Defending The DMCA

from the not-a-popular-stance dept

Here's a column from someone who is taking the currently unpopular (at least in the techie community) stance of defending portions of the DMCA. While he admits the circumvention parts might go a little too far, he says the parts protecting service providers from being guilty of copyright infringement are very helpful to e-commerce. Of course, we've already had a post about why that section of the law sucks too. The way it works is that ISPs have to immediately remove the "offending" material as soon as they're told about it - without finding out if the material does, in fact, violate copyright law. It's "guilty until proven innocent". I think it's good that service providers aren't liable - but they should at least be able to find out if the material really does violate something before removing it. Even then, shouldn't the courts go after the person who put it up rather than the service provider?

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