Ares Rights, Notorious DMCA Abusers For The Ecuadorian Gov't, Now Sending DMCA Notices On Stories About Ares Rights

from the copyright-as-censorship dept

Wed, Sep 3rd 2014 9:29am — Mike Masnick

We still hear from copyright system supporters who insist that copyright is never used as a censorship tool. And yet... we've written a few times about a Spanish firm named Ares Rights that works with the Ecuadorian government and others to seek to censor critical content by totally abusing the DMCA process. However, it appears to have stepped things up a notch in the ridiculous category, now seeking to abuse the DMCA even further to censor stories about its own censorship-by-DMCA. It gets a bit recursive.

Last week, Adam Steinbaugh had a good blog post detailing how Ares Rights had issued some bogus DMCA notices over some news coverage in Ecuador... of Ares Rights itself. In May, PlanV had written about Ares Rights and its abuse of US copyright law to try to censor stuff on behalf of the Ecuadorian government. It's a good detailed breakdown of how Ares Rights abuses copyright law. However Ares Rights sent a takedown, claiming trademark infringement in the article, because (you guessed it) the article mentions "Ares Rights." Except that's not how the DMCA or trademark law works. At all.

Of course, rather than having the criticism of Ares Rights disappear, it just resulted in a lot more coverage of the situation (and, of course, the original article stayed up). It got American press coverage as well as Ecuadorian coverage from multiple sources.

Rather than learn the lesson that issuing bogus takedowns is a bad idea that not only doesn't work, but will likely backfire spectacularly, Ares Rights doubled down... and sent a new DMCA takedown to try to take down Adam Steinbaugh's post. In this case, Ares Rights is claiming the following:

b) Copyrighted work or other intellectual property that we are claiming to be infringed:
Your customer shows private and not public data.
Your customer displays a document with copyright.
Note strictly private use with contact address, email and telephone. This data is private and not public use only.
Your customer violates privacy laws Spain and CEE.

Please, delete this url.
c) A description of where the infringing material is located on your Site:
http://adamsteinbaugh.com/2014/08/29/ares-rights-wants-ecuador-journalists-to-stop-talking-about-ares-rights-censorious-abuse-of-copyright/

Of course, most of that has nothing to do with copyright, and thus a DMCA notice is improper. Second, all of it is pure bullshit.

Steinbaugh filed a "counter notice" which is well worth reading:

Dear Mr. Martínez:

I am writing in response to your censorious DMCA takedown notice of today’s date, which demands that I remove the entirety of my post about your firm’s censorious abuse of DMCA notices to intimidate or censor your critics and political dissidents, which is located here: http://adamsteinbaugh.com/2014/08/29/ares-rights-wants-ecuador-journalists-to-stop-talking-about-ares-rights-censorious-abuse-of-copyright/

This communication to you is a DMCA counter notification letter as defined in 17 USC § 512(g)(3).

My response is this: fuck off.

In more delicate terms:

First, your notice is defective in that it fails to identify the specific work claimed to be infringed, as required by 17 USC § 512(c)(3)(A)(i).

Second, the material at issue is not protected by copyright, and in the unlikely event that it’s protected at the barest margins of copyright law, my use of the material — which is still unidentified — is a fair use under 17 USC § 107.

I declare, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that the complaint of copyright violation is based on mistaken information, misidentification of the material in question, or deliberate misreading of the law. And, to be sure, your reading of the law to demand removal of your abuse of the DMCA is unmistakably deliberate. To encourage the re-calibration of your interpretation of copyright law, please refer to 17 USC § 512(f), which provides for attorneys fees should a content provider be hoodwinked into temporarily disabling access to material on the basis of your fraudulent DMCA takedown notices.

My name, address, and telephone number are as follows:

Adam Steinbaugh
[redacted]

I hereby consent to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which I reside, which is the Federal District Court for the Central District of California, conveniently located six blocks away from the foregoing address.

I agree to accept service of process from the complainant.

My actual or electronic signature follows:

XOXO, Adam Steinbaugh

As per usual, Ken Popehat White does the best job summing this up.

It's not clear what Ares Rights hopes to accomplish. Their DMCAs will fail. This won't slow coverage. Trying to brush off the EFF or Steinbaugh with a DMCA notice is like trying to get a dog to stop humping your leg by petting it and feeding it bacon. Maybe they bill by the hour, even for patently ridiculous tasks? Maybe they are trying to convince their Ecuadorian masters that they are doing something, anything? Maybe they are just really very bad at their jobs? Stay tuned to find out.

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Filed Under: adam steinbaugh, censorship, copyright, ecuador, journalism
Companies: ares rights

9 Comments

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Ninja (profile), 3 Sep 2014 @ 9:34am

We still hear from copyright system supporters who insist that copyright is never used as a censorship tool. And yet...

Do NOT underestimate the power of the copyright crew to live in complete denial.
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Michael, 3 Sep 2014 @ 9:42am

trying to get a dog to stop humping your leg by petting it and feeding it bacon

My process for trying to get a dog to stop humping your leg is patent-pending and referring to this process as you have could cause me egregious financial harm. If you do not cease distribution of my process immediately and take down any mention of it, I will be forced to seek legal remedies.

- Charles Carreon
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Roger Strong (profile), 3 Sep 2014 @ 10:06am

...even further to censor stories about its own censorship-by-DMCA. It gets a bit recursive.

(comment self-censored)
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Namel3ss (profile), 3 Sep 2014 @ 10:16am

I knew when the DMCA passed back in 1998 that it was a train wreck. Sadly time seems to have proven me right.
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DannyB (profile), 3 Sep 2014 @ 10:44am

Re:
Do you have a reverse process to get them to start? And hopefully that process is unencumbered by patents.
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Mason Wheeler (profile), 3 Sep 2014 @ 10:45am

Re:
Well yeah, everyone with a technical background looked at this and said it was going to be a disaster. Extrajudicial punishment for the breaking of laws, based on accusation alone, with zero due process? How did anyone think that's going to turn out?

The examples that Techdirt keeps posting on here about so-called "abuses of the DMCA process"? News flash: those aren't abuses at all. That's the DMCA working exactly as designed. You think the music and movie interests who drafted this didn't see the glaringly obvious?
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connermac725 (profile), 3 Sep 2014 @ 2:20pm

fools live to repeat their mistakes
need i say more
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That One Guy (profile), 3 Sep 2014 @ 4:33pm

Re:
I might be thinking of another law, but wasn't the DMCA originally denied being put into law when it was proposed, and it was only after the US threw it into one or two 'trade' 'agreements' that it was forced into law, via the 'we have to uphold our side of the agreement!' scam/argument?
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Rick Carufel (profile), 4 Sep 2014 @ 6:34pm

DMCA orders
The biggest abusers of copyright laws is goodreads.com. They absolutely refuse to remove books from their sight even after multiple DMCA take down orders. Their pat excuse is they have the right to use the content because of agreements with Amazon. I specifically unpublished six book from Amazon and resent the take-down and specifically stated the books were no longer published on Amazon. Their reply? They have a reight to use the content because of their agreements with Amazon. Clearly a canned responce that no human ever looked at. If an author asks about getting a book removed from the site Goodreads bans the author and keeps the book.
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