Overreaching copyright: an old problem getting bigger every day

An interesting piece from the Electronic Frontier Foundation about how the "content industry" (a nicely disparaging name for them, unless that is the first word is an adjective - but they are clearly discontent, or perhaps they are malcontents) can use the DMCA as a tool of censorship, by banging out takedown notices with no regard for fair use. They can get stuff that offends them taken off-line for quite a long time - well, in internet terms, in which time moves more rapidly than usual, a very long time, effectively for ever in some cases. It shows how important exceptions are to the copyright system, to prevent over-reaching or the sort of absolutism of which I and many others have written before. And the US notion of "fair use" is so much wider than our "fair dealing" exceptions!