Justin Zatkoff is a law student at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law in Detroit, Michigan,.
He was a student at Oakland University and Executive Director of the Michigan Federation of College Republicans when, in 2006, he was assaulted while visiting Ann Arbor. Initial reports blamed the assault on "liberal thugs", but the police report pointed the blame on an acquaintance. The incident received national attention from conservative and liberal political weblogs.
In 2012, Zatkoff sent DMCA "take-down" notices to a number of weblogs that had published photographs of the incident, including Mark Maynard's eponymous site MarkMaynard.com. This caused that site to be offline for a few days and triggered a (predictable) backlash and re-examination of the incident.
Zatkoff's attempts at removing photographs of the incident also appear to have targeted national site Sadly, No!, who similarly revisited the incident as a result, additionally noting that their image had come from the Michigan Daily--and claiming fair use--rather than from Zatkoff, as his DMCA notice to them claimed. According to Google Transparency Report, Zatkoff or someone acting on his behalf has at least twice requested that Google de-index pages under claimed violations of his copyrighted material.
Sources:
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Michigan Daily, Oct. 1, 2006: Alleged political hate crime
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MarkMaynard.com, Oct. 3, 2006: beaten down in ann arbor
- MarkMaynard.com, Nov. 11, 2012: My site was taken down in web-washing attempt by
- Google Transparency Report: Justin Zatkoff
- http://justinzatkoff.com/
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