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Honoring a DMCA takedown isn’t ever required, but ignoring one strips away the safe harbor protections for that specific content. This in turn makes you liable
by kd5bjo 7y ago
Honoring a DMCA takedown isn’t ever required, but ignoring one strips away the safe harbor protections for that specific content. This in turn makes you liable for any copyright infringement of that content as if you had published it yourself. If it’s legitimate, you’ll presumably win the court case and quite possibly get your attorney fees back.
- strogonoff 7y agoThanks for patient explanation. I guess, to sum up, the current system enables smaller players (commenters, vloggers, site authors) to publish on the Web through intermediaries of all kinds (like Linode or YouTube). Those intermediaries want to make sure they don’t get sued for the content they host, so they use safe harbor and observe DMCA. Those enjoying more direct access to the backbone (metaphorically and possibly literally speaking) of the Internet trust their legal teams and don’t need safe harbor protections. Thus if you are lucky enough to not need the safe harbor protections, you have the ability to bully smaller fish by issuing takedowns left and right.
- kd5bjo 7y agoThat’s essentially right but the ability to use takedowns to bully the smaller fish comes from a slightly different source. What the DMCA safe harbor provisions both try and succeed to do is remove those intermediaries from potential copyright proceedings. This allows them to flourish but also disincentivizes them from providing legal assistance to their customers— the ultimate lawsuit will be not be Giant Media Conglomerate vs Comcast ISP, it will be Giant Media Conglomerate vs John Doe. So the fundamental problem here doesn’t really have anything to do with copyright, but rather the reality that fighting a lawsuit can ruin you even if you’re in the right.