Copyright As Censorship: Birth Blogger Fight Goes Legal Over DMCA Abuse
Techdirt. Stories filed under "fair use" 2013-03-30
Summary:
Phew! That's a lot of stuff. You can see the actual lawsuit here if you'd like (and it's also embedded below). I will say that prior to getting this, I'd never heard of either of these women, and I have no idea what the real crux of their dispute is about -- though it's quite clear that there's a much bigger history going on between these two women prior to the events listed above. In the post showing the middle finger picture, Gina describes a long history (in, um, snarky terms). Either way, one or both of these women may have wronged the other at some point. I have no idea, nor does it really matter concerning the specific events above. Reading the blog posts back and forth (which isn't as easy as clicking on the original GOMI links, because Gina has blocked any traffic coming from that site with a message listing two possible reasons you're getting the blocked message -- with the first one being the likely issue: "you clicked on a link to my site from a really, seriously effed up place on the internet, in which case, for real? Why are you hanging around such places? Nevermind, ick, I don't wanna know.") I'm obviously not going to get into the long term fight the two are having over birthing methods or education -- but on the copyright issues, it seems fair to weigh in. It's pretty clear that Gina way, way, way over-claimed things in her original blog post alleging infringement. She makes it sound as if Dr. Amy is guilty and must pay up, solely based on the accusation. She also claims that because her host has been contacted, they have to take down the content. Neither claim is true or accurate (it's possible she got questionable legal advice here):OK, so Gina wrote this post about how she's learned soooooooooo much after being a doula at 20 births.
Dr. Amy responded with this post, basically saying, "If you've learned this much after 20, what do you think you'd learn after a few thousand?" It really wasn't terribly mean, by Dr. Amy standards.
Gina then responded with a photo of herself flipping Dr. Amy the bird, and saying, "I don't want to leave you without something you can take back to your blog and obsess over, so here's a picture of me."
Dr. Amy then wrote about it (and included the photo, which is now gone) in this post.
Gina THEN proceeded to scream "Copyright infringement!!!!" and send Dr. Amy a letter demanding money, which she wrote about in this post. (The letter was originally posted but later deleted.)
Dr. Amy's husband, who is a very big-deal lawyer, wrote back to Gina and told her she didn't have a case. Gina then repeatedly filed DMCA takedown notices to Dr. Amy's host (and then her new one, after she switched hosts), which she detailed here. She also started a legal fund so she could go after Amy. It was VERY clearly an attempt to abuse DMCA in order to shut Amy up. Gina was also encouraging other people to fill out forms saying that Amy had "stolen" (aka quoted, with proper citation) their stories.
Then, Dr. Amy countered with this suit…
By law, Amy now owes me $750 per incident, and up to $30,000. Think twice before stealing things off people's blogs. In case you're wondering, that is a VERY serious offense.... Her host has also been contacted, and by law, they must remove the content.No, by law, Amy is not required to pay up until a court decides she has to. Also, copyright infringement is not stealing, but that's a whole different fight. As for the host being contact, they do not have to remove the content by law, though there are very strong incentives for them to remove it. Of c