Oh, good grief.

[kyrielle]

You know, we've taken copyright to ridiculous extremes. The things the DMCA is being used for....

Like, say, shutting down a parody site - to such a degree that an upstream provider is cutting the entire ISP off due to this and previous problems. The article's worth a read, but it's also infuriating.

I hate to think about where this country is going and has gone, on this and many other fronts.

Comments

[supersat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's quite sad. I think Verio went way beyond their legal requirement in terminating their account. If I were The Thing, I'd sue Dow because parodies are fair use. It's making a first amendment-protected statement about the original work.

Another unfortunate part of the DMCA is that you have to shoot first and ask questions later. If you don't take down the potentially offensive material quickly after it is reported, you're liable for the infringement. The side effect of this is that anyone can claim something is copyrighted by them and BY LAW the provider has to immediately take it down. Sure, the customer can sue the person that made the claim, but only if they suffered any actual damages. If you're claiming you have a copyright on something on someone's personal site, there's no real recourse the legit owner has against you.