James Delahunty
18 Mar 2007 18:57
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has recently taken on several individuals that have abused the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) takedown notice process. The group recently filed two cases against two abusers, and it is rumored that Viacom may also be tackled by the group. The first of these cases was against Michael Crook.
Crook responded to Craigslist personal ads and made a list of those he considered "perverts" and posted them publicly online. After a Fox News appearance, several pictures of him (from that appearance) appeared on some blogs. Crook used DMCA takedown notices to order that the pictures be removed. He also claimed that he owned the copyright to the images.
Of course, the two problems with the notices are that he didn't own the copyright to the images and that "fair use" would have allowed the pictures in any event anyway. The EFF stepped in then and in a settlement, Crook agreed to stop using the takedown notices and recorded an apology video.
In another interesting ongoing case, the EFF has gone after Richard Silver, the "creator" of the Electric Slide dance. He claimed that a video uploaded to YouTube violated his copyright. According to the EFF's complaint, the video actually only had about 10 seconds of steps that "resembled" the Electric Slide, which was enough for Silver to issue a DMCA takedown notice against YouTube.
The EFF is accusing Silver of knowingly misrepresenting his claim and in taking the case to court, said that dance steps are not suitable for copyright at all. Silver also claimed to have copyrighted a single video performance of the dance, but according to the EFF, that does not mean others cannot record the same steps in their own videos. The case is pending.
Recently, Viacom issues about 100,000 takedown requests to YouTube, of which, up to 60 notices may have been invalid, according to a Viacom executive. The EFF has called for YouTube users who had videos pulled inappropriately to contact the group but did not reveal any future legal plans.
Source:
Ars Technica