Fake Copyright Takedown Requests and Us

It happens everyday: Somebody’s intellectual property gets taken down from a site – often YouTube – even though there’s no question that the person who uploaded it is the owner and wants it out there. As creators/users/viewers what can we do to keep the information flow running – without aiding and abetting I.P. “piracy?”

TorrentFreak.Com has some ideas:

Not the original pic for this article. In fact, TVWriter™ “borrowed” it from a fine article on interweb censorship by Erik Kain at Forbes.Com. (Check it out!)

Should Bogus Copyright Takedown Senders Be Punished? – by Ernesto

Every week copyright holders send out millions of takedown notices to websites all across the Internet. While the majority of these claims are legitimate, a healthy percentage are not. These “errors” can cause serious harm to the public, but the senders are never held responsible for their mistakes. Perhaps it’s time to punish repeat senders of bogus takedown notices?

Yes, copyright holders are entitled to protect their content from being pirated, but whether they should be able to do this at all costs is up for debate.

In recent months the number of takedown requests sent out by copyright holders hasincreased dramatically, and we’re now at a point where it’s starting to turn the Internet into a big mess.

Just to give an idea of the scope of the issue, Google previously noted that 37% of all DMCA notices they receive are not valid copyright claims.

One of the problems is that many rightsholders use completely automated systems to inform Google and other sites of infringements. They swear under penalty of perjury that their notices are correct, but this is often an outright lie.

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One thought on “Fake Copyright Takedown Requests and Us”

  1. Streaming of the Hugo Awards at the World Science Fiction convention was cut off by automatic copyright bots because clips of TV and movies were shown. The awards had permission to show those clips.

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