

Twitter uncloaks a year's worth of DMCA takedown notices, 4,410 in all - Slimy
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/twitter-uncloaks-a-years-worth-of-dmca-takedown-notices-4410-in-all.ars

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davvid
I'm confused why twitter even has to do anything here.

For example:
[http://chillingeffects.org/dmca512c/notice.cgi?NoticeID=1860...](http://chillingeffects.org/dmca512c/notice.cgi?NoticeID=186005)

Is it really illegal to _link_ to infringing material?

Oh.. that's right. <http://www.2600.com/news/112801-files/universal.html>

Wow, that's so stupid. Why don't they just strip the hyperlink part and leave
the URLs un-linked? It'd be a nice legal way to comply while disagreeing.

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droithomme
I do understand copyright applying to avatar and background images. If someone
is using someone else's artwork or photography for either one of these, I can
see a DMCA notice coming in and being honored.

I suppose there could also be some sorts of material where 160 characters
could exceed quoting for fair use. Such as haikus.

I do not understand all the takedowns because of mere mentions of pirate
sites, or inclusion of their names, or even linking.

Has linking really become illegal? That was one of the nightmare scenario
people were worried about some years ago, but which was dismissed as something
that would never happen.

I completely and totally contest that a URL to an actual site is a copyright
violation. (Barring the extreme cases such as a URL containing a haiku, but
that doesn't seem to be the case in any of the incidents listed.)

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nostromo
Certainly if Twitter had to remove a link to a link to The Pirate Bay
([http://chillingeffects.org/dmca512c/notice.cgi?NoticeID=1860...](http://chillingeffects.org/dmca512c/notice.cgi?NoticeID=186005)),
so would Google. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems that Twitter is being "extra
cooperative" here; that's not totally unreasonable for a smaller company with
limited resources.

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akashshah
Can someone explain to me how links to copyright content come under DMCA?
Twitter is most definitely not hosting the copyright content? Why are they
even at the receiving end of takedown requests?

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dangrossman
Profile images and backgrounds can be infringing and are hosted on Twitter.
Enough people hijacked the identities of celebrities and businesses to need
the Verified Accounts program after all.

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nextparadigms
Google takes down links under DMCA, too.

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ngokevin
We've automated the whole DMCA process here at Oregon State University. We
have Python scripts that parse the takedown emails, a Python suite that parses
network logs to associate it with a user, emails appropriate people, disable
network access if they do not respond, complete with django webapp and api.

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moizsyed
Is there an API to Chilling Effects? Would love to do some fun things on this
dataset.

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devindotcom
Yeah I personally would love to see some basic data breakdowns per site,
service, region, etc.

