I would have taken the pages down ...
... and sent a written apology. Then, sit back and wait :)
Microsoft appears to have asked Google to remove some microsoft.com pages from Google's search engine. TorrentFreak reportsthat LeakID, an organisation that provides services such as “Monitoring illegal links and sources” and “Send automated takedown notices to ISPs hosting infringing links and websites”, has sent Google a …
sorry, although I probably agree with you, I have to say:
EITHER - one thing or another thing, not thing A, or thing B, or thing C (and so on ad infinitum).
Not quite the French level of language 'zealotardiness' yet, but some things are just implicit in the word definitions.
I almost now also feel the need to state 'epic micro$oft fail', but in all-caps and a recurrent exclamation mark...
My dictionary says that when 'either' is used as a conjunction it is used before the first of two - or sometimes three or more - specified alternatives introduced by 'or'.
That's the Longman 2003 Standard English dictionary.
Can you give the source for your claim that 'either' is exclusively used with only two alternatives? Either you have a source, or you were making an unwarranted assumption, or this is plain grammar Nazi nastiness. Do let us know which.
Yup, and that is the problem in a nutshell:
You may not KNOW you've been excluded from the Net. Because, let's face it, if you don't show up in a Google search you pretty much don't exist. I not sure if this isn't even more disturbing than their (alleged) worldwide hoovering of personal data for the NSA's benefit..
for all we know $someone could also have tricked LeadID into relaying a bogus request; which would tell us more about this organisation than Microsoft
They appear to be a company that makes a living sending DMCA takedowns. That tells me all I need to know about them really.
Parasites.
"Don't they have some kind of legal rights to compensation?"
Most of the DMCA request thingies I have seen state that you must specify the following in a takedown request - "I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate, and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed" - which means that the person/organisation is specifically claiming to either own the copyright of the thing in dispute or be acting on behalf of the owner.
There are a few high profile cases of an ass-kicking for misrepresenting copyright ownership in this respect (ie http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2004/10/15 ) though I reckon takedowns vs ass kickings weighs extremely heavy on one side. For starters, going legal costs money and it is a big headache. I suspect cost/location/inconvenience stop many people with illegitimate claims against them or their content from seeking restitution.
Perhaps the law should be amended that any organisation that files ten false claims is considered vexatious and all further claims from them would be automatically disregarded. But no, I rather suspect the parasites doing this are behind the lobbying that makes it all possible.
Or maybe it's to do with the whole court case of microsoft (and cronies) vs google in the EU over the search monopoly.
"Find if you won't adjust yoru search thigns to favour us, then remove us"
Can't see how they could complain. Maybe google shoudl do that to all those complaining.
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Seems there's a lot of people who either don't understand the DCMA and so miss-use it or deliberately abuse it.
Either way, it shows what a bad piece of legislation it is. Definitely time it was taken down and thrown away. Sadly, that's about as likely to happen as me winning a EuroMillions Rollover - one can hope, but...
Ever tried using the built-in bing search at microsoft.com to search for technical docs/info?
They must know that the only way to actually search their site is to use google and site:microsoft.com
As much as I'm not particularly fond of any mega-globo-corp-bastards, Google's search engine is actually pretty good at returning what I'm looking for. I tried DuckDuckGo for a while but the results are just never quite right.
What is really worrying me - out here we are a bunch of tech-oriented people that can see the second bottom of broken laws like DMCA etc., because we can also see that people are greedy, nasty bastards.
When we look at all voters - the game is pretty much lost. "DMCA is good because it protects you from TERRORISTS!" - yes, it sounds horrible, but that's an overdriven analogy of passing all-crap law these days (there's a few more "bridge topics").
Quality & human touch when it comes to sensitive cases today is gone. Corporations maximize their profits beyond recognition using all cold-blooded methods available. That's a highway to abuse.
And yeah, we can see it... but Paris can't! As long as people cannot see DMCA taking money from their wallets - they are fine with that - and pretty much everything else. They cannot see, that the B-side of the problem is cutting their liberties... one by one... cut, cut, cut.
It's sad but true. I have personally tried to enlighten a lot of people about the implications of bad law, spying, liberty-cutting etc. - but as I wrote - "man, $ in the wallet - I couldn't care less!".
I'm flabbergasted (I never thought I'd ever use that word) that automated takedown requests are even considered legal at all.
Similar to the automated takedown requests on YouTube of a mans video that contained only sounds of nature.
If I were a person of legal authority I would push into law a DMCA amendment stating that automated takedown notices are not considered legal, and are only legal when verified by a human.
Let's face it if corporations were given a chance they would shut down the entire internet which would make big media entirely happy where they are the only sites accessible.
Which law defines links as "illegal", exactly?
Surely a copyright infringement only occurs if actual copyrighted material is transmitted without the copyright holder's authorisation. The mere existence of a link to it isn't any sort of "infringement", surely, and therefore can't be rightfully characterised as "illegal".
Or was I absent the day the MAFIAA® rewrote the statute books?