Copyright As Censorship: Sketchy Food Scanning Company Abuses DMCA To Censor Critical Reporting

from the because-of-course dept

Another day, another example of copyright being used to censor. A few weeks ago, we wrote about a sketchy crowdfunded "food scanning device" company called TellSpec, which had ridiculously threatened the online publication Pando Daily with laughably ridiculous defamation claims. The threats were ridiculous for any number of reasons, including the fact that the statute of limitations had expired and the commentary wasn't even remotely defamatory. There were also some weird (and stupid) threats about suing in the UK, despite TellSpec being based in Toronto and Pando in the US. At some point, TellSpec then denied having made the threats, but that appeared to be pure damage control.

Not surprisingly, this reaction led Pando to continue to investigate TellSpec, and it discovered some more sketchiness, including another crowdfunding campaign which has since been pulled. Basically, despite the fact that TellSpec hasn't delivered the product it promised to Indiegogo users, and despite the evidence that the product they're working on doesn't even do what they promised (not by a long shot), TellSpec tried to raise more money via a different crowdfunding site -- Crowdfunder -- which focuses on equity crowdfunding for accredited investors (though Pando shows that Crowdfunder appears to make no effort at all to verify if users are accredited investors).

From there, Pando's Paul Carr got access to TellSpec's investment documents, in which it claims many of the basic features it promised years ago won't be ready for years in the future, and suggests that it's still a long way off from delivering even a much more limited product (which it told Indiegogo backers it would start shipping by last month at the latest). Also, Carr notes that these documents never actually mention the details of the Indiegogo campaign (or mention Indiegogo at all), but rather suggest that the company has tons of "pre-orders" which they use to show how successful they are. This leaves out the frustrations from all the backers who haven't received anything, and who are doubting the company has a real product.

Carr posted those documents on Scribd as source documents to support his reporting... leading TellSpec to (1) send him angry and bizarre threatening emails and (2) issue a DMCA takedown to Scribd, leading Scribd to cave and take them down (be careful who you partner with, people).

THIS IS AN OFFICIAL NOTIFICATION THAT A USER OF SCRIBD (choose one): * 
has posted my copyrighted/trademarked work without my permission.

I am (choose one): * 
the duly authorized representative of the exclusive rights holder

for the following titles: 
Tellspec Executive Summary 09-30-2015 3 
Tellspec_TellSpec-Investor-Deck_09-30-2015-3 
Tellspec_QA-Tellspec_09-18-2015-3

These exclusive rights are being violated by material available on Scribd at the following URLs (include as many as necessary): * 
http://www.scribd.com/doc/288228641/Tellspec-Executive-Summary-09-30-2015-3#scribd 
http://www.scribd.com/doc/288228638/Tellspec-QA-Tellspec-09-18-2015-3 
http://www.scribd.com/doc/288228639/Tellspec-TellSpec-Investor-Deck-09-30-2015-3

I have a good faith belief that the use of this material in such a fashion is not authorized by the copyright holder, the copyright holder's agent, or the law. * I agree

Under penalty of perjury in a United States court of law, I state that the information contained in this notification is accurate, and that I am authorized to act on the behalf of the exclusive rights holder for the material in question. * I agree

I hereby request that you remove or disable access to this material as it appears on your service in as expedient a fashion as possible. Thank you.

Your full legal name (required) * 
Isabel Hoffmann

Company name (if applicable) 
Tellspec Inc.

Physical address: * 7B Pleasant Blvd, suite 991 
Toronto, ON M4T 1K2 
Canada 
Email address: * [redacted by Pando]
Phone number: [redacted by Pando]

Pando has now learned that you should not use Scribd if you're a journalism outfit. Once Pando started complaining publicly, Scribd agreed to put the documents back, but it shouldn't take public condemnation to stop copyright misuses for the sake of censorship.

But, more importantly, we get yet another example of people using the DMCA for censorship, rather than to protect against any legitimate "copyright infringement." And this is the regime some people think is worth expanding?!?

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, crowdfunding, dmca takedown, food scanner
Companies: crowdfunder, pando, scribd, tellspec

Stupid Legal Threats: Sketchy Crowdfunded Food Scanner Company Threatens To Sue Site That Reported On Phantomware Product

from the repeat-after-me... dept

Another day, another ridiculous legal threat. This time it's from a company called "TellSpec" against the news site Pando Daily. Last year, it appears that Pando had a couple of articles about Tellspec, a crowdfunded food scanning project that raised $386,392 on IndieGoGo. Pando was reasonably skeptical of the product, which claimed it could tell you the "allergens, chemicals, nutrients, calories and ingredients" of your food just by "scanning" the food with a handheld device. Pando called it a "giant medical scam."

Physicists weighed in that the scientific claims made by Hoffman and Watson were at best dubious and at worst a blatant scam. According to TellSpec’s Indiegogo page, their food scanner would be powered by a “Raman spectrometer,” which puts out pulses of light to measure particle density and collect a detailed fingerprint of the food which is then analyzed in order to calculate nutritional information.

Physicists called bull. Raman spectrometers are weak, big and expensive. To do this scan accurately you would need to be sending out a high density of wavelengths from the spectrometer, fueled by a high-powered source, not a tiny rechargeable battery as TellSpec claimed. It would be impossible, many people said, to miniaturize this so dramatically and to do so for a $250 price tag. That’s without taking into account that most experts suspected the technology would be useless in assessing the finer details of food texture and detecting small trace ingredients in low concentrations, like the food allergens it swore it could find.

Pando noted that after public criticism, TellSpec added a disclaimer (not originally in its pitch video) that the video was not of a real device, but was "solely for the purposes of demonstration." Since the campaign was funded, the story from TellSpec has changed over time. Here's more from that Pando article from last year:

On November 18, TellSpec posted a “Live demonstration of technology” on its YouTube page. Unlike the small, less than palm sized device promised on Indiegogo, the scanner used in the four-minute video is much larger, doesn’t operate wirelessly and has a secondary part crudely taped onto it.

Also, some video trickery:

Once again TellSpec displays its knack for misleading videos. When the camera focuses in on the phone to show off its analysis of the food being scanned, the phone’s clock is clearly on display. The first result is from 1:30 p.m., but in the next shot it’s 1:21 p.m., 1:22 p.m. and 1:23 p.m, before jumping back in time again to 1:15 p.m., 1:18 p.m. and 1:19 p.m. What we’re clearly seeing is not a live demo, but a series of cut together clips which cast doubt on whether what’s shown on screen has any connection to what was scanned by the device.

And then there's this:

Then surprise, surprise, in mid-March, TellSpec updated their Indiegogo page to say that they were ditching the technology that they claimed in the video to have spent nine months working on. The TellSpec scanner wouldn’t have a Raman spectrometer in it, but would instead feature Texas Instruments’ DLP technology, essentially a series of micro-mirrors that switch on and off at high speed.

Anyway, it's now a year and a half after that story (and over a year since the company had originally promised to deliver its device, and suddenly... TellSpec is threatening Pando with one of the most laughable defamation threats we've seen (and we've seen a lot of laughable defamation threats):

From: Isabel Hoffmann

Date: October 14, 2015 at 5:01:00 PM PDT

To: Andrew Anker

Subject: Pando Daily Defamation and Retraction

Dear Andrew

Last year, Tellspec was victim of a persistent and consistent defamation attacks, with three articles written by James Robinson and published by Pando Daily. We have sent requests to the editor as well as the past writer to retract the defamation done both on Tellsepc [sic] and my person.

Social media and in particular RedIt [sic] has several explanations that are not very ethical for this sudden attack on Tellspec, I encourage you to read them. After several failed attempts to contact the editor I have engaged a lawyer to start an action against Pando Daily.

I understand that you are now the chairman for Pando Daily and I wonder if you are aware of this. I would appreciate a call or an email so this can be resolved amicable [sic] and without further delay. Tellspec has suffered financial losses due to these articles that claim we are a scam. Please advice [sic] if we can talk before my lawyer contacts you and the editor.

Isabel

All typos in the original. This is a joke. As Ken "Popehat" White often points out, a hallmark of censorious trademark attacks is a failure to actually show what statements the person or company believes to be defamatory. Also, generally speaking, the statute of limitations on defamation claims is one year. The article that Isabel Hoffman/TellSpec is complaining about is from April of 2014. They kinda missed their window to sue, if they truly believed it to be defamatory. Of course, there would actually need to be defamation in the original article as well. And I'll say this as someone who generally is not a fan of Pando's reporting, I can't find a single thing in the original articles that would even border on defamation.

In the Pando article about the threatened lawsuit, Pando editor Paul Carr notes that Hoffman called Pando's lawyer and is now threatening to sue the site in the UK (famous for somewhat more ridiculous defamation laws) despite the fact that Tellspec appears to be based in Canada and the US, not the UK. After a bout of "libel tourism" the UK finally updated its defamation laws a few years back to make it much harder for non-UK individuals and companies to sue there. And Pando is based in the US as well. Even assuming there was some legitimate way to get a case going in the UK, the SPEECH Act in the US would certainly protect Pando. In short, the whole threat appears to be your standard ridiculous bullying, which will only serves to draw more public scrutiny to Tellspec's silly project and the original claims it made that it has failed to live up to. Or, as Carr notes:

Hopefully it goes without saying that Tellspec is very welcome to sue us in San Francisco, London, Timbuktu or on Mars. We stand firmly behind our coverage of Tellspec and, as is our policy in these situations, will aggressively defend -- in any court that actually has lawful jurisdiction over Pando -- against any attempt to silence our reporting.

Of course, finding a lawyer actually willing to file a lawsuit in any of those places may prove to be a challenge. Someone accurately calling you out for a sketchy product with a misleading pitch is not defamation. Sending threats past most reasonable statute of limitations is not a good idea. Sending a threat to sue in a random third party country is not a good idea. And, of course, doing all of that in an attempt to stifle some bad press coverage of your sketchy product is... well... not generally a sign of good judgment.

Filed Under: crowdfunding, defamation, food scanner, isabel hoffmann, legal threats, raman scanner, reporting, reviews
Companies: indiegogo, pando, tellspec

But Why Do We Need A P2P Bill Of Rights In The First Place?

from the funny-how-that-works dept

I came close to totally ignoring the news that Comcast has teamed with Pando and announced that it wants to create a P2P "Bill of Rights that would create "a set of rules that would clarify how a user can use P2P applications and how an ISP can manage file-sharing programs running on their networks." This, of course, is all a part of Comcast's suddenly very public efforts to deal with the fallout from the company's rather secretive traffic shaping efforts (and, it hopes, to avoid the wrath of Kevin Martin and the FCC. Of course, this process started with the relationship with BitTorrent -- which was woefully short on details.

This "Bill of Rights" plan is, in some ways, even worse. It's funny how whenever we see companies suddenly declaring a plan for a "Bill of Rights" (which should be about addressing consumer rights), it's really always about figuring out a way for a company to do the same stuff it had been doing all along without getting in trouble for it. It's basically a way for a company to tell the government "hey look, we're self-regulating!" even if that self-regulating is letting them do whatever they want. While it's nice that Comcast tied this to a relationship with Pando (the same company that's trying to help telcos deal with file sharing network issues), it doesn't change that the fact that this is a lot of talk with little action.

While the usual suspects have decried this plan for the press release vaporware that it is (while pointing to Comcasts' questionable activities when its traffic shaping was first discovered), a much bigger question is why we should even want a "P2P Bill of Rights" in the first place. One of the very reasons why internet access is so valuable (and why Comcast got into the business) is the open nature of the internet that allowed all sorts of new, interesting, unexpected and useful services to spring forth. When you start putting rules on it, concerning how an application can run and what a user can do, you're effectively shutting down that ability. You're saying that we have enough innovation, and any new innovation needs to be incremental on top of what we already have and within these well-defined limits. That's not a recipe for innovation. It's a recipe for keeping the status quo, while other places, that don't have unnecessary restrictions, continue to innovate and grow.

Filed Under: p2p, p2p bill of rights, traffic shaping
Companies: comcast, pando