Twitter's new DMCA policy. What's changed?

Twitter recently revised its policies for handling tweets and uploaded content subjected to a DMCA takedown notice.  What's interesting about this is that it is both user-focused in terms of increased transparency as well as policy-minded in terms of calling greater attention to copyright (ab)use online.

Under the DMCA, a 1998 revision of copyright law roughly as popular online as Mitt Romney is in San Francisco, copyright holders can make a request to remove unauthorized use or display of their content (the "takedown notice") to websites and services that host content.  The site hosting the content, in order to comply with the law and maintain its protection from being held liable for copyright infringement, must remove that content.  The law does not require that the sites notify the users whose content is being removed.  However, users can counterclaim, stating either that the content is in fact theirs or that they have authorization to use it.  If the original notifying party who issued the takedown notice fails to respond, the content can be restored in about two weeks.

In the past, Twitter would simply pull the content.  (Whether they also notified users of this action is unknown to me, having not experienced this myself or knowing anyone who has.)  Now, however, Twitter will "withhold" the tweet or picture, replacing it with a notification that a copyright holder has claimed infringement.  From a technical perspective, the operation is the same (the deleted tweet could presumably be restored on action by Twitter if a counterclaim was filed).  The withheld tweets linger in the same purgatory as deleted tweets before they are permanently wiped from Twitter's servers.  Now, however, instead of slipping silently away, they're put on display so that everyone knows what is happening.  Of course, in the cases of legitimate takedown requests, I would hope that it's a simple matter for a Twitterer to delete the badge and move on without calling attention to a momentary lapse.

I mentioned in an earlier post how Twitter can be a valuable resource for journalists (and researchers, for that matter), and this change is a stroke of genius at crowdsourcing awareness DMCA abuse.  Because the "withheld" tweet is represented by a badge on the user's feed, other Twitter users can tweet about the issue.  In doing so, not only does it provide a platform for commentary, but it also, assuming some consistency in hashtags or content, might correlate with the frequency at which certain rightsholders (or representatives thereof) employ DMCA takedown notices, similar to the way Youtube identifies who requested the removal of videos.  The advantage over Youtube's handling, however, is that Twitter can be indexed and referenced in a way that is not possible on Youtube (unless you're internal to Google).  Twitter also submits each takedown notice and counterclaim, de-identified as to the alleged infringer, to Chilling Effects, a clearinghouse of information on DMCA takedowns.

By capturing and publicizing not only the notices, but the discussion surrounding them, while at the same time improving the user experience, Twitter has demonstrated a commitment to preserving a system of rich discussion and sharing online and not simply the bare-minimum approach to compliance that large rightsholder groups designed the law to encourage.