Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> Dan Rosenthal wrote:
>> You've identified one of the criticisms of OCILLA/DMCA -- that it can be
>> easily abused by copyright holder to keep stuff offline. (This is what the
>> EFF is probably getting involved over). However, the proper response to that
>> is for the alleged infringer to request sanctions against the copyright
>> holder for misrepresentation. It's not the Foundation's place to get
>> involved, nor the proper use of their resources to second and third-guess
>> these decisions. They take the office action, remove whatever it is, and if
>> the underlying legal battle gets fought, they can then go and reverse it. So
>> no, there's no obligation to interject ourselves, but more importantly I
>> think we DO have an obligation to respect the existing legal system as well
>> as protect the entire project from litigation.
>>
>>
>>
This raises an interesting question. One of the criticisms of
the whole system is that there is no practical system of
even keeping track of how much the system is abused,
since apparently only Google is open about what suspected
infringing content it is removing. So there really is no one
keeping the system honest.
It is clear to me that antagonizing all those people who
are making accusations that content on Wikipedia is
of an infringing nature -- whether it is or is not -- may
well not be a tactically wise to the world move. But it
does give one pause. In an ideal world it would be cool
to be completely transparent to folks like Chilling
Effects.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen