Amy Alexander on 24 Dec 2000 00:56:37 -0000 |
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[Nettime-bold] One-stop censorship tool for content providers |
Article at: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,40816,00.html on new software ("Copyright Agent") that proposes to automate the "take down and removal" policies of the DMCA. In other words, based on the content-providers' criteria for identifying infringing material, it automates the sending of cease-and-deists letters, to which the ISP's are pretty well pressured to comply under DMCA. If they don't comply, they risk being sued. While the focus is largely on people trading MP3's on Napster, etc., this can and likely will also automate the censorship of content which is merely unpopular with the content-providers under the guise of protecting intellectual property. There is of course quite a lot of this going on already, with corporate satires, protest sites, etc., constantly wrestling with corporate IP legal teams. However, Copyright Agent eliminates the time and expense of having a legal team invent stories and send letters to the ISP; instead, it reduces the process to a bulk listing of "infringing" materials. The ISP's are obliged to either summarily remove the materials or disconnect the allegedly-offending users. The last paragraph of the article is kind of entertaining: > "The whole issue is that if you are making available something that is > infringing, you lose all rights to privacy," Hill said. "It doesn't concern > me that the this might not be infringing. That was the whole reason > behind the DMCA and if it's found that the language isn't clear enough, > believe me, they will fix that quickly with new legislation." _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold