Square Enix Appears To Be Using The DMCA Takedown Process To Silence Criticism

We’ve talked plenty about the ways that the DMCA process specifically is wide open for fraud and abuse. There are plenty of forms this sort of thing can take, of course, but one of the more troubling among them is the use of the DMCA process specifically to disappear critical commentary that a copyright holder doesn’t like. Typically you see this sort of thing activated in a way that at least straddles the line of what copyright law actually allows. For instance, you might have a copyright holder that is generally okay with some uses of their work online, but then turns to the DMCA process when those uses come along with criticism. A selective enforcement of copyright law based on undesired commentary, in other words.