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.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 10 2018, @12:57AM
Some hillbilly with no clue started a live YouTube stream of FOSS USGS Swarm software which shows earthquakes on a waterfall type display. This asshat sent takedown notices to everyone else doing the same, including verified scientists streams of the USGS software. The guy even asks for donations to build a new server for it. Totattaly bullshitting all 100 viewers on his stream while the thousands that watched the other ones were left with a message saying "This content has been removed due to a copyright claim by Spectronet".