The actors have weaponized systems to protect their work. These parties have the power to claim, monetize, or remove content that they don't have a right to. They are all familiar with bad faith takedowns of their work on internet platforms.
Do you know that this can happen to you as well? The hard way was learned when a muckraker's entire body of work was taken down due to fake DMCA requests.
Since the beginning of the year, Dirty Bubble Media has been covering the most shady aspects of the industry. Some of this year's biggest stories have been covered by the newsletter's author under the name Mike Burgersburg.
Have you heard of Celsius, the lender that helped crash the entire cripto market this year? Burgersburg sounded the alarm at the company in January. Burgersburg was looking into another lender around that time. It was like a fate similar to Celsius' soon after.
The online home for Burgersburg's reporting was taken down by Substack on July 15, which was odd since Burgersburg had become a trusted source of information in the small-yet-growing skeptic circle.
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There is a notice on the Substack page that says "Publication Not Available". You are unable to access the page.
Substack deplatformed one of its own creators. The newsletter platform has caused controversy due to its less strict moderation policies. The company went to bat for writers accused of creating transphobia on its platform.
Molly White, creator of Web3 Is Going Great, said on July 17 that she went to find one ofdirtybubblemed3's posts to use in a citation and found that his research had been flagged as a violation of the terms of service. Substack Inc should restore it soon once they realize people are weaponizing their reporting flow.
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Burgersburg said that Substack had taken down his website because of spurious complaints.
According to the EFF's Associate Director of Policy and Activism, people don't think about copyright as a restriction on speech because it's supposed to help creators. Copyright is a monopoly right on expression that has been granted by law, and that makes it in conflict with free speech, and that makes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which gives people the ability to take things down without a court order, an incredibly effective tool for censorship.
Over the years, false takedown tactics have become more and more common, where authoritarian regimes overseas have weaponized copyrighted works to silence critics.
A Substack spokesman told Mashable on July 15 that the company had received multiple valid Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)infringement notices regarding Dirty Bubble Media and that it "notified the writer and explained our copyright dispute policy each time" The Dirty Bubble Media content was removed due to Substack's policy.
Burgersburg gave us copies of the three takedown requests that were sent to Substack and resulted in his reporting being taken down. There were two for unique articles and one for an updated version of an article.
While every platform's policies are different, Jonathan Bailer, copyright and plagiarism consultant at Copy Byte and author at the website Plagiarism Today, found it odd that the platform took down his website in this particular case.
"If the case could be handled with a single DMCA notice and we aren't talking about a sky high number of works, it really shouldn't have tripped their policy."
Burgersburg confirmed that Substack tried to reach him as early as April, after multiple DMCA takedowns were sent over a four-month period. He didn't check the email address he used to sign up for Substack often enough.
Substack restored the account five days after it was opened. A few of Burgersburg's posts were missing. The complaint was given 10 days to respond to the dispute.
Since Spring, a company called "Mevrex" has filed three separate DMCA requests accusing Burgersburg of plagiarizing their original work.
The 1998 U.S. Copyright law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides for the removal of copyrighted material from websites and online platforms. The Mevrex filed their complaints through the service. Customers can pay as little as $10 a month for a subscription service or as much as $199 for a flat fee.
Substack decided to remove Burgersburg's newsletter and archives from the internet after getting a third takedown notice.
The copyright claims were not true. Burgersburg did not plagiarize. The opposite occurred. Burgersburg's reporting was copied and pasted. They backdated the post on their website to make it appear on their website as if it had been published before Burgersburg did.
DMCA.com didn't reply to a question from Mashable.
It seems unlikely that theDMCA.com knowingly filed a false notice, as they were likely deceived as well, according to Plagiarism Today. "Cases like this cause people to distrust your notices, which leads to problems down the road."
"Who Spends $24 million on an NFT?" is one of the Burgersburg articles that UNFT News is claiming to be their own. Meet Deepak Thapliyal, the CEO from Nowhere. The way it got to her wallet is a bit odd. In February, Burgersburg posted these on his newsletter. The pieces were published by UNFT News.
On February 14, Burgersburg posted the piece on the website. Burgersburg's work was re-posted by UNFT News on their own website. The post dates were submitted as proof that Burgersburg was the plagiarist.
The article was backdated to February 9. There is a problem with the publishing date. UNFT News claimed to have published that piece before their website existed.
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The UNFT News website was found on the internet archive's Wayback Machine. UNFT News, which claims to be a leading online magazine, did not launch until mid-March 2022. The most recent version of the website is from March 19. The pieces that Burgerberg actually wrote are not shown in the archives.
There isn't a lot of coverage ofcryptocurrencies on UNFT News. "Top 10 Best Photo Hunt Of Ice Rugby," "The Great Time For Enjoy City View On Mountain," and "Outdoor Photo Shooting With Sexy And Beautiful" were some of the titles that appeared on the UNFT News website.
Mevrex is a media agency that offers services to more than 200 brands and businesses in over 30 countries, according to its website. Most of the mentions of Mevrex online are paid for press releases and advertorials by the company itself, which says it was founded by a youngentrepreneur named Lakshay Jain.
Articles like this one filled UNFT News in March 2022. But the articles they claimed Burgerburg took from them are nowhere to be found Credit: Screenshot
The accounts on UNFT News' social media appear to have been inflated.
It was posted on March 29, 2022. The posts that get more than a single digit of likes are the ones that have a lot of followers. Its Facebook Page has 13k followers and gets very little engagement. Not a single uploaded public video has appeared on its profile page. The UNFT News account was suspended sometime in April or May. The account used to be called "NFT News" and changed its name in April.
Attempts to speak to Mevrex were unsuccessful.
EFF's Trendacosta said there's no deterrence for sending a bad takedown.
Substack hasn't restored two of the three posts Mevrex claimed were plagiarizing.
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