Using a Copyright Infringement claim to shut down the opposition

Den Lennie has posted a story on Facebook about a short video review he posted on Vimeo getting taken down due to a Copyright Infringement claim from one of the manufacturers in the test.

What's disturbing is that in the thread of the post, a representative from the company actually seems to admit that they made the claim because they didn't like the results, not because of any copyright claim. In a first message they state "We just feel that the test was not fair or representative of our product," but in their second post they state:
You are completely right, we should have just contacted you directly to arrange the re-test rather than acted via Vimeo, please accept our sincere apologies for that. We of course have no issue at all with you posting the results of the re-test all we wanted was just to ensure the test was representative, there was nothing more to it than that.
This is, frankly, shocking.

While the internet is a sea of copyright infringement, and services like YouTube, Vimeo and Blogger are doing their best to remove offending material, their blind and automated processes can make it easy for infringement claims to be made, while making it difficult for those who have been labelled as infringers to clear the claim.

I had a DMCA complaint lodged against me for posting part of a press release; when I contacted the company that issued the press release they said they didn't even lodge the complaint! I was unable to find out who lodged the claim, or what the claim related to, in the end, I just removed the post (it was just a press release, after all, so I couldn't be bothered...)

 Perhaps these companies should have policies for those who make frivolous claims of copyright infringement.


Update [Aug 1]: Rotolight Statement

Comments

Wiztwas said…
I had a complaint post on my blog about a company who subsequently went bust removed by google after they got a takedown notice. Never seen the take down notice, no idea who filed it or what the claim was.
Jul 31, 2013, 3:57:00 AM
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