Around the fall of 2003 a group of students had found and posted a bunch of emails from Diebold Election Systems saying that their machines could be at risk at hackers. The students posted them on a web site so that they could tell the world what happened and they thought that the public should know about this, but because of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act the company threatened copyright infringement and the web site was taken down with out any trial or public hearing. Although after complaints from the students and some bad press from the company, the company told them they were not going to sue them. The letters were yet again posted on the web site.
The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act is when a private company threatens to sue an internet service provider on copyright issues the internet service provider can remove the copyrighted material so they can't be sued. This means that private companies has the most power over any of their information on the web because internet service provider usually doesn't want to be brought to court so they just delete anything that the private companies don't want up on the internet.
I personally find this 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act to be a offense to freedom of speech on the web. If the information is there it should be able to be shared with anyone on the web without threat of a lawsuit.It is just another example of how the big corporations can hide their mistakes from the public. Also it is not exactly fair when a 12 year old child is sued for downloading music or trying to sue a girl scout camp for royalties for the songs they sing. I find it to be a disgusting practice for big companies to go after people who want other people to know the truth.
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