Discussion about DMCA and take down requests.

[spidy]

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Mainly associated with USA based hosts etc. The basic idea is that a host cannot be sued or held liable for comments (that may contravene copyright materiel) that is posted on places they run as long as they "expeditiously" remove such content when sent a correctly worded "take down request"

(although the act does not specify what is meant by EXPEDITIOUSLY )

If they remove the content they are then protected under the "safe harbour scheme" system from prosecution.

Here is where the system badly falls down, IF the host receives an INVALID or untruthful take down request most hosts will comply with it to protect themselves and ignore the FACT that it is an INVALID request.

IF the wording of the request is technically correct many hosts will use this as an excuse to comply with the request saying that the FORMAT and wording is correct so they will comply with it.

Although this is a USA legislation some other countries will comply while others have similar legislation.

Some hosts that are quite happy to stab their customers in the back after receiving blatantly obvious fraudulent and invalid take down requests include the following.

Dreamhost.

CloudFlare.

Leaseweb.

Domains by Proxy.

Web Hosting Hub.