When somebody want to silence speech , they often expend the quickest method uncommitted . When the address is hosted on a major online platform , that method is usually a copyright or stylemark complaint .
For many old age , EFF has work with people whose lawful language has been unfairly targeted by these sorts of complaints . We ’ve notice that some approaches tend to work better than others in preventing that form of deliberate abuse , as well as the casual censorship that come from haphazard and trawl net approach to patrol online violation .
In the copyright context , the contours of inspection and repair supplier policy are generally set by the good harbor planning of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act . Those provisions outline the practices to which online service of process providers must adhere in social club to avoid copyright financial obligation for the activity of their users . But services have some flexibility in how they apply those requisite , and can make decisions that optimize for champion drug user speech — or instead for minimizing their own sound costs , reducing engineering requirements , or building relationship with rightsholder radical , for lesson .
When it come to trademarks , the absence of a detailed statutory safe harbor can mean more dubiousness for service of process providers , but also more flexibleness . Some service supplier are very conservative in their response to trademark complaint , taking down content quickly when there ’s a complaint , even where there ’s little real risk of indebtedness . But other service supplier prefer to dramatize policy that take over that a small degree of legal risk of exposure is worthwhile to protect their users . For example , they can want trademark complaint to be gross and valid , can check that that substance is only taken down after human follow-up and thoughtfulness , and can give users a probability to dispute those complaints .
And with regard to both right of first publication and trademark , services can work to ensure that their policy are exercised in an open and transparent style , so that exploiter can well understand the scope and scale of right of first publication and trademark ill and company responses .
Major on-line chopine have become the hub for so much of our spoken language . The consequence is that their policy decision can have an outsized impact on what voice communication embark the public discourse , and what gets quieten or relegated to subaltern condition . As users choose which platforms will host their updates , writing , images , and videos , they ought to know which of these services have made explicit commitment to defend that spoken communication against bullies that would judge to take it down .
As with our April “ Who Has Your Back ” account , which call government request for personal data point , the category we evaluate in this account are based on objectively verifiable , public policy statements . so as to bear on that quality , we ’ve chosen not to award stars unless we can cite a public policy , even in typesetter’s case where internal policies may meet our evaluation thresholds . We ’ve also select not to present star in cases where we ’ve learned that a caller has not listen its own public policies . If users consider that a ship’s company ’s actions do n’t match its policy , and can provide specific examples , please have us know .
We roll up the information in this report by examining each company ’s published term of service of process , right of first publication and earmark insurance policy , and transparency reports where useable . As part of our evaluation , we contacted each company to excuse our finding and to give them an opportunity to improve their public stances .
Evaluation Criteria
We evaluate the following five criteria for each service :
DMCA squelcher notices . Services earn a star in this category for take a conventional , complete , and valid DMCA notice for copyright - based squelcher of subject . service must also commit to forward the information comprise in that placard to the affected user . In some cases services make that information available only upon postulation ; where a serve has made a public hope to do so , we have grant a asterisk .
DMCA counter - notices . In orderliness to take in a star in this category , avail must have a publicly documented counter - notice subprogram that includes a commitment to promptly restoring all antagonistic - noticed works after the required 10 - 14 days of downtime . Additionally , service must invest to excluding replication - noticed works from “ repeat infringer ” insurance .
hallmark complaint . As with the first category , table service earn a star here for requiring a formal notice of trademark ill , including information about the relevant trademark , and forwarding that info to any exploiter whose uploads are affected .
Trademark disputes . so as to earn a star in this category , services must outline a routine by which users can contest hallmark complaint , or trust to extra human recapitulation of the takedown . In the services we ’ve evaluated , we ’ve present a wizard to company that provide a documented intragroup dispute resolution process that includes the substance abuser and to companies that require complainants to obtain a court order for put-down .
Publishing a transparency report on copyright and stylemark complaints . eventually , services earn a star here for publishing data on takedown request . We ’ve intentionally left this family flexile , but in future editions may increase the requirements to include some of the expert practices we ’ve take note , like publishing compliance rates , breaking down information about non - obligingness , and forwarding actual notices to the Chilling Effects database .
Results Summary
EFF arrived at the evaluation criteria after measured considerateness of existent industry drill , the state of copyright and trademark law , and experience with users who have dealt with vilification from copyright and trademark roughneck . We were pleased to recover that servicing have been largely open to our concern , and in many face were able to point to policies that fill these measure , or , where their “ star - desirable ” internal practices were not reflected in their public policy , to retool their public - facing statements so that exploiter would have it away about those practices .
We should be very percipient : we conceive that these five evaluation standard are trading floor , not a ceiling . These are minimal standards for what a overhaul can do to defend its user ’ actor’s line against copyright and hallmark yobo . For example , even a racy , drug user - friendly DMCA takedown policy can still present problem for words , because of flaw in the statute itself . Even policy that garner all five star topology can not foreclose all roughneck .
We also note that some service have go above and beyond the rating criteria in this report . Automattic , the parent company behind WordPress , has filed lawsuits in response to abusive takedown request . Etsy prepares educational materials and web log posts about the public ’s right to expend trademarks and copyrighted work . Twitter has issued a thorough Transparency Report every six months for over two class . And YouTube has occasionally proactively restored content place by a DMCA notice , ahead of the DMCA ’s 10 occupation daytime waiting period , where that cognitive content was clearly non - infringing .
Still , the report can be understand to chew over a wide commitment across many of the services we ’ve surveyed to manage takedown asking in a way that recognize the right and responsibilities of user as well as transmitter .
Download the complete “ Who Has Your Back ? 2014 : When Copyright and Trademark Bullies Threaten Free Speechreport ” asa PDF . This articlefirst appear on Electronic Frontier Foundationand is republish here under Creative Commons license .
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