DMCA Takedown Requests Filed by Topple Track Against Legitimate Websites

• A series of takedown requests were filed against legitimate websites that cover news on censorship.
• An article by Member of European Parliament Julia Reda was taken down from Google’s search results recently.
• It is possible that the DMCA requests were filed by impostors as the complaints hold no legitimate grounds.

With copyright infringement being a hot topic, more DMCA complaints are being filed than ever before. However, multiple news outlets that cover censorship news are receiving DMCA takedown requests against them that are bizarre in nature as they hold no legitimate grounds. The complaints are being filed by reporting agency Topple Track against a string of websites.

Only a few of the DMCA notices that have been filed by Topple Track are related and valid while others are completely vague. It is likely that the takedown notices are either spoofed by hackers or have been sent with multiple filing errors. Some of the content that has notices served include an article by European Member of Parliament Julia Reda, which has been removed from Google’s search results. Some articles on European upload filters and link tax proposals have also been targeted. It’s not just European censorship content that is being targeted but also organizations like the Digital Rights Group EFF and news agencies like The Verge, WikiHow, Ubergizmo and many others.

Image Courtesy of Torrent Freak

The DMCA complaint reporting company admitted that there might have been instances of inaccurate filings and have issued an apology stating “We will issue retractions for everything affecting your brand and website and will further reach out to EFF.org as well to explain and issue retractions for all links sent there as well. We apologize for how this may have affected you and others”.

Topple Track has currently halted its service to undergo maintenance. The service will be back up once the issue is rectified. While the company did make mistakes, at least the bizarre notices will no longer be valid once they are retracted.

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