCA notices are improper; they stated clearly that about 30% of the cases they studied were improper.
So that 30% isn't a statistic; it's merely an example of the DMCA's effect on a small sample of people who are willing to go public with their story. TFA doesn't actually teach us much about the overall impact of the DMCA.
But I suppose that's a bit too precise for a
Re:Power to abuse? (Score:5, Insightful)
At first I thought this was kind of stupid since the federal gevernment doesn't have that power. Then I remembered that the federal goverment has ruled that marijuana grown in California, sold in California, and consumed in California constitutes interstate commerce and can therefore be regulated or banned by the federal gov't.
Yeah, we're screwed.
"the industry" (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats the beauty of being an attorney, the more stupid laws like this, the more money to go around.
And remember, you get paid even if you lose.
No (Score:4, Insightful)
If a woman wears provocative clothing in a bad part of town late at night and gets raped, maybe she was foolish for attracting attention, but she is not to blame for the rape. The rapist is.
If you leave your home unlocked and you get robbed, you will probably feel angry at yourself for leaving the house unlocked. The blame for the robbery, however, is purely the robber's.
If the American electorate is overly susceptible to media influences, call them gullible. That does not make the shark-like actions of the corporations any more acceptable. Even using the metaphor of a shark (they shouldn't be blamed; it's in their nature) is a better reason to take precautions against them, not a worse one.
If you're still reading this, I had a previous discussion on slashdot where we talked about some of this:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=167485&ci
Re:Power to abuse? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A helpful guideline: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not so sure that there is a conflict between the two. Think about it. Fascists want to merge the corporations and the government into one single entity. Libertarians (at least based on their Slashdot posts) want to abolish government power completely, leaving corporations the only entities with any power - which, of course, will lead to them merging into cartels and ultimately a single entity.
The end result of both is the same: a world ruled by corporations. Only the path taken there varies.
Re:The DMCA is only a symptom. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A helpful guideline: (Score:2, Insightful)
However, it has both authority (a position of power; in possession of power over others. -- OED) and legitimacy (conformant to law or rule; sanctioned or authorized by law or right; lawful -- OED).
You can criticise "First Past The Post" as much as you like, and I'll agree (I'm a Lib Dem supporter, so I'm obliged). But while that remains the electoral system mandated by British law, any government elected by that system has both authority and legitimacy.
Re:Power to abuse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Power to abuse? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is (and the thrust of the article was) that the process is being subverted by the use of legal threats - many of which are unfounded.
For all the cases that the RIAA has initiated, I don't know of a single one that actually was decided at trial (someone please correct me if I am in error). They are all settled because the law is being used as a club, and the strategy used by attorneys and their clients is to intimidate the target into submission by claiming huge damages, and offering to settle for a relative pittance. The uses of the DMCA follow a similar pattern.
Numerous DMCA violations are sent to people overseas with no followthrough when they are refused compliance. It's looks like a fishing expedition.
It becomes less an issue of due process and more a case of economic bullying, using the law as a tool to that end. If the parties allegedly hurt by DMCA violations feel that the acts are criminal, why are so few complaintants interested in pursuing the matter at trial and sending the offender to jail? They certainly can afford such justice, and it would be a strong example to use.
Instead, over and over again, we see threats, borderline extortion, and a steady pattern of avoiding the courts and the kind of blind justice the application of due process should bring.
So I'll say it again; a legal system, not a justice system.
And BTW, I know this is not an issue unique to the USA. You'll note from my e-mail I'm from Canada.
A New Kind of Moderate (Score:3, Insightful)
On the traditional political-spectrum chart as taught in political science classes, you have two axis - one of economic freedom and one of interpersonal freedom. Turning the chart on its corner, the "left" is liberalism, high interpersonal and low economic freedom, culminating in a purely socialist direct democracy; on the "right" is conservativism, high economic freedom and low interpersonal freedom, culminating in a purely capitalist complete dictatorship. This is the normal left/right spectrum we usually hear about, and both extreme ends of it have obvious problems with them.
On the "top" is libertarianism, more of all freedoms (as nobody can tell anybody else what do do), culminating in anarchy; on the "bottom" is populism, less of all freedoms (as everybody has some control over what other people do), culminating in tyranny.
When I speak of "Populist Libertarian" I'm basically saying "moderate", but in a way most people don't think of it. People think of moderates in terms of the left/right schism but completely ignore that while we're maintaining some equilibrium between the left and the right, we're sliding gradually toward tyranny on both sides. Tyrannical liberalism becomes Stalin's communism, and tyrannical conservatism becomes Mussolini's fascism. The libertarians have a good point that we need to move away from such tyranny, but as you point out if you go too far in that direction you wind up in anarchy, which has just as many problems of an entirely different sort.
The solution I envision is a system which acknowledges that factions and groups will exist, and allows them to exist, and allows them to form larger groups of groups, and so on and so forth, but applies to every group or meta-group the exact same set of standards as are applied to individual people. The same rules that properly govern interaction between groups of people should apply equally well to groups of groups, and so on. The same kind of standards which apply to a parent running a household should apply to a president running a country, and vice versa. If they don't, there's a problem somewhere in there - either you're governing your household or your country wrong.
As for what exactly those common rules are, I believe in what are more or less the libertarian interpersonal ideals (you can do whatever you want, except do unto others what they don't want) with semi-socialist economic ideals - basically free-market capitalism overlaid with a 50% redistribution of wealth within the group, i.e. half of what anybody brings in is divided up evenly amongst the group. The specific way I encapsulate this is with two pairs of freedoms/responsibilities:
- the freedom of liberty (to do what you want) and the responsibility to respect the liberty of others
- the freedom of security (not to be done unto as you don't want) and the responsibility to respect the security of others.
- the freedom of public property (you can do what you want with anything that's not owned by someone else) and the responsibility to respect public property (not to depreciate its value, which also encompasses environmentalism)
- the freedom of private property (you can control the things you create or acquire) and the responsibility to respect private property (i.e. no theft or vandalism).
The first and third of these are the usual emphasis of liberals, while the second and fourth are the usual emphasis of conservatives. I think they're all equally important.
As to who actually enforces these laws, i.e. who "the government" is, each group has a directly elected triad of leaders, each tasked with a different area of responsibility. The Councillor's job is to oversee the internal working of this group, applying the rules to interactions between the people (or sub-groups, if this is a meta-group) within this group. The Governor's job is to oversee the interaction between this groups and other groups of the same level and act as a
Re:Don't atack the DMCA, attack the root (Score:3, Insightful)
But if you write or create something, then you, as the creator, have the right to determine how you want your work to be used.
That's not true. People create things all the time that are used in way's they didn't intend to. Did the creator of TNT desire it to be used in killing millions? Did the creator of the phone intend for it to be used in stalking? Creators rights are not controll rights.
Now, Does the creator have a right not to share this creation with the world if they don't want to, sure - it's called a privacy right. Do they have the right to two way binding agreements with people about how a creation is used, sure - it's called a contract right. Do they have recognition rights, sure - if I claimed I wrote somthing I didn't then that would be fraud. But I know of no right of creation. Besides, there is a creator bigger than you that gave information one set of characteristics, and physical property antoher - so in all fairness, who'se violating who'se terms now.
That's outrageous. It's like saying slavery is a "tool" and nothing more. Bullshit, it's a form of unjust controll and nothing more. The same with copyrights, the right to controll how people use information at their disposal is not a tool or a right.
The real root of the problem isn't the system, it's human nature. At the core, humans are selfish greedy creatures. If you don't believe me, visit a Christmas sale at a big department store sometime. People are using copyrights for selfish ends.
If that is so, then you don't know what it means to be human. It is human nature to make our best interest to look out and work for the best interest of others, but sometimes that doesn't happen because we are finite, or we use our free choice to deny that nature. Copyrights reward people who harm society, a reward that is no longer bearable or tenable in the information age.
Ironically, when you force people to let others use their works however they like, you are placing a restriction on the person who created the work, which is really just another form of control
What are you talking about. I'm forcing noone to make a creation, I'm forcing noone to let me use their creation, rather they are spewing it everywhere and then when I make use of a copy they try to controll me and extract royalities. As far as I'm concerned, they can have their creation, in fact they already do - they have their original copy, and they haven't let me do anything with it.
Not illegal until the 1997 NET Act (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't try to paint it as something new enabled by P2P. What IS new is the idea that sharing files without making a profit is the domain of hardened criminals. What you are witnessing is the same thing lawmakers witnessed during prohibition. Copyright law has been transformed into complete and utter bullshit and everyone knows it. These are just the same law abiding people doing the same things they always have. As much as you might like to paint a different picture, most people who download music are not the same people who casually shoplift. The law is wrong. Obviously it needs to be repealed. Read all about it: [ucla.edu]
Fuck you very much President Clinton AND both houses of Congress for going with the monied interests instead of the intellectuals when dealing with "Intellectual Property" laws.
The defenders of P2P for LEGITIMATE use lose their credibility if they are not equally realistic and aggressive in condemning and thinking of ways to stop illegitimate use.
No they don't. They have issues with the DMCA and the NET Act and your definition of legitimate, along with the majority of America. "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Obviously, we don't consent. When teenagers are being dragged into court on criminal charges for sharing songs, when Girl Scouts have a list of songs that are illegal sing around the campfire, and when I cannot legally sing Happy Birthday to my niece at McDonald's, something is terribly wrong with the law. It's time our lawmakers got tough on the corporate criminals stealing our culture from the public domain.
Re:Power to abuse? (Score:2, Insightful)
P2P "pirates" only think in terms of themselves, but Adam Smith would say that in doing so, the Invisible Hand generates progress. Everybody who downloads the latest GCC is doing it only for their own good, but the fact that GCC is free and widely used makes a lot more progress possible.
To think you can draw a line between two halves of humanity -- "the creators and consumers of IP" -- is absurd. Nobody creates something new in a complete vacuum; everybody who creates is also a consumer. To mark a set of people as "consumers" and then try to limit what they can do, will necessarily limit what creators can do, which limits progress of science and the useful arts. You can't have one without the other.
When I read your post, I was a consumer. When I typed a response, I was a creator. If nobody could read anything on the internet, would anybody write anything on the internet?
Re:Power to abuse? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is two problems with argument.
First, it is inevitable that a laissez-faire system of any sort is taken over by someone wishing to establish a dictatorship. A laissez-faire system, by definition, means a system that is not overseen by anyone; it is simply a state of anarchy, and anarchy always ends with someone taking the reins of power - after all, there's people who want power and no one to stop them.
Second, for a wicked man, the ability to do evil and make others suffer is in itself a reward. It is insufficient to consider only selfish evil - the willingness to harm others to benefit yourself - to understand human psyche. You also have to consider malicious evil, the willingness to do harm to others even when it doesn't benefit you in any way, and in extreme cases, even when it does you harm too.
In short, no kind of system can possibly remove the reward for gaining power, since the one in power can make his own rewards, and some sick bastards get their kicks from the abuse of power itself rather than any benefit for themselfs gained from said abuse.