shouting loudly

In yet another example of the abusive use of DMCA Title II, Disney has effectively silenced a weblog critic who was waging a successful PR campaign against one of its stations for patently offensive content.

The blog, Spocko’s Brain, posted audio files of right-wing talk show hosts from Bay Area ABC affiliate station KSFO. As MediaPost recounts:

KSFO features hard right-wing talk show hosts who endorse torture, call for the public hangings of New York Times editor Bill Keller and other journalists, and demand that callers mock Islam.

Spocko posted audio files of the shows as part of a fairly successful letter writing campaign in which he had successfully scared away many large advertisers. But then Disney (which owns ABC) sent a letter demanding that Spocko’s ISP take down the blog. It apparently went dark for a short period of time, but it is now back up and running–audio files and all.

Ironically, this has only brought much more publicity to the Spocko’s campaign, and it will only make it harder for corporate advertisers to stay with KSFO. A blogger criticizes a media outlet? That happens hundreds of times per hour. A blogger is scary enough that the media outlet abuses copyright law to silence the criticism? Now THAT’S a story!

UPDATE: Here’s an SF Chronicle story providing some additional details. It makes it sound like Spocko’s Brain never went dark per se, with Spocko just pulling (but apparently again posting) audio clips.