Court confirms DMCA 'good faith' web site shut down rights (Register) [LWN.net]

The Register reports on the latest DMCA fun in U.S. District Court. "InternetMovies.com had asked the District Court for the District of Hawaii to require that copyright holders investigate infringing Web sites before shutting them down. This rational request was rejected by the court, as its granted the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and any other DMCA zealot the right to put the clamp on Web sites at will."

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Not being American I haven't studied the DMCA

Posted May 30, 2003 14:48 UTC (Fri) by sholden (guest, #7881) [Link]

But I wonder how strict "good faith" is. If it's perfectly OK for the RIAA to send cease and desist orders because a filename sort of matches and band name. And it's OK for the MPAA to shut down web sites they think are infringing...

Then surely some fun loving lawyer (or non-lawyer who can find a lawyer who will donate some time and ink - or just a non-lawyer if anyone can send such a demand) can start demanding that the hosting providers/bandwidth suppliers of the MPAA and RIAA web sites (and net connections even) be shut down because they have a "good faith" belief some of their copyrights are being violated.

Copyrights on things like web page designs, for example (after all if matching band names in file names is good enough for the RIAA, then surely the presence of a <table> tag similar to what you use is good enough).

Of course you'd have to be brave (and stupid) to get into a legal stoush with such organisations...