In what should be a surprise to nobody, a judge ruled yesterday that “the ‘good faith’ test under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was subjective, not objective”.
What that means in essence, is that a fair suspicion of copyright infringement is enough to demand a site remove content. But in the print world, actual proof of infringement is required. This is great news for shady types, as they should be able to get their competitors into trouble just by claiming they have infringing content on their site and then come up with a reasonable sounding reason for thinking they might have.
All I can say is “what next?” This is crazy and of dubious benefit online anyway. However it may well lead to the likes of Microsoft using it to cause trouble for sites displaying content that they don’t approve of. Simply find something in the site you think you can make a case for copyright infringement, and then file a cease and desist notice. Considering the sorts of things that Microsoft and the other big guns are patenting and copyrighting nowadays, (like online to-do lists for example) it would not be hard to work around the legal requirements for “good faith”. I’d imagine that the record and movie companies are just wetting themselves in delight over this ruling as well.
Read this article at TheInquirer for more. If you have any concerns, you should probably pay this site a visit also.
Franki
