Copyright As Censorship: Popular Twitter Account Keeps Getting Deleted Over Trollish DMCA Claims

Amazingly, there are still some people out there who insist that copyright is never used for censorship. But an even bigger concern is how more and more people are looking at the ability to censor via copyright as a feature, not a bug, and are interested in expanding that right. Most bizarre of all, we've seen a number of people, who insist that they're "online activists" who want to stop bullying and trolling, advocating for expanding DMCA style takedowns to trollish behavior.

What they don't realize is that this will only make the trolling and abuse much worse, because it puts a new tool for abuse into the hands of the abusers.

Take, for example, what appears to be happening with a popular, if silly, Twitter account @Dog_rates which, as you may have guessed, rates dogs:

This is Doug. He's a Draconian Jabbawockee. Rad tongue. Ears are borderline legendary 11/10 would pet with a purpose pic.twitter.com/MVvbQW88Pv

- WeRateDogs (@dog_rates) February 12, 2016

I like dogs. I have a wonderful dog. I still don't get the appeal of the account, but apparently thousands of people do love it. Apparently, there's also a troll who doesn't appreciate it, and who keeps sending bogus DMCA takedown notices on the account, leading it to get repeatedly suspended. Reporters at the Daily Dot and the Washington Post both wrote about this, and from the details in the accounts, it seems pretty clear that the guy sending the DMCA notices is your standard, garden variety troll, who just wants to take down an account because it's something he can do.

To ensure that this mysterious individual wouldn't continue to try to remove his work from the Internet, Nelson decided to try to negotiate with them. Their email exchange is " strange. At one point, the troll claims that they will next target another popular animal Twitter account dedicated to goats. After several emails, the two finally settled on a resolution. The copyright complainer wouldn't target @dog_rates further if Nelson promised to delete two of the tweets targeted by the DMCA claims. Nelson was given a dramatic 20-minute time limit to comply.

After he deleted the tweets, Nelson asked, "Mind telling me what that was about?"

His troll replied: "Enjoy your account. Sorry about that. I'm just a one of your old followers. I'm going through a tough time I'm really sorry."

Of course, it's possible that this trollish behavior was inspired (and I can't believe I'm actually typing this), by an earlier spat about dog rating Twitter accounts, in which @dog_rates got incensed about a competing dog rating Twitter account that didn't just have the same idea, but was actively reusing both pictures and Tweet text from the @dog_rates accounts. It did seem like @dog_rates overreacted to that (and seems to take this whole dog rating thing way, way too seriously).

However, the larger point remains: if you give people a tool that they can use to try to stifle the speech of others, it will be abused. It's always abused. Those insisting that expanding takedown abilities to target trollish accounts will lead to good outcomes are failing to realize that the exact opposite is likely to happen. The takedown powers will be abused by the trolls instead. Be careful what you wish for.

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