Tahoo! Internet Life (magazine)
August 2002 issue

COPYRIGHT BULLIES:

Will new laws muzzle free speech online?

From the authors of Star Trek fan fiction to those who post tributes to the robotic Sony Aibo dog, amateur Web publishers have sustained heavy assaults from global media conglomerates looking to safeguard their intellectual property with cease-and-desist notices. A C&D, as it's known, is a letter sent by a company's attorney demanding that the publisher in question immediately stop using protected material.

Even big companies are occasionally targeted: Google's recent, high-profile imbroglio with the Church of Scientology extended the copyright controversy to include the previously assumed right to simply link from one site to another.

Into the fray steps Chilling Effects (http://www.chillingeffects.org), a clearinghouse maintained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in collaboration with some of the nation's top law schools, including Harvard and Stanford. The site features an archive of C&D notices sent to Web publishers. Among the documents are the warnings that prompted Google to remove links to Operation Clambake (http://www.xenu.net) - an anti-Scientology site that includes some internal church documents - or risk violating the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998.

Since C&Ds must cite the allegedly offending URLs, savvy surfers have been able to use the Chilling Effects database to bypass the Scientology blockade. Google has agreed to post alll of its C&Ds on Chilling Effects, where site owners can download forms to file a counter-complaint with Google if their links are removed.

As a result of the public postings, many C&Ds have actually boosted the popularity of the very sites they seek to target - much to the delight of the anti-DCMA camp.

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