German Anti-Piracy Group Issues Takedown Over Video It Had No Rights To
from the copyright-as-censorship dept
Reader Drizzt sent over a whole stack of links about an ongoing story in Germany concerning an anti-piracy group in Germany -- Gesellschaft zur Verfolgung von Urheberrechtsverletzungen (GVU) -- who apparently issued some takedown notices on some videos that (a) it had no rights to and (b) which the filmmakers had put up under Creative Commons licenses (that link is the Google translation of the original German). I was going through all of the links to piece it together, but it looks like TorrentFreak has done an excellent job summarizing the situation. Basically, GVU contracted out to a technology "partner," called OpSec Security, and that company screwed up. GVU and OpEc are apologizing for the situation. One of the filmmakers, Mario Sixtus, sent GVU a cease-and-desist for falsely claiming rights over his film, noting that this was nothing less than "digital vandalism," and direct interference of his publication rights. Sixtus also noted that if GVU had found a Hollywood film on his hard drive, would a simple "oops, our bad" have been accepted in response, as GVU and OpSec seem to believe is fine in this situation?Filed Under: copyright, creative common, germany, takedown
Companies: gvu
