Copyfraud: Poisoning the public domain

[Edric O]

Here's a very interesting article about the side effects of existing copyright law:

Copyfraud: Poisoning the public domain

The basic point is this: Actions taken against online copyright infringement effectively operate under the principle "guilty until proven innocent." If some company merely claims that their copyrights are being violated by certain free content, most sites will immediately remove that content and not bother checking if the copyright claim was valid. As a result, people can enforce copyrights they don't really have - just by claiming to have them and betting that no one will bother to check.

And some people have finally figured out that they can use this to make a profit, by claiming to hold copyright over works that are in reality in the public domain. Since there is no one out there with the job to defend the public domain, no one will challenge such fraudulent claims.

[Andrew]

I have sent a DMCA request to Gob citing your post as something I created and own copyright to. Expect it to be removed shortly. And I don't have to prove anything, or else I'll send my monkey lawyers after Gob! and Gob wouldn't want that, so he'll remove it.

Just an example of how silly DMCA gets.

I think it will be very interesting if copyrighted works are removed from internet and blocked. If they find a way to correctly and 100% do it, then there will be no copyrighted works on the net! I'm sure copyright holders will love the fact that none of their work will ever be seen or used. And I'm sure Microsoft would love a 100% proven anti piracy device, as it would remove 100 million users or so.