Wordpress Goes Legal: Sues Over Two Egregiously Bogus DMCA Notices That Were Designed To Censor
We've talked in the past about the unfortunate situation in which there is almost no real punishment for bogus DMCA notices. Section 512(f) of the DMCA is supposed to provide a way to get attorneys' fees …
Context & Ripple Effects
Section 512(f) of the DMCA has long existed mostly on paper: as coverage going back to victims fighting back against DMCA abuse in 2007 noted, takedown notices must be sent under threat of perjury, yet almost no sender has faced real consequences for abuse. Even a high-profile blunder like [[a:1197784|Microsoft's 2012 notice that 'mistakenly' targeted the BBC, TechCrunch, Wikipedia and the U.S. government]] ended without visible penalty, reinforcing that false takedowns carry essentially no cost.
What makes this filing different is who is suing: WordPress, one of the web's largest publishing platforms, is spending its own legal budget to attack two bogus notices head-on rather than simply restoring the content. The breadth of same-day pickup — WordPress.com News, Ars Technica, EFF, Gizmodo and notably Retraction Watch — signals that the story resonated as a censorship case, not just an IP procedural one.
First-order effects
- The sender of the two notices now faces actual Section 512(f) liability — including potential attorneys' fees — for what WordPress characterizes as deliberately censorious filings.
- WordPress absorbs litigation costs in the near term to force a court ruling on whether these notices were made in bad faith.
Second-order effects
- Other platforms targeted by dubious takedowns gain a template and a data point: if WordPress wins or extracts a settlement, countersuing under 512(f) becomes a credible option rather than a theoretical one.
- Serial takedown senders face repricing — if bad-faith notices can finally trigger fees, mass automated or strategic takedown programs get more expensive to run.
Third-order effects
- If courts begin enforcing Section 512(f) with any regularity, the notice-and-takedown system shifts from costless censorship tool toward one with a deterrent price — though the statute's history suggests judges have been reluctant, so the outcome of this single case will not settle it.
- A sustained pattern of platform counter-suits would push the balance of the DMCA safe harbor away from sender-friendly defaults, potentially prompting Congress or the Copyright Office to revisit how 512(f) penalties are calculated.
The trend: Major platforms are moving from passively absorbing abusive DMCA takedowns to actively litigating them, testing whether Section 512(f) can finally put a price on censorship-by-copyright.