Ashley Madison abusing DMCA "to put genie back in the bottle," EFF says
Source: Ars Technica
Avid Life Media sending bogus takedown notices to Twitter, Reddit, and others.
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And now it appears that the site's Canadian owner, Avid Life Media, is misusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in a bid to make people unpublish the data that lists millions of Ashley Madison members' e-mail addresses and other information. The problem with this scenario is that such data isn't subject to copyright, the Electronic Frontier Foundation says.
"Ashley Madisons owners have been sending numerous DMCA takedown notices to platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and others in an attempt to stop the dissemination of millions of names and email addresses of the sites users...," Mitch Stoltz, an EFF staff attorney, wrote in a recent blog post. "While theres no doubt that the leak is embarrassing and potentially disastrous for the millions of people who have been revealed as users of a site that promotes marital infidelity, Ashley Madisons attempts to use the DMCA to put the genie back in the bottle are misguided, and in some cases, may violate the DMCA itself."
E-mail addresses and usernames, for the most part, aren't copyrightable, Stoltz said.
"Importantly, the DMCA process applies only to copyright claims. It cant be used for other complaints like defamation, invasion of privacy, trademark infringement, trade secret disclosures, or violations of a websites terms of use or community guidelines," he wrote.
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Read more: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/08/ashley-madison-abusing-dmca-to-put-genie-back-in-the-bottle-eff-says/
irisblue
(32,980 posts)hobbit709
(41,694 posts)ProfessorPlum
(11,257 posts)the people who published the users are pecksniffs, hypocrites (undoubtedly), reckless with other people's lives, and probably extortionists.
One can appreciate AM wanting to put the cat back in the bag, but it's just not possible these days.
shawn703
(2,702 posts)Their time would be better spent doing something other than trying to stop water from flowing over the Niagara falls with a spoon.