The DMCA (the Draconian Media Clobbering Act… sorry, I mean the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) has been used for some pretty jaw-droppingly stupid things since it was passed. This is just one of them, but it’s an important one, because the court just told copyright holders that they will be punished if they demand that something legal (under fair-use laws) be taken down under the DMCA.

In other words, copyright holders can’t just set a program to automatically scan everything on the ‘net and issue take-down notices under the DMCA for anything remotely similar to something they own — one of the most blatant abuses of the law, and apparently a very popular one until today.

As the first comment says:

A fair decision in a copyright case? I think this is one of the signs of the apocalypse… (I’ll be under my desk if anyone needs me)

🙂