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No AdminsScience VS AIDS denialism
Public Group active 12 years, 2 months agoAmong the issues inherent in just about any kind of censorship — even censorship that’s valid in the very first place — is function creep.
Come up with a clever way to block illegal images of child sexual abuse, and someone will need to use it to block piracy sites, and so on. Force ISPs to install parental-control filters, and shortly the infrastructure has been used to block extremist videos and other “harmful content”. And so forth. It’s all well-intentioned, but censorship with good goals can still go wrong.
Here’s one such example. The wonderfully called Myles Power is a science blogger from Middlesbrough. His site attributes oodles of educational YouTube videos, from the best way to extract DNA from strawberries to producing a simple jet engine at home.
He got his start — or at least a lump up the YouTube positions — after being requested by Google’s video website to become something called an “EDU expert”, which essentially means they flew the Brit to San Francisco to teach him how better to share his passion for science education online.
All excellent stuff, and a great example of utilizing the web to teach and inspire.
Tomorrow, nevertheless, he’s in danger of getting his whole YouTube channel of science instruction videos yanked, carrying out a DMCA takedown request.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a US law that gives sites “safe harbour” from copyright claims when they act quickly to take down infringing content when notified by the owner. Put simply, if someone posts, say, Miley Cyrus’ entire catalogue of songs on YouTube, her record label can request Google to delete the videos. As well it should (not least to halt her spread).
Because of the heroic scale of handling this — a lot of people post plenty of infringing content — much of the process has been automated. Any person or organisation can file a claim of infringement through Google’s website for its search results or YouTube content. They’re assumed to promise only if they possess the content, or are acting in the owner’s benefit, and, naturally, only if their claim is valid. Nonetheless, there’s nothing preventing someone from filing a claim against, for example, PC Pro’s own station, even though we weren’t infringing anything (which we aren’t, thus don’t get any ideas), and we’d have to respond to avoid trouble.
And that’s what occured to Power — though he’s not exactly uploading pop songs. Alongside his educational work, he creates Bad-Science-style videos debunking inaccurate science beliefs. His most recent has focused on an AIDS-refusing documentary, which has attracted the attention of the group supporting the movie. That group has issued multiple DMCA takedown notices requesting the content be removed from YouTube — which Google has obediently done. And because he’s had so many complaints, the remainder of Power’s content — unrelated to that documentary — is also vulnerable to being pulled.
In other words, it’s censorship by copyright law.
To learn more information about house of numbers documentary stop by the web-site. Power has a recourse, aside from expecting journalists will hassle Google enough to sort this issue out. He can file a “counter-notification” via a link directly in his account — but this takes ten days to procedure. The first claims against his account hit on 7 February, and because he’s had so many criticisms (all from exactly the same source) his account is at risk of termination on 18 February.
To stop the process, it seems he can file a “valid” counter-notification, and hope YouTube and Google agree with him. Power’s supporters, meanwhile, have found other methods to react, notably uploading his videos to other sharing websites, to make sure they stay available regardless of YouTube’s final decision.
There’s another downside to Google’s system, however. It isn’t the web giant’s error, but as the counter-notice is a legal document, it includes your “private info” — making it a handy method to track down personal details of your critics, in the event you wish to harass them further (though there’s no suggestion that’s the motivation in Power’s case).
The straightforward fact remains that the educational blogger — one that has been flown around the world by YouTube itself in acknowledgement of the worth of his uploads — is being pushed to fight paperwork battles and PR skirmishes thanks to misuse of the DMCA, when he should be teaching children how to (safely) explode matters in the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
This isn’t the first time this has occured, also it surely won’t be the last. Google has sought to draw attention to the specific situation, publishing every copyright notice it receives via the Chilling Effects website, but what’s actually wanted is a better system for halting harassment via DMCA.
Copyright issues need dealing with, but any law that lets content to be banned for a great motive can be mistreated to remove something for the incorrect motives. We need to build in protections in the beginning of such a process, rather than enabling educators to be pushed off YouTube.
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