Can Copyright and the DMCA be used to silence critics? October 13, 2007
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about AT&T’s terms of service that included termination of your service if you said critical things about them. After a great deal of criticism AT&T has changed their terms of service. It now reads in part:
5.1 Suspension/Termination. AT&T respects freedom of expression and believes it is a foundation of our free society to express differing points of view. AT&T will not terminate, disconnect or suspend service because of the views you or we express on public policy matters, political issues or political campaigns.
This is not the last we’re going to see of corporations trying to censor their critics on the internet though. Not by a long shot. The law firm Dozier Internet Law is demanding that InfomercialScams.com take down negative consumer comments about DirectBuy. Dozier Internet Law claims they are specialists in a list of things including getting “websites pulled down without notice“. They don’t think the public should be able to express their opinion if they think “DirectBuy is a scam“. Worse yet, Public Citizen is being threatened with copyright violations for posting the threat letter claiming copyright on that too! I don’t know if DirectBuy is a scam or not but I read the comments on InfomercialScams.com and I can see why DirectBuy would want to erase them from the Internet.
These sorts of cases are becoming all too common but here’s something to keep in mind. “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.“
MediaDefender Busted September 15, 2007
Our friends over at torrentfreak recently discovered a huge cache of internal emails that were made public from MediaDefender. The sole purpose of MediaDefender’s “Miivi” site was to trick people into uploading copyrighted material, and bust them for it. These emails discuss everything from Miivi to fake torrents.
From the TorrentFreak article:
“When TorrentFreak reported that Media Defender (MD) was behind the video site MiiVi, they cast doubt on us. Now, in what is surely the biggest BitTorrent leak ever, nearly 700mb of MD’s emails have gone public. When MD’s Randy Saaf found out we rumbled MiiVi he said, “This is really f***ed.” This is too, but much more so.”
So give it a read, it’s very enlightening stuff.
Viacom steals video, issues take down notice to the artist August 30, 2007
Christopher Knight made a video as part of his campaign for Rockingham County Board of Education and posted it on Youtube last fall. A little over a month ago the cable network VH1 took the video he made from Youtube without permission and used it in their for-profit television show Web Junk 2.0. Knight wasn’t upset about that. He was pleased that so many more people got to see his work than he expected. So he put a clip of the VH1 segment showing his own video on Youtube.
Yesterday he got a letter from Youtube. It seems that Viacom had the clip containing the work they pirated taken down for copyright infringement.
Dear Member:
This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Viacom International Inc. claiming that this material is infringing:Web Junk 2.0 on VH1 features my school board commercial!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddyVQwpByug
On his blog Knight brings up questions we all should be asking. “What does this mean for independent producers of content, if material they create can be co-opted by a giant corporation without permission or apology or compensation? When in fact, said corporations can take punitive action against you for using material that you created on your own?” Vaicom is heavy handed in it’s copyright infringement patrol but they don’t seem to have a problem violating copyright them selves. It’s not just fair use thats under attack these days. We the people are too.
