What could be done with the simple word DID? In 2018, the owner of Two-Bit History, a website dedicated to the history of computers, wrote a very nice article about mathematician Ada Lovelace, who is considered the first computer programmer.
Unfortunately, if you search for Google article you will not find it. An anti-piracy company deleted it because it dared to use the word "did".
Every hour, every day, every week all year round, anti-piracy companies send out DMCA alerts to remove content that allegedly infringes on the Internet.
Many of these are content takedown requests, targeting movies, TV shows, music, gamea, software and anything else that can be digitally reproduced. For copyright holders it is now a duty but mistakes can happen. The scale is such that mistakes are almost inevitable.
Unfortunately, some of these mistakes are so ridiculous that they seem unacceptable, especially when they target people who had no intention of breaking the Law.
Case: Sinclair Target, owner of the blog Two-Bit History
In 2018, Target wrote an article about Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, who is often cited as the first programmer in the world, despite being born in 1815. Unfortunately, if you search the article today via Google you will not find it .
The image below shows the original Tweet that the article announces and still exists on Google, but the article itself has been removed, thanks to a copyright infringement complaint.
Υπάρχουν δεκάδες λόγοι για τους οποίους ένα άρθρο μπορεί να παραβιάζει τα πνευματικά δικαιώματα κάποιου, αλλά πολλές φορές είναι εντελώς παράλογοι. Το άρθρο του Sinclair διαγράφηκε επειδή μια εταιρεία για την καταπολέμηση της πειρατείας που λειτουργούσε για account μιας τηλεοπτικής σειράς αποφάσισε ότι ο τίτλος της Ada Lovelace που περιείχε τη λέξη «DID», είναι παράνομος.
This monumental "potato" was announced on Twitter by Sinclair himself, who complained that “Computers are stupid folks. Too bad Google has decided they are in charge. ”
Of course people are stupid, not computers. The proof is in DMCA complaint sent to Google by RightsHero, an anti-piracy company working on behalf of Zee TV, an Indian pay-per-view channel television which presents Dance India Dance.
It is now in its seventh season. The Dance India Dance series is a dance show that is often referred to as DID. So because Target and at least 11 other websites dared to use the word in titles, RightsHero listed the pages as illegal and asked Google to remove them.
Let's see what happened.
Below are some of the other articles that allegedly violate the Law:
-USGS Earthquake Hazards Program of the US Geological Survey (Did You Feel It? (DYFI) collects information from people who felt an earthquake and creates maps that show what people experienced and the extent of damage)
– The US Department of Education (Did (or will) you file a Schedule 1 with your 2018 tax return?)
- Nature.com (Did pangolins spread the China coronavirus to people?)
The Torrentfreak tried contact RightsHero. However, the only anti-piracy company that bears this name has a useless website that does not provide information about where the company is, who owns it, or how someone can get in touch with them.
So without RightsHero, Sinclair Target was left with only one option, to file a counterclaim with Google in the hope that his page would be restored.
