Sitelock is a major player in online security; a rival, White Fir, thinks its products are subpar, and has published extensive articles explaining why White Fir’s products are superior — articles that Sitelock has targeted with fraudulent copyright claims.
Sitelock claims that White Fir’s use of screenshots from its site are copyright infringements, despite their clearly being fair use under US Copyright Law, and despite last year’s landmark Lenz ruling that says companies are obliged to consider fair use before using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act notices to demand the removal of material from the internet.
Not only did Sitelock abuse the law with their censorship demands, they also self-inflicted a Streisand Effect wound: until the legal abuse, virtually no one cared about White Fir’s Sitelock articles. Now they’re at the center of attention for millions.
For the past few years, web design and security company White Fir has been publishing articles critical of SiteLock. In 2014, for example, the company published a piece declaring that Sitelock was poor at protecting its clients.This was followed by several others continuing on the same theme, including a May 2016 piece declaring that Sitelock was scamming its customers. Clearly, things were beginning to heat up.
It’s not clear whether Sitelock disagrees with any of White Fir’s critique but the company has certainly noticed the articles published web outfit. That became evident this week when Sitelock filed DMCA notices against two pieces published by White Fir.
Web Security Firm Sitelock Uses DMCA to Censor Critics [Andy/Torrentfreak]
Sitelock [White Fir]
SiteLock Fails To Do Basic Security Check
[White Fir]