Editing Unjust and extraterritorial law: DMCA (section)

==Example 2: Fair use and automated retaliation==
An American freelance content creator uploads a reaction video after a Formula 1 race. In his analysis, he includes a five-second clip of a key moment from the broadcast. The excerpt is used under the rules of fair use. It is not monetized directly, and it appears in a clearly transformative and critical context, which is protected by US copyright law.

Despite this, the video is flagged and removed within minutes by an automated system operated by the rights holder. The creator receives a copyright strike. If it is his third, the channel is terminated automatically. His income disappears overnight. He loses access to his platform, his content, and his audience. With no way to earn money, he can no longer pay his rent, buy food, or cover basic expenses. '''<u>There are no clients to contact or recover. The entire business collapses instantly. All of this happens because of five seconds of footage used legally</u>'''.

There is no review process. No human being examines the case. The decision is made by an automated system trained to match pixels and audio patterns, without considering the legal context. The company that issued the takedown is based overseas. If the creator wants to contest the strike, he must submit personal information, accept legal liability, and prepare to defend himself in a foreign jurisdiction.

Hiring a lawyer involves not just legal fees. It may also require booking a flight, for example from Florida to California, which is over 5,000 kilometers. If the accused is from another country, an interpreter may also be needed. He must navigate a legal system he has never dealt with. All of this happens only to defend the right of fair use, a right that should have protected him from the very beginning.

This is how the DMCA handles fair use. It is not treated as a right but as an exception you have to defend manually, at your own risk and cost, with no guarantee that anyone will listen.

<blockquote>'''Section 512(c)(1)(C) of the DMCA''':  "Upon notification of claimed infringement [...] the service provider shall respond expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity."</blockquote>This clause requires platforms to take down content quickly when they receive a complaint. However, it does not require them to restore the content after a dispute is filed. The law protects platforms only if they remove the content, which gives them a strong incentive to delete first and ask questions later. This one-sided structure undermines the presumption of innocence and forces users to prove their legitimacy after the damage is already done.

It is worth noting that '''<u>when this provision was written in 1998, most US lawmakers likely did not even have home internet access. The internet was not yet a global platform for mass publication and individual expression</u>'''. The DMCA was conceived to regulate the distribution of pirated software and physical media, not to moderate billions of user-generated posts on real-time content-sharing platforms. Its current application represents a distortion of the original intent, repurposed to control a digital ecosystem that did not exist when the law was passed. What is wrong with this framework is its outdated nature.