WWE Lawyers DMCA Tweet With Video Of Independent Wrestling Event, Probably Over A Hashtag That Promotes WWE

from the takedown-the-takedowns dept

I think it's fair to say that the lawyers for wrestling's WWE have found themselves playing the heel in the past. Perhaps it's the result of the company being run by known crazy person Vince McMahon, who has found his way to our site by being an IP protectionist among other things. WWE's lawyers have tried some pretty nefarious methods for going after those they believe violated WWE's intellectual property rights. For instance, they tried to get the mailing address of the operator of a streaming site by falseloffering a gift bag.

But the legal team never tried to simply and incorrectly make DMCA claims on the videos of other wrestling operations... until now. Bar Wrestling, which is described as an independent wrestling promotion, routinely films its matches and events, and puts them online for free, including on Twitter. For some reason, a lawyer for the WWE issued a takedown on one tweet with Twitter, which complied and removed the content.

That "illegal link" goes to video content owned by Bar Wrestling. Period. Full stop. I can't be sure, but my guess is that the lawyers for WWE police WWE hashtags, so when they saw the hashtag denoting one of the wrestlers in the tweet, and saw the shortened link, they assumed it was illicit content to an illicit site. Which ultimately means that WWE lawyers go about laying claim to content on the internet without doing even the barest amount of checking into that content, as simply clicking the link would have made it clear that this was Bar Wrestling content.

So, WWE called someone else's content theirs, Twitter immediately takes it down, and then it's left for the victim to go clean up everyone else's mess? Need we a better example as to why takedowns at the speed of light are absolutely stupid?

Filed Under: content moderation, copyright, promotions, takedowns, wrestling
Companies: bar wrestling, wwe