What The DMCA System Is NOT For: Shutting Down Twitter Accounts You Don't Like And Sending Anonymous Tips

from the it's-a-broken-system;-let's-break-it-further dept

It's long overdue, but someone needs to start running some remedial DMCA courses. The takedown notice system is severely flawed, but ultimately workable. It's supposed to be used to alert various services of copyright-infringing content. It is not supposed to be used to:

• take down legitimate content, however inadvertently
• take down speech/criticism you don't like
• alert hosting services of potential trademark violations
• used as an outlet for some misguided attempt at public service

One of the key elements of a DMCA notice is the statement a sender swears are truthful:

Sworn Statements

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Both statements come into play in the following DMCA notices.

First up, we have a rep for the International Thespian Society issuing a takedown notice on an entire Twitter account, supposedly for using the ITS logo without permission.

Description of infringement: They are using our logo without permission, and it is the incorrect/old version of the logo.

So, not only is the logo someone else's property, but apparently it's the one the Society is no longer using, which I guess makes it worse[?].

Here's the ITS logo:


Here's a screenshot of the account that was removed (via Google's cache).


There's no logo visible here and the account doesn't seem to have been active for very long. It could have been utilizing the ITS logo briefly, but by the time it was last crawled that was no longer the case. (There's not much of a gap here. Google's last crawl was Feb. 1st. The takedown notice was issued on Jan. 29th.) So, a simple request to the account owner could have possibly resulted in the removal of the logo without removing the account. But, that's not the only problem ITS had with the Twitter account. The next sentence in the "Description of infringement" is entirely baseless and is not what the DMCA is supposed to be used for.

Their tweets are also in violation of the International Thespian Society

What the hell does that mean? Other than the momentary logo usage (which is far from proven), the account made no effort to associate itself with ITS. Sure, those tweeting the account mentioned things like how attractive their ITOs (International Thespian Officer) were ("The ITO at our conference was literally so attractive.") and others were a bit more off-color ("I played sweet and sour (sweet means gay, sour means straight) at conference for every boy I saw. I only guessed two sour..."), but the account itself made no claims to be affiliated with the Society. It appears someone at ITS found these tweets a bit unsavory and decided to nuke the account in order to ensure the everlasting purity of the thespian world -- at least the thespian world under its control.

So, this is speech being killed by a tight-assed Society who couldn't sit idly by while acting students lusted after their instructors or noted that the drama world attracts fewer heterosexual men than other pursuits. Terrible and, again, an abuse of the DMCA takedown system. The tweets issued by @ThesConfessions were not copyrighted material. Only the logo was, if indeed it was ever present. Even then, the only thing that needed to be removed was the infringing logo, not the account and its tweets.

Next up: making claims about copyrighted material that isn't yours to be making claims about (the "I am the copyright owner or authorized to act on the behalf of the authorized owner" section).

Here's one sent to Google from a "friend."

1. Complainant's Information

Name:
Company name:
Full legal name of the copyright holder: friend
Country of residence: EG

A kindhearted stranger on the internet is a rarity, especially one who uses a now-fraudulent legal form to send anonymous tips.

2. Your copyrighted work
Location of copyrighted work (where your authorized work is located):

i would like to report that site www.get80.com
take look at that one and find your self he selling other people courses

Helpful, but it's not really your copyrighted work, is it, friend-o?

Gather 'round, readers. Take one look yourself and see what get80 used to be selling before the site was blinked into nonexistence by "friend." (No link for you, readers. Even the cache pops up a dialog box -- with Adblock and such equipped.)


It certainly appears a variety of courses were being hawked at impossibly low prices. This would seem to be an open-and-shut case of mass infringement, but that's something for the authorized copyright holders to sort out, not just random internet denizens who enjoy the mundanity of filling out forms.

Now, the last example is the tiniest of infractions, but if we're going to hold the DTECnets and the IP Arrows of the world to a certain standard, then everyone needs to play by the same rules, even "friends" who stumble across cheap-looking sites apparently selling infringing goods.

But the sterner warning goes to the International Thespian Society which used a DMCA notice to kill an account it just didn't like. That's not "protecting your IP." That's just small-scale thuggery.

Filed Under: dmca, takedown

Cartoonist Donna Barstow Reappears To Generate More Negative Press While Attempting To Stifle Year-Old Negative Press

from the apparently-she-was-off-acquiring-bigger-shovels dept

Everything old is new again, copyright troll-wise. Just recently, we witnessed the return of one of internet's stranger denizens, one hit wonder Shaun "Tongues of Glass" Shane and his army of Twitter accounts deployed to ensure his oft-tweeted banalist poem is properly attributed to the gruff man with unparalleled page-turning skills.

Ken White at Popehat notes that another copyright-wielding troll has emerged from hiding. Donna Barstow, the "cartoonist" whose unfunny drawings drew the (highly negative) attention of Something Awful goons (that's their chosen name, by the way, not a statement of judgment), has ended her self-imposed hiatus by issuing a backdoor-entrance takedown attempt aimed at delisting White's highly critical post from 2012.

I wrote about her in July 2012, which resulted in a truly surreal phone call from her. I also wrote about her odd follow-up rant in which she suggested that copyright is a federal crime. Apparently she actually meant that copyright violation is a federal crime. I think.

Anyway, this morning (that is, nearly 17 months after I wrote about her) I got an email from Google indicating that she had complained that my post contained private information:

Hi,

We're writing from Google.com to bring the following page to your attention:

http://www.popehat.com/2012/07/06/cartoonist-donna-barstow-engages-in-modern-online-version-of-hey-guys-watch-this/

A Whois search indicated that you're the host for this page.

A concerned user contacted us to report that handwritten signature is published on this page. We hope that you'll assist this individual in restricting access to this private information by removing the page from the web. If it's changed to return a true 404 error via the http headers, please let us know and we'll also remove the listing from the Google index.

We appreciate your assistance. Should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Regards,
The Google Team

On 11/18/13 15:54:25 donnabarstow@gmail.com wrote:

your_name: D. Barstow
email: donnabarstow@gmail.com
webmaster_info_live: agree

number_url:
http://www.popehat.com/2012/07/06/cartoonist-donna-barstow-engages-in-modern-online-version-of-hey-guys-watch-this/

results_url_ssn:
https://www.google.com/search?q=donna+barstow&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb

webmaster_info_contacted: agree

webmaster_info_whois:
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=popehat.com

hidden_subject_signature: Your personal information removal request for a handwritten signature

As you can see, Donna Barstow considers her signature -- the same signature she attaches to every cartoon she creates -- to be "personal information." Apparently, Barstow's idea of "personal" means "things anyone can access."

There's only one place Ms. Barstow's signature appears in my post about her — it's in her cartoon about Mexico, which I put in the post to comment upon it, criticize it, and report on ongoing allegations that some of her cartoons are racist or otherwise obnoxious. It's the signature that she displays to the world in all of the cartoons she publishes. It's "private" in the sense that you can't see it unless you look at one of her cartoons on her web site or published elsewhere by her.

White has written back to Google clarifying the situation. Presumably, Google won't follow through with this request, but stranger things have happened. It appears Barstow's earlier experience with the limitations of copyright law may have taught her at least one thing: the copyright angle probably won't work. Consequently, she has chosen to approach this from an entirely different (but still completely wrong) angle.

Speaking of stranger things, Rob Beschizza at Boing Boing points out that Charles Carreon may be behind Barstow's latest effort. His post dated November 24th details a conversation he had with the "poor woman" who contacted him about concerns that he might be posting about her at a site using Carreon's name. (The site is a "satirical diary" and is [quite obviously] not written by Charles Carreon, "Internet Lawyer".) In the long and winding post, Carreon eventually unloads plenty of hate in Ken White's direction and presumably did the same while calming Donna Barstow, victim of hundreds of self-inflicted wounds.

If this call was recent, Barstow's reaction time is horribly slow. The post she referenced in her conversation with Carreon appeared in July of 2012 (as did Popehat's). It looks as if Barstow's making a belated attempt to clean up her reputation and is apparently assuming it's so long after the fact that no one will care. Obviously, she's wrong. The takedown attempt aimed at Popehat most likely won't work and her effort has generated a minimum of three negative posts in response. Anyone else she targets will just contribute to the body of negative press she's accumulated since going nuclear last summer.

There are lessons to be learned here, but Barstow doesn't seem to have learned anything from her previous experience other than she's run the wheels off the copyright angle.

Filed Under: censorship, donna barstow, ken white, popehat, signature, takedown
Companies: google

'Attribution Troll' Issues DMCA Notice To Remove Critical Posts From Techdirt, Boing Boing And Popehat

from the must-have-missed-all-the-negative-attention dept

To paraphrase a famous poet, don't ask for whom the troll trolls, it trolls for thee. To paraphrase another, infamous "poet," "If only we possessed even a modicum of common sense, we wouldn't have jabbed the stick back into the quieted hornet's nest."

Andy from Torrentfreak brings us the hilarious news that Shaun Shane/On Press Inc has reared its glassy head again via a DMCA notice issued in hopes of removing some highly critical articles from the internet.

Earlier this month TorrentFreak discovered that On Press had filed a DMCA notice with Google against one of our articles, asking the search engine to delist it from the company’s search results. The article was about Twitter copyright complaints but buried away in the comments section was a few paragraphs from Gene Poole, who said the following:

Shane was clearly back, more crazy than ever before – and he wasn’t finished yet. In the same DMCA notice On Press targeted a who’s-who of its critics from earlier in the year.

Perhaps unsurprisingly Techdirt was on the top of the hit list, with Google being ordered to remove a total of 43 URLs that On Press (incorrectly) claimed were infringing copyright, which bizarrely included a URL designed to call up all articles on the site which contained the words “legal” and “threat”.

Adding to the catastrophe, On Press ordered Google to remove the articles written by Rob Beschizza and also Michael Geist, even though the latter was on an unrelated topic. Quite deliciously, mainly because we can’t wait for the Popehat reaction, On Press also ordered Google to censor Ken White’s article.

Yes, Shaun Shane/On Press clearly fails to understand the intrinsic value of keeping a low profile and limiting your harassment to a mixture of Pinterest members and teenage retweeters. Using a clearly bogus DMCA notice to rid the internet of the byproducts of your own misconduct just brings your worst proclivities to the surface again. Every critic On Press tried to censor will be more than happy to add to the negative body of work that currently is the On Press Inc legacy.

As you peruse the URLs On Press attempted to take down here at Techdirt, you'll notice it tried to cover nearly every base by listing certain tags. One of those is "Knopf Publishing," which clearly isn't a tag On Press can screw with. Its multiple accounts still make the false claim that On Press is a "division of Knopf Publishing," but Knopf itself cleared that issue up when this story first broke.

Speaking of its multiple accounts, here's a rolling three-page screengrab of nothing but On Press Inc Twitter accounts… and there's more where that came from.






For an entity so easily moved to inform others about their violations of the Twitter TOS (by posting the unattributed Shaun Shane poem), On Press seems rather unconcerned about its blatant violation of those same rules.

This also isn't the only DMCA notice On Press has sent. Searching by copyright registration number brings up two pages of other DMCA notices from the "company." Most target single URLs where the poem has been quoted, but this one is particularly excellent. The URL On Press attempted to nuke is none other than Google's help page titled "Removing Content from Google." Fortunately (or unfortunately given the incident under discussion), Google decided to pass on removing this URL.

In fact, every single one of the 91 Techdirt URLs targeted by On Press have been kept alive by Google. Of the 134 URLs targeted, 68% have not been removed. This percentage will likely go even higher once Google finishes its review of the 27 URLs still pending.

Also of note: Shaun Shane finally formally registered his copyright on his book, "A Poem Is Nothing" back on February 22 of this year. (Hat tip to TAC for this info.) Surely this is entirely unrelated to the story blowing up the previous week at places like Boing Boing and Popehat. And entirely unrelated the fact that the stories pointed out that without proper registration, the best Shane could hope to gain from pursuing infringement suits was actual damages, something that would be hard to prove when the only content "threatened" is a print-on-demand book ranked in the low millions at Amazon.

Also of note: Shane, who On Press Inc had previously informed me was "dead," seems very much alive in his copyright registration.

Copyright Claimant: Shaun Shane, 1964- . Address: 126 Manzanita Way, Salinas, CA, 93908, United States.

Not only that, but nowhere in the registration (or elsewhere at the US Copyright Office site) is there any indication that "On Press Inc" has been assigned control of these rights, lending more credence to the theory that Shaun Shane himself operates the multiple On Press Twitter accounts and is likely behind a majority of the legal threats scattered across the internet under various names.

More evidence exists that Shaun Shane is, in fact, just a pseudonym of a sometimes-Californian who has most likely never been widely celebrated in the New York poetry scene, much less starred in anything directed by John Waters. The reality seems much more banal, which makes the internet flailings much more pathetic. Other information has been gathered during Shane's short-lived disappearance that lends credence to some of the theories posited in my first post on the subject, but that will remain locked away for the time being. But here's a small taste of what's been uncovered. ShaunShane.com was registered shortly after everything blew up. Check out the address of the registrant:

Registrant Name: Mike Miche
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street: 126 Manzanita Way
Registrant City: Salinas
Registrant State/Province: California
Registrant Postal Code: 93908
Registrant Country: United States
Admin Name: Mike Miche
Admin Organization:
Admin Street: 126 Manzanita Way
Admin City: Salinas
Admin State/Province: California
Admin Postal Code: 93908
Admin Country: United States
Admin Phone: (281) 798-4911

Shaun Shane is Mike Miche… or at least his roommate, but the alliteration is very hard to ignore.

As it stands now, Shane/Miche/On Press should be expecting nothing less than a steady flow of unattributed poetry over the next few days. Look… it's already starting.

Filed Under: attribution troll, censorship, criticism, dmca, mike miche, shaun shane, takedown, tongues made of glass
Companies: knopf publishing, on press inc.

YouTube Tells User He Can Directly Resolve Copyright Claim By Contacting Himself

from the bots-also-observed-running-low-level-snipe-hunts dept

When bots handle copyright enforcement, things are sometimes going to get screwed up. YouTube's various algorithms do a lot of heavy lifting, sorting through the thousands of hours of video being uploaded every minute. Sooner or later, the bots hit a snag, as any automated process will during multiple iterations. But Hugh Atkin's video, which utilizes John William's instantly-recognizable opening theme from Star Wars, triggered a copyright claim from SME (Sony Music Entertainment)... and a conundrum. (h/t to Nate Hoffelder)

Here's what he received for resolution advice from the YouTube helper bots.

Hello,

Thank you for your message.

The claimant has reviewed your dispute and reaffirmed its claim to your video. Specifics of the policy applied to your video are in the Copyright Notices section of your YouTube account.

You may click the underlined link to the right of the video's Edit menu to learn more about this claim.

If you are certain this claim was made in error, you may be able to appeal the claimant’s decision. Eligible users will see an “I want to appeal a disputed claim” link. Please note that an appeal may result in a copyright strike and the removal of your video.

Alternately, you may resolve this issue directly with the claimant at [MY EMAIL ADDRESS]@gmail.com

Please note that YouTube does not mediate copyright disputes.

Regards,
The YouTube Copyright Team

That's right. The dispute notices are coming from inside the house!

Whatever glitched in the dispute process managed to make Atkin's both the master of his own destiny and the victim of his own copyright dispute. The problem can't be resolved as it stands, at least not to Atkin's satisfaction. SME has reaffirmed its claim and lobbed the ball back into Atkin's court, apparently permanently.

Atkin has since fired off a reply to YouTube pointing out the error and asking for contact info he doesn't already possess (in every definition of the word), but so far has heard nothing back.

Now, Atkin could turn this over to YouTube via the appeals process, but that's largely automated and would result in a ruling in SME's favor (Sony Music distributes John William's Star Wars soundtrack work). Sony seems to have a valid claim as far as the use of William's track. Running this through YouTube's appeal process is almost guaranteed to earn Atkin a "strike."

Atkin appears to want to work around this automation (since it doesn't seem to be working properly) by attempting direct communication, but Sony's response team will probably be even less "human" about the alleged infringement than YouTube's bot swarm (both those scanning for infringement and those "manning" the help lines).

Unfortunately, a "strike" may be inevitable. No matter how well Atkin pleads his case to himself, he doesn't have the power to grant himself the permissions he's seeking. And with no contact information forthcoming, the clock will run out before he can extricate himself from this loop.

Filed Under: copyright, takedown, youtube
Companies: sony music

Fake Cable Ad Apparently Hits Too Close To Home; Bogus Defamation Claim Censors Video In Canada

from the what-is-defamatory? dept

Back in March, we had written about an absolutely hilarious fake cable ad by the good folks at Extremely Decent Films. It's funny, and you can watch it again here... if you're not in Canada: Why not in Canada? It appears that YouTube has pulled the video based on a defamation claim. I confirmed this by logging into a Canadian server on my VPN, and got the following: This raises all sorts of questions, none of them good. There's nothing defamatory in the video at all. I don't care how ridiculous Canada's defamation laws are (and they are kind of ridiculous), this video isn't defaming anything. It doesn't name a particular cable company, and it's clearly parody anyway. It makes no statements of fact about any particular cable company anyway. Furthermore, it's clearly focused on the US, not Canada (at 24 seconds it shows a map of the US). So, it seems like an interesting question to know who made the defamation claim against the video? Furthermore, this is the first time I've seen that particular error message on a YouTube video (it's usually a copyright claim). I'm curious as to how carefully YouTube reviews the defamation claims and if the counternotice process is the same as with a copyright claim. Either way, it seems like whoever decided to file such a claim on the video basically decided to censor a video because they don't like what it says... and, of course, that's only going to serve to give it that much more attention (yet again).

Update: YouTube has now reinstated the video, telling us: "Sometimes we make the wrong call. When it's brought to our attention that a video has been removed or blocked mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it." It's still not clear who made the original defamation claim, unfortunately.

Filed Under: cable, canada, censorship, defamation, parody, takedown, youtube

When Even Totally Bogus Copyright Threats Over Court Documents Comes Close To Shutting Down A Site, Something's Broken

from the not-universally-reviled-enough,-it-would-appear dept

The "c" in "copyright" still stands for "censorship," at least when wielded by aggrieved entities with limited retaliatory options. Torrentfreak is reporting that Comcast has sent the site a cease and desist order over last week's article on Prenda's honeypot operations.

[On] Monday we learned that Comcast was not happy with our coverage. Through the brand protection company Cyveillance they sent a cease and desist letter for an alleged copyright infringement, demanding that we take the article offline, or face legal action.

The threats are clear. If we fail to comply with the takedown notice within five days Comcast will file a lawsuit seeking immediate injunctive relief, compensatory damages, statutory damages, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees and costs of the suit.

The "intellectual property" in question is the public court filing, according to Cyveillance. (The actual C&D letter doesn't specify what's been infringed.) Torrentfreak told Cyveillance that public court filings are public domain (which may not be entirely true -- court documents filed by private parties (as opposed to the courts themselves) probably are not technically public domain, though there's a pretty strong argument that most uses of them are fair use -- and especially when it comes to use in reporting and commentary).

After being informed of this fact, Cyveillance told Torrentfreak that Comcast said to "hold off" on removing the post for the time being, but that news came far too late as Torrentfreak's host was already threatening to pull the plug.

Meanwhile, the situation further deteriorated when we learned that our hosting provider LeaseWeb received the same cease and desist notice. LeaseWeb alerted us to this problem on Tuesday and stated that our IP-address would be blocked if the issue was not resolved within 24 hours.

With Torrentfreak's site on the line, Comcast and Cyveillance then decided to turn unresponsive. Several hours later, Comcast finally issued a statement.

Update 7pm CET: A Comcast spokesperson responded to an inquiry we sent to the company’s lawyers:

“[I] am replying to let you know that the cease and desist was sent in error, and you may disregard it. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.”

Oh, one of those common "please take down our copyrighted content or prepare to be sued" mistakes. We've all made those. I'm pretty sure the only "error" was underestimating the pushback.

So, all's well that ends well, I guess, except for that fact that Comcast's "error" nearly took a site offline and gets to walk away from the experience unscathed. And because it made it through with little more than some public embarrassement, it won't learn a damn thing.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, takedown, torrentfreak
Companies: comcast, cyveillance, prenda

Spanish Anti-piracy Firm Ares Rights History Of Censorship By Copyright For Ecuador & Argentina

from the el-efecto-streisand dept

We already wrote about Ecuador apparently using highly questionable copyright takedowns to help censor documents that revealed Ecuador's government's attempts to purchase surveillance tools. In response, Ecuador first claimed that the documents were faked, but Adam Steinbaugh has done a truly fantastic investigation into the company that issued the takedown, Ares Rights, which is a Spanish company that has sent takedown messages for both the Ecuadorian government and the Argentinian government. In multiple cases that Steinbaugh found, the takedown efforts clearly seemed targeted at stifling speech, rather than any legitimate copyright interest.

First, as Rosie Gray notes, Ares Rights asserted copyright claims targeting a documentary that was less than friendly toward Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa.

When the documentary was posted to YouTube and Vimeo, Ares Rights quickly issued DMCA takedown notices on behalf of Ecuador’s state-operated TV channel, ECTV, on the basis that the documentary contained “unauthorized images” from ECTV.

[....] Nor is this Palma’s only connection to works in Ecuador.  This week, he claimed copyright ownership over, among other things, this “wanted” poster depicting an alleged child molester in Ecuador, Jorge Glas Viejo: Why would someone go to great effort to preserve the copyright in this image?  I can only speculate: the ‘wanted’ poster omits the last name of the suspected child molester, leaving him with the same name as Jorge Glas, an Ecuadorian politician and friend of President Correa.

There’s also this DMCA takedown, in which Ares Rights operated at the behest of Ecuador’s communications secretary, Fernando Alvarado, to remove photos purportedly showing a woman he was seeing.

Steinbaugh has a lot more in his article, which is absolutely worth reading, including an email conversation with the guy who is apparently in charge of Ares Rights, claiming he can't answer Steinbaugh's questions about who the client is because it might violate privacy laws. He also shows evidence that Ares Rights has done similar things for Argentina as well.

This morning we had noted that Scribd had taken down the documents. Then it was reported that Dropbox had taken down the documents as well. Steinbaugh is now hosting the documents himself. In solidarity, Ken "Popehat" White is now hosting the documents as well. And we're including the documents below as well.

Let's be clear about this: this is blatant abuse of copyright for the sake of censorship. First, if it's true that the documents are "fake," then the government certainly has no copyright claim on them, because they're not legit. We saw this same ridiculous attempt by Diebold a decade ago, insisting that documents were fake, and then filing copyright claims on them, by which they admitted they were real. Second, if the documents are real, the copyright claim itself is suspect, because there's almost no creativity in these documents that should qualify for copyright. These are basically requests to buy some equipment, which almost certainly don't reach the level of creativity to deserve copyright. Third, and most importantly, even if you could argue that there's some sort of legitimate copyright in these documents, posting them is undoubtedly fair use under the laws of the US where the documents are hosted. These documents are clearly newsworthy, being used for news reporting, and have no impact on Ecuador's "market" for the documents (because there is no such market).

This is, without a doubt, an abuse of the DMCA to try to censor documents that a particular government does not like. At the very least, it should open up Ares Rights to a potential 512(f) claim for abusing the DMCA.

Either way, we've been saying for years and years that copyright is a tool of censorship, and here's yet another example.

Filed Under: argentina, censorship, copyright, dmca, ecuador, surveillance, takedown
Companies: ares rights

Governments Ramp Up Attempts To Censor Content Via Google

from the up-up-and-away dept

Google's latest "Transparency Report" shows that governments appear to be ramping up their efforts to have Google takedown content. It probably won't come as much surprise that many of the new requests appear to be political in nature, rather than truly "illegal" content.

• There was a sharp increase in requests from Brazil, where we received 697 requests to remove content from our platforms (of which 640 were court orders—meaning we received an average of 3.5 court orders per day during this time period), up from 191 during the first half of the year. The big reason for the spike was the municipal elections, which took place last fall. Nearly half of the total requests—316 to be exact—called for the removal of 756 pieces of content related to alleged violations of the Brazilian Electoral Code, which forbids defamation and commentary that offends candidates. We’re appealing many of these cases, on the basis that the content is protected by freedom of expression under the Brazilian Constitution.
  
• Another place where we saw an increase was from Russia, where a new law took effect last fall. In the first half of 2012, we received six requests, the most we had ever received in any given six-month period from Russia. But in the second half of the year, we received 114 requests to remove content—107 of them citing this new law.

As you look at some of the other notes on the requests, you see an awful lot of people in power with thin skins, demanding content they don't like be removed because it reflects negatively on them. In most of those cases, thankfully, it appears that Google has refused to take down that content.

Also highlighted quite a bit in the report are requests from various countries -- including officials in the US -- for Google to either review or to takedown the infamous "Innocence of Muslims" video. Google basically tried to follow local laws on those and took it down in some countries, but not others.

It's good to see this kind of transparency, even if it's distressing just how often we see governments trying to censor information.

Filed Under: brazil, russia, takedown, transparency report
Companies: google

You're All The Weakest Link: Bad Law Permits Bad Takedowns, Which Google Handles Badly

from the a-chain-of-broken-links dept

Google Operating System is a Blogspot-hosted blog offering "unofficial news and tips about Google." Earlier this month, the operator, Alex Chitu, checked his email to discover that a 2008 post had been removed by Google in response to a DMCA takedown. This was confusing to say the least:

Apparently, this is the infringing post: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/02/lyrics-for-youtube-music-videos.html (Google Cache). It's a post about a Greasemonkey script that allowed you to show music lyrics in the YouTube interface.

...

I've managed to find the DMCA notice: "The URL listed below is one of nearly 20 song lyrics sites who have attempted to post lyrics for the song titled 'Alden Howell' by the artist Inspection 12. The lyrics posted on this and other sites are not accurate and the artist has not given them permission to post lyrical content. Inspection 12 has been making efforts to contact these websites directly in order to have the content removed. We are attempting to have this URL and others like it to be excluded from google search results for the name 'Alden Howell'."

Unfortunately for Inspection 12, that blog post doesn't include their lyrics. In fact, it only includes a screenshot with lyrics from a much more popular punk band. Inspection 12 has never contacted me and no post from this blog mentions 'Alden Howell' (except for this post, obviously).

As Tim Cushing wrote in a recent headline, "in the long history of specious DMCA claims, this is definitely one of them." Chitu, unlike many people who are rightfully too intimidated by potential liability, filed a counternotice... and it was rejected.

So we've got an obviously non-infringing post that has been wiped off the web and, at the time of writing, is still gone. That's not okay, and it's time to ask how it happened. There's no shortage of reasons.

Firstly (or more accurately lastly), we've got Google's handling of the DMCA request. As Chitu points out, it was just a search result takedown, but Google chose to actually take the post off of Blogspot as well. That wasn't an accident, it's their process:

From time to time, the Search team may receive copyright removal requests for search results that link to other Google products like Blogger or YouTube. In these cases, we forward these requests to the appropriate teams to evaluate the allegedly infringing material.

Actually, maybe "process" is too generous. If they "evaluate" the requests (twice, apparently—once at Search and then again at Blogger), surely they would filter out a takedown like this one that doesn't even pass the laugh test. And not only did these two evaluations fail to catch it, the review they supposedly conducted after receiving a counternotice still didn't catch the error. Given the nature of the law and the requirements it places on Google, all of this is somewhat understandable, and would be somewhat excusable but for one thing: Google's terrible customer service. Blanket, form-letter rejections that ignore all reason and logic, sent by a faceless monolith, are among the most infuriating things a customer can receive. Good luck getting actual help with a human being.

But the buck hardly stops at Google. It doesn't even really land there. After all, why did Inspection 12 file this takedown in the first place? Chitu asked them just that:

I've contacted Inspection 12 and they say "that must have been submitted in error. not fully understanding the DMCA notice. our intent wasn't to post on a blog or complaints about a blog. it was to submit a complaint to google about websites that are posting lyrical content that is falsely described as Inspection 12 lyrics in order to sell ringtones."

That's a lot better than some of the furious missives we've seen in the past when copyright holders have been called on their shenanigans, but there are still some big problems. If you're "not fully understanding the DMCA notice," then you are not allowed to file it. How can you sign your name to say you have a "good faith belief" in something if you knowingly don't understand what it means? Inspection 12 is clearly guilty of abusing the DMCA process. But one thing they're probably not guilty of is perjury.

And that brings us to the final problem, where the buck really does stop: the DMCA itself. As we've discussed before, the prescribed text of a DMCA takedown notice employs some clever wording to imply (intentionally or otherwise) that it's more strict on the rightsholder than it actually is. The "under penalty of perjury" language is surgically separated from the bulk of the notice—it applies only to the statement that you are the copyright holder or an authorized agent of the copyright holder. As for the statement that the material you are targeting is in fact infringing, that's just made under a good faith belief. That is a much lower bar, and while it's not great to stand in court and have it demonstrated that you asserted a good faith belief when there was none, it's hardly a clear-cut and substantial safeguard against abuse the way "penalty of perjury" is.

So let's be clear on this: the DMCA is harsh on anyone messing with copyright holders by incorrectly claiming rights they don't own, but lenient on copyright holders abusing the public.

Nobody is blame-free here, except Chitu and his blog. Google needs to handle these requests better, and Inspection 12 should never have sent that notice (nor should they be wasting their time on a DMCA campaign against lyric websites in the first place). But the real culprit is the DMCA itself, which is constantly pushing companies like Google in this regrettable direction, and makes it all too easy for rightsholders like Inspection 12 to abuse the law. Until we get a system that holds both sides of the equation to the same standard, and until copyright holders demonstrate that they can use the takedown system judiciously and responsibly, all their protestations about online services not doing enough to fight infringement will fall on deaf ears (or be drowned out by laughter).

Filed Under: dmca, inspection 12, takedown
Companies: google

Prince Sends A Takedown Over Six Second Vine Clips

from the fair-use? dept

Ah, Prince. The purple-loving musician has built up an irrational hatred for all things internet over the years, mostly focused on his belief that he should have 100% control over everything he has ever done. He's gone after companies and fans for posting pretty much anything. His music is also at the heart of the (still ongoing) Stephanie Lenz case, in which Universal Music Group issued a copyright takedown on a 29-second video with some Prince music in the background. In that case, the court said that UMG needed to take fair use into account before sending the takedown.

Given that, it seems rather surprising to find out that Prince is targeting even shorter clips -- including six second clips on Vine, the Twitter offshoot/acquisition, that allows people to post short video clips no longer than 6 seconds. Vine has built up a decent following pretty quickly, and it's difficult to see how anyone could argue that music appearing in such a Vine video wouldn't be either fair use or de minimis use (or both). But don't tell Prince that.

The DMCA takedown comes from NPG Records, which is Prince's personal record label, and names eight Vine clips, which apparently have all been removed. The notice was just sent on March 26, meaning we're still within the time frame in which someone could have filed a counternotice. One hopes that counternotices are being filed, and (perhaps) that someone is willing to challenge Prince on claiming that such videos are not fair use. Would he honestly claim that such a video harms the market for his music?

Filed Under: copyright, de minimis use, dmca, fair use, prince, takedown, vine
Companies: npg records, twitter