Takedown Hall of Shame
By Bala Shah

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in USA is the leading civil rights organization to protect its citizens when their freedoms in the networked world come under attack. Founded in 1990, the highly regarded EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights. EFF is a donor-funded nonprofit and like Greenpeace values its independence.

One of the ways big business, governments, powerful individuals and vested interests prevent free speech is by threatening legal action. Often, a phone call followed by a legal letter is enough. Sometimes, powerful and rich organizations/individuals drag people to court who lack resources to fight legal battles.  The EFF often steps in to protect such people.

Now, the EFF has published its ‘Takedown Hall of Shame’.  In this list, it publicly reveals the big companies that have threatened legal action if the article/photo/satire about them is not removed from the internet.

Surprisingly, media companies who are the fourth pillar of any democracy are some of the biggest culprits.  This EFF ‘Takedown Hall of Shame’ list has some prominent media companies including

-  National Public Radio (NPR) for forcing the removal of a political advertisement.  EFF explains on their site: “Two weeks before a statewide vote on legalizing same-sex marriage initiative, Stand for Marriage Maine (SMM) created an ad criticizing same-sex marriage that excerpted a brief portion of an All Things Considered interview. Although the ad's use of the content was clearly necessary to its critical political message, NPR sent a takedown demand to YouTube resulting in the removal of the video. NPR failed to recognize that SMM's excerpting is simply another clear-cut example of a fair use in political speech -- the 21st century equivalent of an issue pamphlet.”

- NBC issued a takedown for this satirical Obama campaign video, which used archival footage of Tom Brokaw to announce the "bad news" that Senator John McCain had been elected president. Intended to motivate Obama supporters to "get out the vote," it was taken down days before a critical voter registration deadline, illustrating the DMCA's ability to shut down legitimate political speech during timely moments.

- In the heat of the 2008 presidential election season, the McCain campaign posted a satirical video that included a clip of CBS News anchor Katie Couric commenting on sexism in the campaign. CBS News issued a DMCA takedown notice and had the video removed from YouTube. The McCain campaign subsequently called on YouTube to take more care with takedowns targeting political ad. EFF sent letters to the broadcasting networks and YouTube, encouraging all parties involve to protect online political speech.