Forget DMCA takedowns—RIAA wants ISPs to filter for pirated content

(credit: Elias Bizannes)

The Recording Industry Association of America and other rights holders are urging US copyright regulators to update the "antiquated" DMCA takedown process. They want Internet Service Providers to filter out pirated content.

What the RIAA and 14 other groups are telling the US Copyright Office is simple: The 19-year-old Digital Millennium Copyright Act isn't working. They say the process of granting legal immunity-or "safe harbor"-to ISPs who "expeditiously" remove copyrighted content upon notice of the rights holder needs to be supplanted with fresh piracy controls. That's because, they say, the process creates a so-called "endless game of whack-a-mole" in which an ISP will remove pirated content only to see it instantaneously reappear at the push of a button by a copyright scofflaw. This requires the rights holder to send a new takedown notice-often again and again.

The groups say (PDF):

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