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OK, this is a pretty good point. What worries me - probably groundlessly - is that iffy point where the political and the commercial overlap. What if my polit

by Vivtek 17y ago

OK, this is a pretty good point. What worries me - probably groundlessly - is that iffy point where the political and the commercial overlap. What if my political speech is about health care reform? It's not commercial, but it offends some pretty deep pockets - in that case, given enough lawyers (and there are always enough lawyers!), I worry that this kind of law could and would be used to shut me up. No burden of proof. The DMCA has some fraud provisions that allow this kind of thing to be whacked, but I don't know the actual whack statistics. Geeks don't like the government (right now) because there has been a successful couple of decades of anti-government propaganda. Would opposing Anthem be as good for your PR as that? I don't believe it would be. Yet Anthem is arguably a pretty dangerous actor in our current political sphere.

lsc 17y ago
I agree that it is worrying. It's not a good law; the current situation is setup so that a risk averse hosting provider is likely to just take shit down when asked. But what I'm saying is that while there is a pretty big downside to standing up to bullshit takedown notices, there is also a pretty big upside. Would I personally take the risk? heh. well, it would depend on how strong I thought the case was. But probably; Like many entrepreneurs, I'm something of a glory hound and I have a moderate-to-high risk tolerance. My expectation would be that it wouldn't go to court. see what happened with ralph lauen and bong-boing: http://boingboing.net/2009/10/06/the-criticism-that-r.html http://boingboing.net/2009/10/06/the-criticism-that-r.html On the other hand, I do get a whole lot of obviously legitimate takedown notices. I've had several cases of some company selling knock off designer stuff who not only used the trade mark without permission, but who copied the legitimate website wholesale. I mean, I know jack about designer clothing, and I think knock-off goods are perfectly legitimate, but I think it's pretty important to protect trademarks.

by Vivtek 17y ago

lsc 17y ago

I agree that it is worrying. It's not a good law; the current situation is setup so that a risk averse hosting provider is likely to just take shit down when asked. But what I'm saying is that while there is a pretty big downside to standing up to bullshit takedown notices, there is also a pretty big upside. Would I personally take the risk? heh. well, it would depend on how strong I thought the case was. But probably; Like many entrepreneurs, I'm something of a glory hound and I have a moderate-to-high risk tolerance. My expectation would be that it wouldn't go to court. see what happened with ralph lauen and bong-boing: http://boingboing.net/2009/10/06/the-criticism-that-r.html http://boingboing.net/2009/10/06/the-criticism-that-r.html On the other hand, I do get a whole lot of obviously legitimate takedown notices. I've had several cases of some company selling knock off designer stuff who not only used the trade mark without permission, but who copied the legitimate website wholesale. I mean, I know jack about designer clothing, and I think knock-off goods are perfectly legitimate, but I think it's pretty important to protect trademarks.