Researchers on voat have discovered a dodgy DMCA takedown request !
You can verify this for yourself by googling https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/ and checking the link at the bottom of the page .
It's not very effective because it only covers that one specific url instead of the entire site - but it looks to me like a clear abuse of the DMCA system.
According to lumendatabase.org this request was sent by Remove Your Media LLC on behalf of Japan Creative Contents Alliance LLC on March 1st, 2017.
The specific complaint is listed as Copyright claim #21 of 87 total, with this description :
The original works are copyrighted anime television broadcasts and dvd releases by the Japan Creative Contents Alliance LLC. Pursuant to 17 USC sec. 512(c)(3)(A)(ii) the official website for 'GATE' includes a representative list at the below url:
The voat url is at number 297 in the middle of a massive list of otherwise seemingly legitimate copyright claims .
Remove Your Media LLC is owned by a partner at a Texas patent/copyright troll law firm, who appears to have attended the DNC.
They own several other services besides "Remove Your Media, LLC" with names such as "Removeyourcontent, LLC" and "Copyright Defense Agency, LLC" .
The owner of the law firm, Stone & Vaughan, also has a long history of being involved with distribution of pornography. In a public example, Evan Stone partnered with several adult production companies (gay porn specifically) to collect data to sue downloaders and split the profits
The logo mentioned in the article pictured above :
And the East India Trading Company crest for comparison
Corporationwiki also lists an Eric Green as a key figure between all of these companies :
I'm sure Japan Creative Contents Alliance would be pretty pissed off to have their name associated with this fraudulent DMCA takedown request.
I've contacted them for their comments - I suspect they are innocent and are being used by the law firm for their own political agenda.
Update: The email listed on the Japan Creative Contents Alliance is bouncing, the domain is gone, I've sent it to [email protected] instead with no bounce (yet) :
Update 2: This isn't the first time Japan Creative Contents Alliance have submitted fraudulent DMCA requests , and they currently have 267,046 results on lumendatabase .
For comparison Remove Your Media LLC has 221,217 results on lumendatabase ..
Google also publishes their own transparency reports, but unfortunately they don't list the specific url's blocked.
Remove Your Media LLC is the most frequent reporting organization for the voat.co domain according to Google .
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