Harry Reid Wants To Attach Part Of SOPA To Surveillance Reform Bill

from the that-would-be-a-mistake dept

See the update at the bottom of this post.

Late last night I started hearing rumors that Senator Harry Reid was looking to slip a little something extra into the USA Freedom Act: a key part of SOPA. As you should know by now, last week, Reid surprised many by moving for a cloture vote on the USA Freedom Act. While still controversial in civil liberties circles, many are supportive of this bill as a good first step in surveillance reform -- including EFF and ACLU -- while others are perhaps reasonably concerned about what the bill actually provides. Yesterday, the big tech companies came out in favor of it.

However, yesterday evening I heard through the grapevine that Reid also had a little "gift" he was planning to add to the bill, and I've spent a big part of last night tracking down any details I could find. Basically, Reid wants to attach a part of SOPA to the bill: the felony streaming provisions. You may recall that this was the dangerous plan that was a part of SOPA and a companion to PIPA (though not directly in it) that would have turned merely streaming infringing works into a felony. This got a ton of attention after Fight for the Future created its Free Justin Bieber campaign, after noting that Bieber came to fame by streaming lots of videos of music he didn't license the rights to. Even after SOPA died, the White House still listed the felony streaming stuff in its big wish list. And, just a few months ago, the Justice Department told Congress it wanted streaming to be a felony too.

The reality is that this would be a pretty big expansion of criminalizing copyright infringement. As we explained years ago, there's a reason why "performance" isn't considered a felony in copyright law. Expanding the criminalization of copyright, especially for something as simple as streaming content puts a ton of people at risk. And yes, according to Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain, someone doing what Bieber did would face jail time, which is ridiculous.

So why is Reid suddenly doing this? What we've heard is that it's a "favor" to his friends at UFC -- Ultimate Fighting Championship -- who are based in Las Vegas, in Reid's home state of Nevada. Reid and UFC go back for years, with UFC being big supporters of Reid, and UFC has worked with Reid on a number of campaigns. UFC has also been one of the biggest supporters of expanding and abusing copyright law for years. The organization has sued its biggest fans, has sued streaming sites like Justin.tv (and lost) and even claimed copyright on videos it has no rights to, taken by fans.

So it's no surprise that with Reid and UFC being so chummy -- while UFC has staked out a strong public position to expand copyright criminalization -- that Reid would like to do this "favor" for his friends. But it's a massive slap in the face to the tech industry -- Reid's second such massive slap this year. Remember, earlier this year, after the tech industry had finally, finally gotten a few important pieces (not nearly enough, but a great start) for patent reform to the finish line, Harry Reid got a phone call from the trial lawyers and killed the whole thing? If he actually goes through with this plan, it will be yet another massive slap in the face to Silicon Valley. Perhaps that's the reputation Harry Reid wants. The Senator who gives out personal favors to friends, and stands in the way of innovation. I can't imagine that will go over well in the long run. Furthermore, it's almost as if Reid has totally forgotten what happened around SOPA. I can assure him that those who fought against SOPA have not forgotten.

The last I've heard on this so far is that Reid is still looking for a bit more support to attach this to the USA Freedom Act. Hopefully no one gives it to him, and this idea simply goes back in the trash can where it belongs.

Update: Senator Reid's office has posted a response to this story claiming that this is all spin from "Republicans who want to tank" the USA Freedom Act. That's not actually true. While I'm not going to reveal my (multiple) sources on this, Reid's explanation is not at all accurate. We confirmed this with multiple sources -- nearly all of whom are in favor of the USA Freedom Act. We did hear one rumor that there was an effort under way to get a Republican on board to support this plan, but we didn't report that because we couldn't get detailed confirmation on it. What we're now hearing from others, however, is that Reid's office is trying to point the finger directly at one specific Republican Senator, and we have a request in to his office to see if he wants to comment.

Filed Under: copyright, criminalization, felony streaming, harry reid, justin bieber, over criminalization, streaming, ufc, usa freedom act
Companies: ufc, zuffa

More On IP Arrow: Takedown Company's Boss Owes MPAA $15 Million And Clients Apparently Fine With Filing Bogus DMCA Notices

from the not-surprised,-but-still-disappointed dept

A few more details have been revealed about IP Arrow, the anti-piracy company whose DMCA notices were filled with links to content not owned by the companies it represents, including links to some rather dubious porn titles.

First off, it's hardly a company. IP Arrow is simply an "offshoot" of Morganelli Group LLC, the new home for its non-porn clients, as was pointed out by a commenter over at Torrentfreak.

This new-kid-on-the-block, hired-gun copyright enforcer named "IP arrow" appears to be a sock-puppet shell company owned by Joe Morganelli (Morganelli Group LLC)

Note that their client lists are virtually identical.

It looks like Joe Morganelli has transferred Lynda, Lionsgate, and Zuffa (UFC) to this new label "IP Arrow" while pornography is still carried under the old label "Morganelli Group".

The stats over at Google's Transparency Report bear this out. The last DMCA notice issued for Zuffa, Lynda.com or Lionsgate by Morganelli was on August 1st. Since that point, every DMCA notice issued has been for one company: LFP Video Group LLC. LFP stands for Larry Flynt Productions. IP Arrow's work for Lynda.com, Zuffa and Lionsgate begins on August 5th.

Unlike the shoddy work done for Lynda.com, Zuffa and Lionsgate, Morganelli's work on behalf of the porn publisher seems to be subject to some actual vetting. You can see the difference in the number of URLs taken down. Despite issuing takedowns for LFP at the same frequency as the other three clients, LFP notices have asked for the removal of far fewer URLs.


Even under the previous name, Morganelli's work for his "mainstream" clients was uniformly terrible. Whatever automated program Morganelli's deploying appears to simply sweep up URLs and dump them into a form. It doesn't seem to be able to differentiate sidebar or related search links from the actual URLs linking to infringing copies.

Lynda.com, Zuffa and Lionsgate seem perfectly OK with IP Arrow (and Morganelli) sending out DMCA notices claiming ownership of other companies' content. I contacted all three but only heard back from one: Lynda.com.

On the 19th, I spoke briefly with David Glaubke, Director of Corporate Communications for Lynda.com. He asked what I thought was going on and I told him that it looked like IP Arrow was running a rather lousy bot/crawler and not vetting the results before firing off DMCA notices -- notices that are sworn statements that the company named owns the content listed. And, presumably, Lynda.com was paying IP Arrow to issue false statements in its name.

He assured me that his CTO and IT team were looking into the issue and that he would get back to me with any further comments or statements.

This statement, emailed to me a day after our phone conversation, appears to be Lynda.com's final word on the subject.

lynda.com retains the services of IP Arrow as a part of the company's on-going anti-piracy program to mitigate the illegal download of our intellectual property on torrent sites. On our behalf, IP Arrow issues batch DMCA takedown notifications for links to directories containing our content. Those links often contain keywords designed to drive traffic to adult or illegal material in directories that happen to also contain lynda.com videos. Many of the URLs highlighted in this TechDirt story, implied to be targets of erroneous takedowns, at one time contained our files but no longer do.

That may all be true, but plenty of other anti-piracy companies run automated services and yet, their takedown notices aren't primarily composed of links to content that isn't theirs to take down. Not only that, but Morganelli, who apparently runs IP Arrow, seems to have very little trouble compiling vastly more accurate takedowns for LFP Video.

Why would a content owner be satisfied with service like this? Hopefully, Lynda.com and IP Arrow's other clients aren't being charged per URL. The way IP Arrow's service "works" pretty much guarantees the takedown notices will be completely useless by the time they're processed. This hardly seems like an efficient way to fight piracy.

Then there's this to consider, from the same Torrentfreak commenter.

So why did he do this? [split off Lionsgate, Lynda.com and Zuffa to IP Arrow]

Maybe because Hollywood still remembers Joe Morganelli as the guy they sued nearly a decade ago for running one of the internet's biggest warez sites, and are reluctant to give that copyright criminal any more of their money until he pays up on that multi-million dollar judgment he was slapped with but never paid.

Former pirate goes into the piracy-fighting business, all the while owing the MPAA $15 million. His previous Usenet experience explains his expertise in combating piracy there but, once out of his comfort zone, he seems to be flailing. Here's what he had to say about his Usenet work.

“What my team does is monitor usenet 24/7 using a Bayesian Classifier. We also verify everything 100% to ensure we are making the proper removal requests for the UFC and our other clients,” Joe Morganelli of Morganelli Group LLC told TorrentFreak.

Apparently, this verification process doesn't carry over to his work outside of Usenet. Even if the URLs listed contained links to his clients' content at the time of "discovery," they no longer do at the point the DMCA notice is processed. It's a lazy, stupid way to rack up hundreds of "hits," which IP Arrow can then point to as "evidence" of its thorough work. Let's not forget, one of the takedowns even asked that the search results for the term "rar" be removed.

It's something that's been noted before and seems to still occur with some frequency -- some companies feel piracy is too much of a problem to ignore, but not enough of a problem to put in the hands of someone competent. The only thing this half-assed approach guarantees is that these companies aren't getting what they paid for.

Filed Under: bogus takedowns, copyright, dmca, joe morganelli, takedowns
Companies: ip arrow, lynda.com, mpaa, ufc, zuffa

IP Arrow's DMCA Takedown Notices Claim UFC And Lynda.com Hold The Rights To Child Porn

from the beyond-bogus-into-potentially-damaging dept

Here's another one of those famous "anomalies": a DMCA takedown request that takes down tons of content that doesn't belong to the named rights holders. This DMCA request is almost all anomaly.

IP Arrow claims to represent Zuffa Inc., better known as the parent company of the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship.) We know algorithms are flawed but whatever software IP Arrow is deploying seems to randomly collect links and dump them in a DMCA notice. (Second theory: an IP Arrow employee's personal searches are somehow making their way onto the submitted forms.)

The UFC is notorious for aggressively pursuing infringement of its PPV events. Apparently, there's plenty of pre-recorded stuff floating around the net and the UFC wants that gone, too. Unfortunately for the UFC, it gave this job to IP Arrow. In return, IP Arrow has filed a DMCA request claiming (remember, this request is a sworn statement) that the UFC is the rights holder for (possible) child porn. I'll go ahead and make the bold statement that these photos of naked teenagers are not Zuffa/UFC's "work." I can't (or rather won't) attempt to verify whether these photos are actual child porn. But that's not really the issue. The fact is that IP Arrow is issuing takedown links to files that appear to be child porn while making the claim that Zuffa/UFC hold the copyright to these photos.

This isn't the only issue with the DMCA request, but it's by far the most damaging one. The rest of the notice contains some links to UFC content, but those links are the minority. This isn't a case of a few inadvertent links being swept up because of similar keywords or file names. This is a nearly-random link dump that requests takedowns of a wide variety of content completely unrelated to the UFC.

http://www.vertor.com/download/Bigcutie+Kennedy
http://torrentcrazy.com/s/ps2-killzone-2
http://torrentcrazy.com/s/teen-truth-or-dare-xxx
http://rapidlibrary.com/files/nika-tsereteli-mamuka-berika-post-white-reggae-mp3_ulzwwzqrfvi89on.html
http://allsoftmac.com/movies/129370-hammer-of-the-gods-2013-limited-720p-brrip-x264-ac3-crewsade.html
http://allsoftmac.com/tv-shows/128962-pbs-secrets-of-the-dead-the-man-who-saved-the-world-2012-hdtv-720p-aac-x264-mvgroup.html
http://allsoftmac.com/tv-shows/129006-true-blood-s06e09-life-matters-web-dl-720p-dd51-h264-ntb.html
http://allmacsoft.com/e-books/129323-pannovation-and-the-gatefree-space-decentralized-innovation-is-a-game-changing-force.html
http://allmacsoft.com/software/129454-os-x-mavericks-109-developer-preview-4-macosx-dmg.html
http://torrentjo.com/Indian+Telly+Awards+-+25th+May+2013+-+Full+Episode-page8.html
http://rapidshare.zoozle.net/suche.php?q=blue+oyster+cult+the+ultimate
http://torrentcrazy.ee/torrent/2362056/xxx-comic-dragonball-z-extra-milk

That's just a sampling of what's claimed to be UFC's copyrighted content by IP Arrow.

According to Google's transparency report, IP Arrow is new to the anti-piracy game, having first showed up on August 5th. Since then, it has been very busy, firing off 61 takedown requests for 47,000 links in just over two weeks. Its other requests haven't been much better in terms of targeting only infringement of its clients' work. (Other clients are Lynda.com and Lionsgate Films.)

A takedown request on behalf of Zuffa/UFC sent August 5th asks for the removal of (among several other things) episodes of Big Bang Theory, a version of Nero Burning ROM and an album by the Handsome Furs. Here's an unedited chunk of one request, which shows the range of content IP Arrow is attempting to take down. Yes. IP Arrow is even asking to have the entire results of a search for the term ".rar" taken down.

Its work for Lynda.com shows the same amount of incompetence. Lynda.com offers video courses on "business, software and creative skills" for $25/month. Here's what IP Arrow is taking down supposedly on Lynda's behalf. Yes. That's right. According to IP Arrow, Lynda.com has produced a variety of pornographic videos, including "icest rape porn." Much like Zuffa/UFC above, I'm sure Lynda.com appreciates having its name associated with potentially illegal material.

Attempting to discover anything about IP Arrow's methodology is a dead end. Its website [which is down at the moment - cache link] is barely more than a placeholder (with a rather long TOS), sporting bold icons against a 1970s wood panel backdrop. It makes a few broad statements about how "different" its service is but contains no actual information as to how it performs this "different" work.

Judging from the quality of the DMCA notices it's issued, IP Arrow either has no idea what it's doing or just doesn't care. What's worse is that its submitted links have been taken down nearly 100% of the time, despite the fact that its DMCA notices are loaded with content its clients don't own. Its work for Lionsgate seems to be slightly more accurate than its takedowns for Lynda and Zuffa, but even those have a number of errors as well. Here it is attempting to take down infringing copies of one of the worst titled sequels ever, "The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia." Once again, a legitimate company is also a distributor of teen porn according to IP Arrow.

I've contacted the companies IP Arrow is currently issuing takedowns for (along with IP Arrow itself -- whose site is now mysteriously down) and will update if I receive any replies. While I appreciate the fact that these companies are seeking to protect their copyrighted material, I think they should be concerned that the agent representing them is now linking their names with very questionable porn. They should also be concerned that these sworn statements are also claiming they "own" copyrighted content belonging to others, but I would imagine things like "incest porn" and "15 year old vaginas" appearing on takedown requests in their names will be more troubling to them than the serialized false statements IP Arrow is issuing.

Filed Under: automated, child porn, dmca, dmca takedown, ufc, ultimate fighting championship
Companies: ip arrow, lionsgate, lynda.com, zuffa

UFC Makes The Awful Decision To Sue Some Of Its Biggest Fans

from the short-sighted dept

Having recently lost its attempt to blame Justin.tv for the fact that some of its users stream Ultimate Fighting Championship matches, UFC's parent company Zuffa is moving ahead with its strategy of going after its fans directly. This isn't entirely new. A few years ago, the company announced plans to sue fans, even though it admitted at the time that the costs of such lawsuits would outweigh any benefits. Of course, that alone should make you wonder what Zuffa management is thinking, but it seems that their entire thought process is "piracy bad, must stop," and that's about it.

The latest move is that Zuffa was able to get user information from Greenfeedz.com, one of the websites that let people watch unauthorized feeds of UFC's pay-per-view (PPV) events. This plan is very reminiscent of when DirecTV ran one of the first of these extortion-like shakedown campaigns by getting the list of customers from a seller of smart cards (which had other legitimate purposes) and then demanding $3,500 from each of them. That action did not go well for DirecTV, leading to multiple lawsuits, including from former employees, and the company eventually dropped the program altogether. Stunningly, Zuffa's lawyer compares his situation to the DirecTV situation... but seems to ignore the massive backlash it created, the legal pushback and the eventual dropping of the program.

Of course, as we also noted in that post a couple years ago about Zuffa's plan to sue fans, huge numbers of people are perfectly willing to pay large sums for the PPV fights, and the numbers seem to keep growing. It seems to depend more on who's fighting rather than whether or not unauthorized streams are available. That said, in explaining why they're going to sue their fans, Zuffa's legal boss, Lawrence Epstein, said that he believes the company has an obligation to sue the fans.

But, even more ridiculous is the response when someone asks about suing fans. Epstein claims that UFC loves its fans, but anyone who infringes is simply not a fan at all. However, that's ridiculous. An article by Ben Fowlkes at MMAFighting.com provides a wonderful explanation for why this is a ridiculous claim:

For starters, the UFC seems to believe that there are two types of MMA fans: the type who buys the pay-per-views, and the type who watches them illegally. In reality, the line between those two groups is probably a lot blurrier than Zuffa realizes. Chances are very good that some of the people who have streamed events in the past have also bought them, and probably will buy them again at some point in the future. Maybe they only pony up the $55 for the pay-per-view when the card is good enough, or when they can get friends to split the cost with them. Maybe they stream it when they only care about one or two fights, or when they’re simply too strapped for cash to afford it.

My point is, not all piracy is created equal, at least on the receiving end, and attacking viewers as if they are distributors could do much more harm than good.

For instance, picture a 19-year-old college student just about anywhere in America. He wants to see a UFC event, but maybe he can’t even afford basic cable, let alone a pay-per-view. He can’t go to a bar to watch the fights (unless he has a convincing fake ID), so he stays home and finds an illegal stream on his laptop, because he can't stand to miss the big fight. Then, months later, he gets sued by the UFC.

What’s going to happen when that kid graduates, goes to work, and finds a job that will allow him to enjoy luxury expenses like pay-per-views? You think he’s going to become a loyal customer of the company that sued him back when he was struggling to buy books? You think he’s going to buy a ticket to see a UFC event when it comes to his city? You think he’s going to buy merchandise or watch free events or patronize the UFC in any way after that experience? Maybe. Or maybe he’ll hold a little bit of a grudge. You know, for the rest of his natural life.

That's the amazing thing about so many anti-piracy attempts. They simply don't take into account the actual situation, and what the real costs and benefits of their actions are. They just think "piracy bad, must stop." They refuse to accept that those who are infringing may have reasons for doing so beyond "I'll never give any money to these people ever." Not actually understanding that seems like a huge strategic blunder. For all the talk of having an "obligation" to sue fans, I would think that the company's officers actually have an obligation to the company's shareholders, which means not making braindead moves that actually hurt the bottom line. And yet that seems to be the ultimate plan here.

Filed Under: copyright, fans, piracy, ultimate fighting
Companies: zuffa

Justin.tv Not Guilty Of 'Stealing Cable' When Users Stream UFC Matches

from the good-ruling dept

Last year, we wrote about how Zuffa, the parent company of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) was suing Justin.tv because some of its users streamed UFC matches. As we noted at the time, we couldn't see how Zuffa would get past the DMCA's safe harbors. Apparently, Zuffa tried to get around that by being way too creative for its own good and the court has now shut down those efforts. Basically, Zuffa focused on two areas not covered (or not clearly covered) by safe harbors. The first is trademark, which is neither covered by the DMCA's safe harbors nor Section 230's safe harbors -- though, many courts have accepted similar rules that limit liability to third party service providers anyway. In this case, the court is extremely skeptical of the trademark claims, in part because it seemed clear that Zuffa was merely trying to use trademark law as if it were a "mutant copyright law," which courts have rejected in the past.

The other attempt to get around safe harbors was to use the Communications Act, which has rules against "intercepting cable." Justin.tv actually suggested that Section 230's safe harbors should protect it from that claim -- which makes sense -- but the court doesn't want to touch that argument. Instead, it just says that the basic idea that Justin.tv is illegally intercepting cable doesn't make any sense -- and notes, again, that it appears to be Zuffa seeking to do an end-run around copyright law:

In essence, Zuffa alleges that Justin.tv’s users copied Zuffa’s UFC event and then rebroadcast the UFC event over the internet. This is not the type of conduct properly addressed by the Communications Act, but by copyright law (and, potentially, trademark law) because Justin.tv had no relationship with the original cable or satellite signal: by the allegations, Justin.tv did not receive or intercept any actual cable or satellite signal or broadcast. The Court finds no evidence in the statutory language, other cases, or legislative history that the Communications Act addresses this type of conduct or was meant to bolster or act as a separate type of copyright claim.

Furthermore, as Eric Goldman highlights in the link above, there's a further footnote discussion in which the court notes that if Zuffa's "stealing cable" argument made sense, it would open up a whole host of legal issues against pretty much all cloud computing:

if the Court were to allow claims such as these, it would have to allow similar Communications Act claims against scores of “cloud computing” service providers such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon.com, Dropbox, Box.net, and others because Jusint.tv’s [sic] particular streaming service would be irrelevant. As an example, say a person took a snippet (or longer) of video of a UFC match being broadcast on their television with their iPhone, Windows Phone, etc. The iPhone then automatically uploads that video to one of dozens of cloud storage systems such as Apple’s iCloud. The Court refuses to find that Apple (or Microsoft, etc.) would be liable under the Communications Act for merely receiving and storing this data under the Communications Act. Yet, Zuffa arguesfor exactly this result when it argues that Justin.tv’s mere receipt of this video stream makes Justin.tv liable. In passing the Communications Act, Congress did not intend such a result, and this Court will not broaden the effect of the statute in this manner.

Nice to see a court recognize the troubling implications of such a crazy argument.

Filed Under: copyright, safe harbors, stealing cable, ultimate fighting
Companies: justin.tv, zuffa

Is It Copyright Infringement To Pass A DMCA Notice On To ChillingEffects?

from the copyright-on-a-copyright-infringement-notice? dept

Tom Rubin, who happens to be Microsoft's chief counsel for intellectual property strategy, has a blog post up at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford, where he highlights the worrying trend of filers of DMCA takedown notices forbidding the recipient to publish or pass the notice on to third parties like ChillingEffects. From the notice:

IMPORTANT NOTICE: None of the information contained in this legal notice is to be transmitted and/or released to any third party, including but not limited to Chilling Effects (chillingeffects.org), without the express written permission of the the copyright owner and or his agent. As stated in Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and in the normal course of processing and notifying the infringing counter party, recipient must only include information specific to that counter party's infringement and must not include this entire notice. Any re-transmission in whole or in part of this legal notice by the intended recipient will be a direct violation of U.S. and International Copyright Law and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law by the copyright owner.

Yes, that's right. The company is claiming that the DMCA takedown notice itself is copyrighted and that passing it along will constitute infringement. Of course, this raises some questions. Assuming that such a notice is copyrightable (and I'd argue that, depending on the text, it might not be), who owns the copyright. The paragraph above appears to imply that it's the copyright holder of the original content that the takedown notice is about, but that wouldn't be true. It seems that the copyright, if there is one, would be held by whoever wrote the letter, which is the third party firm hired by the original copyright holder. Also, did whoever write this letter actually register it with the Copyright Office?

Either way, I can't wait to see the DMCA takedown notice filed on a DMCA takedown notice.

Of course, it's not too hard to track down more details about this. That's because at least some of the recipients of such a warning appear to have totally ignored it. Within seconds, I found a recent letter on ChillingEffects (sent to Google) that includes this language. It's a letter from Zuffa LLC, better known as the parent company for UFC, who has been quite aggressive in copyright lawsuits. The actual letter appears to have been filed by an outfit called MiMTiD, which promises automated DMCA takedown notice submission, which only raises even more questions. If the letter itself is automated, again that raises questions about whether it's copyrightable.

Even odder is the following paragraph in the letter. After denying the recipient the ability to forward the letter to anyone, including specifically calling out ChillingEffects, it appears to indicate that it will instead forward the letter to a different aggregator of such notices, called "The Chilling Report" but apparently that database is kept secret and you need to "obtain secure access" to see it:

Please also note that with the express permission of the copyright owner, in addition to being forwarded to certain members of the United States Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, MiMTiD will send this legal notice to a third-party that aggregates repeat infringer data gathered by different agencies and infringement mitigation service companies around the globe and provides centralized access to that data to be used by global policy makers and law enforcement agencies to create and enforce copyright law. As such, this legal notice will included in The Chilling Report (http: //www.chillingreport.com). To obtain secure access to the Chilling Report please email The Chilling Report at xxxxx @chillingreport.com or call (713) xxx-xxxx.

I checked out http://www.chillingreport.com and nothing loads. So is this an attempt to try to hide DMCA takedown notice info from the public? If so, I doubt it will work. It's nice to see that Google apparently didn't think twice before passing this letter on to Chilling Effects, despite the prohibition. Now we'll see if MiMTiD, Zuffa or anyone else actually tries to claim a copyright on the DMCA notice. I would imagine they'd have to send a DMCA notice to Chilling Effects first, and if that includes the same paragraph, we may get into an infinite loop of DMCA notices...

Filed Under: chilling effects, copyright, dmca
Companies: mimtid, zuffa

UFC Sues Justin.tv, Claiming It Induced Infringement

from the one-to-watch dept

The company that owns Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has been complaining and threatening about online streaming video services for a while, but it appears that it's finally started suing, and its first target is Justin.tv. This isn't that surprising, given that it's (loudly) complained about Justin.tv for years, and made clear it was gearing up for lawsuits. I haven't seen the full filing yet, but unless there's something egregious in there, I can't see why Justin.tv isn't protected by the DMCA's safe harbors. UFC (well, really its parent company, Zuffa LLC) is trying to claim "inducement" and seems to be suggesting that Justin.tv doesn't respond helpfully enough to takedowns. However, from what I've heard, Justin.tv is pretty vigilant in responding to takedowns and has put in place safeguards to try to block such things. They might not work perfectly, but the company has definitely done plenty to try to block such streams. Again, perhaps there's something more in the filing, but otherwise, it seems likely that Justin.tv is clearly protected by the DMCA's safe harbors.

Filed Under: copyright, inducement, streaming
Companies: justin.tv, ufc, zuffa