What Is DMCA and Why Should We Care?

 
YouTube is taking down a number of anti-religious videos on the grounds that they violate copyright. The accusations are being organized by Creationist groups, especially those associated with Kent Hovind, who is currently in prison for tax evasion [Hovind’s Goons use Fraud to Remove Critical YouTube Videos].

The Rational Response Squad is the latest group to lose their YouTube account [We're ready to help sue Creation Science Evangelism Ministries].

The legal tool that's being used is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This is an American law that imposes stiff penalties for copyright infringement on the internet. The problem is that the law encourages websites to take down material whenever a "charge" of copyright infringement is made. By doing this the websites avoid the threatened legal action.

Here's how the Wikipedia article describes the problem,

The DMCA has been criticized for making it too easy for copyright owners to encourage website owners to take down infringing content and links when it may not in fact be infringing. When website owners receive a takedown notice it is in their interest not to challenge it, even if it is not clear if infringement is taking place, because if the potentially infringing content is taken down the website will not be held liable. The Electronic Frontier Foundation senior IP attorney Fred von Lohmann has said this is one of the problems with the DMCA.[2]

Many sites are receiving DMCA notices and taking down links to infringing material as a result. Because the links are taken down it is rarely challenged in court resulting in link liability being a grey area of the law, although based on previous legal cases it leans in favor of copyright owners.[3] Stephan Ott of LinksandLaw.com states that "linking to infringing content is unlawful and that is also what most of the courts say."

I'm constantly amazed at how easy it is to use legal trickery to curtail basic freedoms such as free speech. In this case, the freedom/anarchy of the internet seems to be too much to stomach for those people who want to control peoples' thoughts. I suppose we should have seen this coming. After all, the other kinds of media are also highly censured in America.

Now I suppose there's going to be a big legal fight and the courts will have to decide whether these YouTube videos violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Oh well, it keeps the lawyers off the streets and gives all the amateur lawyers something to blog about.

Perhaps the experts could answer a question? If a company like YouTube were to relocate to another country would the act still apply? Could the act be used to censor foreign websites?