There we have it: let’s make polyfill additions to the existing Web to demonstrate how a Reliable, Private, and Fun Web can emerge.
censoredIn May, the US Copyright Office came to San Francisco to hear from various stakeholders about how well Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA is working. The Internet Archive appeared at these hearings to talk about the perspective of nonprofit libraries. The DMCA is the part of copyright law that provides for a “notice buy sales lead and takedown” process for copyrighted works on the Internet. Platforms who host content can get legal immunity if they take down materials when they get a complaint from the copyright owner.
Content owners–there is no other area of law that allows content to be removed from the web with a mere accusation of guilt. Victims of harassment, defamation, invasions of privacy, or any other legal claim, have to go to court to have anything taken down.
Unfortunately, this tool can be, and has been abused. We see this every day at the Internet Archive when we get overbroad DMCA takedown notices, claiming material that is in the public domain, is fair use, or is critical of the content owner. More often than not, these bad notices are just mistakes, but sometimes notices are sent intentionally to silence speech. Since this tool can be so easily abused, it is one that should be approached with extreme caution.