Chilling Effects DMCA Archive Censors Itself 88
An anonymous reader sends this report from TorrentFreak:
The much-praised Chilling Effects DMCA archive has taken an unprecedented step by censoring its own website. Facing criticism from copyright holders, the organization decided to wipe its presence from all popular search engines. A telling example of how pressure from rightsholders causes a chilling effect on free speech. ... "After much internal discussion the Chilling Effects project recently made the decision to remove the site’s notice pages from search engines," Berkman Center project coordinator Adam Holland informs TF. "Our recent relaunch of the site has brought it a lot more attention, and as a result, we’re currently thinking through ways to better balance making this information available for valuable study, research, and journalism, while still addressing the concerns of people whose information appears in the database."
Ffs (Score:1)
Well who now watches the watchers?
I smell a rat (Score:5, Insightful)
Just what are they trying to balance ? People's right to know about abuses of the law with ?
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Well, they were on double super secret probation after all.
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Re:I smell a rat (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there actually is a legitimate issue here.
Not every takedown notice in the Chilling Effects database is bogus. By putting the text of legitimate notices in a searchable database, Chilling Effects can be used to find infringing content. For example I didn't see "Interstellar" when it was in the theaters near me. Using Chilling Effects I very easily found a number of sites offering bootleg downloads.
If Google removes an infringing link from search result, having the takedown notice copy stored at Chilling Effects appear in Google search result effectively nullifies the takedown. The offending URL is right there in the takedown text.
So what is being balanced here is Chilling Effects' mission -- serving as a database for researching takedowns -- vs. the legitimate copyright interests of the people issuing the takedowns. It won't stop legitimate or illegitimate users of the Chilling Effects database, but it won't guide casual search engine users to infringing content either.
Of course this won't satisfy intellectual property interest groups, whose only mode of operation appears to be "scorched earth".
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Well I can see that argument but if you go to the site, there isn't anything there. So if they just wanted to not be a pirate bay 2.0 they could have removed the links. Either way I doubt this has much effect on piracy one way or another. Before you mentioned it, I would never have thought to use chilling effects to search for downloads. The sites that specialize in such things do a much more thorough job of providing downloads.
Not always Free Speech (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not always about Free Speech, sometimes it's just copyright infringement.
A huge amount of notices on chilling effects are obvious and blatant copyright infringement notices of movies, films, music.
There are some that are real Free Speech issues when someone uses DMCA to stop others from speaking, but that's a minority. This minority is the one that must be fought.
If all notices are treated as a whole, making no distinction between real freedom issues and pirates abusing the system, the battle will be l
The censoring of free speech (Score:3, Insightful)
There are some that are real Free Speech issues when someone uses DMCA to stop others from speaking, but that's a minority
No matter how small that minority is, a censorship of free speech is A CENSORSHIP OF FREE SPEECH, much like what those motherfucking Islamists did in Paris
If we cowed to those fuckers then we might as well wave goodbye to the Western culture which celebrates freedom and liberty, at least as it has been portraying itself to be
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Yes, censorship must be fought.
But you are equating the killing on Paris to a police raid on a shop selling pirated products.
One is an attack on freedom, the other is not.
The minority of notices on chilling effects that involve an attack on freedom must be fought. The notices involving copyright infringement are not an attack on freedom, they are pirates abusing the report system and if you put all on the same basket, the war for freedom is lost.
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Copyright is a weapon, being used to attack free speech. You are wrong. DMCA is evil, all of it.
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Got any crackers?
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... is exactly the same as brutally murdering...
Oldest trick in the books there, pal. Maybe that garbage works on some, but it falls flat on this end... Censorship is bad. Nothing else to say.
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Yes it is. The content is irrelevant.
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DMCA is evil, all of it.
Not at all, the compulsory licensing parts of it are why many services are available in the US and not in other countries and the safeharbor provisions are probably the only reason we still have search engines.
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Not worth the price. Safe harbor can be provided without the other baggage. It's a sham.
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It's not always about Free Speech, sometimes it's just copyright infringement.
Go on, tell us when it's permissible for copyright infringment to trump free speech. I'll buy this argument only in the straight-up "somebody distributes copyrighted material which I own and does so without my express permission".
In particular I don't buy this argument for just about everything else, like "oh that looks like it might be our copyright so we'll issue some takedown requests, in fact we'll automate that process entirely for our convenience."
Moreso because the applicable law contains rather spec
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Actually, I'm willing to believe what he says, i.e. "most of the complaints are about actual copyright infringement", without proof. That these don't get reported is what one would expect to see, and given how easy it is to make a direct copy, one would expect that to happen often.
So what? How much harm does an instance of copyright infringement do compared with censoring one instance of free speech. Even the great predominance being valid complaints would not suffice to justify this act, and in particu
Re:Not always Free Speech (Score:5, Insightful)
The "battle" was lost a long time ago.
The war on drugs couldn't even be "won" and that had physical products with high costs and prison sentences.
How does anyone possibly think they can stop information, right or wrong, on a system that is designed to facilitate moving information?
It's honestly a waste of time and humanity would be much better served spending the resources/time/money/man hours elsewhere.
Re:Not always Free Speech (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you calculate that 400% figure as relating entirely to going after pirates?
Identify the software, and I will find you a cracked version. I'll even time how long it takes me.
Re:Not always Free Speech (Score:5, Insightful)
You're looking at it from the wrong angle. First off, there's big profits in prohibition. Second it provides pretext for the police to raid your house and kill your dog. Think of them as 'speed traps' for revenue.
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Amen!
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It's not always about Free Speech, sometimes it's just copyright infringement
that's funny because copyright law is fundamentally about censoring free speech.
so you can record a song and sell zillions of zero-cost copies for a profit. great! if i then buy one of those and share my own copy with anybody i'm suddenly a pirate? read my lips: gfy.
If all notices are treated as a whole, making no distinction between real freedom issues and pirates abusing the system, the battle will be lost.
that all notices are public is nice, so we can all see who the real pirates are.
Re:Not always Free Speech (Score:4, Insightful)
Aww, poor baby copyright holders, have to give their legal address to have someone else's URL suppressed. Never mind that the DMCA _counternotice_ requires not just a legal address, but an invitation to sue. And the legal address part has been used by false claimants to commit terrorism [slashdot.org]
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funny how you display such a narrow minded concept of "free speech" and yet call me the moron :-)
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From Wikipedia: "Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas using one's body to anyone who is willing to receive them."
Merriam Webster: "the right to express facts and opinions subject only to reasonable limitations (as the power of the government to protect itself from a clear and present danger) guaranteed by the 1st and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution and similar provisions of some state constitutions"
Oxford Dictionaries: "The right to express any opinio
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from your own investigation you might have already inferred that "freedom of speech" is a indeed pretty broad concept. distributing content is speech. meta-speech if you like because the very act of doing so can be a statement. for me personally it undoubtly is.
copyright law originates from the very basic desire to control the printing press, a few centuries ago. the bits about the "creator" came later on and are just a byproduct, today that's the facade for another fundamental goal which is the control of
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"A huge amount of notices on chilling effects are obvious and blatant copyright infringement notices of movies, films, music."
And what's the problem? The RIAA/MPAA and similar groups take down tons of videos, music, and more that are protected speech (parodies, fair use), that are in the public domain, or that they don't even own the copyrights too, as well as bully lawmakers to write new laws that extend copyright perpetually and make 99.9% of Americans criminal scum by default. I have absolutely no sympat
Re:Not always Free Speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy Links are free speech.
an illegal download ... is illegal.
But a link to this download on the google page per se is free speech. Now a DMCA censors this free speech of google to link this page for the correct search terms. That's what chillingeffects records.
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maybe its not where you live. in europe it is.
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What is an "illegal download", allo? That would be child porn, and "hate speech" in my jurisdiction.
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i did not specify this too exact. If you really want to nitpick, probably both and pirated stuff are not, because the download itself is not forbidden in many jurisdication, only the ownership and the distribution. What i meant, and i guess you know it, is that the illegal copy of a file is something which can be taken down with a DMCA, if the hoster is liable in this jurisdication. But taking down a link to this stuff is censorship.
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I do think their is often a misunderstanding of what protected free speech is. Free speech has never meant (in the US) no cost to speak, and it has never meant that all locations and media are protected from private interests impeding on all speech. At least constitutionally protected free speech is only guaranteed for individuals from government intrusion (and civil court judgments are generally not counted as government intrusion). It especially hasn't meant that commercial speech is protected (citizens
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yes and no.
First: Free Speech is about to speak free to those, who want to listen. Not to get a platform everywhere. Full ACK.
But: Free Speech should protect companies as well.
What can be compared to your post in germany is the right to "private copies", which means you can legally copy the CD for your car radio and you can give the copy even to relatives or close friends. Which excludes wider audiences or even companies.
But a .torrent is like a map. Nobody should forbid you to print a map with a big red X
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>But: Free Speech should protect companies as well.
Sure, but for profit speech must be accurate and follow local laws. I can proclaim snake oil as a cure for cancer, but I cannot sell it as a cure for cancer. I also cannot be legaly paid, or otherwise make a profit for selling snake oil as a cure, without some proof. You cannot have businesses profiting from illegal actions and hiding behind free speech. If you are sold a product for a purpose, you expect it to be safe, effective and legal. If it is
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No, not even there is a difference.
You can say, you think Snakeoil will cure cancer. If you tell, it really does, you can be held liable, even as person. If you told in good faith, you will not be liable for telling lies about it, maybe for exaggerating its healthiness. Of course, the penalty for lying about it will be higher, if you do so to sell it. So make sure to have sources for your claims and add references to them where its needed, then you'll be save. Otherwise you can even get problems if you blog
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"jon wolf photography"
thats interesting you see last week I was getting a notice at the bottom of the page telling me some results may have been removed under the european right to be forgotten laws
Just googled that now and there is no notice. (The notice didn't tell me who or why) unlike ones for movies which often give a list of urls where you might find a movie download or a project on github.
Not having the notice means there is no incentive for me to keep digging
this all started when someone bid at a c
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The problem is - who makes the distinction? They were just a repository, making it available for anyone to review and analyze it themselves.
analogous to "constructive dismissal" (Score:4, Insightful)
If the only way to find something is to already know it's there and exactly how to get to it then effectively it doesn't exist for anyone else because they'll never be able to find it on their own.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there such a thing as a P2P search engine? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because we appear to need one. And I don't mean an engine that search P2P torrents or something but rather one that is like google or Bing but run P2P sort of like Tor or something.
It doesn't need to be fast. It just needs to work.
Re:Is there such a thing as a P2P search engine? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes there is. See here: http://yacy.net/en/index.html
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Very cool. That may be what we have to shift to if they keep fucking with the search engines.
Chilling Effects Firefox extention? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like a firefox extention would be a good way to solve this.
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Except the point of ChillingEffects notices on search pages was to make the average person aware of these results being omitted. People who don't think this stuff really has any effect on them. The average person isn't going to know about, or bother installing, a Firefox extension to see.
Coawrds. They always cave in to pressure. (Score:1)
These idiots are cowards.
If they knew they were cowards to begin with they never should have
started.
There is nothing worse than a coward, unless perhaps it is a quitter.
Somebody should mirror the site (Score:5, Interesting)
Mirror the site, add links to each page back to the original, and make the mirror indexable. The site can't be so fast-changing this is impractical.
I never heard of this site ... (Score:2)
... I am late to the party and there's no ice.
Did I miss much?
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I see you dropped off the newslookup.com news archive back in September after the redesign and I was going to add you back but noticed that even your news-blog section is blocked.
Your robots.txt has
User-agent: *
/blog_entries
Disallow: /
This means the entire site is being blocked including the blog at
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The claim of the above OP (AC signed "Wendy", I assume the AC is claiming to be Chilling Effects founder Wendy Seltzer) that "it was not our intent to remove the site from search engines " doesn't square with these from the article.
CH*E CHARLIE (Score:2)
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Remember, your DMCA letter contains the juicy content, like weblinks to pirated and other copyrighted material.
1. Copyright holder sents DMCA letter to Google. 2. Google takes down copyrighted content. 3. Google sends your DMCA letter to ChillingEffects. 4. ChillingEffects posts your DMCA letter to its website. 5. Google caches the ChillingEffects website. Your copyrighted material is NOW back on Google.
6. We check *alleged* copyrighted content.
7. Content appears to be a self-made movie of birds singing, instead of the copyrighted work.
8. *Claimant* on behalf of "Copyright holder" still gets away with this act of vandalism scott-free, but we can put another mark on the bench
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In your Step 5, only the first sentence is valid. Chilling Effects is never given a copy of your copyrighted material, they do not post a copy of your copyrighted material. They post a copy of the DMCA notice that you sent to Google. If that DMCA notice contains a list of 100 URLs where I can download your copyrighted material, I'm afraid that's too bad. Maybe you should be filing your DMCA notices against the places actually hosting your copyrighted material, so that those URLs no longer function, instead
Fork Chilling Effects! (Score:1)
That's right. Create an alternative. As for Google, well fuck them too [yacy.net]!
I don't understand (Score:2)
what could the medai companiesthreaten hem with? Give me the DB and I'll put it up.
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Besidees wgetany other good methods to mirror the site? Is is there info on how many noticed there are? I'l get a $5 vps and just clone it. Chilligeffects should run their own mirror so we can use rsync to keep it updated.
Avast rates this as a suspect site... seriously? (Score:1)
Someone pumped the ratings at Avast to make Chilling Effects show as a suspect site.
So the site that tried to take over my computer last week is safe but Chilling Effects is suspect?
I can't see a way to put in a plus rating for it.
chilling effect website great pirate site! (Score:2)
When I wanted a eBook and couldn't find a copy on torrent I'd notice at bottom of Google "listing removed via DMCA .... Notice on chilling effect site"
So I'd pull up chilling effect and search for book, find the DMCA takedown request. Since they couldn't take down the file as its hosted overseas, the URL is requested be removed from google.
So copy and paste the URL in the DMCA notice and thanks to the broken moronic DMCA system I can download all pirated material I want, since DMCA takedowns are public just