[Ecommerce] copyright takedown experiment

[James Love]

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave@farber.net]
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2004 8:28 AM
To: Ip
Subject: [IP] copyright takedown experiment



Begin forwarded message:

From: Kurt Albershardt <kurt@nv.net>
Date: October 19, 2004 2:17:32 AM EDT
To: dave@farber.net, gnu@toad.com
Subject: copyright takedown experiment

> From <http://www.doom9.net/>:

Dutch civil rights organization Bits of Freedom has run an interesting
experiment: They put up a text by a famous Dutch author, written in  1871
to accounts with 10 different ISPs. Then they made up an imaginary
society that is supposed to be the copyright holder of the author in
question, and sent copyright infringement takedown notices to those 10
ISP via email (using a Hotmail account). 7 out of 10 ISPs took down the
material, sometimes within hours and without even informing the account
holder. One ISP doubted the legitimacy of the claim and asked for some
proof that the alleged plaintiff was in fact the copyright holder. Yet
another ISP actually realized that copyright had long since run out on
the work. That's real scary, don't you think? Made up society, Hotmail
addresses and a website is gone. I doubt it would work if you wanted to
take down the MPAA/RIAA homepage, but if you run a small website,  chances
are good that somebody can have your site shut down with little  effort,
even if there's absolutely no grounds for it. I guess "guilty  until
proven innocent" is already a reality in a lot of places.

Paper here <http://www.bof.nl/docs/researchpaperSANE.pdf>


--
James Love
http://www.cptech.org mailto:james.love@cptech.org
mobile +1.202.361.3040