Kickstarter transparency report shows crowdfunding's copyright woes
If you've noticed a crowdfunding project that was ripping off someone else's work to make a pitch, you're not alone. Kickstarter has posted its first transparency report, and it notes that there were 282 Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests in 2014 -- a notable amount considering that there were 68,668 total projects that year. The company only took action against 44 percent of them, but that still means that it had to scrub content (or in some cases, whole projects) in 123 campaigns.
As for the biggest offenders? As you might imagine, copyright takedowns took place in the categories that tend to get the most buzz, such as design, games, movies and technology. Thankfully, that's largely the extent of the company's problems in the report. Kickstarter faced a far smaller 28 trademark disputes, and just 8 requests from the government and police for user info. In short: so long as you're not "borrowing" someone else's logo or music for your campaign, you're probably fine.
[Image credit: Rex Hammock, Flickr]
