Graef DMCA Abuse Update

Filed in archive Legal , People , Society & Public Policy on January 29, 2007

We reported previously on the Guntram Graef lawsuit as an example of DMCA abuse. Mr Graef responded to us as below. Allegations of ID theft and Sexual abuse are important. We do not pretend to judge those charges, which are outside our discussion.

Our article focused on how the DMCA law is being misused. One way, as in Mr. Graef's case, is its use as a convenient bludgeon for other offenses, which could have been prosecuted without the DMCA

Guntram Graef pointed me to two web sites where readers can get more information - a Cnet interview and blog article on lessons learned.

His personal message to me:

[S]ome people misunderstood why I dropped my copyright claim with YouTube. I still believe that a copyright infringement happened and my claim certainly wasn\'t abuse of DMCA. It is just that in this particular case the bigger issue is the infringement of personality rights and abusive and sexually abusive nature of the video. Taking Ailin's real life photo (that is copyrighted), photoshopping it and uploading it into the Second Life software to produce a video of course was a copyright violation. Yet, I felt there is no gain arguing with people about this. It only distracted from the more important issue of sexual abuse / griefing / attacks on a person.