Do you agree? ----
From Reputation Defender's CEO Michael Fertik:
http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/article/2008-8-20-magid
"Fertik, whose company helps people manage their online
reputations, thinks there needs to be a mechanism for people who have
been defamed or libeled to order the removal of offending content. His
idea is to "take a page from the playbook of the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act, which allows copyright holders to issue a takedown
notice to services that are hosting material without permission of the
copyright holder." (Basically give everyone on earth a heckler's veto over anything posted anywhere on any website that they don't like).
"At the conference, Fertik made the point that, 'Viacom can send
one letter to YouTube to get 50,000 videos removed, but if your
daughter is on YouTube kissing a boy, you're out of luck.' " (Is this really the kind of chickenshit 'problem' that Rep
Defender gets called in to solve? And, of course, you could always just
ask the boy nicely to take the video down.)
"Another panelist, Dan Dougherty of eBay, defended CDA Section
230, saying it is 'effective and useful for its intended purpose of
encouraging diversity and honest discourse on the Internet.' He
expressed concern about Fertik's notice-and-takedown proposal, saying
that defamation is different from copyright, where there is
registration and other evidence of ownership." |