patrick.net

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/02/nj-ag-takedown-notice-that-led-to-new-gun-file-lawsuit-came-from-slovakia-not-us/

In a February 12 letter (PDF) to District of New Jersey Judge Anne Thompson, NJ Assistant AG Glenn J. Moramarco writes that a recent takedown notice submitted to Cloudflare and aimed at the website CodeIsFreeSpeech was faked.

"A key document supporting Plaintiff's TRO application—a 'takedown notice' purportedly sent by [New Jersey AG's Division of Criminal Justice] to CloudFlare, Inc., which hosts one of the plaintiff's websites, CodeIsFreeSpeech.com—was not in fact issued by DCJ," the NJ AG's office writes in the filing. "[It] appears to have been issued by some entity impersonating the Attorney General's Office."

This is has happened to patrick.net as well. Anyone who doesn't like anything on the internet can simply tell an ISP that the content violates the DMCA. The ISP then threatens the site into removing the content more often than not, since ISPs do not have time to investigate and don't like legal liability.

The DMCA is a disaster for free speech.