Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen has battled various forces in her time, irking fundamentalists of various vintages. Yet, her current battle is against one she probably didn’t envision – Twitter bureaucracy.
For the last two days, Twitter has been taking down Taslima Nasreen’s own pictures, including one of her cat's, ostensibly over a copyright violation.
Nasreen first tweeted on October 31: “This cyber terrorist threatening me every time I upload header photos, he will manage to delete with the help of @TwitterSupport . How come @twitter serves this terrorist?”
Nasreen stated that even her cover picture with her cat was being taken down.
The account of the individual appeared to be suspended.
Speaking to FPJ, Taslima Nasreen explained how one individual managed to get Twitter to take her own pictures down.
Targeting Nasreen’s account, the user would claim that the pictures were not hers. The user would do so by putting up the picture in context on his own blog, following which he would complain to Twitter that Taslima Nasreen was violating copyright by using the image.
Nasreen told FPJ: “However, when I try to complain to Twitter about this. They ask for a URL. But the individual takes down the URL so I can’t submit proof to Twitter about the malpractice.”
Nasreen added that she had been trying to get in touch with someone at Twitter but was unable to do so. She hadn’t even updated her own profile photo, worried that Twitter would suspend her account.
The emails that Nasreen received from Twitter were shared with FPJ. According to the DMCA takedown notice, the copyright is owned by one Md Mahbub Alam who claims to work as an admin for Mahbubvai.com, based in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
However, the links which had been submitted as proof of copyright violation are already fetching 404 errors.
Another notice claimed that the copyright owner was one Asem Hamid, however, the phone and the fax provided for the identity were the same.
The blog that has been putting up the picture is titled Team CSBD which seems to exist to note the exploits of Bangladeshi hackers.
The website claims to praise the works of three Bangladeshi hacker groups – BD Black Hat Hackers, Bangladesh Cyber Army and Expire Cyber Army – which it claims has taken down 20,000 Indian websites and is also high on rhetoric, praising the international decentralised hacker group 'Anonymous'.
Note: This is a developing story. FPJ has reached out to Twitter India and will update the story once they respond.
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