Deeplinks Blog posts about DMCA
Major record labels are once again trying to force an Internet service provider into enforcing their copyrights by cutting off customers from the Internet over copyright accusations. The lawsuit they filed against Texas broadband provider Grande Communications suffers from many of the same due process problems as the BMG Music Publishing v. Cox Communications case, which is on appeal.
After almost two decades of litigation, you’d think the contours of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbors would be settled. But the cases just keep coming, and while the overall trend is pretty favorable, the latest ruling takes an unfortunate turn (PDF).
The case involves LiveJournal, a social media platform that allows users to create “communities” based on a common theme or subject. The communities are partly managed by moderators, who review posts (including photos) that users submit to make sure they follow the rules for posting and commenting created by the community. A community focused on celebrity news, called “Oh No They Didn’t” (ONTD), became particularly popular, garnering millions of views every month.
The latest episode of the technology podcast Reply All features an excellent summary of some of the issues with the World Wide Web Consortium's current project to create a standard for restricting the use of videos on the web; we've created this post for people who've just listened to the episode and want to learn more.
What's going on?
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is a standards body: they work to create open standards, rules for connecting up the web that anyone can follow, guaranteeing that anyone can make a web browser, web server, or website.
The “notice-and-takedown” process for addressing online copyright infringement isn’t perfect: it’s often abused to remove lawful speech from the Internet. But it many cases this process, described in Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), works pretty well—particularly because of the safe harbors that protect Internet services that comply with the law. That’s why it’s so frustrating that major media and entertainment companies are still pushing the Copyright Office to recommend throwing away the safe harbors and instead order Internet platforms to filter users’ communications.
Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.) just re-introduced their You Own Devices Act (YODA), a bill that aims to help you reclaim some of your ownership rights in the software-enabled devices you buy.


