Yahoo DMCA policy leads to hostile SEO exploits

It seems that Yahoo started cracking down on DMCA violations real hard lately, and in effect opened itself up for really nasty SEO (Search Engine Optimization) exploits. Brian Turner posts about this in his blog:

Simply by stating a claim of copyright infringement has been filed with regards to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), you can have a competitor or innocent site dropped entirely from Yahoo! search.

I think this is one of those things that should be filed under the "duh" category. There is no way a search engine like Yahoo or Google can fairly detect, investigate and police their databases for things like that in a cost effective way.

It's like this - creating silly legislation is just plain stupid (and/or evil). Blindly enforcing silly laws is dangerous. It's as simple as that. I think Yahoo just put itself between a rock and a hard place . Now that they started enforcing this stuff, they can't really stop because they are liable for the listed content now. If they continue delisting pages this way, they are in for a hell of a shitstorm. So they are damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

I always said that a policy of non-involvement is the best thing you can do. If the judge tells you to delist someone - then you do it. Otherwise, leave it alone and put a disclaimer on the front page.

Uh, oh... Can someone please file a DMCA complaint against SCO?

Tags: dmca, yahoo, search