Google: the majority of takedown notices are bogus
Google has filed a submission with the New Zealand government in response to the new law there, which compels ISPs to terminate your Internet connection if you're accused of copyright infringement three times. In its submission, Google discusses its experience with "notice and takedown," which allows people to censor web-pages merely by asserting that they infringe copyright -- and they note that this process is routinely abused -- check out the numbers they proffer:
In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.This doesn't surprise me: what did the world's governments expect when they allowed the entertainment industry to talk them into notice-and-takedown? If you create a free, easy, largely consequence-free means for censoring the Internet, that it wouldn't be abused?
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Somebody has to be the guinea pig. You can't move to fascism without beta testing your repressive techniques.
So what would happen if every person who is interested in fair copyright laws gave notices to the RIAA and their ilk to takedown every web page or propaganda piece they ever put out?
"If you create a free, easy, largely consequence-free means for censoring the Internet, that it wouldn't be abused? "
That was the idea.
Everywhere I look, I see governments in barely hidden panic, desperately scrabbling for some way, any way to shut the web up. They will do a great deal more harm yet in their efforts to monopolize the pravada. But they WILL lose. The only way governments could succeed in crushing free speech on the web is if they fully cooperate with each other in conspiracy against their own people. Happily, that just isn't going to happen.
Actually, the article says that 57% were targetting business competitors and that 37% were bogus.
Thank you Google!
"[E]xcessive copyright protection can stifle creativity, choke innovation, impoverish culture and block free and fair competition." Amen.
It's interesting that Google should choose to get involved in this one. Is this an expression of a true belief held by Google? Is it a PR stunt engineered to garner more respect from the open information advocates that so hammered Google over their practices in China and elsewhere? Or is there some hidden financial incentive Google has for opposing New Zealand's new law?
The financial incentive isn't all that hidden: Google own YouTube, so the burden of dealing with all these stupid takedown requests is on them. This in turn makes YouTube less useful, therefore less popular - it's the small number of creators attempting to actually make money using YouTube that are most vulnerable.
Why is this something the "world's governments" did? As far as I am informed, just a few countries implemented it or plans to do so. The EU parliamnet for example rejected the idea. But this doesn't count, right? Because the EU is eeeeeeeeevil.
#6 @ Iason and #7 Tynam raise real questions about Google's incentive, and I'd add to the fray by pointing out that Google doesn't just take ON the burden of these take-down requests, but has done so in remarkably stupid and "be evil" ways which cast suspicion on their motives -- and their ability to advocate effectively and in a trustworthy manner -- here.
An example: parent company Google has spearheaded vicious blogger crackdown and content attack through Blogger over the past year or more, responding to any all takedown notices for SONGS by deleting people's entire blog POSTS, thus killing content and disrupting blogger as a reliable publishing medium. In response, many of the biggest music blogs who were on blogger have deserted the company.
Some copyright "protector", right?
Unlike you, these numbers surprise me quite a bit.
They're this *LOW*?
Weird, how whenever Google comes up, whatever the matter is, people change the subject to dead horses. Google's always behaved like the big corporation it is, and will, for as long as it's in business, continue to do so.
What's happening here is nothing more than Google expressing its aversion to a stupefying law penned and passed by people with astonishingly little idea of the ramifications of such legislation, and that has clearly been abused until now where enacted and will likely continue to be abused wherever it goes. That it affects Google's profits and is a general administrative annoyance is a given: it's a corporation. Businesses generally don't do things out of the goodness of their hearts.
Whatever Google's motivation, if companies are sending bogus notices in an attempt to stifle competition, I believe that they should be charged with fraud. Within the existing legal and business framework, it is too easy to send a DMCA violation notice, and there must be a consequence of doing so in case the notice is in error. This would force companies to perform due diligence to prevent erroneous claims as well as to raise the price beyond simple the "cost of doing business". Personally, I support ditching copyright and avoiding this whole mess altogether.
... allowed the entertainment industry to talk them into notice-and-takedown?
I'm no fan of big media's use of copyright -- IMO, the current copyright regime does far too much to restrict both thought and speech -- but I think this aspect of the DMCA (in the states, at least) should be called "notice-and-takedown-or-counternotice", because you really do have a chance to refute the original notice. It's a good concept. It only falls down when ISPs and hosting services take the original notice at face value, rather than as an unproven assertion. ISPs have a safe harbor and they should use it.
Ordering a take-down is so easy that even God came out of hiding to hit me with one.
See:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pip_r_lagenta/3328737287/
Fraudulent, abusive DMCA takedown notices are subject to the penalty of perjury, btw...that's actually part of the DMCA.
Coupla technical points:
* AFAIK the submission was filed not with the government but the industry body trying to hammer out a code of practice; while many submitters complained about the law itself (and one major ISP has walked out of the talks) it's only indirectly at issue here (If there isn't agreement the minister has promised to do something unspecific about the situation).
* While section 93 has takedown notices for online content (and it's notice-and-takedown, not notice-and-notice), the submission is on s92, which is about cutting off the internet of downloaders. Google's interest here is in terms of its consumers not its content. The DCMA notice thing is relevant by extension - download complaints will be no more reliable.
I bet there's a sweet master list of sites that DON'T fall under these rules.