Another Day, Another Bogus Set Of DMCA Takedowns Based Solely On Keywords (This Time Hiding Legit GitHub Projects)
from the collateral-damage dept
For many years we've seen DMCA takedowns that were clearly based on little more than quick keyword searches. There are so many of these cases that it's difficult to keep track of them, but a few examples: Fox demanded a takedown of an article on the SF Chronicle's website... because Fox owns the rights to the movie Chronicle. Some companies, like LeakID seemed to specialize in sketchy takedowns based on just keywords and not actually looking at the content. A story getting attention on Headline News (with followup from TorrentFreak) details just the latest example.The company Takedown Piracy (very subtle there!), working for porn company Wicked Pictures, sent a DMCA notice to Google to delist thousands of links that Takedown Piracy/Wicked Pictures insists are infringing. Yet, many are not. In fact, they've clearly been caught up in some poorly designed automated keyword search. And the unfortunate part is that it resulted in the delisting of a bunch of perfectly legitimate GitHub projects that have nothing to do with the copyrighted content in question.
Two URLs targeted – github.com/yahoo/pure and github.com/yahoo/pure/releases/ belong to the Pure.css project. Described as “a set of small, responsive CSS modules that you can use in every web project”, Pure.css is owned by Yahoo.Other mistakes? Taking down two GitHub projects named "Rebound" because there's a movie called Rebound. Or taking down Netflix's open source project Lipstick. Or openSUSE's network configuration tool wicked, because obviously that must be infringing on Wicked Pictures' copyrights, right? And, surely, Wicked Pictures is the only one to use the word "Pushover" so all GitHub projects must be infringing:
Apparent reason for takedown: Wicked has a movie titled Impure Hunger
In the past, the EFF has argued that these sorts of automated takedowns based on little more than a keyword search clearly violated 512(f) of the DMCA, because they misrepresent things in the takedown. Unfortunately, courts haven't been all that interested in that argument, and copyright holders keep getting away with just saying "oops, my bad" and moving on to issue another set of bad takedowns.Wicked Pictures’ 1999 movie Pushover has a lot to answer for too.
Takedown Piracy hit Google with demands to delist the main URLs for no less than ten Github projects simply because they had the word ‘pushover’ in their titles.
https://github.com/Thibauth/python-pushover
https://github.com/tcnksm/vagrant-pushover
https://github.com/substack/pushover
https://github.com/sps/pushover4j
https://github.com/qbit/node-pushover
https://github.com/laprice/pushover
https://github.com/kryap/php-pushover
https://github.com/danesparza/Pushover.NET
https://github.com/jnwatts/pushover.sh
https://github.com/dyaa/Laravel-pushover
https://github.com/erniebrodeur/pushover
Still, looking at the actual DMCA notice, it doesn't even seem legitimate. It doesn't actually name the works in question. It just says:
The materials reported in this notice are the copyrighted DVD/videos of Wicked Pictures. A representative list of these works is available at http://www.wickedpictures.comAnd for the "original URL" it just lists the Wicked Pictures URL again. You're supposed to show what actual copyright is being infringed -- not generally say "there's a representative list here."
Either way, this highlights (yet again) the absurdity of both the DMCA takedown process and the focus on blaming Google for everything. As TorrentFreak notes, if these DMCA notices had actually gone to GitHub, then Takedown Piracy might have been told more quickly that the demands were bogus. But these days, everyone wants to just hit Google with as many takedowns as possible, as a sort of negative "SEO" (Search Engine Optimization) technique, and thus even less care is put into takedowns than usual.
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Filed Under: copyright, dmca, keywords, takedowns
Companies: github, takedown piracy, wicked pictures
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Time for another legal theory
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When is Google going to stop feeding them?
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Re:
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Re: Re:
>their stuff. Why not just de-list them completely?
>It would serve them right.
Yeah just like that country in Europe they wiped off the news map. What was it called again...Iberia, Catalan?
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The MPAA claimed it would only use the law responsibility when it was being considered. I made comment back then on another site, this wasn't for their own personal use but rather a national law and anyone could use it.
We have been getting a much clearer picture of the results of a lack of penalties in the law and what it has resulted in.
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Re:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-105publ304/pdf/PLAW-105publ304.pdf
Page 24. Look for and read the paragraph marked "(f) MISREPRESENTATIONS -- ..." and the following three or four paragraphs.
Why the courts don't enforce that provision is beyond me.
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Re: Re:
Extortion? Destroying the concept of 'due process'? Silencing someone because they might be infringing on your rights? Passing laws solely to benefit a select few, at the cost of the majority? Retroactive changes to laws that were already one-sided, to make them even more so? It's all good as long as it's 'to defend copyright'.
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Then Google should have removed all those Wicked Pictures URL's from its search engine being as Wicked Pictures supplied them. Should Wicked Pictures complain that their own URL's being removed from Google then Google should point out to them that they requested in the notice for them to removed and they were indeed removed. How should Google know what is infringing or what is not infringing. Only the copyright holder (who isn't Google) will know if it is infringing.
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What's utterly pathetic about this is that this situation hasn't changed. The events that got me totally against this kind of thing were when a university's lecture archive got taken down due to the fact that the professor was named Usher (as per one of the current top selling artists) and a 1980s 48K ZX Spectrum was attacked because it was named the same as a recent new release that couldn't possibly have fit into that file size (Soldier Of Fortune). This was in 2000.
In a decade and a half, despite all the hyperbole, attacks and attempts to infringe on everybody else's rights, these twats haven't changed a thing. Nor will they, until they're forced to treat everyone else's rights with the same respect they try to demand for themselves...
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These pirates get worse each day
And changing one letter from "nude" to "node" is a lame way to try to hide the pirated content. Those darrrrrn pirates could at least put some effort in it.
You see it obviously isn't the content providers fault but Im for a $10k fine if they send a wrong DMCA takedown. Then noone will get fined and people will finaly see how great these companies are.
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Since TOS's seems to be a law in and off itself, i suggest someone host a website with just words, nothing more, no links, words of content that is regularly censored..........with a jpeg agreement, so not so easy to "crawl" for the agreement, that states that
should this website be taken down over copyright reasons without confirmation, that you hence forth have binded yourself to this contract, a contract you have willingly accepted by taking this site down over copyright reasons where there are no copyright material, which you would have known had you very easilly had visited the site.
Now if you are of the opinion that no single individual has the right to create a contract or what is sometimes known as a TOS without persmission from a godly body, then i hesitate to call any TOS'S that are implemented to this day a contract, nor binding, if there is no agreement between both parties for everything in that contract, nor have i heard of some magifactured restriction that only certain bodies are allowed to make a "sell your soul" contract
seing as contracts change and users regularly uninformed of such, i guess in this respect you have shown that an agreement is not necassary......so that being so, you will not be allowed to claim an uniformed agreement if you should agree to this contract by shutting down this website without confirming copyright material.....hence forth :)
Now, since you have agreed, i deem that you give up 1% of your profit for the purpose of kicking your but, and that should we have to suffer with such a corrupt system, then at least you'd try to take the bloody time to check wether the website actually hosts sharing content.........oh by the way, middle man forced by policies, ....... i mean law, to comply are temporarily exempt from this contract, so go right ahead, with my blessings
The undersigned
In my imagination, im imagining these very strict TOS enforces taking a TOS very seriously, and ferenvently complying .....hence forth.........totally no TOS'ing hypocrates in my imagination right now....oh no wait......hello
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Better idea
Give the suppression of free speech some TEETH!
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Re: Better idea
After 20 times you're already at a million dollars.
On the 21st time, it is that same million (which means it doubled) plus a bit of growth.
Given the vast rate of bad DMCA notices, it would work just fine to have an increment applied to each brazenly false DMCA notice. The worst offenders would quickly go out of business.
Doubling it each time sounds so unfair. But something that sounds much more fair would still have the same effect.
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Re: Re: Better idea
After all, they're not using all that high-speed internet service to do anything worthwhile. Lest that might keep them somewhat out of legal and financial trouble for a while.
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What a racket
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How about libel?
Serve them and hit them in small claims. Over and over. Hopefully, the default judgements will have their impact.
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Whitehouse statement
"We must protect our Porn industries monies"
....coming up later
"Bribery on the rise.......good timezzz"
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In this case the ability to shutdown anything they don't like without requiring proof of why it needs to be shut down.
like the police randomly arresting people and refusing to tell them why they are being arrested, oh wait that already happens
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I remember reading about an artist that received a notice that she had to remove one of her works from her web site. After much time and red tape it was discovered that the reason was that she had simply titled the painting as the date she completed it. Because some movie had been released om that date some ridiculous automated search kicked it out.
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Actually, not really...
MPAA Gets Its Wish: Court Basically Says It Can File Bogus DMCA Takedowns Without Concern For Fair Use
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130911/18073124494/mpaa-gets-its-wish-court-basically-says-it -can-file-bogus-dmca-takedowns-without-concern-fair-use.shtml
Warner Bros. Admits To Issuing Bogus Takedowns; Gloats To Court How There's Nothing Anyone Can Do About That
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131118/02152325272/warner-bros-admits-to-issuing-bogus-taked owns-gloats-to-court-how-theres-nothing-anyone-can-do-about-that.shtml
Why It's Almost Impossible To Get Punished For A Bogus DMCA Takedown
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121017/10355320733/why-its-almost-impossible-to-get-puni shed-bogus-dmca-takedown.shtml
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Re:
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Of course then companies will attack google for abusing its market power to keep them from filing DCMAs.
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