TorrentFreak

Yesterday Google kindly published a database of takedown requests sent to the search giant on copyright grounds. The DMCA notices are supposed to help protect legitimate sales but entertainment companies sending them are clearly having problems. Witness some of the world’s biggest music and movie companies taking down everything from news articles promoting their latest releases, to their very own marketing content.

A London-based anti-piracy company has found itself mired in controversy after it wrongfully took down comedian Dave Gorman’s work posted to Flickr. The company responded with the excuse that their server had been hacked last month by people hoping to ruin the company’s reputation. Research into DMCA takedowns previously issued by the company suggests they can do that on their own.

The EFF has filed a brief in the dispute between the cyberlocker Hotfile and Warner Bros, where the latter is accused of taking down content they don’t hold the copyrights to. The EFF argues that Warner Bros. is stifling online speech by denying Hotfile users to access to legitimate content. The movie studio’s claim that they are not responsible for mistakes made by a computer, but this is not a valid defense according to the group.

The DMCA was once drafted to protect the interests of copyright holders, allowing them to take infringing content offline. Today, however, the system is systematically abused by rightsholders as an overbroad censorship tool. One third of the notices sent to Google are false, companies like Microsoft censor perfectly legal sites, and others use the DMCA to get back at competitors.

Where would we be without censorship? Last year we ran a piece on a mistake by the US authorities, which shut down 84,000 websites for alleged child pornography crimes. Ironically enough, this article is now censored by a porn outfit. Paper Street Cash, LLC, the proud owners of teamskeet.com included the piece in a list [...]

The Tor network is a great service for those who wish to browse the Internet anonymously and uncensored. Unfortunately, however, there are still people who abuse the network’s resources by running their BitTorrent downloads over Tor servers. As a result, these servers are bombarded with DMCA notices, which in some cases may lead to them being disconnected.

Sending DMCA takedown notices in bulk has become increasingly fashionable during recent years but thanks to the database at Chilling Effects, we are able to see who is sending what to whom. As concerns mount over the amount of checking carried out before items are taken down, it appears that Fox has managed to get Google to delist DMCA complaints on Chilling Effects, which were originally sent by Fox themselves and submitted to Chilling Effects by Google.