We all know that DMCA notices are kinda dumb, but this is ridiculous: a single takedown request from Pearson, a textbook publisher, took down 1.45 million education blogs in one fell swoop.
Ars Technica reports that Pearson targeted a single page from 2007 that was using copyrighted material. Some form of miscommunication ensued, though, as EduBlogs, the host of the blog in question, found that all of its 1.45 million sites were taken down.
EduBlogs insists it was never given the chance to solve the problem itself — rather, the blogs were taken down by the overarching provider ServerBeach, to whom EduBlogs is a client. The whole problem was sorted in around 60 minutes, but that’s not really the point: rather, it highlights how dumb DMCA notices are and how badly they work. [Ars Technica]