Any Lord of the Rings fans out there? (Come on, admit it, you're reading a blog, for pete's sake, that's a dead giveaway!) BBC reports on an interesting strategy to beat the whack-a-mole game (or should I say whack-an-orc) that is the DMCA's notice-and-takedown approach. I posted recently on eSnips, a site where people who are not the author (I'm pretty sure in this case JRR Tolkien didn't post his works) post copyrighted books and other media. Like similar sites, eSnips says it willl take down works if requested, but the Tolkien estate knows that there's nothing stopping the books from being posted again. So after eSnips took Tolkien's books down, the estate sued for the names of the posters, and a US District Court has ordered eSnips cough them up. eSnips says it needs to talk to the posters first and see if they object.

This is quite rich. From peer-to-peer networks to uploading sites, those posting copyrighted works love anonymity. Would they be as willing to infringe copyright if they knew the site they were posting to would turn over their identities?

Oh, and in case you have no sympathy for Tolkien's heirs and don't believe he should have been able to pass down his intellectual property the way one might pass down a flower shop or a family farm, please read the comments in my previous eSnips post (at this point we're at 23 comments and counting). That field is full of published authors trying to make an honest living off of their hard work and creativity. They are the real victims of sites like this.