Sunday, November 12, 2006

DCMA at work again, this time with landmark

San Francisco-based Landmark Education, known for its Landmark Forum motivational workshops, is trying to suppress an investigative television news piece critical of its methods. Landmark contends that the documentary infringes its copyright in the Forum course, while citing to copyright registration of the Forum leader's manual. Using the alleged copyright violation as a pretext, Landmark subpoenaed three websites hosting the video -- the Internet Archive, Google Video, and YouTube -- seeking the identities of the anonymous uploaders. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allows a content owner to issue a subpoena for the identity of an alleged infringer without first filing an actual lawsuit.

"This is a classic example of using a bogus copyright claim to squelch free speech," said EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. "To the extent that the documentary uses any Landmark material, that use is clearly non-infringing. Landmark is simply trying to use the streamlined DMCA subpoena process to obtain the identities of its critics."

Well DCMA is good for you and your fellow citizens, specially if they are big coporations. Read the rest of the article and motions at EFF, Deep Links site.

Links

Self help group bullies net critics

For EFF's objection to the Internet Archive subpoena: http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/landmark/eff_letter.pdf

For more on Landmark's subpoena campaign:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/landmark/

you also can contact;

Corynne McSherry
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
corynne@eff.org

Kurt Opsahl
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
kurt@eff.org

1 comment:

GuruTruth said...

More information about this documentary video, Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus. After the airing of this film to 1.5 million people in France, Landmark Education was investigated for unpaid-labor practices and left all of France one month later in June 2004. Landmark Education is currently attempting to suppress Freedom of Speech and abuse the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to get this film removed from the internet. There is more about this at Landmark Education wants to make French news report a “forbidden video” on the Net and at Why did Landmark Education leave France?, as well as reported in The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, as carried from Reuters in Google faces legal challenges over video service, and at the Electronic Frontier Foundation at Landmark and the Internet Archive.

More information about other controversial Large Group Awareness Training organizations, at :

The Truth about Human Potential Seminars