May 16, 2022
Elon Musk takes a stand on controversial Disney copyright case
Elon Musk is predictably unpredictable.
The capricious CEO of Tesla (TSLA) – Get the Tesla Inc. It’s never where you expect it to be.
When a host of CEOs go to great lengths to avoid the spotlight, he embraces them. He is not afraid to stir up controversy by making sometimes loud statements, or taking positions that he knows will anger his critics.
That’s all Elon Musk.
The Serial Entrepreneur: Involved in four prominent companies (Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink) and in the process of acquiring a fifth (Twitter (TWTR) – Get the report from Twitter, Inc.) — now sees himself as a global CEO whose responsibility it is to speak out on a host of burning issues of our time.
For some time now, Musk has been into just about everything: the Russian invasion of Ukraine, antidepressants, Japan’s population decline, work, politics, and more. Yet he has remained silent on abortion despite Politico.com’s disclosure of a Supreme Court draft showing that a majority opinion had voted to strike down Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion. The billionaire will probably have to wait for the decision to be official before commenting on this sensitive issue.
Meanwhile, the richest man in the world has just taken a stand in the highly controversial debate over the protection of the rights of authors and creators and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which addresses issues between copyright and the Internet. .
‘Overzealous’
“Current copyright law in general goes absurdly far beyond protecting the original creator,” Musk tweeted on May 12, commenting on a Slashdot story that US Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo) had just filed. a bill to strip Disney of special copyright protections. .
He added that: “The overzealous DMCA is a blight on humanity.”
Hawley’s bill reduces the term of protection for original works to a maximum of 56 years instead of the current 120 years. This bill appears as some kind of punishment against Disney after the group recently opposed Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. The change will also be retroactive.
Scroll to Continue
“The era of Republican handouts to big business is over,” Hawley said in a statement. “Thanks to special copyright protections from Congress, awakening corporations like Disney have made billions while increasingly pandering to awakening activists. It’s time to strip Disney of special privileges and usher in a new era of creativity and innovation”.
Musk’s tweets suggest that he supports the bill, or at least favors reducing copyright terms.
However, there is an important distinction between copyright and the DMCA.
Owning Twitter, Musk would have to comply with online protections
The DMCA extends a safe harbor to providers of online services or network access. For example, if a user uploads a copyright-protected video to YouTube, places a copyright-protected file on Dropbox and shares links publicly, or simply hosts a copyright-infringing website with a web host , the service provider (YouTube, Dropbox or web hosting provider) — is released from any liability. In other words, the DMCA provides protection to websites like YouTube, preventing them from being sued simply for hosting copyrighted content uploaded by a user.
The DMCA also allows anyone to send a notice to a service provider asking them to remove copyrighted content if it infringes their copyright. If they don’t remove the content immediately, they may be liable for damages if sued.
Musk’s stance on the DMCA is not selfless. If the billionaire completes the acquisition of Twitter, currently on hold, he must comply with this law as the new owner.
In the past, the microblogging website has received numerous DMCA-related takedown requests. In 2021, Twitter saw a 6% increase in DMCA takedown notifications sent and a 17% increase in affected accounts, according to its transparency report published in January. Withheld tweets fell 49%, while withheld media rose 18%, the company said.
The report, which covers the period between January and June 2021, indicates that the social network and Periscope, the Twitter streaming app that was suspended in March 2021, received a total of 179,400 takedown notices for 799,400 affected accounts. The compliance rate was 33.2%. Basically, in most cases, Twitter did not remove the content.
“We do not withhold content in response to DMCA takedown notices that are incomplete, do not address copyright issues, or that we determine to be fraudulent,” Twitter said.
“We carefully review each notice and follow up with the reporter as appropriate. In addition, there may be certain uses of copyrighted material that do not require the permission of the copyright owner, such as political speech, content that is potentially of interest journalistic or cases of apparent fair use”.