full text of DMCA takedown letter

[Glenn Hampson]

Hi Folks,

 

Here’s the full text of the DMCA takedown letter you were discussing a few days ago. Thank you to Fernanda Ferreira at UC Davis for being willing to share this. We were speculating about what page two of this letter looked like---as you can see now, this communique is about as tame it gets: “Please remove or disable access to the infringing pages or materials identified below, as they infringe the copyright works identified below.” There’s no threatening language used here at all---a DCMA takedown letter can sound much more ominous.

 

This isn’t a commentary on APA’s decision to mail out these letters to begin with---only an observation that the APA doesn’t appear to have floated this trial balloon with a stick of dynamite attached. This was a happy face balloon.

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

 

*** Sent via Email - DMCA Notice of Copyright Infringement ***

 

Dear Sir/Madam,

 

I write on behalf of the American Psychological Association (APA) to bring to your attention the unauthorized posting of final published journal articles to your institutional website. Following the discussion below, a formal DMCA takedown request is included with URLs to the location of these articles.

 

As a reminder, authors of articles published by APA are able to post the final accepted, pre-formatted versions of their articles on their personal websites, university repositories, and author networking sites (see Internet Posting Guidelines here: http://www.apa.org/pubs/authors/posting.aspx). Similarly, APA complies with funder guidelines to post final accepted manuscripts into appropriate repositories when research is funded by a federal agency.

 

It has come to our attention that final, formatted versions (i.e., versions of record) have been posted on your website, and request that you take them down.  Authors may replace them with the final accepted manuscript versions, including the required note linking to the version of record (as outlined in the Internet Posting Guidelines). Doing so allows APA to preserve the scientific integrity of the research, as finding the final version of record through the APA PsycARTICLES database connects the article with any ensuing commentaries, corrections, and potential retractions; it also connects the version of record to related content and citation information. For full details of APAs efforts, please visit http://www.apa.org/pubs/authors/unauthorized-internet-posting.aspx.

 

APA appreciates your anticipated cooperation. If you have any questions or feedback, or if you believe you have received this message in error (because you have received formal permission from APA to post these versions of record), please reply to the email address below.

 

Thank you.

 

Sincerely,

Attributor Corporation as agent for American Psychological Association

 

 

 

Copyright Infringement Notice

 

This notice is sent pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the European Union's Directive on the Harmonisation of Certain Aspects of Copyright and Related Rights in the Information Society (2001/29/EC), and/or other laws and regulations relevant in European Union member states or other jurisdictions.

 

Please remove or disable access to the infringing pages or materials identified below, as they infringe the copyright works identified below.

 

I certify under penalty of perjury, that I am an agent authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the intellectual property rights and that the information contained in this notice is accurate.

 

I have a good faith belief that use of the material listed below in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

 

 

My contact information is as follows:

 

Organization name:   Attributor Corporation as agent for the rights holders listed below

Email:  counter...@attributor.com

Phone: 650-340-9601

Mailing address:

1825 S. Grant Street

Suite 600

San Mateo, CA 94402

 

My electronic signature follows:

Sincerely,

/Devon E. E. Weston/

Devon E. E. Weston

Attributor, Inc.

 

*** INFRINGING PAGE OR MATERIAL ***

 

Infringing page/material that I demand be disabled or removed in consideration of the above:

 

Rights Holder: American Psychological Association

 

Original Work: Children?s eye-movements during reading reflect the quality of lexical representations: An individual differences approach.

 

Infringing URL: http://languagesciences.ucdavis.edu/uploads/5/3/0/0/53002683/luke_etal_2015.pdf

 

[Note from Glenn: Several other titles and links were also mentioned in this email. These have been removed to protect the privacy of the authors involved.]

 

 

 

[Fiore, Steve]

Careful you don't hurt your back by bending over backwards so far...

Sent from my iPhone

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[Glenn Hampson]

LOL. Sorry—it’s just that the boilerplate DMCA letters can read like the FBI is at your doorstep. In our earlier discussion we realized that we didn’t know exactly what the APA was threatening and to whom. As this letter shows, their takedown request was either watered down intentionally, or the attributor.com folks just believe in a soft-pedaled first warning. Maybe this is irrelevant info, maybe not (it is still a takedown request, after all---which is maybe to your point). I do find it interesting though.

[Michael Wolfe]

A DMCA letter is not a takedown request, it is a takedown notice, and the intended recipient is not meant to be the person posting the work, but rather the intermediary hosting a given copyrighted work. The result of non-compliance, for an intermediary, is the loss of their DMCA safe harbor as to that work. Intermediaries have a strong incentive to comply with a valid notice under most any circumstance, regardless of the tone of the letter. So why would any sender be nasty about it when (a) the recipient generally has no personal connection to the posting and (b) the desired result can typically be achieved more or less automatically?

Now, in this case, it looks like many recipients were not, in fact, intermediaries, but the alleged infringers themselves. The DMCA form isn't really appropriate in these cases, but my guess is it's used because the apparent formality gives the appearance of authority.

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Michael Wolfe

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[Glenn Hampson]

Good point Mike---thanks. This is a notice that reads like a request, but yes---it’s still a notice. In this case, there was an intermediary---the letter went to the UC Davis Office of Research, which has a DMCA desk. And this desk notified the author (but just sent her page one of the two-page notice).

 

I guess if there wasn’t an intermediary well-versed in the meaning of copyright infringement, adding some fire and brimstone to the notice might help.

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