Kings Of Leon Management Issuing Questionable DMCA Takedowns To Stop Clips Of On-Stage Problems?

from the copyright-as-censorship dept

John Obeidin points us to the news that YouTube videos of a problematic Dallas concert by the band Kings of Leon are disappearing from YouTube under claims from Vector Management, who apparently represent the band. Apparently Caleb Followhill from the band complained a bunch about feeling sick and saying that his voice was shot. At some point, he announced that he was going backstage to vomit and that he'd be back later -- which didn't happen. The rest of the band apologized (profusely) and later hinted at "bigger" problems with the band. Lots of folks in the audience were upset about all of this. Either way, a bunch of videos sprung up on YouTube. But as quickly as they go up, Vector Management appears to be pulling them down. Now it's possible that some of the videos include clips of copyrighted songs, but the whole thing certainly seems pretty questionable, and looks like an attempt to stifle the video of what happened. Assuming that most of the videos only included a bit of music, but focused on Caleb's statements, it seems like there would also be strong fair use claims.

Now, I did just find the following video, which does not appear to include any music, but merely clips out the statements made by Caleb and then other members of the band. It's still up as I'm posting this. If it remains up, then perhaps the takedowns are only directed at clips with actual music in them. Even so, the whole thing feels sketchy and, of course, is only drawing more attention to the whole story.

Filed Under: caleb followhill, dmca, kings of leon, takedown, youtube
Companies: vector management

Hotfile Claims Warner Bros. Issued Takedowns On Content It Had No Copyright Over

from the uh-ohs dept

The legal battle between cyberlocker Hotfile and the MPAA continues to heat up. After a judge severely undercut a key claim of the MPAA, the MPAA has been acting petulantly, refusing to hand over certain documents under discovery to Hotfile. The MPAA claims it would reveal their secret "anti-piracy" plans... but the real issue may be that Hotfile believes that Warner Bros. used Hotfile's takedown tool to remove content over which it had no copyright. That would be a no-no and would certainly make the case that much more interesting...

Filed Under: dmca, takedown
Companies: hotfile, mpaa, warner bros.

No Punishment For Bogus DMCA Notices If Service Provider Doesn't Take Down The Content

from the too-bad dept

One of the issues with the DMCA is that there's very little incentive to avoid sending bogus DMCA notices. There is 512(f), which says that if you misrepresent that content is infringing, you are liable for damages, but it's rarely used. And, now it's been limited further in a court ruling. Earlier this year, we wrote about a silly copyright fight concerning virtual horses and virtual bunnies in Second Life, with one company claiming another company copied its "breedable" virtual animals and that was infringement. It issued a takedown. After it was determined that the copyright claim was ridiculous (there was no direct copying), the company who was on the receiving end tried to claim that there was a 512(f) violation in the original takedown. However, the court dismissed that claim because Second Life never complied with the takedown, saying:

limiting suits for damages to those caused by an actual takedown is a less effective deterrent than allowing suits based merely on the filing of a false Takedown Notification. But the statute is unambiguous in entitling an alleged infringer to damages caused “as the result of the service provider . . . removing or disabling access to the material"

In other words, if the service provider doesn't follow through on the takedown, there's no punishment for filing a bogus DMCA notice. Too bad.

Separately, I hadn't realized just how ridiculous the DMCA notice was. It didn't just ask for a takedown of the virtual animals itself, but of the food for the animals, in order to make the virtual animals die. This snippet from the ruling struck me as amusing:

The Notification sought, among other things, the removal from Second Life of Amaretto's virtual "food" and "water." Had the takedown occurred, the virtual horses would have "died" from "starvation" and/or "thirst" within 72 hours.

Yup. Using copyright to "starve" to "death" virtual animals. I'm sure that's exactly what our Founding Fathers were thinking about when they wrote the Constitution.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, punishment, takedown

Google Misreads Complaint From MLB, Blocks Wrong Site

from the the-new-new-google? dept

Well, this is unfortunate. Google's been getting more and more pressure from the US government to censor websites based on accusations (not convictions) of copyright infringement, and it appears that Google is caving more and more to such requests, rather than standing up for user rights and the basics of how copyright works. It did that bizarre and really poorly thought out blocking of certain autocomplete words. Then there was the absolutely awful copyright school that perpetuated certain copyright myths and made "fair use" sound like the negative side effects you might get when you take some prescription medicine. On top of that it got a lot of attention for deleting Grooveshark's app from the Android Marketplace, but further research shows that it's been dumping a bunch of music apps.

The latest, though, is particularly egregious. Apparently, it entirely removed Rojadirecta.es from its directory based on a DMCA complaint from Major League Baseball, but it appears to have completely misread the complaint.

First of all, you may recognize the name Rojadirecta. It's the site that was found to be totally legal (twice) in Spain, but still had its .com domain seized by Homeland Security. It already had the .es domain and now that's become it's main site. Now, you could potentially see someone issuing a DMCA takedown over that site, but the notice in question was not actually a DMCA takedown notice at all, but a notice of a violation of AdSense. If that's the case, then you could see it lead to a cancellation of that AdSense program, but not a block from the index.

Making matters even worse, MLB's complaint is wrong. The AdSense in question was not even on Rojadirecta's site. Rojadirecta is a linking site, and the complaint was actually about ads on a site Rojadirecta linked to. And yet, because of this Google blocked the Rojadirecta site. At a time when governments around the globe are also getting upset with Google for what they deem to be arbitrary listing decisions (and yes, I agree that this political argument is silly), you would think that Google would be more careful than to completely dump a site based on a questionable AdSense policy violation claim.

Filed Under: adsense, copyright, takedown
Companies: google, rojadirecta

UK Music Publishers Issue DMCA Takedown On Public Domain Sheet Music

from the there-is-no-public-domain dept

It was just a few months ago that we noted how music publishers were annoyed at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP), which has aggregated music scores of public domain music. We noted that it occasionally received copyright threats, and now it's received another one. The UK Music Publisher's Association (note: not a specific publisher) issued a DMCA takedown over some public domain music (Rachmaninoff's The Bells), and GoDaddy (as it seems to regularly do) took down the site. Nice of them.

IMSLP and its supporters are apparently looking to see if they can file a copyrfraud lawsuit against the UK MPA for the bogus takedown. Even more bizarre is that the MPA is now trying to hide the fact that it sent the takedown in the first place, demanding that the director of IMSLP takedown the takedown notice. Amusingly, in the response to the MPA, the person from IMSLP notes that their last email was sent to the imslp.org domain... which is useless:

I note that one of the receipients of your 21/04/2011 11:23 email is feldmahler@imslp.org. Because you caused, via a bogus DMCA takedown notice, imslp.org to be removed from the internet, that email address will not work.

Of course, the punishment for filing false DMCA notices is pretty minimal, so these sorts of situations will keep happening. It's really too bad that GoDaddy took down an entire site over a single DMCA notice, but the law encourages that sort of censorship approach.

Filed Under: classical music, copyright, dmca, public domain, takedown
Companies: imslp, music publishers association

'Death Of ACTA' Song Taken Down In Copyright Claim

from the irony-much? dept

You may recall last fall we wrote about one of Dan Bull's excellent tracks commenting on copyright issues, called Death Of ACTA. You can see the video for the song here: Dan Bull has embraced file sharing -- not surprisingly, given the subject matter of many of his songs -- and placed the song on various sharing networks and sites, including the cyberlocker Mediafire. Obviously, he did so on purpose, with the desire that more people hear the song. However, he noted with a bit of irony recently that the song on Mediafire was taken down due to a copyright claim. Considering the whole song is about the overreaching efforts of copyright as censorship, this seems pretty ironic.

Dan was kind enough to forward on the takedown message... and it's a total mess. There's simply no useful info in it other than that a French company called TF1 wants the file (and a bunch of others) off of Mediafire as quickly as possible. Now, it's not clear what the issue is here, but it's not difficult to take a guess. "Death of ACTA" is obviously a play on Jay-Z's "Death of Autotune" Jay-Z's song features prominently a sample of the song "In the Space" by French film composers Janko Nilovic and Dave Sarkys. It's quite likely that Jay-Z licensed the sample. Not surprisingly, Dan Bull did not, but that's the nature of creating a parody song.

Also, since all of this is happening in Europe, there aren't fair use laws. Dan would probably have a stronger argument in the US. In Europe, it's a bit more of a crap shoot. Of course, the whole thing is pretty silly if you think about it. Is there any less demand for "In the Space," due to Dan's song? Anyone who suggests that's the case is not in touch with reality.

In the end, though, how ridiculous is it that a song that's all about the excessive nature of copyright law ends up being subject to a takedown notice itself? It seems to encapsulate everything that the song is talking about as being ridiculous concerning copyright law. The song is, of course, still available in lots of other places, though it will be interesting to see if TF1 starts going after it elsewhere as well. I'm guessing that each takedown will only draw that much more attention to Dan's song and the ridiculousness of copyright law today, if it creates a situation where a clear commentary about copyright law gets taken down... by copyright law.

Filed Under: acta, commentary, copyright, dan bull, death of acta, jay-z, parody, takedown
Companies: tf1

Jawa Threatens Blog That Accused It Of Cramming, Gets Blog Taken Down By ISP

from the intimidation dept

The JAWA story continues. Yesterday, we posted about accusations from Verizon Wireless that JAWA was effectively "cramming" premium SMS charges onto users' bills, which came about following an investigation (and eventual lawsuit) by Texas regulators. The blog AZDisruptors.com has been highlighting some of the accusations against JAWA while most of the press had kept quiet on it. However, it appears the folks at JAWA don't like that. They sent a cease-and-desist to the operator of the blog (embedded below), Hamid Shojaee, that makes all sorts of accusations against him; claiming defamation, false light invasion of privacy, tortious interference with business relations and criminal harassment.

The letter also, oddly, accuses Shojaee of being a cyebersquatter, despite that having nothing whatsoever to do with what's being disputed here, and Shojaee clearly explains why he has the various domains he has. As for the specific legal threats against Shojaee, it's hard to see how the latter claims have any merit. The defamation claim is the key one, but considering that both the Texas attorney general and Verizon Wireless's lawsuits against JAWA seem to make similar claims, it's difficult to see the defamation claim standing. On top of that, since JAWA's CEO Jason Hope is clearly a public figure, the standard for defamation is much higher and, almost certainly, was not met by Shojaee. I'm guessing that JAWA wouldn't even want to get into the discovery phase of any such lawsuit -- meaning this threat letter feels a lot like a SLAPP. Arizona has an anti-SLAPP law... but it is very limited and almost certainly doesn't apply here, unfortunately (all the more reason for a federal anti-SLAPP law).

Separately, JAWA's lawyers contacted AZDisruptors.com's host, SquareSpace, and registrar, GoDaddy, demanding the site be taken down for these reasons. Ridiculously, SquareSpace complied -- without even contacting Shojaee first. This is problematic for a variety of reasons. First of all, SquareSpace has no legal requirement to takedown a site upon accusations of defamation. Section 230 protects it against liability in those circumstances. But, even more to the point, the fact that it would take down the site without first even hearing from Shojaee is really problematic and suggests that SquareSpace should not be trusted as a hosting provider.

Either way, Shojaee is fighting back. He got SquareSpace to put the site back up and has responded to JAWA's accusations against him with a lawyer, who seems well equipped to respond to such bullying. I've embedded the response letter below, but just a snippet:

Your letter, its accusations, and its conclusions are shocking. And you are wrong in every respect...

[...]

I can't close a letter without pointing out the obvious: your letter, instead of addressing Mr. Shojaee's accurate claims about Mr. Hope's business activities, maligns his character and accuses Mr. Shojaee of "fail[ing] to disclose your true motives to your readers." You then go on to list a number of web domains that Mr. Shojaee legally owns in connection with a legitimate business purpose.

The idea that Mr. Shojaee has done anything to apologize for is laughable. It is Mr. Hope who has built a company based on deception; it is Mr. Hope who has illegally used technology to bilk consumers out of millions; it is Mr. Hope who has chosen to interfere with my client's business...

Sounds like the attempt at intimidation isn't likely to work... Oh, and in the meantime, the press is starting to pick up on the story as well.

Filed Under: arizona, cramming, defamation, free speech, hamid shojaee, jason hope, slapp, takedown
Companies: jawa

Fox Sends DMCA Takedown To Google To Remove Link To DMCA Takedown Sent By Fox

from the got-that? dept

Ah, meta DMCA takedowns. We just recently noted the growing trend of some DMCA notice filers to claim that the notices themselves are covered by copyright and thus should not be sent on to ChillingEffects.org, the clearinghouse for DMCA takedowns. It's highly questionable whether or not such DMCA notices are actually covered by copyright, but we hadn't seen anyone actually challenge the claims. However, TorrentFreak has an article on a slightly different, but related situation, where it appears that Fox sent a DMCA takedown to Google, ordering it to block links to a DMCA takedown Fox had sent Google earlier.

That may be confusing, so we'll go through this slowly. Basically, Fox sent Google an initial DMCA takedown, to get it to stop linking to links to unauthorized copies of the movie Avatar. Fair enough. Google, as it does, forwarded this takedown to ChillingEffects and removed the links in its index. However, then Fox apparently sent another DMCA takedown, demanding that Google take down the link to its original takedown in ChillingEffects. The second takedown has a huge list of links that it wants Google to stop linking to, so the ChillingEffects one is buried in there.

However, I have to wonder if that's a legit DMCA takedown. The only way it's legit is if Fox really does have some copyright claim over the original DMCA takedown notice, and that's iffy, at best. Of course, Google is pretty quick to takedown these links in order to retain its safe harbors. However, I do wonder if the folks at ChillingEffects, who certainly understand the law, will decide to pushback on this one.

Filed Under: chilling effects, copyright, dmca, search results, takedown
Companies: fox, google

CBS Reporter Posts YouTube Video Of Grammys... Only To Have CBS Send Takedown Notice

from the left-hand,-right-hand dept

Adam Singer has the news of how a reporter for CBS News, reporting on the Grammys, posted a YouTube clip to a story he had written... except soon after it was posted, CBS issued a DMCA takedown on the video, leading to this bizarre situation, put into image form by someone at Reddit (of course): Both reports claim that this is CBS filing copyright claims against itself, though that's not really accurate. It's CBS filing a YouTube takedown (or doing a content ID match, more likely) and not realizing that its own reporters were making use of the YouTube video. The real question is why CBS wouldn't make legit clips available as easily as the YouTube clips were available. As it stands now, the video embed has been pulled down, and the reporter apologizes that no clips are available. That scenario seems even more ridiculous than the original takedown. This is the same company, and he can't get a legit clip to put with the story?

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, grammys, takedown
Companies: cbs

Monster Cable Issues Yet Another Bogus DMCA Notice To A Search Engine

from the that's-not-copyright dept

Back in November, we had the ridiculous story of Monster Cable almost certainly abusing the DMCA to takedown a classifieds search engine called Jaxed. It appears that the company has done something similar yet again. The folks at Dealbert.net, a "deals" search engine that searches various deals websites (FatWallet, SlickDeals, etc.), faced a takedown when Monster Cable's chief lawyer issued a DMCA takedown notice to Verizon (the full DMCA notice is included after the jump).

There are a bunch of problems with this. First of all, Dealbert is a search engine, pulling content from other sites. If there's really infringing works on those other sites, then the liability should be on those other sites. If you look at the Perfect 10 rulings, the court noted that as a search engine, Google was not liable for what it found, and it seems that would likely apply to Dealbert as well (yes, the Perfect 10 ruling is technically only precedent in the 9th Circuit, but it's been cited elsewhere and is generally considered to be the law).

Second, nowhere does Monster Cable explain what actually infringes and what copyright is infringed. The relevant part of the DMCA notice:

Under penalty of perjury, we hereby affirm that the undersigned is authorized to act on behalf of Monster Cable Products, Inc. whose exclusive copyright rights we believe to be infringed as described herein.

We have a good faith belief that the Internet site found at the following

http://dealbert.net/?qs=beats+by+dre&btnSubmit.x=0&btnSubmit.y=0&btnSubmit=Search
http://dealbert.net/deal.php?id=3847653

infringes the rights of the Company by using Copyrights belonging to Monster Cable Products, Inc., including but not limited to: Monster Cable, Beats by Dr. Dre, Monster Turbine, and Heartbeats by Lady Gaga.

A court would have to decide, but given that Monster Cable swore under the penalty of perjury, I would argue this sounds like perjury. It's claiming that its copyrights are being infringed, but the only things it seems to identify -- Monster Cable, Beats by Dr. Dre, Monster Turbine, and Heartbeats by Lady Gaga -- are all trademarks, not copyrights.

Whether or not you believe that Dealbert infringed on Monster's trademarks, the DMCA does not cover trademarks. It's for copyright only. Using the DMCA for non-copyrighted content, and claiming it is copyrighted is an abuse of the DMCA and could open up Monster Cable to significant fines, should Dealbert pursue the company in court.

On top of all this, rather than approaching Dealbert directly, Monster Cable went straight to Verizon, who at least was kind enough to pass the notice along to Dealbert, rather than simply pulling down the site. Dealbert's response has been to remove the content in question, because it doesn't want to risk having Verizon simply pull down its entire website.

However, it appears this is a gross abuse of the DMCA, by a company notorious for abusing IP laws. Historically, Monster has been quite aggressive over its trademarks and occasionally patents, but here it appears to be abusing copyright law by pretending its trademarks are copyright, and that the DMCA applies to them.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, takedown, trademark
Companies: dealbert, monster cable