Member Article

WordPress's Victory Against "Straight Pride" UK

The company behind WordPress, Automattic, has won what could prove to be a hallmark victory against censorship. A few years back, independent journalist Oliver Hotham interviewed a now-defunct political group that went by the name of Straight Pride UK. Not surprisingly, the interview he posted on his blog didn’t exactly make them look good.

As a matter of fact, it more or less made them come across as a petty, politically-irresponsible hate group. It also shouldn’t come as any surprise that, when their request to take the interview down from his site was ignored, they escalated. The group filed a fraudulent DMCA takedown request against Hotham, removing the content from the web.

“WordPress caved to them without question, removing my article and telling me if I tried to publish it again, I’d be suspended, but that I could challenge the takedown of my article,” writes Hotham in a 2013 blog post. “I responded that yes, I very much would like to, and was emailed a form I’d have to fill in. One of the requirements was that I ‘consent to local federal court jurisdiction, or if overseas, to an appropriate judicial body.’”

Given that he was a student, Hotham had neither “the money, time, or patience” to go through a court trial. He swallowed a bitter pill and took the content down. For all intents and purposes, it looked like the hate group had won.

Then, a few months later, something pretty awesome happened. WordPress parent company Automattic decided it was high time that someone strike back against censorship. Straight Pride UK was one of their first targets.

“Cases [like Hotham’s] are both infuriating and increasingly common,” WordPress’s Paul Sieminski explained in a November 2013 article. “While there are no legal consequences under the DMCA for copyright abusers, there is a provision that allows victims of censorship (and their web hosts) to bring legal action against those who submit fraudulent DMCA notices. Until there are some teeth to the copyright laws, it’s up to us - websites and users together - to stand up to DMCA fraud and protect freedom of expression.”

Alongside Hotham, Automattic took Straight Pride UK to court. Or tried to, anyway. Press officer Nick Steiner never responded to the summons.

That makes this victory more of a symbolic one than anything - as well as a hollow one, according to Sieminski.

“We’re never going to collect,” he told Ars Technica. “It highlights the lack of effective remedies for abusing the DMCA, which people are still using as a tool of censorship.”

Even still, I’d argue that this is a very, very good thing for hosting clients across the world. If other content management engines and hosting sites follow Automattic’s example, the victory against Straight Pride UK could be the first of many. And as the legal system becomes more and more bogged down with cases against people who think the DMCA is their personal censorship tool, it might well push lawmakers to re-examine current copyright laws.

At the very least, it signals that there are real legal consequences to DMCA censorship - it’s not simply a matter of ‘fire and forget.’

About Rachel Gillevet - Rachel is the technical writer for WiredTree, a leader in fully managed dedicated and vps hosting. Follow Rachel and WiredTree on Twitter, @wiredtree and check out more of their articles on their web hosting blog, http://www.wiredtree.com/blog.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rachel Gillevet .