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DMCA complaint becomes content for website

         

lucertola

10:17 am on Jul 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



apologies if posted in the wrong place -- our DMCA complaint to google has become content on a watchdog site for legal issues in the internet.

They've taken names off, parts of addresses but left the URLs -- and the 'headline' says we're trying to 'delist our competitor.' Much more aggressive than the other cases listed: 'author of document wants google to remove alleged infringers.'

Question: are these documents public? I could hazard a guess & say the person we filed against gave it to them, but there is no 'counter complaint' as far as I know and the guy took our stories down.

It's also now the second google result for thief's website (it doesn't show up searching our name unless you put the two together), so I don't know if they did it what they're trying to prove...

Any ideas on what our rights are? It'd be pretty funny to file another DMCA against these people (does our letter to google belong to us?) though it's a coven of lawyers...

edit_g

10:30 am on Jul 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



A copy of the notice will be sent to a third party who will make it available to the public.

[google.com...]

This third party is the watchdog site you're referring to.

BigDave

10:23 pm on Jul 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



does our letter to google belong to us?

I am almost certain that they do not receive copyright protection as court documents. And if they do, you can assume that an organization that is concerned and *reporting* on free speech issues will have significant fair use rights to such material.

You filed an action against someone. It should be a public record. If you do not want it to be public record, don't file it.

lucertola

8:06 am on Aug 1, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Clearly I should've gone back & read the google dmca filing statement before posting, apologies for that.

What struck me about the notice of our claim was the 'headline', in other words was not presented in neutral language eg 'widget.com files dmca against blah.com for alleged copyright violations' but that's just a question of details, electronic filing is more open to interpretation because the document is likely plugged into a module where they have to write a headline.