EFF Posts Gripe Site Legal Guide

Because copyright and trademark lawyers have had such itchy trigger fingers when it comes to issuing DMCA takedown notices, there’s a lot of confusion out there what exactly constitutes infringement, and what webmasters can and can’t do with intellectual property.

Part of the problem is that websites hosting other people’s content—YouTube, Blogger, eBay, etc.—remove the content at the slightest whiff of a DMCA notice to avoid trouble. This leads, of course, to abuse and to targets without any great recourse.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation posted a great, Eric Goldman’s amendments and additional precautions, if you're not feeling quite as, well, ballsy as the EFF):

1. Be noncommercial
2. Don’t use trademark alone in domain name (add commentary like “sucks”)
3. Add a disclaimer of unaffiliation
4. Find a service provider with a backbone*
5. Be selective with borrowed text or images
6. Don’t offer to sell domain name to trademark owner

   *Number three is a great one, and EFF links to a

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