A Law of One's Own: The Inefficacy of the DMCA for Non-Consensual Intimate Media

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Qiwei, Li, Zhang, Shihui, Pratt, Samantha Paige, Kasper, Andrew Timothy, Gilbert, Eric, Schoenebeck, Sarita
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Qiwei, Li
Zhang, Shihui
Pratt, Samantha Paige
Kasper, Andrew Timothy
Gilbert, Eric
Schoenebeck, Sarita
author_facet Qiwei, Li
Zhang, Shihui
Pratt, Samantha Paige
Kasper, Andrew Timothy
Gilbert, Eric
Schoenebeck, Sarita
contents Non-consensual intimate media (NCIM) presents internet-scale harm to individuals who are depicted. One of the most powerful tools for requesting its removal is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). However, the DMCA was designed to protect copyright holders rather than to address the problem of NCIM. Using a dataset of more than 54,000 DMCA reports and over 85 million infringing URLs spanning over a decade, this paper evaluates the efficacy of the DMCA for NCIM takedown. Results show that for non-commercial requests, while more than half of URLs are deindexed from Google Search within 48 hours, the actual removal of content from website hosts is much slower. The median infringing URL takes more than 45 days to be removed from website hosts, and only 5.39% URLs are removed within the first 48 hours. Additionally, the most frequently reported domains for non-commercial NCIM are smaller websites, not large platforms. We stress the need for new laws that ensure a shorter time to takedown that are enforceable across big and small platforms alike.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_13575
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Law of One's Own: The Inefficacy of the DMCA for Non-Consensual Intimate Media
Qiwei, Li
Zhang, Shihui
Pratt, Samantha Paige
Kasper, Andrew Timothy
Gilbert, Eric
Schoenebeck, Sarita
Computers and Society
Non-consensual intimate media (NCIM) presents internet-scale harm to individuals who are depicted. One of the most powerful tools for requesting its removal is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). However, the DMCA was designed to protect copyright holders rather than to address the problem of NCIM. Using a dataset of more than 54,000 DMCA reports and over 85 million infringing URLs spanning over a decade, this paper evaluates the efficacy of the DMCA for NCIM takedown. Results show that for non-commercial requests, while more than half of URLs are deindexed from Google Search within 48 hours, the actual removal of content from website hosts is much slower. The median infringing URL takes more than 45 days to be removed from website hosts, and only 5.39% URLs are removed within the first 48 hours. Additionally, the most frequently reported domains for non-commercial NCIM are smaller websites, not large platforms. We stress the need for new laws that ensure a shorter time to takedown that are enforceable across big and small platforms alike.
title A Law of One's Own: The Inefficacy of the DMCA for Non-Consensual Intimate Media
topic Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.13575