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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday June 09 2018, @10:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the bad-critic-no-cookie-for-you dept.

So a professional critic is the last person you’d expect to use copyright to try to squelch someone else’s fair use rights. But that’s exactly what happened last month, when James Grubb, a journalist from VentureBeat, used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to censor a critic just for highlighting a few paragraphs of his work on Twitter.

On May 2, VentureBeat’s gaming section published Grubb’s review of a forthcoming video game, Red Dead Redemption II. His opinions on the game weren’t shared by everyone, which is no surprise. Another video game critic, Jake Magee, took a shot at Grubb on Twitter, suggesting he only liked games that contained “progressive political posturing.” Alongside that criticism, Magee posted screenshots from Grubb’s review—his goal was to show his followers the text that, as he saw it, supported his point.

That was apparently too much for Grubb, who promptly sent a DMCA notice to Twitter over the matter. Twitter soon slapped black boxes over the images that Magee had posted. It wasn't until several days later that the boxes were removed and the post was restored.

What justified this copyright takedown, in Grubbs’ view? First, Grubb said that Magee posted his entire article in a screenshot, a post which, in his view, “crosses the line of acceptable fair use.” Grubb also suggested that he wouldn’t have taken legal action if Magee had simply included a link to his article.

[...] Journalists and critics should know the basics of fair use. It’s a right that their work relies on. At the very least, before a professional critic uses the DMCA to have another critic’s material removed, a double-take is needed on fair use.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by idiot_king on Saturday June 09 2018, @10:43PM (3 children)

    by idiot_king (6587) on Saturday June 09 2018, @10:43PM (#690952)

    ...not. DMCA is exactly the type of crap Marx was talking about when he criticized capitalist entities for influencing the state so they can essentially bash people over the head with laws. It creates a sociopathic society, and this is just one small example of it in action.

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  • (Score: 2) by qzm on Sunday June 10 2018, @08:15AM (2 children)

    by qzm (3260) on Sunday June 10 2018, @08:15AM (#691053)

    And yet it was the Marxist identity politics shill that used it.
    Shocked I tell you. Shocked.

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 10 2018, @02:39PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 10 2018, @02:39PM (#691100)

      It's almost as though identity politics is anti-Marxist. The Trotskyists are no fans of identity politics.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday June 10 2018, @10:22PM

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Sunday June 10 2018, @10:22PM (#691193)

      Marxist doesn't mean what you think it means.