

If You Have a Blog and Allow Comments, Register for DMCA Protections, Sites Warn - dctoedt
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/if_you_have_a_blog_and_allow_comments_register_for_dcma_protections_sites_w?utm_source=maestro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tech_monthly

======
Scott_MacGregor
Why not just write it into Federal law that a site can act as its own
registered DMCA Takedown Agent, instead of having everyone go through
additional red tape and pay a $105 fee to run a blog.

In a way it seems like the fee to register is a freedom of speech issue. Pay
an inconsequential tiny fee to run a blog, or potentially suffer huge
financial losses. Kind of like the old Poll Tax from years ago.

It seems like being proactive as builders and maintainers of the internet, and
getting a new field added to the WHOIS data for a DMCA takedown email
addresses would make the process easier to administer for the complaintants,
and more in keeping with Freedom of Speech that the United States is founded
on.

~~~
wmf
AIUI the $105 fee _is_ to register as your own DMCA agent. Presumably it would
cost much more to hire someone to handle DMCA requests for you.

I don't understand the legalities about registration, but there have
definitely been problems about sending DMCA notices to the right place. In
many cases attackers send the notices to your hosting company who just nukes
your server and then notifies you later (or nukes your DSL and sends email to
an address you've never used). Would they have sent the notice directly to you
if you registered?

Putting abuse contacts in whois is a good idea; it's already done for IP
addresses but not for domains.
<http://www.fr2.cyberabuse.org/whois/?page=abuse-contact>

------
jrockway
Do services like Disqus handle this for you? The infringing material is hosted
from their site, after all.

------
cstross
Note: The DMCA is a specific piece of American legislation. It does not apply
in the UK, or Canada, or in general anywhere outside the United States.
Different regulations apply.

(I get irritated by articles like this that assume the whole of the world is
governed by US law.)

~~~
AgentConundrum
I'm in Canada, but my blog-that-nobody-reads is hosted in the US, as likely
will be another site going live soon. Wouldn't they be subject to the DMCA
since the host is in the States? Should I be looking into a new datacenter for
the new site?

~~~
cstross
Yup, if your blog is hosted in the USA, your hosting provider would be subject
to DMCA takedown notices. The solution is to find hosting elsewhere -- ideally
by shopping for a favourable jurisdiction.

Anyone got any good suggestions?

------
chrismiller
Does this at all apply to a service hosted in the US but owned/operated from
Australia? I wonder if there is a separate organisation we would need to
register with here.

------
seldo
I was going to mention that DMCA is typo'd in the title, but it's also mis-
spelled in the article itself.

~~~
dctoedt
Fixed; thanks.

------
kyleniemeyer
Wouldn't comment moderation be a simple way to avoid this?

Although I can understand that for larger sites that is not feasible - but for
personal blogs, avoiding the $109 would be nice...

~~~
hristov
Not exactly. Technically, if you serve a page which has copyrighted material
you are guilty of copyright infringement. So if the copyrighted material is on
your page even for a little bit(i.e., before you discover it and delete it),
you may be guilty of infringement for those people that have accessed your
page before you took the content down.

Also it is very hard to decide what is and isn't copyrighted material on your
own.

~~~
ams6110
Comment moderation to me means that comments do not appear until approved.
However I don't think this really avoids the issue: are you going to take the
time to research every comment to be sure that there is no infringing content?

~~~
kyleniemeyer
That is the kind of moderation I had in mind - but you are right, it could
take more time than it's worth.

------
wladimir
This extra cost will discourage sites from accepting comments, which is a
scary idea. It was nice to have the internet as a relatively open medium. But
those days are clearly numbered...

------
Chiisuchianu
How can anything in a comment be a copyright violation? Since when is text or
words copyrighted?

~~~
chc
Text and words were the original thing that copyright applied to, back with
the printing press.

