How can an author ban critique?

[land luber]

Maybe she sent a "take down" notice pursuant to the United States Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Scubaboard would then be required to remove (not quite what happened here) allegedly infringing material until the claims are sorted out (I am oversimplifying but I don't want to spend hours trying to explain it all). Or maybe she claimed slander or some such thing.

Just guessing - but what is Scubaboard for?

Susan Porter's lawyer probably did send a DMCA takedown notice as you suspect! But a takedown notice in no way requires scubaboard to do anything, scubaboard closed the thread on their own choice.

The DMCA actually grants some immunities to a forum like scubaboard for copyright violating posts. What a takedown notice does is say "this is violating copyright, I am putting you on notice." After getting it, scubaboard loses immunity protection from the DMCA if it (1) is indeed violating copyright and (2) if it still doesn't take it down.

The thing is, people send DMCA takedown notices willy nilly. Often it’s not about really believing your copyright rights are being violated, it’s about trying to silence something you don't like. From scubaboard's perspective, even if they are 90% sure there is no copyright violation, do they really want to risk litigation when they are "on notice" and have an out? Lawyers are costly.

What I couldn't gather is whether the posting in question was of a guy's notes with BSDME text not shown or whether the posting actually showed the text of BSDME with the guy's notes also. If only the guy’s notes were shown without any actual text of BSDME, a takedown notice would be very dubious and troubling.

If full pages of the text of BSDME were shown (with or without additional edits), then scubaboard probably should removed any link to it for its own protection. But absolutely nothing should require the post to be closed down if the link was removed. This board is based on free discussion and closing threads rather than just removing a troubling link really lowers the value of the site.

Netdoc, do your homework here and pay a lawyer for an hour of their time before silencing threads rather than just taking down links. If the takedown notice told you to stop discussion, post it and let us see how overreaching it is. You are free to post the takedown notice, it is NOT protected.

Also, if you post takedown notices you receive on this site, others will have an incentive not to abuse them for fear of embarrassment.

p.s. this isn't legal advice, and I am in no position to give legal advice. I'm just an anon poster who obviously has a grudge against DMCA.

Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[John_B]

As a songwriter/musician and erstwhile programmer, I can understand the author's kneejerk reaction to seeing her work posted as a pdf on Teh Intarwebz, even it wasn't exactly a measured response.

What I don't understand, Mossman, is why you are having what seems to be an equally unmeasured response yourself. I admit that I missed the fireworks, but I don't understand why you have such a huge interest against someone trying to protect their copyrighted work? Is there some reason you have a dog in this fight, one that's not apparent from this thread (or what remains of this thread)?

If full pages of the text of BSDME were shown (with or without additional edits), then scubaboard probably should removed any link to it for its own protection. But absolutely nothing should require the post to be closed down if the link was removed. This board is based on free discussion and closing threads rather than just removing a troubling link really lowers the value of the site.

IANAL, but what I've seen done in the past was to replace the offending links with a link to the takedown notice itself. Whether it was fair use or a copyright violation, I've never seen a case where the thread itself had to be pulled.

OTOH, if it were my board (and of course it isn't) I'd have a serious, one-sided discussion with the person who at a minimum broke the TOS (if not the DMCA) by posting the link in question. NetDoc has too much invested in SB to even chance an adverse ruling from some unknown quantity of a judge.

 

[Mossman]

What I don't understand, Mossman, is why you are having what seems to be an equally unmeasured response yourself. I admit that I missed the fireworks, but I don't understand why you have such a huge interest against someone trying to protect their copyrighted work? Is there some reason you have a dog in this fight, one that's not apparent from this thread (or what remains of this thread)?

Huh? Why do you think I have an interest against someone trying to protect her copyright? Maybe you should read my posts more carefully.

 

[vladimir]

It's kind of hard to figure out exactly how much "infringement" took place based on this discussion, so I'll have to wing it. It sounds like an author who appreciates positive recommendations of her book wants to squelch any negative comments. If that is the case, she has surrendered the moral high ground of intellectual property for crass commercialism. In the absence of further clarification, I recommend that nobody buy that book, because it is totally unnecessary and because everything you need to know about Bonaire (including restaurants) is available free at bonairetalk.com.

 

[rjchandler]

It's kind of hard to figure out exactly how much "infringement" took place based on this discussion, so I'll have to wing it. It sounds like an author who appreciates positive recommendations of her book wants to squelch any negative comments. If that is the case, she has surrendered the moral high ground of intellectual property for crass commercialism. In the absence of further clarification, I recommend that nobody buy that book, because it is totally unnecessary and because everything you need to know about Bonaire (including restaurants) is available free at bonairetalk.com.

moral high ground? Protection of intellectual property exists for commercial reasons.
(there - that ought to take this off topic).

Since we are all guessing at the details, maybe we should all chill a bit instead of winging it.

 

[El Orans]

If full pages of the text of BSDME were shown (with or without additional edits), then scubaboard probably should removed any link to it for its own protection.

All BDSME text was replaced by gibberish in the PDF.

 

[DiveMaven]

It's kind of hard to figure out exactly how much "infringement" took place based on this discussion, so I'll have to wing it. It sounds like an author who appreciates positive recommendations of her book wants to squelch any negative comments. If that is the case, she has surrendered the moral high ground of intellectual property for crass commercialism. In the absence of further clarification, I recommend that nobody buy that book, because it is totally unnecessary and because everything you need to know about Bonaire (including restaurants) is available free at bonairetalk.com.

I love Bonairetalk, but frankly there's nothing that could have replaced Susan's book for us when we were there. We not only used it in our condo in the morning or evening to plan our next dive sites, but we took it with us to the sites in case we needed to remind ourselves about the entry, or got blown out and had to go somewhere else (which happened once).

When I first posted I had missed the part where all talk about the book was to be suspended. I hope the intent of that was in relation to the original thread and not everywhere on the board. Hopefully this will all get worked out soon since it seems very clear that there was no malicious intent or quest for stealing Susan's work. Time will tell.

 

[vladimir]

moral high ground? Protection of intellectual property exists for commercial reasons.
(there - that ought to take this off topic).

Since we are all guessing at the details, maybe we should all chill a bit instead of winging it.

You see no moral argument for people having the right to the fruits of their own labor? I see it as one of the most basic rights in a civilized society.

I also see no need to chill; if the author in question finds the conversation ill-informed, she has the means to easily rectify the situation. Nobody else should really care if it veers off into the hypothetical.

 

[vladimir]

I love Bonairetalk, but frankly there's nothing that could have replaced Susan's book for us when we were there.

I'm not trying to go all Jacques Cousteau on you, but my 80 or so dives in Bonaire are the easiest 80 I've done, and I think a restaurant guide is more indispensable than a guide to dive sites there.

 

[The Chairman]

Netdoc said "depending on her response, we might end up having to ban ALL discussions about her book here" and I fail to see why Susan Porter's response is necessary in order to have discussions about her book here. Netdoc doesn't need her permission any more than he needs Bonaire's permission in order to discuss Bonaire here.

Like her book, ScubaBoard is a labor of love for me. We don't have a legal team nor do we feel that we are in the wrong. However, I won't play hostage to anyone: especially not an author that is receiving FREE publicity here on ScubaBoard.

I am giving her through the weekend to respond to my response to her e-mail. If her knee jerk reaction is to threaten to sue me, then we will just auto-censor the name of her book and remove all threads that reference it. I just don't need the hassle and the threat of a lawsuit. I am sure that the bigger loss will be hers.

In reality, we are working on a few things that may make such a book obsolete anyway. As with all things it will be written and driven by YOU the user. We are still in the development stages. No, we won't tell you exactly what it is (people steal ideas) and we don't have a firm date set. Look for the first portion of it within the next month or so. I hope you'll enjoy it.