Digimarc Fighting Piracy By Submitting Incomplete DMCA Notices Targeting Tons Of Non-Infringing URLs (Including Techdirt's)

from the garbage-in,-garbage-out dept

There are bogus DMCA takedown requests -- something we've covered frequently here -- that try to use a copyright tool to make unflattering content disappear. Then there's this form of bogus, the kind being engaged in by Digimarc. It appears to be the result of inadequate automation handling everything terribly.

A July 3rd DMCA notice issued by Digimarc on behalf of AVID Center makes five copyright claims. For whatever reason, only two of the claims have allegedly infringing URLs appended. Where bare minimum competence should be, there's only white space.

The third claim lists an AVID tutorial and asks Google to delist:

• A Slideshare deck that doesn't appear to be infringing
• Wordpress.com
• Docuri.com

So, for the sake of one misidentified tutorial, Digimarc is asking for two complete websites to be delisted.

The fifth copyright claim, for something identified only as "Critical Reading 1," Digimarc demands Google delist something else that doesn't belong to AVID and a 2012 Techdirt post about Google's "shill list."

That's not the only time Techdirt is targeted by Digimarc's sudden burst of stupid DMCA takedowns. This one, sent on behalf of the American Psychological Association, demands the takedown of a completely unrelated webpage and every post Techdirt has published about Sci-Hub.

Digimarc has dumped hundreds of DMCA notices into Google's lap over the last few weeks, many of which are loaded with unvetted garbage.

These are being made on behalf of dozens of top-tier publishers and scientific organizations who apparently are paying Digimarc to perform reputational damage by association. This one, on behalf of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, makes a couple of dozen copyright claims, only bothers to list infringing URLs for a few of those claims, and demands the delisting all of Crunchyroll.com, a Discogs listing for singer Robbie Williams, a Wired story about a Kickass Torrents piracy prosecution, and a tourist's guide to Kensington. These are all supposedly infringing on the AIAA's "Introduction to Aeronautics."

The hits misses just keep on coming. Pretty much any DMCA notice issued by Digimarc over the last month is a comedy of errors. Here's one that can't even be bothered to spell the protected work's title correctly ("The Cather in the Rye") which demands the removal of UK press outlet the Independent's website.

Here's a Simon & Schuster takedown from Digimarc targeting a 2009 Techdirt post on ebooks, the entirety of DailyMotion's website (Dailymotion.com), Rapidshare.com, Kickass.to, and the "create an account" page at Wordpress. Here's one for Houghton Mifflin, which provides a long list of copyright claims without infringing URLs listed and the demand for a delisting of a "best short stories" list published at the Huffington Post.

Not every DMCA notice issued by Digimarc recently has these problems. Some appear to be targeting possible infringement. But a majority of these requests either target non-infringing URLs or don't even have URLs listed under the copyrighted works these are being issued to "protect." It's incredibly shoddy work from a company that claims to deliver "actionable intelligence to help support robust antipiracy strategies."

Filed Under: automated filters, dmca, takedowns
Companies: digimarc, google

Shameful: American Society Of Civil Engineers Issues DMCA Notices Against Academics For Posting Their Own Research

from the for-the-encouragement-of-learning dept

As we've pointed out many times in the past, the originally stated purpose of copyright law was to encourage the sharing of scientific knowledge for the purpose of learning. The first copyright act in the US was actually entitled "for the encouragement of learning." Yet, as copyright law has evolved, it's frequently been used to make learning much more difficult. Just a few months ago, we covered how publishing giant Elsevier had started to demand that academics who had published their own research on Academia.edu take down those works. As we noted then, while big journal publishers often demand that academics hand over their copyright in order to get published, they usually would either grant an exception for an academic to post their own work, or at least look the other way when the academics would do so. And many, many academics obviously decided to post their own papers to the web.

As TorrentFreak reports, the American Society of Civil Engineers has taken it up a level, hiring one of the more well-known copyright enforcement companies out there, Digimarc, to go around issuing DMCA takedown on academics uploading their own works:

The publisher has hired the piracy protection firm Digimarc to police the internet for articles that are posted in the wild. As a result, universities all across the globe were targeted with takedown notices, which were also sent to Google in some cases.

The list of rogue researchers is long, and includes professors from MIT, Stanford, Northwestern University, University of Washington, UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin–Madison and many international universities.

Yes, basically, ASCE has declared that its own academic authors are a bunch of pirates. If you're a civil engineer, now is the time to start looking seriously at alternatives for publishing beyond the ASCE. Declaring war on the academics who provide you all of your content for free, just seems like a bad idea.

Torrentfreak notes that it appears that some universities have resisted these takedown demands. Stanford, MIT and UC Berkeley still have the works in question up. Other schools, however, have quickly caved in. University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Texas-Austin appear to have pulled down the works. Because, you can't support the progress of science if your damn academics are giving away their works for free... instead of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for access to basic knowledge and research.

Filed Under: academia, copyright, dmca, papers, research, takedowns
Companies: asce, digimarc

The More Innovative You Are, The More You Get Sued; Yet Another Patent Lawsuit Over Shazam

from the aren't-patents-great? dept

Earlier this year, we noted that Apple and AT&T had been sued for patent infringement concerning Shazam, the popular service for identifying music. At the time, we noted how this was a clear demonstration of the difference between just the idea and the actual innovation. Shazam has been around for ages, and despite having a good idea (ability to identify music just by hearing it), it struggled for many, many years until the iPhone came along, and there was a platform on which its concept made sense. During that time Shazam kept trying out new things and improving its service. The basic concept behind Shazam (identifying music) isn't that interesting. It was all the work that Shazam kept doing over the years to find the right mix of things that consumers wanted that made it worthwhile.

But, of course, patent holders continue to insist that it's the original idea only that's important.

So, once again, Shazam's service is involved in a patent lawsuit, this time from Digimarc, who has sued Shazam directly, claiming infringement. Now, Digimarc claims that Shazam is infringing on its patents, even though Digimarc does not offer a similar service at all. In fact, Digimarc is in an entirely different business: it's really a DRM company who wants to try to stop people from sharing or appreciating content, by locking it down. More recently, Digimarc has been focused on patenting its watermarking concept (despite plenty of prior art), and going the lawsuit route.

So, we have the tales of two companies who have been around for quite some time. One is focused on providing unique and compelling solutions that make consumers' lives better. And the other is focused on locking things down and talking about its intellectual property. Guess which one's getting sued by the other? So, please, explain again how patents encourage innovation? Once more, it looks like patents are being used to prevent actual innovating by those who prefer to lock up ideas.

Filed Under: drm, innovation, lawsuits, music recognition, patents
Companies: digimarc, shazam