Two weeks ago, I received an email from a good friend who is the publisher of two online surveys of South Asia news articles and analyses, as well as a print quarterly journal. He forwarded an email, from his internet host company, which is the platform his publishing operation uses to circulate online the surveys he publishes. That message began with the statement that it had received a complaint from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that one of his publications had published an article without the permission of the author and, thus, violated copyright law. The DMCA is a US law, codified as 17 U.S. C.§ 512(f), which was promulgated to try to stop copyright infringement, which all writers would argue is a good thing.

This forwarded message went on to state that, in compliance with its agreement with my friend and the DMCA, it was suspending his account until either of two options had been satisfied: a) remove the article (referred to as “content”) from his website which required a sworn statement that he had done so; or b) contest the allegation of copyright violation by a process called “counter notification” which would entail not only an expensive legal process but also a 14-day suspension by the internet host while the counter notification process was being adjudicated.

Publishing is not the primary vocation of this friend; it is the sideline of a successful entrepreneur who views it as a way of contributing to mutual understanding between South Asia and US. It is his way of giving back to the two societies that have nurtured him and made him a successful citizen. Suspension for even a few days under the first option was painful enough: suspension for 14 days or more during an expensive legal process was unthinkable. Thus, the decision is almost built into the DMCA process for part-time or small low-turnover publishers—the content is pulled from the publisher website.

To this point in the narrative, it seemed only of abstract interest to me, probably only a mix-up that required my publisher friend to take down some content he had published either by mistake or because he was a victim of some whacky scam. I scrolled down the page to see if the offending content (article) was there, and to my astonishment and horror, it was an article I had written and TFT had published on February 19. Then I knew why my friend had forwarded the email to me. It was a scam, and I needed to know more about it. What I have learned follows.

So, here are some facts to remember as we go along. First, TFT published the article first, yet did not receive any such notice nor did it file a complaint about it being reprinted by my friend. Second, the first half of my article was deeply critical of Sheikh Hasina and her government, though no more so than many other deeply critical articles I have written about Bangladesh these past few years, while the second half was about Donald Trump and implicitly put the two together in the authoritarian category. Third, years ago I gave my publisher friend blanket authority to reprint anything I had written. The more, the merrier is my MO with regard to my articles and columns. Fourth, the half copy of my article at the bottom of the email my friend received from his internet host did not have my name on it; it had a name that I did not recognize at first, but I found on google that it was a retired colonel in the Bangladesh Army who has become a virulent public critic of the Bangladesh Army Chief of Staff as well as the Awami League government, and who lives now safely in exile outside Bangladesh. Fifth, the date on the article was February 5, at least two weeks before I wrote it and two-and-a-half weeks before it was published.

I arrived late in this story; this scam has been going on for some time, and it has been reported in the media. Yet still is relatively unknown, as far as I can tell, outside South Asia. More importantly, it is more than a common scam; it is a surreptitious and anonymous method of censorship by one or more governments inclined in that direction. Because its known victims appear, as of now, to be mainly, if not solely, Bangladeshi critics of the present regime in Bangladesh, and because that regime’s record of human rights abuse, censorship, imprisonment, often torture, and sometimes assassination of media critics of the government, it is logical to assume that it is used mainly, if not solely, by the Awami League government of Bangladesh.

This will be, of course, firmly denied by that government. However, the misuse of copyright law as a censorship tool by any government, would seem to me to undercut the rule of law, and the use of a US law that unintentionally assists blatant censorship seems to me to be an insult to the US, as it makes the US internet hosting companies unwitting accomplices aiding the Bangladesh government in censoring its critics. This may not be understood by the USG.

It works through a set of savvy internet manipulators that set up dummy websites that then steal content that has already been published on legitimate websites, change the date to a date earlier than the stolen article was published (and sometimes change the author as in my case) and then use the dummy website to reprint it. They then use the dummy website to complain to the internet host, and assert that they have the original copyright, and the article was stolen and published by the original publisher without their permission. Readers will notice that my case was different in that my article was published by TFT first and reprinted later by my friend. And while my friend takes pains when he is reprinting one of my articles to note that it was first published by TFT, the thief either didn’t notice, or realized that his scam wouldn’t have worked with a TFT published article and put the burden on my Bangladeshi publisher friend. There is no proof that these thieves and scammers are connected directly or indirectly with the Bangladesh government, but why would they do it when there is no compensation from the victims? The only entity to benefit appears to be the government that is being criticized; there is no financial benefit to the thief/scammer outside of being paid to do it.

I should add here that it is not only publishers like my Bangladeshi/American friend who are victimized. There have been a number of cases like using the same MO against government critics that have used You Tube videos to disseminate their views. It works pretty much the same way except that instead of complaining to the internet host company of a publisher, the creator of a dummy website complains directly to You Tube that the video was stolen, and asserts that the dummy website owns the copyright.

It is clear that, for some reason, neither the internet host companies nor You Tube find it in their interests to do due diligence in trying to sort out the veracity of these copyright claims. They seem to automatically presume the publisher or You Tube is guilty and require them to prove their innocence–certainly not consistent with a basic doctrine of US law that one is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The automaticity of the internet host company response is illustrated by the significant number of cases in which the article or video that was stolen and falsely claimed as copyrighted by a dummy website has erroneously carried a date of publication after the real date of publication. Egregious errors like this should be easily detected by the internet host company.

It is not clear to me why the internet host companies are not required or incentivized to look more deeply into the false copyright claim. Perhaps just a tweak in the DMCA would work to stop this surreptitious form of censorship. Certainly, something should be done to stop the use of copyright law meant to protect authors from being victimized by unscrupulous manipulators of the internet. This is particularly true when this is leading to directed censorship by at least one South Asian government that wants to hide its serial abuse of freedom of speech and is blazing a trail for others that want to do the same thing.

I cannot end this column without mention of the sad news this week of the death, at age 80, of Moudud Ahmed who served, at various times for various parties as Vice President and Prime Minister of Bangladesh. Moudud was always thought of as the quintessential politician and, because of that, had his share, and probably more than his share, of detractors. We were good friends as I came to know him well in the first few months after my arrival in Dhaka when we were close neighbors. I don’t have space to write about his career, one which ranged from working in the early days for Sheikh Mujib and in the government-in-exile during the 1971 war to his final role as part of the 2018 opposition coalition to Sheikh Hasina’s government. He was my friend, and I thought that despite his political peregrinations, he was a true Bangladeshi patriot, guided by a hard core of principle. May he rest in peace.

The writer is a former career diplomat who among other positions was ambassador to Bangladesh and to Pakistan

The article appeared in the Friday Times