Thread by @PhineasJFR

Around the world journalists are being imprisoned, hacked, even killed. So why should we care about copyright law?

#Thread about the "subtle censorship" of a reputation management firm that uses manipulative methods bury the truth. #StoryKillers

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forbiddenstories.org/story-killers/…

Let's go to 2018. Mexican journalist Daniel Sanchez publishes an investigation into a company contracted by a state governor for @pagina_66.

He starts getting calls asking to take the piece down. He consults with @article19mex who tells him not to.

Daniel 1 - Company 0

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Months later, he gets a weird email. It appears to be from the "Compliance Department" of the European Commission. They say he is infringing on a personal data law called #GDPR. Nevertheless, he keeps the article up.

Daniel 2 - Company 0

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But in January 2020, a rep acting on behalf of the company tries something new. They file a copyright claim with Pagina 66's hosting provider.

"Look!" The person essentially says, "I wrote this piece first and Daniel copied it."

And this time it works.

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The hosting provider tells Daniel to take down the piece within three days or the whole site will go black.

Company 3 - Daniel 2. Game over.

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So, what really happened? Daniel was a victim of what's called a back-dating scam.

In this scam, a piece of content is copied and backdated on a different website, often a fake news site or a blog. Then the author of the fake article invokes the #DMCA, a US copyright law.

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The DMCA was created in the late 90s to prevent mass reproduction of copyrighted content online. (Think LimeWire or The Pirate Bay a few years later.)

But nefarious actors have learned how to weaponize this law to remove legitimate content.

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One of these companies is called #Eliminalia. @FbdnStories was leaked tens of thousands of internal documents. We found dozens examples of fraudulent DMCA claims used to remove legitimate content.

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This company says it can "erase your past" to help you "build your future." So who are their clients?

We found that this company worked on behalf of convicted criminals, corrupt politicians, crypto scammers and even an accused Chilean medical torturer.

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So, we've seen how they erase your past. But how to they help you build your future, you might ask.

Well, one way is quite crafty: flooding the zone with fake content to hide the real information.

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Working with @Qur1um we discovered 100s of fake sites that were used to publish positive or neutral stories about Eliminalia's clients.

These articles were posted en masse in internet forums to make it seem to search engines like they were garnering legitimate traffic.

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This way, when you search for an accused cartel pilot, you find articles about his expertise in chihuahua behavior. Searching the name of a cop accused of torture, you see results for a soft-hearted poet, author of the new collection "No heart can hold on."

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"This is a nice new definition of censorship," Tord Lundstrom at @Qur1um told us.

Qurium put together a video showing dozens of the fake articles where these clients are portrayed as piano players and Anatolian cat experts.

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Yesterday, dozens of news outlets published their investigations into Eliminalia, including @OCCRP, @IrpiMedia, @ArmandoInfo and @elespectador, as part of the #StoryKillers project.

You can read our investigation here: forbiddenstories.org/story-killers/…

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