More DMCA Censorship at Yahoo!

Thomas Hawk writes "Once again a Yahoo! user has found themselves on the short end of the DMCA stick. Video blogger Loren Feldman recently found that his video mocking (read parody) the Village People and blogger Shel Israel was removed from the Yahoo! service after Scorpio Music served Yahoo! with a DMCA takedown notice. The video in question contained a very brief fair use parody snippet of the Village People song YMCA as performed by a puppet. What's more, Yahoo! threatened Feldman with the termination of all of his Yahoo! services including the revocation of his Yahoo ID."

Microhoo! del.icio.us + flickr + mail = enema

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft welcomes you to Microhoo! del.icio.us, flickr, and mail!

Please download this proprietary nsakey.exe file to verify if you are general loser to our advantage. Silverlight required to proceed with the download.

What's the BFD here?

[TubeSteak]

It is terrible that it seems that anybody in the world can send a DMCA notice, valid or not, to Yahoo and get them to censor user content. Personally I think Yahoo has a higher obligation to the users who use their sites.

Yahoo doesn't have a higher obligation to there users and I don't recall the DMCA requiring content hosters to vet takedown notices.

You really think Yahoo (or any other large webhost/portal) is going to spend the money to have people sitting around all day checking the validity of every single DMCA takedown notice they receive?

Yahoo did what they were supposed to do under the law.
Now it's your turn to file a counter-notice [chillingeffects.org]

Re:D-M-C-A

[cp.tar]

You should have used HTML formatting.

Put a <br/> at the end of each line, and instead of empty lines, use the occasional <p>...</p> tag pair. Empty lines are the worst, I'd say; they bring your average way down.

I learned it the hard way, too, but I've been posting my comments in HTML ever since.

P.S. Obligatory Userfriendly link [userfriendly.org]

Re:What's the BFD here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that's not the American Way(TM). The American Way is to stomp your feet, whine like a little bitch, then blame the company who is following the law. Sure, he could have filed counter-notice and follow the law himself, but why do that when you can have a tirade and piss on a company you don't like?
 

Re:And they wonder...

[downundarob]

Yours is probably a rhetorical question, and you would know how to find out but..
Del Shannon originally penned (and had a hit with it) in 1961

Lawrence Welk 1962.
the Small Faces in 1967
Elvis Presley in 1970,
the Beach Boys were known to have played it live.
Charlie Kulis 1975
Bonnie Raitt 1977

Just to name a few

Re:Publish it in the open

[Evets]

That was a case under very specific circumstances. The takedown notice was actually filed with the copyright office before being sent. It specifically contained a "do not publish" clause within the takedown notice. And it was sent specifically to goad the recipient into publishing the takedown notice, as other very suspect takedown notices sent by that law firm had been published publicly by that particular site.

That's not to say that the big guns wouldn't just follow suit with that strategy, but the easy way around it has been around for years [catb.org] - although admittedly it doesn't scale very well.

Question mark end of DMCA stick

[iamacat]

DMCA takedown is basically a question from ISP to the content publisher on weather the material is distributed legally. The publisher can just tell Yahoo that the material is legal. In this case, the videos will be restored and subscriber's identity will be made known to the author of DMCA notice to settle the matter in court if necessary. The process is mutual and in fact the issuer of DMCA notice is liable for any damages resulting from the downtime.

Unlike DMCA counter-circumvention provision this is actually a good thing. ISP is off the hook and instead the customer and the purported copyright owner get to give up their claims or duke it out in court if they choose. Genuinely infringing material can be immediately removed from public access, ensuring that say, Photoshop source code does not make it into too many hands before the court battle is settled.

Re:DMCA counter notice

[yuna49]

From the level of whining we hear here, you'd imagine that a counter-notice would be a difficult and costly proposition. Here's what's really required [chillingeffects.org]:

* The subscriber's name, address, phone number and physical or electronic signature
* Identification of the material and its location before removal
* A statement under penalty of perjury that the material was removed by mistake or misidentification
* Subscriber consent to local federal court jurisdiction, or if overseas, to an appropriate judicial body.

Doesn't seem too onerous to me. Once you file the counter-notice the rightsholder has to file suit against you within 14 days in a Federal court. I'd bet many of these complaints would just fade away if the rightsholders were forced to file suit in response to counter-notices.

Instead we have people like the OP who decide the best route to contesting take-down notices is to complain in his blog and on Slashdot.

Now there are a couple of areas where the balance between the rightsholders and the alleged infringers might be improved. It appears that, for complainants, perjury only applies [chillingeffects.org] to the issue of whether the complainant is authorized to act on behalf of the rightsholder. For the counter-notice, perjury applies to the statement describing why the material does not infringe. If that's the correct interpretation, I'd like to see the perjury clause apply to the actual claim of supposed infringment as well as to the claimant's authorization. Forcing rightsholders to sign the claim of infringement under penalty of perjury might stave off nuisance take-down notices.

Also, while I understand the rightsholders wishes that the supposedly infringing material be removed as soon as possible, I do think it would have been better if the ISPs were required to notify the alleged infringer before the material is removed, not after.