The DMCA Contact posting, and the link to it in the header, are there to make sure that if someone unknowingly infringes copyright in a comment, that the copyright owner is obligated to contact me before filing suit. This could be done by accident, by malice, or by employees of a firm looking for a chance to sue. It doesn't do any good for anything that I intentionally post here, of course. But it does provide some protection for the actions of a commenter.
If your blog allows comments, you darn well better have a DMCA Contact information link somewhere on every page of your blog.
UPDATE: It appears that you need to register with the Copyright Office for this to work--which is $105. Nope. I'm just going to moderate all comments. It's a pain--but the alternative is turning off comments.
According to the linked form, the Copyright Office doesn't allow the use of PO Boxes for notification either, unless that is the only option available in the geographic region. As someone who pays perfectly good money for a PO Box for the convenience it offers, and the piece of mind of knowing that my mail is secure, I find such policies most aggravating. I suppose no good deed goes unpunished.
ReplyDeleteIn the case of Blogger, I would expect that Google would be the DMCA contact, and in turn would be obligated to notify the user of any infringement claims.
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