What I don't get is how merely _alleging_ a copyright infringement under the DMCA can lead to the immediate take down of an entire website. If I was to claim Microsoft infringed my copyright, would they take microsoft.com offline for 10 days?
The entire point of that section of the DMCA was to make it easy for rights-holders to get something pulled from a site. While the DMCA definitely puts too much power in the hands of rights-holders, the previous method was to sue the infringer and then wait for a court to issue an injunction (which could tend to take a while; the courts aren't really known for their speedy service).
Rights-holders obviously don't like the idea that the infringing material just sits there being distributed to anyone that wants it while all the legal ducks are lined up for filing suit and petitioning a judge to issue the injunction.
> If I was to claim Microsoft infringed my copyright, would they take microsoft.com offline for 10 days?
The big players obviously have the rules bent for them, especially since they have large legal teams. I assume that if you have a large, highly-paid legal team, your hosting provider might also let you leave your content up with the understanding that your legal team will help them out if the DMCA-notice-issuer comes a-knockin'. Either that, or they make enough money off of your account to warrant paying legal fees to defend themselves in order to keep you as a happy customer.
In your example, Microsoft would probably just remove the offending material, then rush the court documents to get a suit underway so that a judge could issue a ruling allowing them to distribute it while the matter was decided.
The issue, it seems to me, is that a rights-holder by that definition is anyone who _claims_ to be a rights holder. I would expect there to be some form of plausibility check by an independent person, otherwise there could be completely frivolous denial of service attacks based on this law.
Not a lawyer, but I thought DMCA takedowns only applied to the safe-harbor provisions for ISPs and hosters. Since microsoft likely self-hosts their content, there would be no advantage for them to comply with a takedown request. Takedowns aren't law--- you don't have to comply, but if you do, then you're indemnified from a lawsuit by the copyright holder.
Why would they host it on Network Solutions? The unfortunate reality is that we do not always have freedom of speech in fact. Most network hosts are not going to protect you if they're afraid of being sued.
They should be using http://prq.se, the same company that hosts TPB & wikileaks.
Edit: This post is perhaps ill-informed. Network Solutions is 4chan's registrar so they can't be that bad.
>"Why exactly do people refer to the DNS as 'distributed' ?"
Because it is distributed: both physically/geographically in where the machines are sited and the use of anycast at the root, and architecturally/conceptually in the way responsibility for zones is hierarchically delegated (aka "distributed") to sub-root-level servers which are authoritative for their subdomain of the namespace.
If microsoft did not publish the document, or they did not register and establish it as copyrighted material, then I say Cryptome should claim copyright of the document.
Furthermore, the CALEA requires ISPs to coperate with "LAW Enforcement" of which Microsoft is NOT. What Law enforcement agency told network solutions to block the domain?
How is it not valid to say that a guide written by Microsoft is protected by copyright and can't be republished?
If he believes himself that copyright is not intended to protect this type of material, why doesn't he file a DMCA counter notice so that Network Solutions is prevented from taking down his site?
No host is going to put themselves on the hook for some customer's infringement by ignoring the safe harbor rules, regardless of noble intent of the infringer.
