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Comment by jaredgeorge | Hacker News Reader

Is it just me or does this title seem misleading? It appears (from the article) that WordPress took down an article because of an abusive use of the DMCA and is legally required to do so...

"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.""

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That's pretty weak - "We knew this was wrong but we did it anyways."

Even if you might not like it, you have to conform to the law. If the law says you can't kill somebody, you don't, no matter how much you believe they deserved it.

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?

"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.

> WordPress not complying with the DMCA could have the effect of them losing their safe-harbor status

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.

The DMCA does not create any obligations to take down anything. It provides that IF a service provider CHOOSES to take down material in response to a notice, it gains liability protection for any copyright infringement it was committing by hosting that material. If WordPress believes the notice is being used for censorship reasons, and there was no infringement occurring, and thus no actual risk of being liable for hosting it, then ignoring the notice is both perfectly legal and there's zero benefit to complying with the request.

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