Digital Millennium Copyright Act celebrates a quarter century of takedown notices It has been 25 years since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was signed into US law by President Bill Clinton, ushering in an era of intellectual property (IP) protection for all. Or that was the hope. The DMCA has its basis in treaties passed in 1996 by the World Intellectual Property Organization aimed at dealing …
I disagree that the DMCA should have anything to say about the relationship between those hosting content and those generating it, as far as legitimate submissions are concerned. If a given host is too burdensome with its T&Cs* then the creator should take their business elsewhere or self-host. If offering up content to a large platform is beneficial due to a larger audience or private hosting is excessively costly, then there's the quid to the quo of host content monetisation.
*It might be reasonable for legislation to require clear T&Cs to be enforceable.
The era after it's passing was one of the most prolific eras of media piracy, and also one of banner profits for the media players that pushed for it.
Every premise it was built on was flawed or an outright lie. What got people off the pirate feeds was cheap streaming content from the likes of Netflix, Pandora, and Spotify. Google got it's star acquisition not only exempted from enforcement but in the process got itself a sweetheart deal paying pennies on the dollar of what the other music and media companies could negotiate. Essentially permanent most favored nation status.
YouTube was founded on pirate content. During the trial they showed that their own employees were responsible for uploading massive amounts of material that formed the core of high quality content that allowed the platforms explosive growth. That lawsuit only went away because nobody in the valley wanted to be on the wrong side of Add Daddy. So Google fed the content industry most of it's competition, and the studios signed a Faustian pact with the devil to allow Google to continue to profit off mass piracy.
The DMCA thus failed at it's legitimate purpose, and what remained was for it to be used over and over to attack security researchers, open source developers, and competitors. To harass and intimidate journalists and musicians with fake takedown notices. (or real takedown notices based on bogus claims).
The DMCA and the patriot act were both disasters, and instead of repealing them, we are still living in their shadows decades later. These terrible laws help normalize an era of predatory laws protecting the narrow interest of the largest players, and normalized a bold new era of looking the other way while leaving things utterly and obviously broken.
How'd that work out for us again?
Data is infinitely copyable and trying to fight against that is like trying to plug the hoover dam with your penis.
Carrot, not stick. Make me want to pay, like the way I buy video games from the likes of Steam and Good Old Games (GoG). A few clicks, a little money (ridiculously cheap sales if you wait, too) and I'm playing. Immediate refunds available if it's crap, too.
Yep, I have gotten one or two of those takedown request.
One of your customers is downloading movie …. Or some such.
The system they are using must be automated. We get the request as it is happening.
Lots of fun to be had. All you have to do is trace the bandwidth to a Mac (if you are supplying public Wi-Fi). Find the manufacturer Mac info for the device type and look on the dhcp for a name.
So I walk up to this guy, Fred. I know it is Fred because it was “Fred’s phone”. An android phone.
I Let him know that the FBI want to talk to him about the movie he is downloading and watch him run. :)
Now in the takedown notice there wasn’t anything about reporting anything to anyone.
Some days can be so rewarding when you can teach somebody that they don’t really have any privacy on a public wireless.
Instead of trying to find innovative ways to get money to creators, the DMCA just tries to turn back the time to the 1970s, claiming that it can keep people from using computers. Essentially they try to maintain business-models that make no sense in the computer age.
In some areas, like mobile phones, they even succeeded, making manufacturers lock down their systems so users no longer can easily upgrade to another operating system. That is why there is so little progress in that field.
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