I woke up this morning to a message from Facebook that my profile photo had been removed for copyright infringement after a complaint from the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility. This is the message I received:
Contact the Complaining Party
If you believe that this content should not have been removed from Facebook, you can contact the complaining party directly to resolve your issue:
Report #: 940883179273582
Rights Owner: Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility
Email: jack@wagunresponsibility.org
Copyrighted Work: A logo my organization or client owns
If an agreement is reached to restore the reported content, please have the complaining party email us with their consent and include the report number.
Facebook complies with the notice and takedown procedures defined in section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). If you believe that this content was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification, you can submit a DMCA counter-notification by filling out our automated form at http://www.facebook.com/legal/copyright.php….
I looked up the graphic I had been using, and it appeared to be an altered version of a graphic they were promoting on Facebook, found here. Now, there IS an exception in copyright law for parodies. There is a pretty good argument that this is just a parody, so it probably does not violate their copyright.
So I put up this instead as my profile photo, which has a much stronger message against I-594. Problem solved.
The fact I-594 proponents are resorting to this is evidence they are concerned the initiative may not pass. If they were confident it would pass, they would not care about images people upload to Facebook on their personal accounts.
