Back in November 2011 we blogged that the Recording Industry
Association of America (RIAA) wanted “DCMA clarity” from Congress - and now the recording industry's trade
organization has urged Congress to overhaul the safe harbor provision of
copyright law that shield websites from infringement actions provided they
remove infringing material after being notified, saying the law is too
burdensome for copyright holders.
Congress is planning a comprehensive review of copyright law
in the digital era, and RIAA Executive Vice President for Anti-Piracy Brad
Buckles said in a post on the organization's website that "the balance is
off" in the current system and
“it’s time to rethink the notice and takedown provisions of the DMCA” ,
going on to outline the various ways
that the DMCA isn’t working.
In the blog, titled “One Year, 20 Million Links To Illegal
Songs Sent To Google: This Is How It's Supposed To Work?” Buckles says “We are
using a bucket to deal with an ocean of illegal downloading” in a post to mark
the 20 millionth takedown notice the trade body has issued against Google,
requesting that it remove from its search engine a link to unlicensed music
content - urging Congress to increase the obligations of web companies which of
course enjoy safe harbour protection from copyright infringement claims where
they host or link to infringing content, by operating a takedown process.
Buckles is suggesting that the likes of Google and YouTube
owners should be more proactive in ensuring that unlicensed content identified
by rights owners is blocked or removed permanently, and from wherever it may be
stored. At the moment content companies issuing takedown notices generally have
to be very specific about the piece of content they object to, which is clearly
perceived to be a major burden by content owners with Buckles saying “Under a controversial interpretation by
search engines, takedown notices must be directed at specific links to specific
sound recordings and do nothing to stop the same files from being reposted as
fast as they are removed. It is certainly fair for search engines to say that
they have no way of knowing whether a particular link on a specific site represents
an illegal copy or not. Perhaps it’s fair for them to make that same claim at
the second notice. But what about after a thousand notices for the same song on
the same site?”
He goes on: “As the Congressional review of the DMCA gets
underway, there should be a strong focus on what notice and takedown was
supposed to accomplish. The DMCA was intended to define the way forward for
technology firms and content creators alike, but some aspects of it no longer
work. How could we expect it to? It was passed before Google even existed, or
the iPod, or peer-to-peer file-sharing or slick websites offering free mp3
downloads. It was after the DMCA that Napster, and Grokster and LimeWire and
Grooveshark and MegaUpload, to name just a few, came on the scene. In
particular, it’s time to rethink the notice and takedown provisions of the
DMCA”.
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