Why Abuse of the DMCA Take-down system is Bad News

[AndyJ]

As things have been quiet on the forums for a few days, I thought I'd post a couple of links to interesting articles about the way the big movie and music companies can abuse the system in the USA which allows the owners of copyright material to request that the material is removed from sites when it is posted without permission. It's a good and cheap system for tackling online infringement, but despite there being penalties for any abuse, some big organisations seem to have a bullying attitude and this is helped by an overly acquiescent approach by the big online service providers like Youtube, Blogger and Google. Any system which is regularly abused risks falling into disrepute.
I would be interested to hear others' opinions on this subject.
Link 1:http://www.scitechbits.com/2010/05/15/nonsense-filming-a-movie-being-filmed-violates-copyright/
Link2: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/kafka-in-bloggerland-the-mysterious-world-of-the-dmca.ars