I Googled for something and at the bottom of the page was:
In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.
I've never seen it before, what does it mean? Mary
If you go to chillingeffects, you can look at the DMCA page and it tells you.
Basically it's a law which copyright owners of digital work are using to prevent people from geting their hands on the source code in order to violate it, make patches or generally rip it to pieces etc.
DMCA is a horribly blunt pro-forma that allows anyone in the USA who understands it to send threatening-looking "Cease & Desist" notices to anyone they feel like, without any real need for suppoorting evidence or legal cause. They're easy to defend against (they fall apart in court), but you have to go to court to do so. Overall it's a typical knee-jerk reaction (like the UK dangerous dogs laws) with an additional twist of the US Mouse-protection laws that favour the well- heeled or corporations over citizens. Great way to stifle grass-roots protest.
ChillingEffects.org are a bunch of the good guys (I think Lessig is in there somewhere) who are trying to highlight the issue and its abuses.
Some of the DMCA kerfuffle is related to the LOCATS macro intaweb meme (look it up on wikipedia, it's all there). It's probably at its funniest with the gothmacros community on Livejournal. _If_ your taste in clothing is questionable, and your waistline is more of an equator, and the "goth fashion" community you read and post to is closely associated with a particularly barbed "I HAZ A BUKKIT" community full of bitchy Photoshoppers, then it may not be the wisest thing to upload photos of yourself in full costume to a community where there's an implicit re-use licence on the content uploaded....
If you did all of that, and you're American, then you can have endless fun by trying to throw the DMCA around at the people who ripped you (and your bukkit) to shreds. If these people are Goths (which largely means over-educated, under-worked Libertarian Unix admins) then expect fireworks in return.
So now you know! I bet Mary wishes she'd never asked!
Well, I do - in a way - but isn't it good to see people making fools of themselves!
I'm always amazed at factories dedicated to making strange widgets most people have never heard of, this is the internet equivalent I suppose.
Thanks to everyone,
Mary
Some of the more amusing out workings of the cultural war....
Several laser printers being sent notices of copyright infringement.
A number (13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,704,640) was declared illegal to broadcast or communicate to anyone.
Its a raft of US legislation that makes it illegal to try and circumvent any technical measure used to protect copyright. So for example reverse engineering the protection mechanism that protects a digital rights managed audio file so that you can download it onto your MP3 play would in itself become an offence. With it is a large collection of legal mechanisms that allow for issuing takedown notices to suppress supposedly illegally hosted content. Needless to say it is widly abused as a way of stifling anything that a corporation or copyright holder wants to suppress without any real need for evidence.
We now have something similar in the EU copyright directive.
No, I think _this_ is the internet equivalent:
On Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:11:42 -0700 (PDT), a particular chimpanzee, Andy Dingley randomly hit the keyboard and produced:
..Speaking from experience, perchance?
Yes. Car-crash blogging. Cruel, but great sport to watch.
Links are from here
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.