DMCA BLOGGER ALERT: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (And "Spam Blogs," Too)

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DMCA BLOGGER ALERT: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(And "Spam Blogs" To Boot)

ALERT: If you are involved in any aspect of blogging, journalism, publishing, communications, or just happen to own a mobile device which can be unlocked (which would permit you to switch carriers when traveling abroad, or for other reasons), you need to be fully apprised of the DMCA - The Digital Millennium Copyright Act - and its implications for your personal life and business career. You may get one of these on your Blogger dashboard, email, or in the form of a summons. Here's what appeared at the top of my dashboard [yikes!]:

I recently received the associated email which follows. It was sent by Google about one of my posts in The Mad Marketing Tactics Blog which may have contained some material which represented a violation of copyright laws or policies. I simply deleted the post, as I was unable to find the complaint message which cited the nature of my offense by using the suggested Chilling Effects Search Page, which was not functioning earlier today.

Chilling Effects accumulates these DMCA complaint letters, eliminates the identity of the sender (this is sometimes called "sanitization,") and doesn't give you an opportunity to contact, correspond with, or directly confront your accuser - an anonymized complainant.

Here's the content of the letter sent by Google to me:

Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the copyrights of others. As a result, we have reset the post(s) to \"draft\" status. (If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits. The URL(s) of the allegedly infringing post(s) may be found at the end of this message.) This means your post - and any images, links or other content - is not gone. You may edit the post to remove the offending content and republish, at which point the post in question will be visible to your readers again.

A bit of background: the DMCA is a United States copyright law that provides guidelines for online service provider liability in case of copyright infringement. If you believe you have the rights to post the content at issue here, you can file a counter-claim. In order to file a counter-claim, please see http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=lr_counternotice&product=blogger.

The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information removed, will be posted online by a service called Chilling Effects at http://www.chillingeffects.org. We do this in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). You can search for the DMCA notice associated with the removal of your content by going to the Chilling Effects search page at http://www.chillingeffects.org/search.cgi, and entering in the URL of the blog post that was removed.

If it is brought to our attention that you have republished the post without removing the content/link in question, then we will delete your post and count it as a violation on your account. Repeated violations to our Terms of Service may result in further remedial action taken against your Blogger account including deleting your blog and/or terminating your account. DMCA notices concerning content on your blog may also result in action taken against any associated AdSense accounts. If you have legal questions about this notification, you should retain your own legal counsel.

Sincerely,

The Blogger Team

Affected URLs:

http://madmarketingtactics.blogspot.com/2010/11/slogans-spores-planted-in-consumers.html

Author's Note (1) at 8th February 2013: I have subsequently deleted the "offending post" hyper-linked above (just to avoid expending the time which would invariably be wasted in 1) researching the complaint; 2) determining its validity, and 3) editing the blog post, if necessary) has subsequently been removed.

Author's Note (2) at 8th February 2013: Several weeks ago I was surprised to find that one of my blogs, which had only been posted to once (and that was just a test!) was suspended by Google/ Blogger for possibly being a "spam blog". In the notification, Google stated that the blog might have been suspended in error due to (paraphrased) "certain kinks and quirks in the robotic search which algorithmically makes these determinations and has been known to make errors."

Google's/ Blogger's notification went on to say that if I emailed them at a particular address, they would respond to me within less than a business day with their determination in an email sent to the address of my choice. As a matter of record, I have sent them a total of eight separate requests during the course of the last several weeks, and have never received an acknowledgement, or an email from them. For inquiring minds, here is the text of the notification that Google sent to me [I'm gently sobbing as I relive this moment of horror]:

A SPAM BLOG? THIS CAN'T BE!