Automated Filter Removed Parliament Member's Article Warning About Censorship By Automated Filters

Free Speech

from the i'm-sorry-dave,-i'm-afraid-i-can't-allow-that dept

Last week, Tim Cushing had a post about yet another out of control automated DMCA notifier, sending a ton of bogus notices to Google (most of which Google removed from its search engine index, since the sender, “Topple Track” from Symphonic Distribution was a part of Google’s “Trusted Copyright Program,” giving those notices more weight). The post listed many of the perfectly legitimate content that got removed from Google’s index because of that rogue automated filter, including an EFF page about a lawsuit, the official (authorized) pages of Beyonce and Bruno Mars, and a blog post about a lawsuit by Professor Eric Goldman.

But, seeing as we’re getting towards September when the EU Parliament will again be voting on the big Copyright Directive proposal there, including Article 13, which will require mandatory filters or other automated tools for preventing copyright infringement, I thought it was important to do a separate post calling out one of the other pages taken down by Symphonic Distribution’s out of control Topple Track. And that was that it got Google to de-index an article by Julia Reda, a member of the EU Parliament who has been leading the charge against the problematic provisions in the Copyright Directive proposal.

Specifically — and it would be hard to make this up if we tried — Topple Track’s automated filter got Google to de-index this blog post by Reda, in which she details the problems in Article 13 and how it will create mandatory censorship machines, that would likely lead to massive internet censorship of perfectly legitimate content.

Let’s repeat that so it can sink in. An automated filter helped take down an article by a Member of the EU Parliament, explaining how a (still being debated) proposal would create automated filtering systems that would take down all sorts of legitimate content.

This feels like the sort of thing that should end all debate about just how damaging Article 13 might be (though, of course, it won’t). When you force more mandatory filters onto the internet, these kinds of problems will only increase. Tons and tons of legitimate and perfectly legal content will get blocked. Last month, we posted a useful demonstration of just how much legitimate content would get censored under such a plan, but we never imagined that a perfect example would present itself just weeks later showing just how bad an idea Article 13 is.

Filed Under: article 13, automated takedowns, censorship machines, copyright, dmca, filters, julia reda, topple track
Companies: google, symphonic distribution