TorrentFreak Continues To Get DMCA Takedown Notices Despite Not Hosting Infringing Material

from the this-is-not-the-way dept

It's no secret that TorrentFreak, a mainstay news site covering copyright and filesharing issues, gets more than its fair share of errant DMCA takedowns and other wayward scrutiny. This is almost certainly a function of the site's chosen name, though the sheer volume of mistaken targeting of the site also serves as a useful beacon for just how bad policing copyright has become. If you can't get past a news site having the word "torrent" in its name, then we should probably all admit we're operating at a very silly level of IP enforcement.

And yet it keeps happening. Most recently, TorrentFreak reported on a request made to Google to delist a post the site did on how popular The Mandalorian was with pirates.

Every week we see obvious errors, where sites such as IMDb, Wikipedia, Justice.gov, and NASA are targeted. By now we ignore most of these mistakes but in some instances, we take them personally. That’s also the case for a DMCA takedown request Google received a few days ago. This notice claims to identify several problematic URLs that allegedly infringe the copyrights of Disney’s hit series The Mandalorian.

This is not unexpected, as The Mandalorian was the most pirated TV show of last year, as we reported in late December. However, we didn’t expect to see our article as one of the targeted links in the notice. Apparently, the news that The Mandalorian is widely pirated – which was repeated by dozens of other publications – is seen as copyright infringement? Needless to say, we wholeheartedly disagree. This is not the way.

A couple of things we should absolutely point out. First, at the time of this post being written, Google has not delisted the post from search results. Also, and this genuinely surprised me, Disney was not the the party requesting the post be delisted, despite the show being a flagship on Disney+. Instead, the requesting entity is something called GFM Film. TorrentFreak was unable to pin down precisely who that company is or where it's from, as there looks to be several potential candidates found via web search.

All of which is only really interesting in terms of finding out who is responsible for this screw up. Because, again, TorrentFreak is a news site that does not host a single bit of infringing digital material. The policing of copyright is full of this sort of collateral damage and that doesn't seem to be a problem anyone seriously wants to tackle.

Filed Under: articles, dmca, speech, takedowns, the mandalorian
Companies: torrentfreak

Another Week, Another Hollywood Company Files A Takedown Against TorrentFreak

from the a-weekly-occurrence dept

The news site TorrentFreak tends to get more false DMCA copyright notices than other sites, in part because of its name. It seems that people who don't bother investigating anything jump to the wrong conclusion that because it has "Torrent" in its name, it must be a "piracy" site, rather than a news site that reports on news about copyright and filesharing. So last week, TorrentFreak got some attention after Starz not only sent a bogus DMCA takedown over a TorrentFreak news article about leaked TV shows, but then started DMCAing anyone who even tweeted that Starz was abusing the DMCA this way. Starz eventually admitted it had made a mistake and issued a pretty lame apology.

You might think that others in Hollywood would at least pay a little attention to this sort of thing -- but apparently not. This weekend TorrentFreak reported that yet another tweet of yet another of its stories was removed due to a copyright claim -- this time from Warner Bros. Just like last time, where Starz utilized an awful third party service (The Social Element) to handle these takedowns, this time Warner Bros employed a company called Marketly, one of a few such companies who claim they're in the "brand protection" business and go around issuing often dubious takedowns.

The takedown notice, sent by Warner Bros’ anti-piracy partner Marketly, accused us of posting a tweet that made “computer program(s)” available “for copying through downloading,” without permission of the copyright owner.

“We hereby give notice of these activities to you and request that you take expeditious action to remove or disable access to the material described above, and thereby prevent the illegal reproduction and distribution of this software via your company’s network,” the notice added.

Except that nothing in the tweet in question made a "computer program" available for copying. The tweet was pointing to a story from last month entitled Former Kinox.to & Movie4k.to Admin Freed, Tax Office Retrieves €1.75m:

While it is a story about former pirate streaming sites, you'd think it's the kind of story a company like Warner Bros. would like to keep up, as it talks about the operator of such a site going to prison and handing over a ton of money.

I sent Marketly a bunch of questions regarding this takedown, and the company got back to me actually defending the takedown and insisting it was appropriate. The argument was that because Twitter automatically turns URLs into links, so the headline itself was "linking" to two pirate sites:

The hyperlinks Twitter inserted in TorrentFreak’s tweet directed users to webpages that are infringing on Warner Bros. content causing Marketly to issue a notice as noted in TorrentFreak's article.

But that's questionable on multiple levels. First of all, no one is using those particular links to magically discover pirate websites. Second, they are still news articles, reporting on news about these sites, and the fact that those should be censored raises serious 1st Amendment questions. Third, even if those links do go to the sites, they are still not links directly to Warner Bros. infringing material. Instead, they are links to sites whereby people might find Warner Bros. infringing material. But that's also true of Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter itself and much, much more. Does Marketly take it upon itself to block links to those sites as well?

The DMCA does let you block links to specifically infringing content, but not to entire sites across the board, yet Marketly (and apparently) Warner Bros., don't much seem to care about the specifics of the law. Like so many in Hollywood, the incorrect assumption they make is that if a site has some infringing material, then there's no problem with wiping out the entire site.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, reporting, takedown, tweets
Companies: marketly, torrentfreak, twitter, warner bros.

Starz Really, Really Doesn't Want You To Know That TorrentFreak Wrote About Leaked Shows, Or That Anyone Tweeted About It

from the and-twitter-is-assisting dept

Something weird is going on with Starz over the past few days. Either it really, really doesn't want you to know that a bunch of unreleased episodes of well known TV shows were recently leaked online. Or it really, really, really wants you to know all about it. Which one of those two things is true may depend on just how familiar whoever is manning the Starz copyright-takedown desk is with the concept of the Streisand Effect.

You see, a week ago, TorrentFreak published the article linked above. This is a pretty typical TorrentFreak kind of article, noting that some high profile shows or movies have leaked, perhaps providing screenshots, but not providing any links or really telling anyone how to get the shows. It is just reporting that the leaks exist. Two of the shows leaked were from Starz. As TorrentFreak wrote:

There are also two full and unreleased seasons of Starz’ “The Spanish Princess” and Hulu’s “Ramy” among the leaked files. Both series have yet to premiere and were leaked from screener sources.

Then, last Thursday, TorrentFreak published a new article, noting that Starz had, in fact, filed a copyright claim with Twitter for TorrentFreak's tweet to its original story. The takedown was sent by an operation called The Social Element, which holds itself out to be a "social media agency" who can "simplify complex social media for global brands." It also describes itself as:

A global team of geeky pioneers, using our social media super powers to help our clients connect with their audience in the most powerful way.

I was at an event late last week, and only saw the latter story of the takedown message late Friday evening after returning to my hotel. I set it aside, thinking maybe I'd write up something this week. And then, over the weekend, things got weirder. Reporter Mathew Ingram told me, oddly, that his tweet about TorrentFreak's article about Stars/The Social Element pulling down TorrentFreak's tweet... also received a DMCA takedown and was removed:

He was not the only one. Copyright law professor Annemarie Bridy, who is regularly featured on these pages received one as well:

Also, the twitter account for SJD, who runs Fight Copyright Trolls:

And others as well:

And, to take it one step further, into the "asking for real trouble" category, EFF itself has announced that it had a tweet taken down for linking to the TorrentFreak article. EFF's staff attorney Kit Walsh was quoted in the original, saying "Starz has no right to silence TorrentFreak’s news article or block links to it." Then EFF tweeted a link to the article with text similar to Walsh's quote... and that tweet got taken down due to a Starz copyright claim. That's playing with fire.

A quick search of the Lumen Database shows dozens of DMCA notices sent to Twitter, many within the last week or so. I can't see most of those tweets because Twitter has taken them down. Except somewhere after a few days, it appears that Starz took the ball itself, and boy did it run with it. It just started issuing takedown after takedown on basically any tweet about this. If, initially, this was a story about a clueless social media agency gone rogue, Starz's actions over the weekend suggested otherwise.

Let's just review how messed up this and how far removed any of this is from actual copyright infringement.

TorrentFreak, a popular news source, published an article merely noting the fact that some Starz TV shows had leaked online. This bizarre "social media agency" called The Social Element decides, on behalf of Starz, that this is no good at all, and sends a DMCA notice to Twitter for TorrentFreak's tweet about the article. Already, this is ridiculous. The article was not infringing anything, nor linking to anything infringing (it doesn't even tell anyone how to get the infringing works). The tweet is even less infringing.

But then, Starz doesn't just decide to double down on what The Social Element did, it goes full on censorship crazy, sending takedowns on every tweet about TorrentFreak's new article about the bogus takedown of the tweet to the new article. This is so far removed from any kind of copyright infringement that it is beyond frivolous.

It's also a very clear violation of 512(f) of the DMCA, which would matter if 512(f) had any legal teeth at all.

Equally concerning is the question of why Twitter is agreeing to take down these tweets based on obviously bogus DMCA claims. I know that many sites do automatically take down any content on the receiving end of a DMCA notice, but most larger companies at least do a cursory review to make sure they're not obviously bogus. I'd be surprised if that's not the case with Twitter, but for whatever reason, all those tweets are being taken down -- even the one from EFF, which you might think would at least make someone at Twitter take a second look.

Of course, as you might imagine, the more Starz doubles down on this destructive and abusive campaign, the more people are hearing about how its TV shows have been leaked online. Perhaps it's some sort of sophisticated viral marketing play... or, more likely, some people who have never heard of the Streisand Effect, but are getting a very big lesson in it today.

Last night I reached out to Twitter, Starz and The Social Element with a whole bunch of questions, and may update this piece if any of them get back to me with answers.

Filed Under: 512(f), abuse, copyright, dmca, dmca 512(f), free speech, journalism, reporting, takedowns
Companies: starz, the social element, torrentfreak, twitter

Steam, Proud Adopters Of Hands Off Games Policy, Very Hands On When Banning All Of TorrentFreak

from the freak-out dept

The calls for internet platforms to actively censor content one group or another doesn't like has slowly risen to a cacaphony as of late. Even the most well-meaning arguments calling for internet platforms to be more heavy-handed in moderating the sources of content are invariably stupid, showing little understanding of just how hard it is to do this without creating all kinds of collateral damage, how hard it is to properly define for a large subset of humanity what sources are acceptable and what sources aren't, and a near complete misunderstanding of just how much human error goes into this overall. We have helpfully cited several exmaples of platforms sticking their feet in crap as they try to attempt this.

But the case studies in how badly this always goes keep rolling in. You may recall that we recently discussed how Comcast's protected browsing options managed to disallow access to TorrentFreak, a news site. Well, Comcast doesn't exactly have a reputation for being hands-off when it comes to managing its network. Unlike, say, Valve's Steam platform, which just made a bunch of news with a new games policy championing its hands-off approach. How Steam handles links shared on its platform are obviously in a different timezone compared with the games its allows, but it's still a bit odd to see that Steam is apparently very much hands on when it comes to blocking TorrentFreak as well.

Here at TorrentFreak we’re used to censorship. Every few months we’re contacted by readers trying to access our news articles on public WiFi, only to find that the site is blocked alongside various warnings, none of which are true. It’s almost as if the word ‘torrent’ in our URL has been blindly blacklisted for some reason.

Sadly, this week we’ve discovered that Steam, the popular digital game distribution and social networking platform, has jumped on the “let’s censor TorrentFreak” bandwaggon. A tip from a TF reader and Steam user highlighted the problems he’d experienced when trying to read TF articles via Steam’s chat interface.

As has often been the case in the past, the likely culprit in all of this is a combination of an overly aggressive filtering and blacklisting system combined with the simple fact that TorrentFreak's name has the word "torrent" in it. Still, as non-nefarious as that explanation is, assuming it's even true, that almost perfectly highlights just how terrible even large internet platforms are when it comes to correctly censoring undesirable content.

Just to make this clear, nothing about TorrentFreak makes it a valid target for censorship of this kind. It's purely a news site, covering topics related to digital marketplaces, piracy, and filesharing. And, yet, the site is depressingly used to finding itself on all kinds of blacklists. In this case, however, users are being told that TorrentFreak is something it absolutely is not.

Steam has banned our entire platform and put up a warning that’s not only completely false but also damaging to our reputation.

“https://torrentfreak.com has been flagged as being potentially malicious. For your safety, Steam will not open this URL in your web browser. The site could contain malicious content or be known for stealing user credentials,” the warning reads.

Of course, on its own platform Steam is fully entitled to block resources that it believes can harm its users. Some might even argue that it has a duty of care to do so, in order to keep its community safe. However, making blatantly false statements while blocking access to accurate news reporting shouldn’t ever be part of that.

It's an obvious point, but one that needs to be repeated to every person out there shouting for websites to do more site and source blocking. Because going down that road is always going to lead to this kind of collateral damage, particularly for larger platforms that need to do this kind of censorship in an automated fashion. Perhaps for some, blocking valid news organizations is worth the larger outcome of blocking content they don't like.

For us, however, it's quite obvious how horrible a deal that is for free and open speech on the internet.

Filed Under: bans, content moderation, moderation, steam
Companies: torrentfreak, valve

Comcast Protected Browsing Blocks TorrentFreak, Showing Why Site-Blocking Sucks Out Loud Always

from the voluntary-overblock dept

While site-blocking is now a global phenomena, every country appears to be on a different trajectory in how it does this new flavor of censorship. Russia, for instance, looks for any excuse to block the availability of a website on its soil, resulting in absolutely hilarious amounts of collateral damage. Italy is slightly more judicious, but still does its site-blocking sans due process, whereas Ireland has just begun to open the door to site-blocking, with all kinds of major media companies just waiting to barge through it. Here in America, site-blocking is typically reserved for streaming sites during major sporting events and the voluntary blocking companies like Comcast offer with its "Protected Browsing" service.

But let's be clear: all of these points on the spectrum suck out loud. Collateral damage is the rule, not the outlier, and these efforts at justified censorship always creep, if not dash, towards the other line of reasonable behavior. As an example of this, let's go back to the site-blocking Comcast performs for customers who enable its "Protected Browsing" feature. This feature is supposed to protect internet users from malware, unwanted pornography, and pirate sites. It also apparently keeps people from being able to access news sites like TorrentFreak.

A reader alerted us that, when he tried to access TorrentFreak, access was denied stating that a “suspicious” site was ahead. A pirate logo on the blocking page suggests that there’s copyright-infringing activity involved. While it’s no secret that we cover a lot of news related to piracy, it goes a bit far to label this type of news reporting as suspicious.

There are a million possible explanations for how something like this happens. Perhaps the filter is way too aggressive, saw the word "torrent" in the name of the site, and simply blocked it. Perhaps something is being picked up either in the subject matter of the posts at TF, or in the comments, resulting in a block. Perhaps links to other sites contained in the posts are a factor. Or, least likely of all, perhaps someone at Comcast has it in for the folks at TorrentFreak and blocked the site maliciously.

Here's the thing: none of that matters. The only thing that matters is that TorrentFreak is not a malicious site, is not a pirate site, is not a suspicious site, and yet it has been blocked by this feature anyway. The ultimate answer to the question "why?" is that site-blocking like this always sucks, always goes wrong, and always carries out collateral damage. Whether its done through abuse or ineptitude doesn't really matter when the result is the same: innocent sites being blocked.

And if you happen to think TorrentFreak does something nefarious enough to make any of this warranted -- about which you're wrong, by the way -- even more innocuous sites have been caught up in this as well.

Previously, Comcast users reported that this system prevented people from accessing PayPal as well, which is a bit much, and others reported that it stopped the Steam store from loading properly.

So, for proponents of site-blocking as a solution to piracy and all the internet's ills, why in the world would I trust government to do this better than Comcast does it on a voluntary basis?

Filed Under: blocking, content moderation, filters, site blocking
Companies: comcast, torrentfreak

City Of London Police Turn Down Torrentfreak's FOIA Request Because It Would Take Too Long To Fulfill

from the too-hard,-won't-try dept

The City of London Police (notably, not the London Metropolitan Police and you will rue the day you ever make that mistake) have been both a law unto themselves and the UK's foremost copyright cops… which would make them a copyright law unto themselves… or something. Name another law enforcement agency that has single-handedly done more to pursue the Pirate Bays of the world. I follow this sort of stuff pretty closely and no one else even comes close. Here's a very brief rundown of the City of London's efforts in the service of King Copyright.

- Ordered registrars to shut down websites (without a court order) and threatened to strip registrars' accreditation if they didn't comply

- Created a secret "pirate site blacklist" for advertisers

- Inserted banner ads on "pirate" websites stating the sites had been forwarded to the police for "review," all without any legal basis to do so

- Arrested the creator of an anti-censorship proxy service, basically because Hollywood told it to

- Claimed Tor is "90% of the internet" and a "risk to society." Also: "bitnet."

Torrentfreak (which follows this sort of stuff extremely closely) sent a FOIA request to the City of London police seeking correspondence with "representatives of the creative industry regarding the pirate bay also known as TPB, thepiratebay.se, thepiratebay.sx, thepiratebay.org, or Pirate Bay."

Forget all the nice things I said about the UK's more relaxed attitude towards Freedom of Information requests. (Well, not all of them. This is a police force that serves the copyright industry, not the UK government itself.) The response to Torrentfreak basically says that it would require making an expenditure of time and as such, falls outside the expense guidelines for FOIA responses.

“In order to establish the existence of any correspondence of this kind it would be necessary to examine all mail systems, all call logs and all files/documents held by the force,” the reply read.

“The cost of completing this work would exceed the limit prescribed by the Secretary of State in accordance with powers contained in Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. The limit is currently set at £450 and the hourly rate is set at £25.”

If so, then any request that might require 18 hours of work will automatically be tossed out. On one hand, this almost seems like an admission that the City of London Police communicate frequently with representatives of creative industries. On the other, it seems like an easy way to blow off a request for information it's in no hurry to release.

This sends Torrentfreak back to the drawing board and raises serious questions about the City of London's computer system. (Then again, the assertions about "bitnet" and "the internet is 90% Tor" raise a few technology-related questions of their own…) Any correspondence system utilized by governments should be searchable, including anything archived. It's not as though this sort of technology is obscure and limited to entities with unlimited budgets. It's fairly basic stuff. But the City of London police maintains it's a job that would exceed the time budget and, therefore, Torrentfreak gets nothing.

Torrentfreak will be revising its requests in hopes of finding something that's not too time-consuming for the City of London police to tackle. If and when these are released, I'm sure they'll make for entertaining and enlightening reading, provided they aren't redacted into complete uselessness.

Filed Under: city of london police, foia, uk
Companies: the pirate bay, torrentfreak

TorrentFreak Pulls The Switcheroo On Copyright Troll That Cited Them In Threat Letters

from the trolling-the-trolls dept

Torrentfreak notes that Prenda Law, one of the more well known copyright trolls out there these days, which has run into a series of skeptical judges lately, has been using a Torrentfreak article in its recent threat letters. The article in question is one we wrote about as well, concerning a default judgment against someone who didn't just share some random works, but had a specific watermark on the files that corresponded to his account. Of course, in the threat letter, all of the additional context about much greater evidence and a variety of other factors that made this case unique aren't mentioned at all.

Feeling that was unfair, Torrentfreak changed that page to something that Prenda might not appreciate:

We redirected the URL referenced by Prenda to a page with information about these mass-BitTorrent lawsuits.

So, instead of being scared by an article about a $1.5 million judgment, Internet bill payers can inform themselves about the steps they can take to respond to the settlement letter.

The page in question explains that increasingly judges are condemning the practices of copyright trolls, and that many mass lawsuits have been thrown out. Just recently a judge designated Prenda's ways as a “bad faith effort,” and dismissed one of their mass-BitTorrent lawsuits.

In addition to some much-needed balance we also included links to attorneys who are familiar with these lawsuits, plus links to other useful resources.

Trolling the trolls. Unfortunately, it's unlikely to have too much of an impact. It's doubtful that Prenda expects too many people to actually go read the article. They just want the basic "be afraid, settle now!" message to get through.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright troll
Companies: prenda, torrentfreak