Despite that my blogspot blog is long defunct, I have, largely out of protest, republished the post which some idiot (or some idiotic bot, more likely) thinks infringes copyright. Here is a link to the post, and below is the note that I have appended to it:

Update (31 March 2010): This post, originally published in June of 2006, was “reset” to “draft” status on 29 March 2010 because of a spurious DMCA takedown notification. I am republishing it now, having removed what I believe to be the offending material: namely, a couple links to DJ mixes which may or may not contain infringements of copyrighted materials — not that anyone made it clear to me what that might be. (Blogger’s email was very vague, and the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse to which I was directed is suffering from such a heavy backlog that it may be weeks or days before I get a chance to see the actual DMCA complaint, which will likely still tell me little or nothing about what someone thinks constitutes infringement below.)

I want to note that the mixes to which I linked have long been unavailable, and so the automated takedown notice I received is essentially saying that I am infringing copyright by directing people to a 404 error. Beyond that simple fact, however, I want to register some protest over the burden of proof falling on me: I did not make the mixes in question but am simply linking to them; moreover, it is a rather gray area to claim that a fragment of a track recontextualized in a mix — and one with critical commentary guiding its aesthetic — is an infringement of copyright. My belief is that this use — on the part of the DJ, never mind a blogger like me simply linking to it — is firmly protected by “fair use.”

I am sorry that Blogger/blogspot and the DMCA make it so easy for spurious takedowns to happen as opposed to facilitating the important re-accounting of the balance that copyright is supposed to strike. It’s amazing to me that two defunct links to mixes, which may or may not infringe copyrights, are enough to remove and potentially delete a post with a great deal of other content in it. This vulnerability to bad law is one reason that I moved my blog from Blogger to a private server years ago. Incidentally, in case this post again becomes “reset,” I have republished it, in full, here: http://wayneandwax.com/?p=3186