Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation offers an enlightening summary of the recent dustup involving YouTube, The Church of Scientology and critics of that church. Earlier this month, representatives of the church succeeded in having hundreds if not thousands of critical videos removed from YouTube via what proved to be bogus DMCA notices.
Here’s the good news: YouTube quickly realized something was fishy, and began investigating. Within days, YouTube suspended the accounts that had sent out the allegedly fraudulent DMCA takedown notices, reinstated the accounts that had been suspended for multiple allegations of copyright infringement, and put most of the videos back up on YouTube, all without waiting to receive DMCA counter-notices from YouTube users who had had their videos taken down.
The bad news, as Galperin goes on to explain, is that the DMCA process is so heavily stacked in favor of copyright holders — be they pursuing legitimate or bogus grievances — that a repeat episode of this nature is all but inevitable.
