‘Well Respected’ People Send DMCA Notices to Hide Their Mishaps

The DMCA lets copyright holders to secure their get the job done, by sending takedown requests to take away infringing materials. Having said that, some folks appear to use this software relatively broadly. This consists of various superior profile men and women who presumably use the DMCA to disguise their inconvenient pasts.

Most of us like effectively-revered individuals. They’ve generally labored difficult to get where by they are and have located some way to give again to culture.

Regretably, even these men and women may well have built a oversight or two in the past. And if people close up on the World-wide-web, they’re difficult to erase.

That does not signify that you can not test of course…

Lately, we stumbled on a sequence of DMCA takedown requests which kindly request Google to remove numerous inconvenient back links. When copyright has tiny to do with it, this route is worthy of a shot, they probably considered.

The senders have a whole lot in common. They all notice that they’re “well-respected” in the modern society that they come from and accuse numerous internet websites of using their “image and name” to draw in focus.

They were being also all convicted of fraud, but that is possibly a coincidence.

Take radio talk-present host Warren Ballentine, for illustration, who describes himself as an artist and motivational speaker. When we would like to url to his Wikipedia page for some background, we’re hesitant to do so, as which is 1 of the allegedly offending internet sites.

“I am a effectively highly regarded human being in the society that I arrive from, the US, and other elements of the environment in which I am known as an artist and motivational speaker,” Ballentine wrote to Google.

“However, a short while ago, there are a quantity of websites that use my image and name to catch the attention of traction for folks go through their content material. I want Google to remove this kind of web sites from the lookup. Many thanks.”

Unfortunately for Ballentine, Google decided not to honor his ask for. Possibly mainly because the content material he joined to in the DMCA discover is not infringing on any copyrights?

This indicates that the a variety of news studies and the Department of Justice’s press launch on his conviction for engaging in two home loan fraud schemes remain on the web.

Oh, and the aforementioned Wikipedia entry remains unscathed also. And the very same applies to several unrelated back links to other Warren Ballentines, which were being inadvertently involved in the takedown requests.

But potentially the accurate purpose for the notices is to deal with up the previous? It wouldn’t be the 1st time that another person tried using that, and this unsuccessful try appears to be part of a collection, as we hinted at previously.

In excess of the earlier several months, there have been quite a few similarly worded takedown requests from very well-respected persons who have been convicted of fraud. Such as this one particular, from tax fraud convict Monica Morgan, and a number of some others from pension fraud convict Chauncey Mayfield, which haven’t gone unnoticed.

In accordance to the information offered to Google, these persons submitted the requests them selves. On the other hand, considering the fact that the language is practically similar, it seems to be a coordinated action.

It is clear that the DMCA takedown requests all goal mentions of their mishaps, as perfectly as other unrelated back links that rank perfectly for their identify. Although this urge could be easy to understand, copyright legislation is not any assist in this circumstance.

In fact, abusing DMCA notices generally backfires, no matter whether someone’s effectively-respected or not.