LeakID And The DMCA Takedown Notice Farce
from the 'baby'-+-'bathwater'---'competence' dept
The DMCA notice and takedown system was considered to be a significant concession on the part of the content industries when it debuted. Over the intervening years, it has become a very powerful weapon, one that is brandished carelessly by many copyright holders. In order to protect their safe harbors, hosting companies have lapsed into a state of kneejerk overreaction, shutting down sites and pulling legitimate content with little to no warning, leaving those on the receiving end of these actions to clean up the mess.Most sites don't have the luxury of investigating takedown notices to determine the veracity of the claims. It's easier (and safer) to kill everything off than to sort out what's infringing and what isn't. The content industries are perfectly fine with killing off legitimate content and operate without fear of reprisal.
But as the number of DMCA notices increases, content providers are frequently placing this weapon in the hands of underqualified third parties who either don't know or don't care what's infringing and what isn't. We've seen several examples of other people's content being claimed by these companies.
The third party DMCA patrolbot featured today first made its name known by claiming malware uploaded by a computer security researcher as its own, resulting in a shutdown of the researcher's Mediafire account. LeakID, the "company" (and we'll explore those scare quotes in a moment) behind the takedown practices what many other sketchy content enforcers do -- bulk keyword searches. This results in false positives that get swept up with all the actual infringement, such as in the case linked above. LeakID also ordered a Microsoft Office patch (freely available at Microsoft's website) be removed from this user's account.
That was the big news. But that's not the end of it. During LeakID's sudden burst of activity, all sorts of content was falsely claimed and removed by the overeager autobot.
- May 30 - A Tumblr user's podfic taken down subsequent to a claim by LeakID. Mediafire suggested it was the material that was being read. Aethel (the podfic reader) sent back this response:
I was reading a story called “What Not To Expect When You’re Not Expecting It” by thehoyden. I emailed thehoyden in advance and obtained permission to make and distribute the recording. Trust me, she is not the origin of this claim.
On June 4th, the file was deleted again, without notification, this time at Sendspace.
- July 15 - LeakID issued a takedown notice on a blogger's own 28-page PDF he offered at his chess blog.
- June 25 - A PDF containing a reading list of Dr. Charles Pecher's published papers is removed from Mediafire at LeakID's request. The list did not contain any actual published papers.
- July 15 - Acting on behalf of Citel Video, LeakID takes down a set of user-made batpacks for a cricket simulator. (?)(!)
The action heats up in September. The famous malware takedown was reported on September 6th. But there's more.
- September 5 - Fan-made commentary tracks for a 25-year-old British children's show called "Knightmare" are taken down at 4Shared thanks to a claim by LeakID.
A company called LeakID is claiming to have copyright on The Dunshelm Players' recordings... Specifically, and very bizarrely, this DMCA has been placed on the Commentary Tracks recorded by Jake Collins, Rosey Collins, Andy Marshall, Ross Thompson, Ricky Temple and myself.
How LeakID have managed to conclude that the Commentaries have anything to do with themselves is quite beyond comprehension, as the Commentaries are in fact the material on the website that is furthest from breaching copyright; to the best of my knowledge, we have never breached copyright with any of our work, but the Commentaries don't even include sound effects or music in the mix, they're just recordings of a few KM fans talking about a TV show.
- September 5 - A blogger has several files deleted from his Mediafire account after another LeakID takedown, including free Bandcamp downloads and an unreleased CDR-only demo. Contact with some of the bands whose tracks were removed from his account confirmed that they had nothing to do with the takedown.
- September 6th - A Day-Z (Arma mod) fan has beta patches and an archived, older version of the Day Z code taken down by LeakID, apparently on behalf of "Metropolitan," Hervé Lemaire's ("CEO of LeakID") own company. ("I am legal representative of lemaire which does business under the name Metropolitan." Wha...?) The fan in question actually held a brief conversation with Mr. Lemaire, which turned out about as well as could be expected:
I did finally manage to get hold of Mr Lemaire on the phone. I began by asking (in French) if he was an agent or representative of Bohemia Interactive or Dean Hall. He said "Non." Although I had introduced myself, I didn't explain why I was contacting him, so perhaps he thought I was a prospective client. I then asked why he had filed an incorrect DMCA claim against the files I had hosted on Mediafire. He ummed for a second or two and then hung up. When I called back later on, his mobile phone was turned off. I haven't been able to contact him since.
- September 11 - A worksheet featuring results and rankings for the Fantasy Premier League (online non-American football fantasy league) dumped because of LeakID.
There's more out there. LeakID does most of its work for Microsoft. The only other companies listed are Citel Video, Midi Libre and a vague entity called Metropolitan. Metropolitan alone is responsible for 118,807 URLs being removed, all in a little over a month. Citel Video takedowns tend to be targeted to specific TV shows and movies, like Naruto and One Piece. Midi Libre is a French newspaper and LeakID has only sent two takedown requests in that name. Unfortunately, neither of the requests are posted online.
In fact, a majority of LeakID's takedowns have not been posted at Chilling Effects. The few that have are very specific takedowns for Microsoft and Citel Video. (Even the specfic takedowns have some anomalies. Here's a takedown for Microsoft that lists an album by Skinny Puppy and a copy of Minecraft as items to be removed. Interestingly, both are hosted at Mediafire.) There are some strange ones where LeakID lists itself as the copyright holder, which clearly isn't true. The carpet bombing requests that takedown anything and everything have not been posted at Chilling Effects. Instead, only the account holders being hit with a takedown get to see these scattergun notices.
However, one of these super-vague takedowns has been posted online. It's only a partial list of URLs, but the list of links covers all sorts of territory. It begins by stating that Hervé Lemaire is "representing" Metropolitan and is "authorized to act on behalf of an owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed." It lists "The Expendables" and "Trespass" but the URLs listed include links to files with names like "Expendables Trailer," "Great Teacher Onizuka Remake," "English Football 2011-2012 Downloads," "Max Payne Mobile," "American Reunion Unrated," "OS X Mountain Lion," "Desperate Housewives Season 14," "Daily Show Featuring Herman Cain," "Grey's Anatomy Sea. 3," "SQL Server 2008 Update," etc. The list literally goes on and on.
So, what's going on here? Is Lemaire taking submissions and compiling them all under the "Metropolitan" name? It does look like LeakID's site does have something akin to a "link dropoff" spot, according to this post written about the company. Another possibility is that LeakID is being retained by multiple copyright holders. If so, he's doing a lousy job vetting his search results. All sorts of legitimate content is being taken down. The last possibility is that Lemaire is freelancing in order to drum up business. If the last is true, then LeakID's takedown requests are not valid. He's representing no one and does not have the authority to request a takedown, no matter how blatantly infringing the content. It seems rather unlikely that he's representing a variety of movie studios, software companies and Apple itself. The more you look at the last couple of months of takedowns (and the resulting collateral damage), the more it looks like LeakID is going "vigilante," and issuing takedowns for anything infringing it can find.
Let's meet LeakID.
"Managing You Content." There's a confidence builder. Let's see what's inside.
"LeakID is the first digital agency and was founded by experts from the world of radio, television and internet."The whole site is filled with approximate English and, no kidding, an mp3 that autoplays upon arrival, just like a Geocities page from a decade ago. (To stop it, press the button next to the "Privacy Policy" link at the bottom of the page.) Speaking of Privacy Policy, let's take a look at that.
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet adipiscing elit.Yep. Placeholder text. This "company" has no privacy policy. Apparently, it was too much trouble to copy and paste one from any number of websites using barely modified boilerplate. But let's not worry about that. How about LeakSearch, the signature anti-piracy tool?
Pellentesque sed dolor. Aliquam congue fermentum nisl..."
"Leaksearch has been developed in php This tool is connected 24 hours a day to more than 30 sources that are updated every day.And so on. Then there's Hervé Lemaire himself. His bio on the LeakID website paints him as someone with years of experience in the music business, including seven years in EMI's digital department. So does his entry at Wikipedia France, which resembles a copy-paste resumé dump job more than it resembles an actual Wikipedia article. (Speaking of resumés, here's a more thorough version, which helpfully points out that his position at EMI was "Head of Digital and Antipiracy.")
Several days, even several days can go by before your product makes its way onto 'public' networks. With Leaksearch, you can make the most of this precious timelag to implement counter-measures and adapt your anti-pirating strategy."
LeakID's official Twitter account is a mystery as well. Every tweet is a link to a Torrentfreak post, leading one to believe that Lemaire either possesses a twisted sense of irony or that the account has been hacked. If it's the latter, there's been no attempt to reclaim it or get it shut down.
Are companies like Microsoft willing to entrust their DMCA process to a company/person whose website is littered with butchered English and autoplays bog electronica upon entry? Even if English is not your native language, as is probably the case with Hervé Lemaire, if that's the language you've chosen to communicate with, you should probably get it right. One would think that companies would be more selective when handing out their legal legwork.
And what about the numerous other companies LeakID is issuing takedowns for? If these companies listed have hired LeakID to handle their DMCA requests, it shows an appalling lack of respect for internet users across the board. Piracy, to them, must be too important to ignore, but not important enough to handle competently. If everything is above board and LeakID has been retained to handle these takedowns, the companies represented must be satisfied with quantity over quality. Collateral damage is not only acceptable, it's considered the "price" of doing business. However, this price is paid by users who have legitimate content removed and accounts shut down.
The same companies that criticize file lockers for operating offshore to dodge US laws are outsourcing their anti-piracy efforts to offshore companies, which have little fear of being held responsible for perjuring themselves with bogus DMCA notices. It's nearly impossible to hold anyone responsible for a bogus takedown and handing off the DMCA duties to a French company makes it that much harder. The likelihood of anyone pursuing legal recourse is virtually zero. This leaves companies like LeakID, Degban and others to serve up bogus takedowns crafted by automated processes. Those on the receiving end will just have to get used to having accounts closed and files deleted for the foreseeable future.
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Filed Under: automated takedowns, copyright, free speech, herve lemaire, takedowns
Companies: leakid
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The problem is simple
You have to appreciate the intelligence that was able to get the politicians to create this stupidity in the southern way. Bless their hearts.
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Wow...
1) grep the internet
2) don't filter the results
3) issue and affirm takedowns
4) ?????
5) piracy stopped
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Re: Wow...
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A couple of thoughts come to mind. First of all, can a French company really be subcontracted to send legal notices under US law? I have no experience here, but it does seem rather strange if so. Surely farming your legal services out to a foreign speaking company is just asking for trouble?
The whole fiasco reminds me of cease and desist orders being sent pre-DMCA such as the Professor Usher who was told to take his lectures down because he has the same name as a singer, or the ZX Spectrum site who was ordered to take down a 40k copy of the 1980s game Soldier Of Fortune in the mistaken belief it was a new title. 2 decades later, and these clowns haven't learned anything. presumably because they can do this without recourse from the wrongly targeted.
For the non-US users here, this really just seems to be a lesson in not using services by US companies as much as anything. The scariest thing? Knightmare was 25 years ago? Wow... that went quickly :S
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Oh, I get it: content owners must stay in US and play fair...
"The same companies that criticize file lockers for operating offshore to dodge US laws are outsourcing their anti-piracy efforts to offshore companies, which have little fear of being held responsible for perjuring themselves with bogus DMCA notices. It's nearly impossible to hold anyone responsible for a bogus takedown and handing off the DMCA duties to a French company makes it that much harder. The likelihood of anyone pursuing legal recourse is virtually zero. This leaves companies like LeakID, Degban and others to serve up bogus takedowns crafted by automated processes."
You pirates don't seem to grasp that a) when millions (and WAY up) are at stake, corporations will use any and every means that don't immediately land them (its officers) in jail b) that corporate technology and practices can evolve too -- in fact, you seem to specifically find that unfair!
So at best you're just whining that US laws don't apply to overseas corporations! You just argue as convenient, never any firm principles.
Now bring on the ad hom! It's what you fanboy / trolls live for!
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Re: Oh, I get it: content owners must stay in US and play fair...
"Now bring on the ad hom!"
Sorry dude, you beat us to it.
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Re: Oh, I get it: content owners must stay in US and play fair...
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Re: Re: Oh, I get it: content owners must stay in US and play fair...
The paragraph is also part of an article about illegal, unethical, anti-artist activity deliberately engaged in by people because they know they can get away with it. Trolls claim to post here because they can't stomach people appearing to defend or condone that. A troll whom attacks this article has no beliefs at all.
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Re: Oh, I get it: content owners must stay in US and play fair...
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Re: Oh, I get it: content owners must stay in US and play fair...
"You pirates don't seem to grasp that a) when millions (and WAY up) are at stake, corporations will use any and every means that don't immediately land them (its officers) in jail"
Yes, hasn't_got_a_clue, you support corporations who will leave no stone unturned in their effort at either keeping or receiving incalculable millions.
As a commenter up above said; this is a FRENCH legal company being talked about. How is it possible for a FRENCH law office to send out legitimate DMCA notices? No, it doesn't matter to you what the law is, as long as the corporations don't have to follow it.
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Re: Oh, I get it: content owners must stay in US and play fair...
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Re: Oh, I get it: content owners must stay in US and play fair...
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Re: Re: Oh, I get it: content owners must stay in US and play fair...
I'm not sure TD has ever taken its banhammer out of the box. And, honestly, I like it that way.
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Re: Re: Oh, I get it: content owners must stay in US and play fair...
We already know that OOTB is a certifiable troll and as you said his posts are often flagged almost immediately.
If Techdirt were to swing the banhammer down on that account, then he will almost certainly create a new account to post his drivel under. It make take some time to recognize the new account, weeks that take people longer to flag and hide, meaning more people will read his crud.
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Re:
It is offshoring fraud to exploit a bad law and avoid consequences when the law is ultimately struck down. IMO.
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This is an excellent article
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Re: This is an excellent article
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Vandalism in Virtual Form...
The difference, of course, is that in the brick-and-mortar world, the police would be actively searching to apprehend the culprit, so that the courts can bring them to justice, including making them pay for the wanton wholesale damage they have inflicted.
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Re: Vandalism in Virtual Form...
Black bloc anarchism: The biggest single reason why North Americans (yeah, Canada—I'm looking at you, too) have essentially lost the right to gather in the streets to petition the government for redress of grievances.
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Re: Re: Vandalism in Virtual Form...
However the clamps came down in the late 60's early 70's when college students, going way over board with the momentum of anti-war protests, started taking over administration buildings just to alleviate boredom.
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Re: Re: Re: Vandalism in Virtual Form...
Bored college students taking over administration buildings didn't cause the pigs to burn down the whole campus.
That was Watts and Detroit and Wounded Knee (but I digress...)
Look, we still had the basic freedom to march in the streets up until the WTO (Seattle '99). After that came the FTAA in Miami —the infamous Miami model— and it was all over... No more peaceful marching in the streets without the tanks and flashbangs and pepper spray and tear gas and kettles.
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Autobot?
Meh... If anything, it's obviously a Decepticon.
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Six strikes?
Six valid strikes? Six valid strikes for a single abuser? Sustained on appeal and everything like that.
When I read this article, I wasn't counting.
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Knightmare
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The Joke
Congress is certainly to blame for this situation when they specified no punishment for false DMCA take-down requests. So many do not even care if their results are valid or not when at worst people can take them to Court... to recover their Count expenses... and for any actual damaged caused... which for most people is... zero. This is why no one cares to punish false take-down requests when the Court route is a whole lot of time and effort for no real gain.
As I said before if people issue false take-down requests then they should be made to pay a fixed fine. Should this happen too often then issue them a suspension. Then at last right holders have reason to respect what is not theirs.
Congress never does what you need them to when to put it simply no one is paying them to fix this problem. So DMCA law is rapidly becoming a joke and recent news like me.ga goes to show websites would prefer to by-pass the law.
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Re: The Joke
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Re: The Joke
In practice, though, these are very difficult things to do -- so the "penalty" is largely symbolic.
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Fight fire with fire?
When media conglomerates, politicians and CEO's start getting their websites taken offline, then they'll do something. Right now all these assholes see is the system is working because la, la, la I can't hear you with my head buried in all this piles of money I'm making from shutting down your legitimate form of income.
Or something like that.
Possibly this could be done with websites that allow user contributions because then the DMCAssassin could claim they legitimately thought they owned copyright on their contributions. In fact where does the legal line stand with things like user comments?
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Shine the batsignal
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Two words: Lowest Bidder.
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As long as someone else pays, IP extremists don't care.
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They're also outsourcing their English to a non-English speaking country ;)
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If only...
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correction
Actually, the file was removed from Sendspace both times. I was considering uploading to Mediafire instead because Sendspace doesn't know how to handle DMCA notices properly.
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So weird
The only strange thing is, if the are a private company, how can they have a judge 24 hours authorizing the copyright claims, or just about any1 can simply claim copyright and take contents offline without any legal support?
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