WordPress.com is increasingly seeing the improper use of DCMA taketown notices…

“… we’ve seen an increased number of improper notices. … [and one example is]…

“Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus are experienced science journalists who operate Retraction Watch, a site that highlights and tracks situations where published scientific papers may not be everything they seem. One reader apparently disagreed with a critique published on Retraction Watch – so he copied portions of the Retraction Watch site, claimed the work as his own and issued a DMCA takedown notice against the original authors.

While there are no legal consequences (like fines) under the DMCA for copyright abusers, there is a provision that allows victims of censorship (and their web hosts) to bring legal action against those who submit fraudulent DMCA notices.

So today, we’ve […] take a small strike back at DMCA abuse. We’ve filed two lawsuits for damages under Section 512(f) of the DMCA, which allows for suits against those who “knowingly materially misrepresent” a case of copyright infringement.”

Excellent news. The BBC is reporting that…

“Google has defeated a legal action mounted to stop it scanning and uploading millions of books. In 2005, the US Authors Guild sued Google alleging that its plans to create a digital library amounted to massive copyright infringement. In its defence, Google said its plans constituted “fair use” because it was only putting excerpts of texts online. U.S. judge Denny Chin has now sided with Google and dismissed the case brought by the Guild.”

Wired has the full text of the ruling.

Read a lot of news feeds? My desktop RSS reader FeedDemon has sadly just stopped development, with a new final 4.5 version. But the developer Nick Bradbury has very kindly made the latest FeedDemon Pro 100% freeware…

“As promised, this last version of FeedDemon is completely free. All of the features of the Pro version are available, and ads are no longer shown in the bottom left of the screen.”