DMCA Timeout -or- How Nicky Has to Eat Crow

So as most of you know, back in July of 2010, little Nicky filed a DMCA complaint about my blog post with links to the publicly available stories that he reprinted in Tabloid Purposes. I filed a counter notification the same day. I have e-mailed Blogger/Google many times since then, and finally LAST NIGHT, I received a response. Six months to the day.

I had asked that they not pass on the personal information in the counter notification to little Nicky because he had threatened to kill me. They responded that by law they had to and asked if I wanted to amend or withdraw the counter notification.

So I asked for a copy of the original complaint, which they had never sent me. I figured if I was ponying up personal info, I wanted to see Nicky's, too. Blogger/Google sent me a copy back this morning, quite promptly. I looked at it and....

Wow.  By law, the complaining party has to provide "information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party". However, the only information that little Nicky provided was a name and e-mail address. There's no mailing address, no phone number. Ooops. Does that meet the requirements of the DMCA? I don't think so.

I have now e-mailed Blogger/Google back and explained to them quite politely that the DMCA complaint does not appear to meet the legal requirements of a valid notice and asked that my blog post be reinstated. If that doesn't work, I do have a counter notification ready. But I have asked to submit one that contains only an e-mail address for contact since that was all little Nicky had to provide.

I've also discovered that Blogger/Google was required to reinstate my blog post within 10 to 14 days of receiving my counter notification - something they didn't do, which is in violation of the DMCA.

Things should be interesting for the next couple of days...