WordPress pulls interview with anti-gay group Straight Pride UK
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The DMCA is a textbook example of how the US caters to big corporations, not how to write good laws. The few redeeming qualities of the DMCA are vastly outweighed by the harm that the DMCA has caused and is continuing to cause.
I'm not ignoring that. A simple counter-claim will get your contents reinstated. You don't actually have to be guilty of copyright infringement to get sued in court. The DMCA does not change this.
> most people do not have the resources to sue a large corporation
What does this have to do with the DMCA? The DMCA is about content carriers, not end users. There is no way data carriers would allow themselves to be liable for the copyright infringements of their users. Thus, without the DMCA, they would simply comply with any legal threat regardless of its merits. The DMCA puts the power back in the hands of the people by allowing the user to file a counter-claim and getting their contents reinstated without any risk to the content carrier.
You could get sued for copyright infringement before the DMCA, and now you still can. Nothing has changed in that regard.
Granted, but at the same time, the requirement to get your blog/website/etc back online isn't difficult.
Sure, just prove that they didn't believe they were filing a valid claim at the time.
Yeah, they just need to send a counter-notice with their full name and address to a bunch of angry homophobes, whilst being gay and running a gay rights site. Easy!
"WordPress is legally required to respond to DMCA notices, but also instructed Hotham how to counterclaim, though one of the requirements was to "consent to local federal court jurisdiction, or if overseas, to an appropriate judicial body"."
And...
"In a statement, WordPress said it recognised that this was an abuse of the DMCA law.
"We think this was a case of abuse of the DMCA and we don't think that taking it down was the right result," said Paul Sieminski, general counsel for WordPress parent company Automattic. "It's censorship using the DMCA.""
If the law says you take down a page after receiving a DMCA notice, you take down the page.
If you don't, you will be punished. That's how the law works.
WordPress not complying with the DMCA could have the effect of them losing their safe-harbor status which might very quickly lead to them going off the net completely. The monetary issue aside (going off the net would mean they lose all of their revenue), is it worth losing all WP.com hosted blogs just to temporarily keep one online?
The outcry from WP's users would help to push our politicians toward a real solution to copyright rather than another hand-out to well-connected corporations.
You cannot lose your status "globally" by choosing not to act on an individual notice. Each notice you respond to provides safe harbor from the potential copyright infringement suit over that one piece of material. All WP would be risking is being sued for that one interview, not the rest of their network.
DCMA seems to work the same way as patent trolls - the little guy just gives up, too expensive, and only the bigwigs can fight back. :/
(to those suggesting a british student sue a british organisation in a US court, please think about how insanely expensive that would be, for someone without a job.)