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If You Have a Blog and Allow Comments, Register for DMCA Protections, Sites Warn

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Re: If You Have a Blog and Allow Comments, Register for DMCA Protections, Sites Warn

#3
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.

Re: If You Have a Blog and Allow Comments, Register for DMCA Protections, Sites Warn

#6

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...

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.

Re: If You Have a Blog and Allow Comments, Register for DMCA Protections, Sites Warn

#8

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 b…

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

Re: If You Have a Blog and Allow Comments, Register for DMCA Protections, Sites Warn

#10
post #6

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...

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…

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?
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