C&D = Takedown = Chill = Limited Creativity = Limited Speech

Ericka Jacobs at Copyfutures found my Fear the Takedown story about Bits of Freedom’s takedown study. She over-stated my effort; all I really did was quote text from Copyfight, which they quoted from Doom9, but that’s how blogs and the web work. More importantly, Erika explained a lot more than I did, including detailing takedown proceedures and safe harbor provisions under US and European copyright law. Finally, she ends by quoting a report by Chilling Effects, a copyright resource center maintained by the “Electronic Frontier Foundation and six law school clinical programs.”

…cease and desist letters sometimes — but not always — have chilling effects on speech that might qualify as fair use.

Copyfutures appears to be the class blog for Professor Solum’s Intellectual Property Seminar: The Future of Copyright at the University of San Diego, and those posting appear to be students in the class. I’ll have to carve out some time to view the PowerPoints, as it looks like an interesting class.