Automated 'Content Protection' System Sends Wave Of Bogus DMCA Notice Targeting Legitimate URLs

from the don't-worry,-humans.-the-bots-won't-ever-do-this-job-well. dept

Yet another content protection service decides it's better off letting the machines do the work, with predictably catastrophic results. The EFF first noticed the DMCA abuse being committed by "Topple Track," a content protection service offered by Symphonic Distribution. Symphonic talks big about its protection service, pointing out its position as one of the "leading members" of Google's "Trusted Copyright Program."

The thing about trust is that it's hard to gain but easy to lose.

Topple Track’s recent DMCA takedown notices target so much speech it is difficult to do justice to the scope of expression it has sought to delist. A sample of recent improper notices can be found here, here, here, and here. Each notice asks Google to delist a collection of URLs. Among others, these notices improperly target:

• EFF’s case page about EMI v MP3Tunes

• The authorized music store on the official homepage of both Beyonce and Bruno Mars

• A fundraising page on the Minneapolis Foundation’s website

• The Graceland page at Paul Simon’s official website

• A blog post by Professor Eric Goldman about the EMI v MP3Tunes case

• A Citizen Lab report about UC Browser

• A New Yorker article about nationalism and patriotic songs

Other targets include an article about the DMCA in the NYU Law Review, an NBC News articleabout anti-virus scams, a Variety article about the Drake-Pusha T feud, and the lyrics to ‘Happier’ at Ed Sheeran’s official website. It goes on and on. If you search for Topple Track’s DMCA notices at Lumen, you’ll find many more examples.

Topple Track's failures came to the EFF's attention because it targeted one of its URLs, supposedly for infringing on artist Luc Sky's copyright for his song "My New Boy." The page targeted by Topple Track discusses the EMI lawsuit against MP3Tunes -- one that has been on the EFF's site for eight years. If Luc Sky even exists (the EFF could find no info on the artist/track), the discussion of a long-running legal battle certainly didn't contain an unauthorized copy of this track.

Presumably Topple Track has customers. (The "Luc Sky" dead end isn't promising.) If so, they're being ripped off by DMCA notices sent in their names that target tons of legit sites containing zero infringing content. The URLs targeted have no relation to the name/title listed as protected content and it's impossible to see how an algorithm could do the job this badly. There's obviously no human interaction with the DMCA process Topple Track employs, otherwise none of the DMCA notices listed would even have been sent to Google.

What did we say about trust?

Google has confirmed that it has removed Topple Track from its Trusted Copyright Removal Program membership due to a pattern of problematic notices.

Symphonic has commented on the debacle, claiming "bugs in the system" resulted in the wave of bogus takedown notices. Possibly true, but all it would have taken was a little human interaction to prevent this abuse of the process and this PR black eye.

Filed Under: automated, censorship, dmca, takedowns
Companies: symphonic distribution

Three Strikes System In Australia 'Too Costly' For Industry; Seems Piracy Not Such A Massive Problem After All

from the kangaroo-courts dept

It was evident when the "three strikes" or "graduated response" was first proposed in France back in 2009 that it was a really bad idea. After all, in its crudest form, it cuts people off from what has become a necessity for modern life -- the Internet -- simply because they are accused of copyright infringement, an area of law that is notoriously full of uncertainties. Given that inauspicious start, it's no surprise that over the years, the three strikes system has failed everywhere, with some of the early adopters either dropping it, or putting it on hold. No wonder, then, that a latecomer, Australia, is also having problems with implementing the approach, as this report from c|net makes clear:

A three strikes scheme to track down individual pirates and send them warning letters about their downloading habits has been all but quashed, after rights holders and ISPs decided that manually targeting and contacting downloaders would be too costly.

However, as in the US, where the "six strikes" scheme is also flailing, the Australian copyright industry has no intention of seizing this opportunity to move on from this punitive approach. Instead, it wants to make it worse by automating the process. Village Roadshow Co-CEO Graham Burke, who Techdirt wrote about back in 2014, is quoted as saying:

"When automation occurs, instead of costing AU$16 or AU$20 a notice [about US$12 or US$15], which is just prohibitive, it will cost cents per notice," he said. "In other words, the ISPs will have an automated system that can be done simply, as opposed to at the moment it's manual."

Of course, an automated system is likely to be plagued by false positives even more than one operated by humans. The much lower cost involved -- cents rather than dollars per letter -- means that there will be no economic incentive to check for these in order to keep the numbers down, which are likely to balloon as a result. In other words, it seems clear that the three strikes system in Australia is about to get much worse -- and it was bad to begin with.

But there is one piece of positive news to emerge from this story. The Australian copyright industry says that it is not worth pursuing alleged copyright infringement cases unless the three strikes system costs almost nothing to use. Clearly, then, the real scale of the losses caused by online piracy is nowhere near as great as companies love to claim, otherwise basic economics would push them to use even a manual system. That's yet another reason to get rid of the flawed and disproportionate graduated response.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: australia, automated, copyright, costs, graham burke, piracy, three strikes
Companies: village roadshow

Snowden: NSA Was Building 'Automated' System To Hit Back At Perceived Cyberattacks

from the bad-ideas dept

One final story to highlight from James Bamford's really wonderful Wired profile of Ed Snowden. This one might not be that surprising, but the NSA was building an internal automated "cyberwar" system called MonsterMind, which would seek to detect an incoming "cyber attack" and then automatically launch a counterattack. Here's how Bamford describes Snowden's explanation in his article:

The massive surveillance effort was bad enough, but Snowden was even more disturbed to discover a new, Strangelovian cyberwarfare program in the works, codenamed MonsterMind. The program, disclosed here for the first time, would automate the process of hunting for the beginnings of a foreign cyberattack. Software would constantly be on the lookout for traffic patterns indicating known or suspected attacks. When it detected an attack, MonsterMind would automatically block it from entering the country—a “kill” in cyber terminology.

Programs like this had existed for decades, but MonsterMind software would add a unique new capability: Instead of simply detecting and killing the malware at the point of entry, MonsterMind would automatically fire back, with no human involvement.

Yeah, because false alarms never happen at all. Hell, just this week I was hearing about a series of false alarms when the US thought that Russia had launched thousands of nuclear missiles at the US. Imagine an automated system taught to respond to that?

And, of course, this only works... if the NSA has access to private company's networks:

In addition to the possibility of accidentally starting a war, Snowden views MonsterMind as the ultimate threat to privacy because, in order for the system to work, the NSA first would have to secretly get access to virtually all private communications coming in from overseas to people in the US. “The argument is that the only way we can identify these malicious traffic flows and respond to them is if we’re analyzing all traffic flows,” he says. “And if we’re analyzing all traffic flows, that means we have to be intercepting all traffic flows. That means violating the Fourth Amendment, seizing private communications without a warrant, without probable cause or even a suspicion of wrongdoing. For everyone, all the time.”

This puts into context some stories from last year, which noted that Keith Alexander seemed particularly focused on getting companies to give the NSA access to their networks. Last October, he gave a speech in which he pitched exactly that:

Drawing an analogy to how the military detects an incoming missile with radar and other sensors, Alexander imagined the NSA being able to spot "a cyberpacket that's about to destroy Wall Street." In an ideal world, he said, the agency would be getting real-time information from the banks themselves, as well as from the NSA's traditional channels of intelligence, and have the power to take action before a cyberattack caused major damage.

And in a Washington Post profile of Keith Alexander from over a year ago, a similar idea was discussed:

His proposed solution: Private companies should give the government access to their networks so it could screen out the harmful software. The NSA chief was offering to serve as an all-knowing virus-protection service, but at the cost, industry officials felt, of an unprecedented intrusion into the financial institutions’ databases.

The group of financial industry officials, sitting around a table at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, were stunned, immediately grasping the privacy implications of what Alexander was politely but urgently suggesting. As a group, they demurred.

“He’s an impressive person,” the participant said, recalling the group’s collective reaction to Alexander. “You feel very comfortable with him. He instills a high degree of trust.”

But he was proposing something they thought was high-risk.

“Folks in the room looked at each other like, ‘Wow. That’s kind of wild.’ ”

This all should probably make you wonder why those very same financial institutions seem willing to shell out somewhere between $600,000 and $1 million per month for Alexander's "patent-pending" solutions to "cybersecurity."

Furthermore, this should shed some light on why the NSA was so in favor of CISPA and now CISA -- cybersecurity bills in Congress that would give private companies liability protections if they... shared network data with the NSA (and other parts of the federal government). The NSA needs those liability protections to get some companies to be willing to open up their networks to do this kind of MonsterMind offering, or they won't participate. It's also why Congress shouldn't pass such a bill.

Filed Under: access, automated, cisa, cispa, cyberattack, cybersecurity, ed snowden, keith alexander, monstermind, nsa, private networks

San Francisco Game Designer Creates Program That Converts Any Text Into A Patent Application

from the probably-a-patentable-process-itself dept

The US patent system is still largely broken, despite years of promises to clean the mess up. As we covered last week, Amazon was recently granted a patent to a photography method that's been in common use for years. Also recently, it was noted that the patent office has resumed its regularly-scheduled programming and is granting as many patents as humanly possible.

With the office running at full speed, there's no time like the present to submit your patent application to the rubber-stamping machine. The specifics of the application are less important than overall appearance of professionalism, so why not hand the creation job over to automation as well?

Sam Lavigne (a SF-based artist and game designer) has created a program that turns any text into a not-entirely-unbelievable patent application.

I wrote a program that transforms literary and philosophical texts into patent applications. In short, it reframes texts as inventions or machines. You can view the code on github.

I was partially inspired by Paul Scheerbart’s Perpetual Motion Machine, a sort of technical/literary diary in which Scheerbart documents and reflects on various failed attempts to create a perpetual motion machine. Scheerbart frequently refers to his machines as “stories” – I wanted to reverse the concept and transform stories into machines.

Levine's post goes into more detail on how this is achieved, starting with the standard formation of most patent applications, whose titles are generally of the "Method and device for xxxx" variety. The resulting applications generated by his code definitely have the patois of the patent process down cold. When attempting to patent something obvious or already patented, the ability to spin a thick web of dense text is a necessity. Lavigne's algorithms don't disappoint. Here's a bit from The Communist Manifesto: the Patent Application ("A method and device for comprehending, theoretically, the historical movement.")

Figure 1 is an isometric view of the progressive historical development of the proletariat.

Figure 5 is a diagram of the whole superincumbent strata of official society.

Figure 8 is a perspective view of the first conditions for emancipation.

Figure 10 schematically illustrates the French criticism of the bourgeois State.

Figure 11 is a block diagram of an independent section of modern society.

Figure 12 schematically illustrates the disastrous effects of machinery and division.

Figure 14 is a cross section of the misty realm of philosophical fantasy.

Figure 15 is a perspective view of an agrarian revolution as the prime condition.

Lavigne has also provided samples derived from "The Hunger Artist" by Franz Kafka and "The Question Concerning Technology" by Martin Heidegger.

At some point in the future, Lavigne plans to release a version that will implement any user input, meaning that any person's blog/Twitter feed/email will soon have a shot at US Patent Office validation. In the meantime, the code is available at Github for "innovators" wishing to get a head start on non-coding rivals.

It's an interesting exercise in bending unrelated texts to the formats and formalities of patent applications. The fact that its creations are no less credible than some actual patent applications isn't necessarily an indictment of the system, which, at the application point, is wholly dependent on the submitter's skill and intelligence. If an algorithmically-generated patent app manages to sneak its way into granted status, then there's reason for concern. The patent office is no longer riding the brakes, which obviously increases the chances of bad patents being granted. It's hard to imagine something like Kafka's "apparatus and device for staring into the void" making its way past any halfway alert examiner, but it at least it could make for some interesting reading.

Filed Under: automated, generated, karl marx, patents, sam lavigne

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

Microsoft Sends Google DMCA Takedowns For Microsoft's Own Website

from the yeah,-that's-working dept

Remember back when HBO sent a DMCA takedown notice to Google that included links to HBO.com? Apparently, the various services, which do automated DMCA takedowns, haven't gotten much better. TorrentFreak has the amusing story of how Microsoft apparently is paying good money to LeakID to send DMCA takedowns, on behalf of Microsoft, to Google over links to Microsoft's own website -- including to its store. Note that the "original work" URLs and the "allegedly infringing URLs" are identical. It really makes you wonder how much Microsoft pays to LeakID for this kind of "service." LeakID certainly has quite a history of bogus takedowns, suggesting that whatever system it's using to issue these takedowns is a complete joke. But, of course, since there's no real penalty for bogus takedowns, LeakID can just keep sending completely ridiculous notices like this one. While Google caught this one before taking stuff down, that doesn't always happen. For a functioning DMCA that doesn't lead to censorship, it seems only reasonable to have real penalties for false takedowns and (at the very least) a notice-and-notice system that gives someone a chance to respond before the content is initially taken down.

Filed Under: automated, copyright, dmca, takedowns
Companies: google, leakid, microsoft

Microsoft Sends Google A DMCA Notice... To Block Microsoft's Bing Search Engine

from the you-can't-make-this-stuff-up dept

Ah, bogus DMCA notices that you just can't make up. TorrentFreak has a good article highlighting a completely bogus DMCA notice from Microsoft (sent by one of its partners on its behalf) that tries to take a bunch of legitimate news sites out of Google's index, on the mistaken claim that they violated Windows 8 copyrights. But, even more ridiculous is an aside mentioned in the article, that some other DMCA notices appear to target Bing, Microsoft's own search engine. Indeed, they're not that hard to find. If you look up DMCA notices asking Google to remove links to Bing, Microsoft shows up quite a bit: If you dig down, you can find out the specifics, such as this DMCA notice sent on May 23 of this year, sent by Marketly on behalf of Microsoft, supposedly to stop the infringement of Office 2010. It lists out 997 URLs that it wants Google to take out of its search results, including a link to a Bing search. Given that Microsoft owns Bing... you'd think it would remove that search first. What's even more amusing is that if you go to the link in question on Bing... it's still there.

Yes, this is yet another silly move by an automated system, but it once again highlights some of the ridiculousness involved in DMCA takedowns for search results.

Filed Under: automated, bing, copyright, dmca, takedowns
Companies: google, microsoft

How Google's ContentID System Fails At Fair Use & The Public Domain

from the it's-a-problem dept

We recently covered how YouTube briefly pulled down the NASA-uploaded public domain video footage from the Curiosity rover's Mars landing. We were quite careful in the piece not to call it a DMCA takedown, because it was pretty clear that the DMCA was not involved. Unfortunately, many have been assuming that it was via the DMCA (and there are even lengthy comments discussing aspects of the DMCA). However, the DMCA had nothing to do with it. It appears that the whole thing was due to the way that YouTube's ContentID system works.

Tim Lee has a great post explaining how ContentID works in such situations, including the story of another video -- which involved commentary on the Curiosity landing done by Lon Seidman of the site CT Tech Junkie, which quickly received five claims from media organizations to copyright in the content. In response to all of this, the EFF has an important post highlighting the serious problems of an automated system like ContentID, which simply cannot understand algorithmically when content may be fair use or public domain. The EFF's fear is that the ContentID system doesn't have the (extremely limited, unfortunately) protections that the DMCA includes, and which were the focus of much discussion in our original post.

Content ID, by contrast, is an opaque and proprietary system where the accuser can serve as the judge, jury, and executioner. Worse, the person whose speech is being silenced has little recourse. The Content ID system tips whatever balance is present in the DMCA and allows even more pernicious forms of manipulation and abuse. In a Wired column earlier this year, Andy Baio enumerated some of the problems that YouTube users encounter:

But there has been a dramatic rise in Content ID abuse in the past couple of years, wielded in ways never intended. Scammers are using Content ID to steal ad revenue from YouTube video creators en masse, with some companies claiming content they don’t own deliberately or not. The inability to understand context and parody regularly leads to “fair use” videos getting blocked, muted or monetized.

But even without taking scammers into account, the premise behind Content ID is just incompatible with fair use and the public domain. It's impossibly complicated to define in a set of "business rules" for automated enforcement. Allowing Content ID robots to apply the rules leads to oversimplification that chills legitimate speech.

If anything, as Tim Lee's article explains, ContentID is actually demonstrating (quite clearly) why there are so many concerns about copyright takedowns. Copyright system supporters often insist that it's "easy" for sites to recognize and take down infringing content, and use any evidence of infringement as a damning sign of a site not doing enough. But, the reality on the ground is that making a determination on whether or not something is infringing is not nearly as easy as some people believe:

But in accommodating the demands of large copyright holders, YouTube has inadvertently reminded us all of the crucial point that flagging copyright infringement isn't nearly as simple as it is often portrayed by rightsholders. Even scanning videos for exact content matches that exceed certain thresholds (in order to preserve at least some fair uses) actually fails in all sorts of interesting ways.

Rather than acting as a neutral arbitrator between major content companies and independent organizations, YouTube's system favors the larger rightsholders that make use of its Content ID system over smaller creators. And because it's a private system that goes beyond the DMCA, the Content ID system is under no legal obligation to comply with the DMCA's safeguards and timelines.

ContentID certainly has some nice features -- including an innovative new revenue stream for content creators. But there are significant problems with it, concerning how it handles fair use and public domain material, which serve to highlight why the idea of a "silver bullet" solution for online infringement is so problematic.

Filed Under: automated, content id, copyright, dmca, public domain, youtube
Companies: google, youtube

EFF Argues That Automated Bogus DMCA Takedowns Violate The Law And Are Subject To Sanctions

from the yes,-but... dept

Having just been victimized by a bogus DMCA takedown notice that censored our content, I'm certainly aware of ways in which the process needs to improve (a notice-and-notice provision, rather than a notice-and-takedown provision, would be a big, big start). However, as we have detailed here in the past, these automated takedowns are pretty typical—and they're becoming an issue in a particular lawsuit. Hollywood went after Hotfile pretty strongly, but as part of Hotfile's countersuit showed, Warner Bros. in particular seemed to have a habit of issuing takedown orders on content it had no rights to.

That's a pretty big concern, no matter what the "intentions" of those breaking the law. Warner Bros.' response takes a pretty cavalier attitude, more or less amounting to "hey, mistakes were made; no biggie" . The specific law on bogus takedowns -- 512(f) of the DMCA -- only says that there's punishment for those who "knowingly materially misrepresent." Warner Bros., of course, insists that just making a mistake does not trip that wire.

The EFF has now jumped in with an amicus brief that argues otherwise. The argument is pretty straightforward: if you're doing automated, or semi-automated takedown notices without reviewing them, the efforts are so careless and negligent that they clearly misrepresent the claims needed for a legitimate DMCA takedown. The filing notes that such automated takedowns are a real problem (even citing our recent experience), and that if such automated takedowns aren't liable for sanctions under 512(f) then that section is effectively meaningless.

Indeed, if Warner were correct, which it is not, Section 512(f) would become largely superfluous. Any company could sidestep accountability for improper takedowns by simply outsourcing the process to a computer. What is worse, copyright owners would have a perverse incentive to dumb-down the process, removing human review so as to avoid the possibility of any form of subjective belief. The tragic consequences for lawful uses are obvious: untold numbers of legal videos would be taken down, whether or not the uses were fair or even licensed.

Imagine the potential for mischief: Let’s say that Warner does not like competition from Universal. It could set a computer to search through Universal’s online presence, with the loosest possible settings, and issue takedown after takedown to Universal’s ISP for spurious claims. Nor is this scenario far-fetched: as noted above, supra at 4-5, anticompetitive uses of the DMCA takedown process are commonplace.

Among other things, the EFF filing highlights the Lentz v. Universal ruling that found that those filing takedowns have to take fair use into account -- and pointing out that you can't take fair use into account if you're automating takedowns.

Unfortunately, historically, 512(f) has been a pretty toothless part of the law in response to bogus takedowns. The bar has been way too high. This is partly why we thought the parallel "remedy" that was found in SOPA was also likely to be equally useless. Attempts to make it stronger were rejected because those behind the bill knew it was toothless. Having the court agree with the EFF's position on this would be a huge help in giving those who are victims of bogus takedowns a tool to fight back.

Filed Under: automated, dmca, sanctions, takedowns

US Copyright Group Kicking Off Next Round Of Lawsuits [Updated]

from the can't-stop-now dept

Despite the fact that there are still some serious legal questions about the methods of US Copyright Group (really, DC-based law firm Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver), the firm is apparently about to file its next round of lawsuits, suing thousands more, with the hope that they'll just shut up and pay up, rather than actually wanting to go to court.. Update: As pointed out in the comments, this is actually an announcement of the second round of the initial lawsuits, actually filing suit against the named participants who failed to settle when sent the "pay up or we'll sue" notice. This makes it a bit more interesting, seeing as actually filing specific lawsuits would make this program a lot more expensive, which is why other, similar, organizations haven't done so....

The same article also notes (without much surprise) that despite orders from the judge for USCG to work with the EFF to craft a more informative letter to be sent to people who are targeted in the lawsuits, the two sides are having quite a bit of trouble agreeing on the language. Apparently, they're already going back to the judge to say that this isn't exactly working. Shocking.

Filed Under: automated, copyright, lawsuits, pre-settlement letters
Companies: us copyright group