Doug Walker is rallying up YouTubers to help bring fair use back to the Internet, after his #WTFU (Where’s The Fair Use?) campaign placed a spotlight upon the DMCA takedowns that have plagued the video-sharing site.
Walker, founder of Channel Awesome and best known for his Nostalgia Critic persona, uploaded a video pointing his viewers in the direction of TakeDownAbuse.org, a site which has been set up in order to raise awareness of a notice put out by the U.S. Copyright Office requesting public comments pertaining to the effectiveness of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The notice states that the Office will “consider the costs and burdens of the notice-and-takedown process on large- and small-scale copyright owners, online service providers, and the general public.”
TakeDownAbuse.org outlines the negative impact the DMCA has had on content creators, writing: “Every time a tweet is written or a video is posted to YouTube, trolls and corporate copyright holders see a way to abuse a law called the DMCA to stifle speech they don’t like, cut out their competitors or critics, or fleece someone for profit. They’re even using robots to automatically take down other people’s work.”
There has been a swelling backlash against the frequent abuse of the DMCA on the site, with video makers having their content wrongfully removed as a result of false copyright claims dished out by companies. Walker’s #WTFU campaign led to YouTube responding to these criticisms, insisting that they would improve their handling of copyright claims in the future, but this latest petition to the U.S. Copyright Office represents a chance to actually change the terms of the DMCA in order to make it more relevant to modern day online media.
However, those looking to help appeal to the government about the DMCA have less than 24 hours to do so, so visit TakeDownAbuse.org before the end of today in order to contribute.
