In February, I wrote about a Fourth Circuit decision in Doe v. Sidar, which discusses one-sided pseudonymity. On Wednesday, Google received a request that it remove that post from its indexes—and thus vanish it from search results—on the theory that the post violated the copyright in a blog post, https://europeannewschannels.blogspot.com/2024/01/fourth-circuit-on-one-sided.html:
Re: Unknown
NOTICE TYPE: DMCACopyright claim 1
KIND OF WORK: Unspecified
DESCRIPTION[:] The decision allows such pseudonymity when the defendant has already been found (by default judgment) to have committed the assault, but Judge Wilkinson's concurrence argues that, absent this unusual factor, one-sided pseudonymity should be frowned on.ORIGINAL URLS: 01. https://europeannewschannels.blogspot.com/2024/01/fourth-circuit-on-one-sided.html
ALLEGEDLY INFRINGING URLS: 01. https://reason.com/volokh/2024/02/21/fourth-circuit-on-one-sided-pseudonymity-in-sexual-assault-cases/
JURISDICTIONS[:] CA
The blogspot.com post has apparently been removed, but there appears to be an archived version here. According to that archive, the supposedly "original" blogspot post purports to have been published Jan. 30, 2024, more than three weeks before the Fourth Circuit opinion (which the post quotes) was released. And the blogspot post talks about and quotes what it refers to as "my amicus brief" in the case; that's actually my brief, which court records show was written by me, and not a brief written by the blogspot post's author. (See also this post from March describing two similar requests that had a similar structure.) [UPDATE 5/3/24, 11:55 am: This paragraph has been revised in light of the archived version (which I hadn't been able to find when I first put up the post); thanks to commenter ReadMyLips88, who pointed me to the archived version.]
