MediaFire Restores Virus Researcher's Account But Not Individual Files 72
chicksdaddy writes "The cloud-based hosting firm MediaFire has reversed a decision to suspend the account of virus researcher Mila Parkour after Naked Security raised questions about copyright violation complaints made against her by the mysterious firm LeakID. In an email to Parkour on Friday, MediaFire's director of customer support, Daniel Goebel, said that the company was restoring Parkour's access to her MediaFire account and apologized for the interruption in service. MediaFire also said it was asking LeakID, the Paris-based firm that accused Parkour of sharing copyrighted material, to 'confirm the status of the counterclaim [Parkour] submitted.' However, the firm is still blocking access to files that LeakID alleged were violating the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a strict copyright enforcement law in the U.S."
Re:Guilty until proven innocent, as usual (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought, the way DMCA was supposed to work is:
1. Claim filed.
2. Content taken down.
3. Counterclaim filed.
4. Content restored until a court order is received to take it down permanently.
Why does it so often seem to end at step 3?
Re:Guilty until proven innocent, as usual (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought the DMCA was only supposed to be usable in the US against US firms?
Is it me or is this the second or third similiar takedown that slashdot has had up in the past month or two that was a DMCA claim being made by a foreign firm, possibly against a foreign individual or entity?
Don't fear the idiot across the pond. Fear the idiot next to you who borrows the other idiot's club :)
Re:Guilty until proven innocent, as usual (Score:5, Interesting)
Horribly unbalanced laws are easy. You americans can force attention by abusing this law in a planned denial of service attack.
Set up a group that issues takedowns against the sites of:
* Your political parties
* Your politicians
* Governmental sites
* Major content providers and their retailers
The politicians will not enjoy this, not in the middle of an election campaign. And the content providers might notice some lost sales when their advertising is taken down for bogus infringement.
Then the system will change. Ideally the dmca goes, more realistically there will be punishment for frivolous takedowns. But that is enough, one can then punish trigger-happy dmca abusers in the future.
And if the punishments are too mild at first - set up a company for another round of targeted takedowns. When the punishments come, this company goes bankrupt and no one really gets punished. Repeat until the law improves sufficiently.
Re:Guilty until proven innocent, as usual (Score:3, Interesting)
Fear the idiot next to you who borrows the other idiot's club :)
Speaking of idiots and clubs, who wants to claim copyright on a bunch of malware anyway? Isn't that like saying "Hey, I'm a cyberterrorist and I don't want you looking at my tools?"
Just saying, sometimes it's tempting to troll right back.
Simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)
There really is only two ways this case should EVER be allowed to go:
1) LeakID admits they don't actually have any kind of ownership over the malware. LeakID gets sued for knowingly sending false C&D notices under DMCA (or equivalent, not a lawyer).
2) LeakID claims to have ownership of the malware. LeakID gets sued to oblivion for creation and distribution of malware.
Re:Guilty until proven innocent, as usual (Score:5, Interesting)
Horribly unbalanced laws are easy. You americans can force attention by abusing this law in a planned denial of service attack.
Set up a group that issues takedowns against the sites of:
* Your political parties
* Your politicians
* Governmental sites
* Major content providers and their retailers
The politicians will not enjoy this, not in the middle of an election campaign. And the content providers might notice some lost sales when their advertising is taken down for bogus infringement.
Then the system will change. Ideally the dmca goes, more realistically there will be punishment for frivolous takedowns. But that is enough, one can then punish trigger-happy dmca abusers in the future.
And if the punishments are too mild at first - set up a company for another round of targeted takedowns. When the punishments come, this company goes bankrupt and no one really gets punished. Repeat until the law improves sufficiently.
This will only work for a short time until they catch on. Then they can simply use the provisions in the USA-PATRIOT Act, the various Executive Orders, and the revised NDAA to treat those responsible as "illegal/enemy combatants" and have them secretly killed or abducted and imprisoned indefinitely.
"In Soviet..."
ummm :-/
Ah, screw it!
It's gotten so bad those jokes are more tragedy than comedy anymore.
Strat
Re:Guilty until proven innocent, as usual (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually if you're dealing with a foreign company, they'd probably do it on the claim that the Berne Convention only requires that nations honor each other's copyright C&D requests and the putback provisions of the DMCA aren't covered by it at all, ie the French can sue after a proper putback because they don't care about that part of the law.
Re:Guilty until proven innocent, as usual (Score:4, Interesting)
According to their wikipedia entry MediaFire is based in the US (Texas), AFAIK you don't have to be a US citizen to sue a US organization in a US court for breach of US laws (feel free to correct me if I am wrong).
Nope, you are spot on. In civil cases you can usually sue in either the country where either party is based or in the country where the transaction took place.
Normally though you always sue in your own country in order to force your opponent to have to deal with the hassle of finding representation in a foreign country and sending witnesses half way round the world. Unless of course one country has such bat shit crazy laws in your favour as in this case :)
This is actually a good point. Maybe the DMCA was designed to help US lawyers by generating this additional revenue stream for them as companies flock to the US legal system to file this crap. In which case it will only change when an equivalent amount of revenue has been lost to overseas as tech companies abandon the US and that does not seem to have happened yet.
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Civil - there is at least one case of someone winning over a wrongful takedown. I can't remember the name now. I suspect it's probably not worth the time/money of a lawyer, which is why the content industry feels they are so safe in just blanketing with takedowns.
No surprise; Daniel's a dick. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had to deal with this guy before when Mediafire took out my entire account instead of the single file that was reported. Even with the company who filed the DMCA notice getting involved, he still wouldn't reinstate the files. Don't bother complaining to Mediafire about him either, because he's the one that gets your complaints. And his reaction to them is to close your support ticket and suspend your account.
"Daniel G", as he shows up on the support site, is a power tripping dick.