Web developer Jeremy Keith writes in his blog about DMCA takedowns, and what appears to be Google waffling on their “don’t be evil” creed:
I was reminded that I have an account over at Google Webmaster Tools set up for three of my sites: adactio.com, huffduffer.com and thesession.org. I logged in today for the first time in ages and started poking around.
I noticed that I had some unread messages. Who knew that Google Webmaster Tools has a messaging system? I guess all software really does evolve until it can send email.
One of the messages had the subject line Blocked URLs:
For legal reasons, we’ve excluded from our search results content located at or under the following URL/directory:
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/21250
This content has been removed from all Google search results.
Cause: Somone has filed a DMCA complaint against your site.
What now?
I visited the URL and found a fairly tame discussion about Perfect Pitch. Here’s the only part of the discussion that references an external resource in a non-flattering light:
I think that is referring to www.PerfectPitch.com. I’m not saying anything about such commercially-oriented courses because I don’t know them, but I think we’d all be wise to bear in mind the general comments voiced in the first two posts on this thread.
That single reference to a third-party site is, apparently, enough to trigger a DMCA complaint.
So let’s get this straight. In a discussion about perfect pitch, someone mentions the website perfectpitch.com. They don’t repost any materials from the site. They don’t even link to the site. They don’t really say anything particularly disparaging. But it all takes is for the owner of perfectpitch.com to abuse the Digitial Millenium Copyright Act with a spurious complaint and just like that, Google removes the discussion from its search index.
Jeremy goes on to urge anyone with a publicly-viewable blog, Twitter, or whatnot to link to, repost, or otherwise disseminate his article. I couldn’t agree more: while the DMCA does uphold the rights of copyright holders, abuses like this shouldn’t be tolerated. In fact, I’m willing to bet a small sum that I receive an unjustified DMCA complaint from PerfectPitch.com for merely mentioning them in this repost. We shall see.
