(News : http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42808521 )

1. What is DMCA ?

DMCA is the short of the all powerful Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The act is used by genuine content owners to appeal and protect take down unauthorized content. The act is needless to say controversial and ThePiratebay [1] saga and the "Kim Dotcom" [2] incident are the most popular use cases of DMCA take downs.

A DMCA Take-down is:

When content is removed from a website at the request of the owner of the content or the owner of the copyright of the content. It is a well established, accepted, internet standard followed by website owners and internet service providers.

Your right to process. Any owner of content has the right to process a take down notice against a website owner and/or an Online Service Provider (e.g. ISP, hosting company etc.) if the content owner's property is found online without their permission.

2. How is DMCA applicable to STEEM blockchain ?

As we know, we have too much of plagiarism, usage of article spinners, videos and photos used without permission etc going on. Now where does this content gets stored ?

The content is getting stored in the witness servers operated by individuals.

This makes the portals like steemit.com, busy.org and every other interface to STEEM blockchain similar to The Pirate Bay. None of this portals store any content but the objectionable content is stored by some 300+ individual who are proud of being part of the decentralized revolution. (And storing SPAM, Plagiarized content and what not!)

Now, I don't personally agree with copyrights, but I believe in free knowledge sharing. I have release most of work in under various public domain or creative common licenses, GPL, MIT licenses etc depending upon the circumstance. Personally my content is heavily plagiarized but rather than the monetary compensation I have just asked for the attribution. (bi-line).

3. How will DMCA move ?

Though I am no expert or in favor of DMCA, If someone ask me, this is how I will move : use DMCA to threaten individual witnesses as opposed to the company.

Now, if a competing blockchain or few individuals who are pissed by seeing people making money via article spinners and stolen content can approach DMCA and request for a take down.

Portals like Youtube has a mechanism to submit DMCA take down notices. We, STEEM blockchain being censorship resistant & 'decentralized' (except for the @grumpycat & @madpuppy controlling everything) etc, will not agree for a take down.

So what will do ?

As a community, we will resist any take down attempt.

What will be the action of DMCA ?

Its going to be very simple, go after all the witnesses, send them a notice or do a simple DDoS against the full RPC nodes. Sure, we will all resist, but is that we are supposed to do ?

• We already want to work on the blockchain and make sure that the prices increases
• We have to launch Hive [3] - the communities
• we have to launch SMT [4]

Do we stand a chance against DMCA take down ?

I believe with the collective expertise, we will be able to do that, but the question is, whether is that something we should be doing or not. As we are crying out about bid bots and various other silly things, the existence of the STEEM blockchain itself is in question.

4. What can we do ?

For, the sake of basic common sense, stop fighting and prevent people from using article spinners, plagiarized content, plagiarized videos etc. The D-* platforms, steepshot etc are requested to take a tough stand against piracy. The witnesses and those who are running full nodes are the ones who is under pressure due increased CPU - RAM requirements already and we are looking at DMCA soon.

Initiatives like @steemcleaners are the only hope and we need to join hands with them.

#5. To @grumpycat & @madpuppy

Before you downvote me to oblivion, May I ask you a question ?

The grumpycat image that you are using, is it bought or downloaded ?

Why don't you join an initiative like @steemcleaners first cleanup the existential threat to this blockchain and then go after the challenges ?

References:

1. TPB : https://www.reddit.com/r/thepiratebay/comments/5tjvnp/tpb_went_down_came_back_up_and_now_ive_got_dmca/

2. Kim Dotcom : https://www.wired.com/2012/10/ff-kim-dotcom/

3. Hivemind : https://github.com/steemit/hivemind

4. SMT :https://steemit.com/smt/@steemitblog/smart-media-token-development

Special requests for Martyrdom

• (1) BEGIN : Meawoooo & bow-bow {

Now, if I have got your attention and tickled the wrong nerve instead of the right one your tail, use the FLAG on the right top to down vote. !

} END : Meawoooo & bow-bow

• (2) If you are one of those running multiple accounts and up voting each other with fake accounts, do upvote me as I upvote all your posts !!!!

Now, @gumpycat and others, if you are genuine, I have a proposal - its about addressing the plagiarism first. Tackle it with machine learning and AI. I am sure there are lot of people who will be able to contribute. What you say ?