A System for Handling Imposter Complaints

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4 pointsrussell3 comments

This is a very long article, but the gist of it is that the victim should file a DCMA-like complaint citing the "Anti-Impersonation Act of 2009". This will get the complaint into the ISP's DCMA queue where it will be investigated and acted on.

Edit: gojopmo pointed out that the "Act" does not exist. So much for speed reading. The only safe way to use DCMA takedown is to have something copyrighted on the offending site. BTW IANAL. As for the photographs, in general the photographer owns the rights to the images. I suppose if it were taken with victim's camera, she could claim ownership. If it were me, I would claim DCMA and see where the chips may fall.

Note that this "Act" does not exist; it is proposed by the article.

As far as the faked page goes, an open reliable identification system could make impersonation more difficult. There needs to be responsibility on the provider to be able to investigate harassment cases, but as the cases grow in number, I could imagine the costs becoming prohibitive. Maybe we need the equivalent of smart spam prevention tools to help identify potential harassment pages before the person targeted even realizes they are being impersonated or attacked? It comes back to software understanding intent or meaning, a hard problem by today's standards. On the social media sites I frequent (twitter, facebook and friendfeed) there are tools in place to identify abusers of the system.

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