Google buckles under power of DMCA

12 Mar 2008 | 11:54 GMT

By Sylvie Barak

AN INQUIRER reader alerted us to very sinister things happening to Google.

A Google search for "Lucy Pinder Tape", while providing several enlightening links, doesn’t provide users with as many results as it possibly could. An ominous little note at the bottom of the page reads: "in response to a complaint we received under the US digital millennium copyright act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page..."

Somehow Google, which is only a humble search engine after all, is being forced to filter information because of a local legal squabble. In this case, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed by the U.S. Congress in 1998, allegedly to bring copyright law up to date for electronic trade and content providers, is proving an impediment to free speech and access to information.

What is even more disturbing about it, is that the law does not simply apply in the US (say, limiting itself to google.com), but is made to apply to country-specific subsidiaries of the search engine, meaning that a US law is being rammed down the world’s collective throat. For a change.

So, how has it managed to pull this off? Well, all it takes is a little help from the DMCA’s friends, namely the World Trade Organisation and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). WIPO is complicit in that it drafted up an international treaty requiring signatory nations to impose particular rights in their own National laws. These treaties were then ratified at WTO meetings where the public had no input whatsoever, and only found out about the dirty deals after they had already been struck.

The DMCA gives publishers free reign to prevent people from printing text or pictures, lending books to friends and, in some cases, even reading them aloud. A classic example given by opponents of the DMCA is the following: A person who legally bought and downloaded an e-book online managed to figure out how to get around the reader software (information he shared). He printed the text out and read it while on the bog and was subsequently charged by the dark forces of the DMCA with a federal crime, looking at a penalty of up to $500,000 and five years in prison.

But the DMCA, apparently not satisfied with simply catching copyright violators with their pants down in their own toilets, are going a step further and threatening service providers themselves. Under draconian DMCA legislation, service providers who give access to material, which purportedly infringes copyright, have to remove access to it immediately upon official notice from the copyright holder, or risk being held liable for contributory copyright infringement. So Google has a choice, but decides it would be wiser to cave and spinelessly remove the offending links from its search listings.

Google is no stranger to gutless cowardice. In early 2006 Google voluntarily offered the Chinese government to censor its results, in return for being allowed greater access to the Chinese market. Earlier, in 2002, Google succumbed to the joint malevolent powers of weirdo alien cult, Church of Scientology, and its friend and ally the DCMA (surprise, surprise). The pair pressured the Search Engine giant to delete certain URLs from its results which directed searchers to pages maintained by Xenu.net, a popular scientology critic. The pretext? Well, Xenu was apparently careless in that it used scientology texts to critique the “religion”. Texts which scientologists invoked copyright infringement on.

The DMCA was happy to help, and so was Google, who not only scrambled to remove the offending text analysis pages, but also managed to delete the whole of Xenu’s site from its listings in the process, until someone pointed out that this might be a tad too much.

Google claims that it is acting fairly by noting that in order for them to re-catalogue any disputed pages after their removal, a counter-notification can be filed, which is highly unlikely considering that the counter claimant will thereby makes themselves prime target of US court jurisdiction.

It is not even that there is anything inherently evil in copyright law itself. The point is, copyright laws should be used with a some logic and fairness. Just as students are allowed to quote passages from books in essays or exams in order to make their points, so should Googlers worldwide be able to critique aspects of Ms. Pinder’s educational video footage. Ahem.

The DMCA’s heavy handed methods are certainly akin to threatening to shoot the messenger, but even so, Google should find itself a backbone and stop willingly offering itself up as the DMCA’s gimp and Internet policeman.

There is really very little difference between blocking content in countries like China (where we call it censoring of free speech and information) and blocking content in the West. It is blatant hypocrisy and raises serious questions about where lines are drawn. When government laws can determine what content is and isn’t shown on the internet, to users around the world, that is what we call global dictatorship. µ

© 2007 Incisive Media Investments Ltd. 2007