Importance

November 04, 2003

EFF, Stanford Support Diebold Countersuit

Copyfight had the first news and a collection of interesting links for EFF's and Stanford's Cyberlaw Clinic's support for a lawsuit against Diebold (EFF, CIS Seek Court Order Against Diebold). The documents filed in the case can be found here (EFF Archive: Online Policy Group v. Diebold, Inc.).

While I applaud the efforts to shut down Diebold's attempt to silence the publicizing of evidence justifying the complaints of Diebold's critics, I'm not sure how viable some of the legal arguments being made are. Some are certainly stronger than others, but it will not be an easy case to win. For example, while I certainly think that publishing the memos is fair use, I don't think the case for fair use is so clear that Diebold "knew" that the copyright claims were false. On the other hand, Diebold certainly should have known that linking to documents hosted on another site is not covered by the DMCA notice-and-takedown claims. The misuse of copyright argument is clever, and I hope it succeeds, but it will be tough going as the doctrine isn't quite clear and most cases deal with issues relating to anti-trust, not political expression.

At the very least, however, the lawsuit should force Diebold to actually litigate the issues rather than merely rely on the notice-and-takedown provisions. Moreover, the arguments in the case will certainly be precedent-setting and very interesting.

Posted by Ernest at 9:25 AM
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