Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter, yesterday Declared Twitter is temporarily suspending accounts found to be “participating in repeated and egregious weaponization” of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Musk’s tweet comes at the same time as a bitter copyright dispute unfolded, resulting in the suspension of his Twitter account by the rights holder. The outage came after professional photographer and his Twitter user @NightLights_AM sent a takedown notice to his Twitter user @Rainmaker1973, an enthusiast.
Tweets from suspended accounts are unavailable and some of the tweets from fan accounts have been deleted, so it’s difficult to trace the full story here. It is unclear whether they were aware of the rights holder’s account suspension. .
@NightLights_AM is run by Adrien Mauduit, a Norway-based nature and astrophotographer, according to TorrentFreak. His Twitter feed was full of colorful videos and photos he took as an “Aurora Tracking Specialist.” In early March, Mauduit uploaded a geomagnetic storm video that was embedded in a tweet sent by @Rainmaker1973. This tweet is powered by his Italy-based Twitter user Massimo.
Massimo, an engineer who uses Twitter to “build a holistic view of #science through curated photos, videos and links,” credited Mauduit’s account and linked to the original tweet. However, according to Massimo, Mauduit did not stop sending takedown notices.
Massimo, who appeared to want to settle the dispute, contacted Mauduit, who demanded money, according to Massimo. Ars was not immediately able to reach out to his Mauduit for comment, but so far has neither confirmed nor denied the allegations Massimo made about their exchange. TorrentFreak pointed out that Mauduit may have intended to demand the license fee, but Massimo said Mauduit had “blackmailed” him for sharing content for educational purposes over the years. He is one of the content creators of .
“Since 2014, I’ve been hit with the DMCA dozens of times, one with a three-week suspension,” Massimo said. murmuredI paid over $1,500 to keep this account open. I’ve been blocked by an error several times, and I’m struggling as it is. ”
But Musk’s new declaration to stop using the excessive DMCA makes him seem more sympathetic to Twitter users like Massimo than to Twitter creators like Mauduit. Twitter did not respond to Ars’ request for clarification, but TorrentFreak speculated that Musk may have been directly behind Mauduit’s account suspension.
Twitter is required Responding to Copyright ClaimsIn 2021, when Musk was criticized for stealing a meme he shared by ripping out the creator’s name, Musk said, ” No one should be trusted,” reported the New York Times.And in May 2022, he murmured “The overzealous DMCA is a plague of mankind,” he said, and “current copyright laws generally go far beyond protecting original creators.” So it shouldn’t necessarily come as a surprise that he would change his Twitter policy to prevent undue enthusiasm on his own platform.
Musk, of course, isn’t entirely against creators filing legitimate complaints, tweeting, “Of course, reasonable media removal requests are appropriate and will always be supported.” However, it remains to be seen where the line between rational and irrational is drawn. [Update: Twitter trust and safety chief Ella Irwin told Ars, “Twitter handles DMCA complaints from rightsholders on a regular basis and we review each complaint to ensure they are valid and if so, we take down the reported content. For all complaints, DMCA and otherwise, we look for evidence of bad faith reporting such as someone claiming to be a rights owner when they actually do not own the rights to the content in question or someone threatening to get a user suspended unless they pay them money immediately, which often turns out to be a fraud scam. If we see evidence of bad faith reporting, we will suspend the reporter.”]
An hour after tweeting about Twitter’s new efforts to prevent the weaponization of the DMCA, Musk said that his tweet was a sign that Twitter’s CEO would be part of his overall Twitter monetization strategy. You seem to have realized that you are not reassuring content creators who want He later tweeted that he understood that supporting content creators was still a “major priority” and that “people need to make a living and thrive from their jobs.”
No one knows how much Mauduit made from uploading original content to Twitter, but as long as the account is suspended, it’s an opportunity for photographers to promote their work and thrive. is clearly missing.
