Twilight Studio Issues Another Bogus Takedown, But Is Zazzle Partially To Blame?

from the the-plot-thickens dept

Fri, Mar 23rd 2012 7:29am — Leigh Beadon

Well, this one's weird. We recently wrote about the attempt by Summit Entertainment (the folks behind the Twilight movies) to claim ownership of a date, issuing a takedown notice over a painting by Kelly Howlett because its creation date (and title) matched a Twilight movie release date (seriously). Now, Mary Jo Place (who goes by the handle Mojo) writes to tell us about her own similar and even stranger situation, in which Summit took down some of her Zazzle merchandise because... well... that's anyone's guess.

The work in question is an original painting called "Sheep Are Pretty Stupid", copies of which she was selling on a variety of merchandise through Zazzle. The products, which again have absolutely nothing to do with Twilight, had been up for a few months before she received a notice from Zazzle, telling her they had removed some of them because of a complaint from Summit. Oddly, it was only the iPhone/Pad/Pod cases that were taken down—not the t-shirts or any of the other merch, even though all the items bore identical descriptions:

Sheep Are Pretty Stupid.
Yes, they are, but you don't have to be numbered among them! Mojo suggests you go AGAINST the crowd by buying one of her sheepie shirts. Or mugs. Or, whatever. Several years ago, I decided I wanted to paint my own Christmas card of the whole lion-and-lamb thing, only from a more, uh, realistic perspective. This is the result.

The email from Zazzle also suggested that the problem could be the search tags, but those (again shared identically by all the merchandise) were mojo, crap, craptacular, sheep, lion, and lamb. Nothing there that suggests Twilight either, except possibly crap. Understandably baffled, Mary Jo contacted Zazzle only to receive a condescending canned response informing her of their duty to abide by intellectual property law. She wrote back again, and actually linked to our coverage of the other takedown, but got nothing back. So she started digging, which brought her to Kelly Howlett's Facebook note about her situation, where she saw something interesting in the comments—and this is where things get weird:

Since Mary Jo's items were gone, she couldn't check to see if she was having similar tag problems. Nevertheless she emailed Zazzle again, included screenshots of the comments and suggested that this may be what happened. A little while later, she received another canned response from Zazzle telling her the products had been restored, but still offering no explanation whatsoever.

All this creates one big question: is Zazzle doing some sort of automatic tagging, which is then triggering false takedowns? If so, that's a pretty big mistake by Zazzle—but some cursory Googling and digging through their help forums doesn't reveal any references to an auto-tagging or community tagging system. If any readers are Zazzle users and have experienced something similar, or have any insight into this, please share it, because nobody seems to be able to figure out what's going on.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: bogus takedowns, censorship, takedowns, twilight
Companies: summit entertainment, zazzle

62 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Atkray (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 7:49am

all you tags are belong to us?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 7:51am

"because nobody seems to be able to figure out what's going on."

Judging by Zazzle's quiet reinstatement of the items I am pretty sure someone is now very aware of what was going on and are trying desperately to fix it before you figure it out.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
bjr70 (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 7:55am

It's "lion and lamb" - that's a line in the book and the film:

Edward: "And so the lion fell in love with the lamb."
Bella: "What a stupid lamb."
Edward: "What a sick, masochistic lion."

My guess is Summit is being stupid and flagging stuff with those terms.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- :Lobo Santo (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:07am
  
  Re: BOOooks...
  The lion/lamb this is itself a reference to another book which contains many images of hate, murder, violence, bigotry, intolerance, incest, and vulgar sex.
  
  Namely, "The HOLY Bible"
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:22am
    
    Re: Re: BOOooks...
    The lion/lamb this is itself a reference to another book which contains many images of hate, murder, violence, bigotry, intolerance, incest, and vulgar sex.
    
    Namely, "The HOLY Bible"
    
    And yet the book in question is the foundation of the biggest religion in the world...
    
    ...Yeah, we're in trouble.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:26am
      
      Re: Re: Re: BOOooks...
      And yet the book in question is the foundation of the biggest religion in the world...
      
      Wait. Which book?
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
      - Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:36am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: BOOooks...
        Namely, "The HOLY Bible"
        
        I hate when people don't get my jokes.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
        
        :Lobo Santo (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:38am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: BOOooks...
        Aww man, if you'd signed this one 'God' rather than Anonymous Coward I'd have been laughing for hours...
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
        
        Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:56am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: BOOooks...
        I thought you were making a Manic Street Preachers reference
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
        
        Laroquod (profile), 25 Mar 2012 @ 7:21am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: BOOooks...
        You are the one who missed the joke.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - c0c0c0 (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 3:50pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: BOOooks...
      the "bible" has a vampire in it as well....
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - DogBreath, 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:36am
    
    Re: Re: BOOooks...
    It also mentions "wolf", so the Bible is next to get taken down by Summit.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Jeremy Lyman (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:26am
  
  Re:
  Ugh. I feel a little dirty just reading this much of it. Can I lodge a DMCA request to get things taken out of my brain?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 10:46am
  
  Re:
  Please reread the synopsis. The tags for her items were "augmented" to include a bunch of references to a bunch of Twilight terms.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - That Anonymous Coward (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 11:08pm
    
    Re: Re:
    And further reading shows she only had entered the first of those 5 terms.
    And somehow Zazzles system then displayed several more tags, all on a theme of twilight...
    Oh... hurm...
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Difster, 23 Mar 2012 @ 7:56am

Apparently idiotic takedown notices are the only way that Twilight can be even remotely entertaining.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:49am
  
  Re:
  What is twilight?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Cowardly Anonymous, 23 Mar 2012 @ 9:47am
    
    Re: Re:
    Twilight is a self-referential series that remarks on the decline of literature that it helps perpetuate through demonstrative writing.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - The Groove Tiger (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 10:37am
    
    Re: Re:
    Quote Cracked.com:
    
    "The 'Twilight' series contains four books about a dreamy vampire and the charmingly klutzy girl who loves him. It was written by Stephanie Meyer, presumably on the back of a trapper keeper while she was still in high school."
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 11:00am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      And don't forget about the series of movies based on the "books" in which the wealthy vampire who has lived for centuries and been all over the world remarkably can find nothing more interesting to do than to stare at a pasty highschool-aged girl who no one else finds remotely interesting other than resident teenaged werwolf.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - BeeAitch (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 11:47am
    
    Re: Re:
    "The thrilling saga of a young woman's difficult choice between necrophilia and bestiality."
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - DOlz, 23 Mar 2012 @ 1:08pm
    
    Re: Re:
    1 : the light from the sky between full night and sunrise or between sunset and full night produced by diffusion of sunlight through the atmosphere and its dust; also : a time of twilight
    
    From: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/twilight
    
    Expect Summit to go after dictionaries and earth's rotation next.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Gracey (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 9:31am
  
  Re:
  Aha! You've figured it out.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Eli Rueda, 23 Mar 2012 @ 7:57am

its the tags
I think i know why, there is a scene where they decide they are in love and say something like. Stupid Lion, Narcisist Lamp.

they also talk about the lion falling in love with the lamb / sheep. so i bet thats why.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:24am
  
  Re: its the tags
  Lion and... Lamp?
  
  Not quite the same thing, but eh.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Dark Helmet (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:26am
    
    Re: Re: its the tags
    I...I love lamp.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Yakko Warner (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 9:02am
      
      Re: Re: Re: its the tags
      Between the lamp and Kristen Stewart, I think the lamp has a wider acting range (if not just more facial expressions).
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - aldestrawk (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 9:07am
      
      Re: Re: Re: its the tags
      You must be thinking of Amber Lamps
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - The Groove Tiger (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 10:38am
      
      Re: Re: Re: its the tags
      Ach! eine Lampe! Der Humpink.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Suja (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 9:37am
    
    Re: Re: its the tags
    Usually when I think of Lamp parings I think of Brave Toasters and Lamps but I guess Lions and Lamps are OK too.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:00am

Why in the world has nobody sued over one of these totally false takedowns and argued that the DMCA takedown process is unconstitutional? The Internet today is far different from the way it was in 1998, and the legal landscape is also a lot different--the Supreme Court has aggressively upheld First Amendment rights several times. I'm not even a lawyer--just a lowly paralegal who's spent their entire career on First Amendment issues--and I'm certain I could craft a fantastic argument that the DMCA takedown requirement creates unconstitutional prior restraints. To illustrate, just think how ridiculous it would be if a state passed a law allowing someone to rip signs down on other people's property that they thought were libelous, without a court being involved. Giving private parties the power to censor speech under color of law is just as much a prior restraint as the government itself doing it. At the very least you could argue that it's overbroad because experience has shown that even though it's not supposed to, it does reach a substantial amount of protected speech.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:13am
  
  Re:
  To clarify, the prior restraint comes not in the initial takedown (that's censorship), but in being unable to repost it without following the DMCA procedure.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- MrWilson, 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:25am
  
  Re:
  Another issue is the fact that they're automating DMCA takedown notices, which means that all of the notices are fraudulent because no one with the ability to swear that the takedown notices are valid "under penalty of perjury" is actually looking at them until after the fact when they get a complaint. Letting your cat click enter to accept an EULA wouldn't hold up in court, why would letting your bot swear that its notices are valid stand up?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Jeffrey Nonken (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 10:41am
    
    Re: Re:
    My cat is smarter than most humans but, alas, is not of legal age in this country.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Cowardly Anonymous, 23 Mar 2012 @ 10:01am
  
  Re:
  Because the scheme is rather carefully crafted to target hosting sites, rather than users. The users are told they have to take it up with the site while the site is told that it will open itself to liability for user content if it doesn't play ball.
  
  You can't sue the site, because the site can point to the DMCA notice. You can't sue the issuer of the DMCA notice, because they didn't actually take down your content.
  
  The constitution clearly states: "Congress shall make no law such that," rather than saying "The Courts shall not upload a law such that." This choice was to ensure that no schemes such as the above could be set up, where an over-seeing body can be routed around. Tragically the Constitution provides no meaningful disincentive for crafting such laws, because the bill of rights was not a core part of the design, but a concession.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Andy Roon (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:10am

Wow, when SEO and rampant copyright enforcement collide. We should turn all the copyright folks against all the blackhat SEOs and see who wins. And have it streamed by the people who stream UFC fights. Wait...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 11:21am
  
  Re:
  Anonymous needs to start 'tagging' other media companies with 'infringing' tags and watch the hilarity as the media companies automatically remove each others content from the web....
  
  The majority of us (who read and agree with the ideas and concepts supported by this site) would probably never even notice that anything was missing....
  
  But it sure would be entertaining.....
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:11am

BTW, another problem I see is that the DMCA has absolutely no process whatsoever for the reposting of anonymous speech, which is protected. If someone claims anonymous speech is infringing, it's gone unless the person gives up their anonymity.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:14am

Automated perjury is not an excuse. This is lawsuit territory.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- velox (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 6:40pm
  
  Re:
  It's just a matter of time...
  Step 1. Individual lawsuit filed.
  Step 2. Subpoena information needed to uncover the process used to issue the wrongful take-down requests.
  Step 3. Request certification of class-action lawsuit.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:16am

Just a guess but if the tags are getting messed up there are only 2 explanations I can think of at the moment.

DB corruption or intentional/unintentional insertion, which includes malicious insertion by the company or someone who has access legal or illegally to their DB, a program gone ape and doing what is not supposed to and so forth, some third party in any way related to Zazzle with access to that account making the changes and he/she/it is not the user and gained access to the account through deception or hacking the website(i.e. XSS).

Is Zazzle under attack? did it get hacked and users data were stolen?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- That Anonymous Coward (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 11:12pm
  
  Re:
  Never assign to outside malevolence what just as easily can be internal incompetence.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
That Anonymous Coward (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:21am

It looks like tag spamming, but the Googles have no other records of that particular string.

The fact the string ends with just the letter j makes one wonder if the coding failed. Someone tried to pump in more than the 40 tags your allowed so it just borrowed some of her space. Maybe little bobby tables visited.

Its possible Zazzle had a glitch (or is just now finding out because the person who hid it and cleaned up did just as awesome a job as they did coding it in the first place) and the downside is these people are getting beat upon for Zazzle failing.

Summit is still a buncha asshats, but it makes a bit more sense.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- That Anonymous Coward (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 11:15pm
  
  Re:
  I had another though as well...
  If you were Zazzle you more than likely have a list of tags that generate problems...
  What if you screwed up the expression to search the existing tags for them to add them instead?
  
  https://xkcd.com/1031/
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Jeremy Lyman (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:21am

Whh...what?
So there are Twilight copyrighted "tags" out there that no one can associate with anything or Summit gets to delete whatever content that tag pointed at? That makes no sense to me in the least. Firstly why do the item pages get nuked (assuming the items themselves are not infringing) and not just the objectionable tag, and second, identifying tag information (usually one or two words) seem more like a Trademark issue than Copyright. Can you Copyright a single English word; or a date for that matter?

I don't care that Zazzle may be using bots to put bad tags on stuff, that's a company policy issue that should get worked out because it makes their search product less valuable to customers. I'm mystified that DMCA take-downs are getting issued because of ambiguous metadata keywords, not because of infringing content.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Prisoner 201, 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:33am
  
  Re: Whh...what?
  Since the cost of a false takedown is zero, collateral damage can be eliminated from the cost-benefit analysis.
  
  Automated takedowns with very liberal targeting algorithms is just the next logical step.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Jeremy Lyman (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:52am
    
    Re: Re: Whh...what?
    Right, which brings up the question of why automated takedowns are even legal. Comments like MrWilsons about machines "swearing" that notices are valid, but end up being perjury, bring that issue to light.
    
    I'd really like to see the EFF or ACLU get on the case for a bunch of these little guys and HAMMER the false notice companies to the full extent of the DMCA. I bet that would send some execs running to unplug their auto-filing bots.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Andrew (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 10:05am
  
  Re: Whh...what?
  Having read the correspondence, I can't see any reference to a DMCA takedown notice in Zazzle's missives. It's likely they have an automated takedown arrangement with Summit and that, if they have clarified / have to clarify why this piece was taken down, it would for unauthorised use of their marks. Which is not unreasonable if its tags were similar to those apparently autogenerated above.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Jeremy Lyman (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 10:58am
    
    Re: Re: Whh...what?
    Hmm, perhaps you're right. The blog title at mojocrap.com says 'DMCA' so that just got stuck in my head, but the actual missive from Zazzle just says it's an "infringement claim by Summit." That might also explain how the pages went back up without an actual counter-notice being filed.
    
    In any case it's not clear what's going on and both of these companies need to be more clear an straightforward about what their practices are. It's looking more and more like Zazzle is to blame for voluntarily censoring its users (and bad database management) which isn't so much a legal problem, but their users need to vote with their feet if that's the case.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:29am

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't think search tags were even covered by copyright! At most this would be a trademark issue.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 11:32am
  
  Re:
  It's not that the search tags are protected by copyright, it's that they're assuming any Zazzle items utilizing said tags are infringing Summit's copyrights.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
PaulT (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:35am

"Nothing there that suggests Twilight either, except possibly crap."

Lol.

Anyway, whoever's to blame this is just another example of why automatic this process is very bad idea. Follow copyright rules and sell perfectly legit material? Tough, a 3rd party just caused your material to be removed anyway because a corporation wants to protect itself at all costs. Want compensation? Pay a lawyer, we don't care...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:43am

out of curiosity, have we now got ignore November 20, 2009 forever, for fear of being sued by this bunch of Summit twats?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
E. Zachary Knight (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 8:52am

Needs a T-Shirt
This makes me want to make a t-shirt that reads: 11/20/2009 Never Forget
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- DogBreath, 23 Mar 2012 @ 9:09am
  
  Re: Needs a T-Shirt
  Your right. I for one, will never forget the day that Bob Marley was well on his way to becoming the richest dead celebrity.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- aldestrawk (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 9:22am
  
  Re: Needs a T-Shirt
  Or..
  Remember, remember the twentieth of November
  vampires, trademark, and tag lots
  I see no lark why vampires, trademark
  should ever be forgot
  
  Hmm, throws off the rhythm a bit.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yakko Warner (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 9:04am

Aren't tags legal anyway?
Even if the tags were there, hasn't it already been determined that using search tags (specifically, buying ad words) that identify a competitor in order to advertise your own stuff isn't a violation of any law? Or am I misremembering that ruling?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Digitari, 23 Mar 2012 @ 10:04am

RE Start playing tag
You're it
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 23 Mar 2012 @ 10:40am

Silence of the lamp...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
BentFranklin (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 1:31pm

Is tagging of a website by another party equivalent to graffiti? That it's done by the landlord of a rental property is just weird.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
BentFranklin (profile), 23 Mar 2012 @ 1:33pm

WTF #1: Zazzle adds tags unrelated to the merch to increase traffic.

WTF #2: Zazzle doesn't know Google ignores metatags.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
WolfmanSmith (profile), 2 Nov 2016 @ 6:19pm

Zazzle won't let me use my own artwork of 1930's criminals
I just sent Zazzle a message via their tech geeks (since they no longer have a customer support link at the bottom of their site) to cancel my account. I tried to create some promotional products for my book on the 1930's Barker-Karpis gang, and they gave me a lame a** excuse that I couldn't put my own original portraits of these gangsters on Zippo lighters because they depict "celebrities". They're f'ing stupid. I'm completely fed up with them, and just deleted all of my images a bit ago. But then had to go in circles to unsuccessfully find a customer support link that is no longer there.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]