Sunday Times sends DMCA takedown notice to First Look over image of frontpage
documentcloud.org
documentcloud.org
The lawyer who filed this DMCA takedown notes that "under penalty of perjury" they have a good faith belief that this violates their copyright.
As the saying goes, this lawyer is either as dumb as a box of rocks, or lying through her teeth. (She's lying.) I would hope a court would find she perjured herself (as well as obviously find this as a abuse of the DMCA), but I doubt that's going to happen.
No, the "under penalty of perjury" bit in the DMCA is that they own the copyright in the content they're saying they own. (I believe this is undisputed; they do in fact own the typesetting of their front page.)
Whether the links actually point to copies of the content alleged, or whether the content if republished would be an infringement of copyright in that context, are entirely separate questions (and there are no repercussions for being wrong, even deliberately, which is one of the really bad things about the DMCA, especially in a world where robots auto-file takedowns based on dud search terms).
They do not seem to have misrepresented their clients' interests, although this §512(c) takedown is clearly filed in bad faith: because yes, this kind of meta-reporting, commentary on news stories, is absolutely classic fair use - and there's the story they're reporting on, right there on the right. I believe it would be perfectly legal over here, too - in fact, the BBC actually routinely republish the front pages of every major UK newspaper every day for comment and criticism, both on the TV and on their website - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs/the_papers - and they neither seek, nor need, permission. This low-res image of the front page represents what the paper was reporting as a snapshot in time as a matter of history. It obviously doesn't replace the paper: it doesn't even contain all of the story in question. It is quite clearly not an actionable infringement of copyright.
One would think that Ms Chisese would have given her client certain advice about the serious potential negative impact of spitefully trying to restrict news reporting via copyright takedowns: aka the "Streisand effect"? You would think they'd know about that. Still, I don't see an "on instructions" in there. Oh well. I'm sure the Intercept will respond as I would expect them to. (Edit: Sure enough - https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/610451356122509312 )