A New Look at the DMCA Section 512 Takedown Process

The Internet has become an engine for growth and innovation and has been responsible for the heretofore unprecedented scale of sharing and access to information. However, today the Internet is also used for the illegal exchange of copyrighted materials. The fast changing nature of the Internet meant that the traditional copyright law was ill-equipped to handle this infringement. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was introduced as an attempt to address the changing needs of the copyright law. One of the salient additions of the law was an extra-judicial mechanism to remove allegedly infringing content. This thesis examines the takedown process in practice in a structured fashion. As part of this work, we analyze the takedown notices made available to the public, in particular the Chilling Effects repository. We also run active measurement studies to understand the actions and reactions of the system as a whole. In addition to this, we address questions about the DMCA Section 512 process and the entities involved in this process. Finally, we also make specific observations and recommendations in an attempt to structure the future work in addition to summarizing the results of this work. In particular, we find that while the process is not able to take down all the infringing content, it is able to make it less accessible to a casual use