Ibis Reader "Checks Off" EFF's Digital Books Checklist

In February, we published "Digital Books and Your Rights," a checklist for readers considering buying into the digital book marketplace. The folks behind the Ibis Reader ebook service have gone ahead and posted thoughtful answers to each question, inviting their users into an honest discussion about the features, policies, and practices around its software.

While we don't agree with all of Ibis Reader's answers, they deserve full marks for being proactive about confronting these emerging digital books issues, and for striving to be clear with its users and customers. They know what's up — the modern gadget hound knows to look beneath the shiny surface and ask critical questions about how open a platform is and whether or not privacy is sufficiently prioritized and protected. Our "Digital Books and Your Rights" checklist helps guide users making that inquiry, and Ibis Reader is smart to approach current users and potential customers with openness.

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Sunshine Week 2010: FOIA Could Still Shed More Light

As the transparency community celebrates Sunshine Week, we here at EFF are reminded that most of the federal agencies we seek to monitor through our Freedom of Information Act work continue to cloak their activities in excessive secrecy. We have grown accustomed to receiving agency documents with large amounts of information blacked out — or "redacted" in the official parlance. While we often suspect that many of these deletions are made to conceal innocuous, or perhaps embarrassing, information, it is usually impossible to confirm those suspicions. But in some rare instances, we are able to learn precisely what a recalcitrant agency has improperly withheld from public view.

Such an opportunity recently arose when the Washington Post published a series of internal FBI e-mail messages concerning the Bureau's abuse of national security letter (NSL) authority. NSLs are used to obtain, among other things, telephone toll billing records and subscriber information, and electronic communication transactional records. In a report issued in March 2007, the Justice Department's Inspector General concluded that the FBI had systematically violated the law by improperly issuing hundreds of NSLs without proper authorization. Within days of the IG's report, EFF submitted a FOIA request to the FBI for documents detailing these abuses. Of the tens of thousands of pages of material that the Bureau eventually identified as responsive to our request, the vast majority of the relevant information was redacted.

The e-mail messages published by the Washington Post were obtained from an FBI whistleblower who had been directly involved in the Bureau's handling of NSLs. Through a careful comparison of the redacted material originally released to EFF with the unredacted messages recently published by the Washington Post, we were able to see precisely what the Bureau withheld. We were particularly struck by the fact that the FBI redacted all references to a proposal that had been floated within the Bureau to legitimize questionable demands for communications records — so-called "exigent letters" — a plan that the DOJ Inspector General clearly described in his report:

Our review of contemporaneous e-mail communications . . . found that for nearly 2 years, beginning in late 2004, [FBI National Security Law Branch] attorneys counseled CAU [Communications Analysis Unit] officials to take a variety of actions, including . . . opening "umbrella" investigations out of which national security letters could be issued in the absence of another pending investigation. . . .

The Assistant General Counsel at first proposed the establishment of six "generic" or "umbrella" investigations representing the recurring types of threats investigated by the Counterterrorism Division. The proposal contemplated that the FBI would issue national security letters from these files in exigent circumstances when there were no other pending investigations to which the request could be tied.

As the side-by-side comparison of the redacted and full-text e-mail messages shows, the FBI withheld all references to its proposal to use "generic" or "umbrella" investigations as a rationale to justify questionable demands for sensitive information relating to private communications. It is worth noting that the FBI continued to withhold this information even after President Obama and Attorney General Holder announced that a new "presumption of openness" should guide agency FOIA implementation. Despite the Attorney General's assertion that the Justice Department would only defend an agency's decision to withhold information if it could demonstrate a "foreseeable harm" from disclosure, in this instance DOJ attorneys defended the FBI's withholding of information that was revealed by the Department's own Inspector General three years ago.

FOIA is a powerful tool, and this example of over-redaction demonstrates the need to continue seeking a culture of transparency and trust from our government. President Obama took the first step by declaring that "[a]ll agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government," and organizations like EFF are making sure that the government remembers its promise. But Sunshine Week exists to remind citizens, journalists, members of Congress, and folks both inside and outside the transparency movement to continue seeking honest disclosure using all the tools that exist: rigorous investigations, hearings, and actual, public oversight.

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Fox and National Public Radio Have Something in Common: Taking Down Obvious Fair Uses

The Fox News Channel boasts that it takes a different approach to news coverage than, say, CBS, NBC, or NPR. But it appears Fox takes the same approach as its competitors when it comes to fair uses of its news coverage in political advertisements: to try to shut them down using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's rapid-fire notice and takedown process.

Ben Smith at Politico reports that the Fox news network has used a copyright claim to cause YouTube to disable access to a Democratic National Committee advertisement less than 24 hours after it was posted. The ad, which accuses Senate candidates competing in the Republican primary of focusing on trivial issues, excerpted less than a minute of a Fox interview with one of the candidates.

The DNC has fought back, firing off a letter to Fox explaining the "DNC's use of the clip is squarely within the bounds of fair use" and demanding that Fox effectively withdraw the claim. The DNC also implicitly threatens to sue Fox under Section 512(f) if it continues to maintain the copyright allegations, and name checks EFF's Lenz case in the process.

As a news organization, and so presumably familiar with the concepts and application of fair use, Fox should know better. Let's hope Fox will take this chance to distinguish itself from its rivals and show its support for free speech by withdrawing its spurious copyright claim.

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The Beginning of the End of Data Retention

Last week, the German Constitutional Court issued a much-anticipated decision, striking down its data retention law as violating human rights. It was an important victory for Europe’s Freedom Not Fear movement, which was formed to oppose the EU Data Retention Directive. But it was also a reminder of the political work which remains to be done to defeat it.

When the European Union first passed the Data Retention Directive in 2006, despite a hard-fought campaign by European activists, it seemed like the beginning of the end for Internet privacy. The directive sought to require telecommunications service providers operating in Europe to retain a detailed history of each of their customers' activity for up to 2 years for possible use by law enforcement; including phone calls made and emails sent and received.

The response from European citizens was swift and outraged. Under the banner of Freedom Not Fear, mass protests were held in cities all across Europe and beyond. The charge was led by the German Working Group on Data Retention (AK Vorrat), which in 2007 filed a class-action lawsuit of nearly 35,000 people challenging the German law.

The suit's complaints were mostly upheld by last week's German Constitutional Court decision. The court held that the blanket data retention mandated by the EU directive violated Article 10 of the German Constitution, which guarantees the basic right to private life and correspondence. The Court said that an infrastructure of exploratory surveillance results in an exceptional intensity of interference with human rights, which must be proportionately protected with appropriate safeguards. It also significantly narrowed the options for similar EU retention laws on other types of data. The court ordered the immediate deletion of all the data stored since the law went into effect in 2008 and ordered the suspension of data collection until a revised national law is proposed.

However, the court did choose to leave many important questions about the EU directive unanswered. In highlighting the need for increased safeguards, the court failed to recognize that the storage of data itself is what violates human rights. For instance, a survey of German citizens in 2008 found that 1 in 2 people would not have conversations with counselors or therapists by phone or email because of their concern about data retention.

A bolder stance was taken in October 2009 by the Romanian Constitutional Court, which ruled that the EU directive fundamentally violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to respect for private life and correspondence. Data retention itself, the court wrote, is "likely to overturn the presumption of innocence and to transform a priori all users of electronic communication services or public communication networks into people suspected of committing terrorism crimes or other serious crimes." As a result, all citizens would become "permanent subjects to this intrusion into their exercise of their private rights to correspondence and freedom of expression."

The rulings in Romania and now Germany set the stage for an imminent series of decisions on the status of national data retention laws across Europe. The recent Bulgarian vote on data retention legislation met with sharp criticism and protests. Petitions against the Belgian data retention law are available in both French and Flemish. The constitutional challenge against the Retention of Data Bill brought by Digital Rights Ireland may be referred to the European Court of Human Rights. In the meantime, despite the fact that the European Commission won its lawsuit against the government of Sweden for failing to implement the directive, the minimal penalty turns out to be worth the political risk.

In order to overturn a directive, the European Commission, Parliament, and Council have to agree. Viviane Reding, the incoming European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights, and Citizenship, declared at her confirmation hearings her dedication to defending the right to privacy. The members of the European Parliament, inaugurating their new term, flexed their political muscle when they recently rejected assenting to the SWIFT agreement that would have enabled the wholesale transfer of Europeans' financial data to the US. The European Council, representing the ministries of the individual Member States, will respond to the political climate in their home countries.

All in all, the threats to privacy and free speech posed by the Data Retention Directive are on their way to being nullified. In Germany, AK Vorrat launched its campaign against the new law being devised and set its sights on ending data retention on the European level. They will need the help of citizens across Europe to raise awareness and speak out for their rights on national levels.

Freedom Not Fear is planning another series of protests later this year – stay tuned to Deeplinks or sign up for FNF's mailing list to find out what is being planned near you.

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Better U.S. Net Rules for Iran, Cuba and Syria

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced on Monday key amendments to the regulation of United States sanctions against Cuba, Iran and Sudan.

The new provisions give a blanket license for the export of "certain services and software incident to the exchange of personal communications over the Internet, such as instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web browsing, and blogging, provided that such services are publicly available at no cost to the user."

This clarification is just what EFF called for last June, and will go a long way to allay concerns that online service providers based in the U.S. cannot offer their services in those countries. Previously, despite the well-known freedom-enhancing capabilities of services like Twitter and Facebook in repressive regimes like Iran, it was unclear whether those companies could even offer their services there without falling foul of the United State's broad prohibition on the export of goods and services to these regimes.

This was not a hypothetical concern: other services that were useful for dissidents to communicate and organize, like Microsoft, and Google's instant messaging clients had previously been blocked from being used in these very countries -- not by the repressive states, but by companies themselves, cautious of violating sanctions.

While the change in the letter of the law is clearly positive, perhaps just as important is the signal this sends about the administration's new guiding policy on global Internet freedom.

Previously, cautious companies, afraid of running afoul of OFAC, have frequently forbidden or blocked all use in sanctioned countries, even when the letter of the law did not require such draconian steps. You can see this institutionally paranoid language, and its inevitable results, in Bluehost's terms of service, which pre-emptively prohibits all citizens of sanctioned countries from even applying to use their hosting facilities (a policy which lead them to shamefully throwing innocent Zimbabwean activists off their service last year).

Now we are moving (slowly) to a new, and better default, where technologists and their lawyers might assume that free Internet services that facilitate free expression and association need not be blocked pre-emptively for anyone, anywhere.

The Obama administration has shown with these changes that it would prefer to move toward that end. Have we got there yet? Is it what export law now says?

While we wait for export regulation experts to sweat the details, the answer is still far too hazy for comfort.  While the State and Treasury departments have fixed much that was wrong with Iranian, Cuban and Sudanese sanctions, there are still regulations on, for instance, Zimbabwe, Syria and North Korea for techies and their lawyers to worry about, and those sanctions still inhibit making software generally available. We also would like to see more clarity about collaborative software development locations, like Sourceforge.

We hope that this administration backs up these first steps with a continuing review of export rules, and pro-actively works to reassure Internet companies that they are free to build an open Internet for everyone, without expecting a knock on the door from their own government.

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The Weakest Link Redux

We often criticize DMCA takedown abuse here at EFF, but last week's Cryptome snafu highlights another facet of the problem: how a DMCA takedown for one item can result in the removal of lots of lawful material.

To recap, Cryptome posted Microsoft’s global criminal compliance manual. Microsoft sent a DMCA takedown notice to Cryptome’s domain name registrar and web hosting provider, Network Solutions, alleging that the post infringed copyright. Under the DMCA, a web hosting provider is protected from copyright infringement liability if, among other things, it “expeditiously” disables access to material properly identified in a DMCA takedown notice. Network Solutions asked Cryptome to remove the Microsoft compliance manual. Cryptome refused explaining that the document was posted in order to help the public better understand Microsoft's practices, and followed up with a DMCA counternotice. Network Solutions promptly shut down the entire Cryptome website. Thus, a complaint about a single document caused significant collateral damage to the perfectly legal material on Cryptome.

This illustrates a basic problem built into the DMCA safe harbors. Microsoft’s notice targeted just one document. Network Solutions, however, couldn’t take down that single document, so opted to take down the entire site. Thus, although Cryptome's beef was with Microsoft, Cryptome also had to persuade Network Solutions to take a chance of losing safe harbor protection (although not much of a chance, because Cryptome’s posting was protected by the fair use doctrine). Because Network Solutions wasn't willing to take that small risk, a whole lot of speech was temporarily disappeared.

We’ve recently seen the same scenario with music bloggers, who may have their entire sites taken down as a result of complaints about a few links to music they’re reviewing.

And sometimes it's not even enough to find a courageous hosting provider. Last year a takedown notice targeting a single site parodying the U.S. Chamber of Commerce resulted in a takedown of the websites of over 300 activist organizations hosted by MayFirst/PeopleLink. The Chamber of Commerce went "upstream," targeting one of MayFirst's upstream service providers, Hurricane Electric. When MayFirst pushed back, Hurricane shut off service, thus pulling the plug on unrelated websites, email and other online tools.

In all of these cases, copyright owners reach out to a "weak link," the service provider with the least incentive to resist the takedown notice. Unless it has a free lawyer, the cost of doing a fair use analysis and defending a lawsuit—even if the service provider knows it will win—is almost certainly more than a service provider is charging any individual customer, or even a whole bunch of "innocent bystander" customers.

This unfortunate outcome is particularly ironic because Congress gave service providers protections in the DMCA. Service providers who care about free speech have better options:

• Remember, if your only relationship to the material targeted is that you provide connectivity to a downstream service, you should qualify for the 512(a) safe harbor, and, therefore don’t have an obligation to take the material down.
• Remember also that you don’t need the safe harbor if the material is a non-infringing fair use. In clear cases, you can bypass DMCA procedures.
• If thinking about fair use doesn’t make business sense, or you’re not sure, keep in mind that the DMCA requires only that you act “expeditiously” to respond to a takedown notice. Courts have found that providers should take down material within a few days of receiving a notice. So if you realize complying with a takedown notice will result in taking down much more material than the notice identifies, take the time to notify the person who sent the notice about the collateral damage it may cause. They may elect to withdraw it, especially where they are likely to face public criticism for causing an overbroad takedown.
• Give your customer a chance to re-jigger their service to avoid such collateral damage.
• Be sure to offer customers a clear counter-notice procedure—the DMCA provides protection for service providers that restore content in response to counter-notices.

Customers who also care about free speech should vote with their wallets and look for providers who will commit to following these suggestions. The safe harbors were supposed to help protect free speech, and they often do—but only if copyright owners, service providers, and internet users follow their common sense as well their business sense.

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YouTube's Content ID (C)ensorship Problem Illustrated

As we've pointed out repeatedly, poor design decisions in YouTube's "Content ID" system have resulted in over-blocking of videos that remix copyrighted materials. Today we got perhaps the most vivid example of the problem: the "silencing" of a lecture by Prof. Larry Lessig about the cultural importance of remix creativity. This is just the latest of many examples. We've been on YouTube's case for more than two years about this problem, and it's high time for YouTube to fix the Content ID system to respect the kinds of fair uses that are at the heart of remix creativity.

How did Prof. Lessig's video trigger the Content ID block? He included "snippets" (I use that word intentionally, as Google does in the context of its own Book Search product, to refer to small portions that should qualify as a fair use) from several remix videos. As a result, the audio track of his lecture included excerpts of several well-known songs. Apparently at least one of those songs is owned by Warner Music, which has chosen to automatically mute the audio track of any video when the Content ID system detects the presence of those songs. It's not clear which song triggered the block—the Content ID system doesn't tell you that.

Of course, in close cases, reasonable minds can differ about whether a particular use of a song qualifies as a fair use (although some cases are easy). But that's no excuse for the automated Content ID filter to block them—if a copyright owner has a good faith belief that any particular remix video crosses the line, it is free to send a formal DMCA takedown notice. Sending a notice is not hard, nor expensive, as demonstrated by the fact that copyright owners routinely send hundreds of thousands of these notices to YouTube. YouTube's Content ID system even will flag all the videos for the copyright owner's review.

But unlike the automated Content ID blocking, DMCA takedown notices at least put a human into the loop, and these humans must take fair use into account before issuing the notice. In contrast, an automated match by the Content ID system results in an automated removal, even where the copyright owner does not object to the use (and, as poorly behaved as Warner Music has been in the past, I can't imagine it really wants to censor Prof. Lessig's lecture).

Fortunately, YouTube permits users to "dispute" automated Content ID removals, and that's why Prof. Lessig's video is once again available. But that's not nearly good enough. First of all, YouTube's procedures for "removing" videos have created considerable confusion and consternation among users, and it's a fair bet that most YouTube users aren't aware of their ability to "dispute" these removals. Second, the thousands of lawsuits brought by record labels against individuals for file-sharing has created an atmosphere of fear that makes many YouTubers hesitant to go toe-to-toe with a major record label.

There's just no excuse for the Content ID system to be blocking remix videos. There's nothing in the law that requires YouTube to do this. In fact, section 512(m)(1) of the DMCA makes it clear that service providers do not need to install filters or monitor their services at all, much less allow copyright owners to use filters to block remixes.

Nor is there any engineering reason why the system should be designed this way. The filter can fix this problem by insisting that the audio and video tracks both come from the same copyrighted work and that the entire (or almost entire) video is drawn from the same copyrighted work. Unless these conditions are met, "block" should not be an option available to copyright owners. If a copyright owner wants to take down a remix video, they should have to follow the rules Congress established in the DMCA.

This is exactly what EFF, joined by numerous other public interest groups, asked YouTube to do in 2007 in our Fair Use Principles for User Generated Content. It's a shame that YouTube, a company that has become synonymous with remix creativity, can't find the time to fix its own Content ID system to protect remixers from unnecessary censorship.

Privacy info. This embed will serve content from youtube-nocookie.com.

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The Google Three: Italy's Personal Attack on Intermediary Liability

This week, an Italian magistrate convicted three Google employees for an Internet video that none of them had produced, uploaded, or even seen. The case arose from an Italian video that was uploaded in 2006 to Google Video, which showed a disabled child being bullied by other schoolchildren. An advocacy organization and the boy's father in Milan pushed for a criminal prosecution; a local prosecutor decided to pursue a case against four individual Google employees. In the decision, a defamation charge was dropped, but three of the named executives were found guilty of a charge related to Italy's privacy laws, and each sentenced to a six month suspended sentences.

We may not see the Italian decision stand for long, and cannot imagine a similar case happening in most Western countries. But it represents a growing temptation of courts and lawmakers worldwide: to find excuses to strip away the protection the law grants to Internet intermediaries. It's also an intimation of the very serious consequences to the Net and free speech if those safe harbors are weakened.

Europe has, in theory at least, at the EU level, strong protections for Internet intermediaries in its E-Commerce Directive: Article 14 of that directive provides that hosting providers are not responsible for the content they host, as long as they are not informed of its illegal character, and they act promptly when informed of it. Article 15 clarifies that hosts do not need to monitor hosted content for potentially illegal content.

This judgement guts both these principles. The court dismissed the allegation of criminal defamation but upheld a charge of illegally handling personal data on the basis that a video is personal data, and that under EU data protection law, Google needed prior authority before distributing that personal data.

This interpretation of the law means that Google is co-responsible for the legality of content containing the images of persons -- before anyone has complained about the content. That effectively means to comply with the decision, any intermediary working within Italy must now pre-screen every piece of video with anyone who appears within it, or risk prosecution. As the judgement stands, it also presents such a wide definition of personal data that it might effectively require that all hosts pre-screen all content be it video, text, audio or data.

The unconscionable fact that this prosecution is of individuals, while devastating for those involved, is only part of the problem. The whole Internet relies on the fact that third-parties can carry messages without having to self-police, interfere with those messages or take responsibility for millions of others' communications.

The Net is made of intermediaries, and attacks on the safe harbor protections for those intermediaries is under way across the world. In China, it's called ISP "self-discipline". In the United States, it's rightsholders demanding secondary or even tertiary liability for infringement by users, or loopholes in net neutrality, or attempts to weaken the protections of CDA 230. Italy may choose to unfairly victimize three American executives in this case, but the openness of the entire Internet risks becoming a victim if the safe harbors are compromised elsewhere.

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UPDATE: Victory - YouTube Permits Amy Greenfield Art

Update: YouTube responded to the letter from EFF and the National Coalition Against Censorship by doing just what we asked. They state: "We have re-reviewed your videos and have reinstated them with an age gate." This is good news, and YouTube is to be commended for correcting its error. Amy Greenfield's channel now has her videos.

Still, the fact that it took two nationally known groups to bring this matter to YouTube's attention is troubling. It demonstrates that YouTube still has work to do to create a viable appeals process. In addition, as we noted below, YouTube should still change its policy to expressly allow artistic works that contain nudity, and give individual artists the same freedom it reserves for professional television and film.

Previous Post: Today EFF and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) wrote to YouTube, asking the video hosting giant to reconsider its removal of the work of internationally recognized video artist Amy Greenfield.

Amy Greenfield received notice from YouTube that her works, which contain some artistic nudity, did not conform with YouTube’s "community standards." Under YouTube's policies, "films and television shows may contain [full nudity]; however, videos originating from the YouTube user community must abide by the YouTube Community Guidelines and are not permitted to include such content." (emphasis in original). The Community Guidelines purport to allow nudity with “some educational, documentary and scientific content, but only if that is the sole purpose of the video and it is not gratuitously graphic,” but does not recognize the value of nudity in art.

When video artists present works that have clear artistic, political or educational merit, YouTube should allow the artist to post the material with at least the same freedom as major studio films and television. If a user community video is flagged as inappropriate, YouTube should at least have an appeals process to allow an artist to explain the artistic merit. While we understand YouTube's desire to keep pornography off its servers, it must also understand that not all nude art is pornographic.

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Practical Advice for Music Bloggers Worried About DMCA Takedown Censorship

Let's say you are a blogger who writes about music regularly and includes links to music in your posts. How do you avoid having your blog censored off the Internet by "DMCA takedown notices" sent out by music industry lawyers (as happened last week to several blogs hosted by Blogger)?

Of course, you could get authorization from all the relevant copyright owners before you post or link to a song. Unfortunately, that's virtually impossible for many music bloggers. In some cases, it may be impossible to figure out who the copyright owners are (consider the problem of live concert bootlegs, rare B-sides, out-of-print material, defunct labels). In other cases, you might have authorization from someone, but it could end up being the wrong person (i.e., an independent promoter or member of the band who doesn't actually have all the rights to give you). And even if you get authorization from all the right people, you could still find yourself on the receiving end of a DMCA takedown from the entity that controls the copyright in another country (because your blog can be accessed from that country).

In other words, it's quite likely that many music bloggers can never be sure that a DMCA takedown notice won't arrive someday.

If one does arrive, your blog hosting service probably won't take your side. The law gives online hosting services strong incentives to comply with takedown notices—prompt responses to takedown notices are often the only reliable shield that hosting services have against copyright infringement lawsuits and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of damages. No matter how much your hosting service values your business, it is not likely that they will be willing to bet their business to save your blog.

While most hosting providers will let you send a "DMCA counter-notice" to contest a bogus takedown notice, sending a counter-notice can have serious consequences if you're not absolutely sure that you had all the necessary legal rights to post the songs or links in question. Sending a DMCA counter-notice is serious business, as it leaves the copyright owner with few options (other than suing) in order to keep the song down. So we recommend that bloggers research copyright law and, if in doubt, consult a qualified attorney (or contact EFF) before sending DMCA counter-notices.

The DMCA also gives hosting services strong incentives to "terminate repeat infringers." That's why most blog hosting services will delete your account (and thus your entire blog) after receiving multiple DMCA takedown notices. The industry norm seems to be a "3 strikes" policy, although the number of "strikes" can vary. This policy can be particularly unfair when a copyright owner sends multiple DMCA takedown notices all at once, or within a few days of each other — you can find your blog deleted before you even find out who was complaining or can send a DMCA counter-notice. Many hosting providers also mark every DMCA takedown notice on your "permanent record" — simply deleting the file or the link won't expunge the "strike" on your account (generally, only a DMCA counter-notice will do that). So a DMCA takedown notice received for your blog might still count as a "strike" years later (again, this is because service providers want to be able to tell a court that they were good about "terminating repeat infringers," lest they lose their shield against copyright infringement lawsuits).

Of course, you may be able to talk the copyright owner into withdrawing a DMCA notice ("your marketing department sent me an email saying this link was legit"). And there may be informal strategies that work most of the time (like deleting links after a short period of time). However, at the end of the day, it's nearly impossible to be sure you'll never receive a DMCA takedown notice.

With that in mind, here are a few practical things you can do to minimize the disruption that the DMCA process might inflict on your blog:

• Get your own domain name: Most blogging platforms will allow you to use your own domain name for your blog, which will make it easier for your readers to find you if DMCA takedown notices force you to change hosting providers. So, for example, if your blog is at YOURNAME.blogspot.com, and your account gets terminated, you probably will never be able to use that URL again. In contrast, if your blog were at www.YOURNAME.com, you could get a new account from another hosting provider and keep your URL the same. And don't register your domain through the same company that hosts your blog—that should reduce the risk that you'll find both your blog and your domain name deleted by your hosting provider in response to DMCA takedown notices.
• Back up your blog, be ready to move it: Make sure that whatever blogging platform you use, it allows you to easily back up your entire blog in a format that makes it easy to republish elsewhere. Have a game plan ready for migrating your blog to a new hosting service quickly if that becomes necessary.
• Make sure your hosting provider can reach you: If a copyright owner wants to send a DMCA takedown notice aimed at your blog, they will probably start by doing a reverse DNS look-up to figure out who is hosting it. So make sure that entity (whether it's a full-service blog hosting service like Blogger or a colo hosting your own server) knows how to reach you. Keep your email address up to date, be sure that messages from your blog hosting service are "white-listed" in any spam filters that you use.
• Choose a service that has clear DMCA policies: Not all hosting providers accept DMCA counter-notices—make sure yours does, just in case you need to use it. Ask your hosting provider how many "strikes" it takes before your account is terminated. Ask whether "strikes" drop off your account after a period of time. Generally, you're better off with a hosting provider that has thought about these questions and implemented clear policies.
• Study up a bit: A little studying up before hand can go a long way towards avoiding problem later. A good place to start is EFF's Legal Guide to Bloggers, which contains frequently asked questions about copyright, the DMCA process, and a host of other legal issues that bloggers might face. The Citizens Media Law Project at Harvard also has a great legal guide online.

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