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Comment by cstross | Hacker News Reader

Never once have I had a DMCA notice not result in the material taken down within 24 hours

I have!

The culprit -- whose copyright agent [edit]appears not to[/edit] respond to DMCA takedown notices unless they come on law firm letterhead -- is none other than Amazon.com. (I've caught scumbags selling books of mine online as ebooks via the Kindle store. Amazon don't listen unless you carry a big stick. My solution was to grab the nearest big stick, in this case SFWA's Griefcom process, but something like that's not really an option for most self-published authors.)

(In contrast, Apple -- same situation, only in the iBook store -- were the very model of efficiency and helpfulness.)

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> The culprit -- whose copyright agent doesn't respond to DMCA takedown notices unless they come on law firm letterhead -- is none other than Amazon.com.

That's illegal. There are well-defined bullet points that make a valid DMCA complaint that must be acted upon, and I doubt Amazon would open themselves up to liability based on "big sticks". They'd lose safe harbor for not complying, which is extremely bad news for EC2 and any Internet hosting provider.

Legal or not, it's what they're doing. And it's not just me:

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/012933.html

If someone were to pursue it further and remind Amazon that not following OCILLA means being liable for every single copyright infringement that they host, whether on EC2, S3 (looking forward to that one!), or the Kindle store, they might change their tune.

It's not illegal, you just can't claim the benefits of the limited liability section if you don't register a copyright agent and respond to DMCA notices.

The DMCA is a law. Not following the rules of OCILLA is not acting according to law, which is identified by the word illegal. Illegal has nothing to do with criminality.

Sorry, but no. The DMCA simply says "A service provider shall not be liable...if the conditions set forth...are met". It does not compel ISPs to make those conditions true. They're not "not acting according to law" by not actively creating the circumstances in which the DMCA provides the limitation of liability.

http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/hr2281.pdf

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