Bonum Certa Men Certa

DMCA Offender Microsoft Has a Culture of Censorship Inside the Company, Not Just Customer-facing

Summary: Microsoft demonstrates its embrace of excessive censorship and its disregard for copyright law, which it abuses in order to censor the competition, too

SITES such as BoingBoing point out that not only British ISPs are censoring news sites like TorrentFreak. According to TorrentFreak, "Microsoft Censors TorrentFreak For Security Reasons" (news sites are not a security risk).



"Same "security" reasons Microsoft flunkies remove FB and TB from work computers," iophk pointed out, adding links to show just how far the British police now goes to censor sites without even a court order [1,2,3].

"Maybe there should also be some criminal charges against companies like Microsoft, e.g. for issuing bogus DMCA takedowns against Google."Next time when discussing Bing censorship we should remember that Microsoft very much welcomes censorship, even within the company. Microsoft went as far as using bogus DMCA takedown requests against Google, essentially trying to censor the competition. It's no wonder that sites which reported this, such as TorrentFreak, are being blocked by Microsoft. TorrentFreak is also reporting right now that Google DMCA takedowns are hurting real companies.

"They should be billing for processing takedowns with higher fees for false reports," iophk notes. Maybe there should also be some criminal charges against companies like Microsoft, e.g. for issuing bogus DMCA takedowns against Google. It is widely known that bogus DMCA takedowns are an offence, but the law is rarely enforced against commercial entities (especially large ones) that resort to bogus DMCA takedowns.

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. Police blacklist aims to cut off ad funding to piracy sites


  2. London police want to stop good firms from advertising on bad websites
    THE CITY OF LONDON POLICE is asking advertisers to stop hawking their wares on what are viewed as "illegal websites".
  3. UK Police Launch Pirate Site Blacklist for Advertisers




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