Warner Bros. Admits To Issuing Bogus Takedowns 199
An anonymous reader sends this quote from TechDirt:
"One of the bizarre side notes to Hollywood's big lawsuit against the cyberlocker Hotfile was a countersuit against Warner Bros. by Hotfile, for using the easy takedown tool that Hotfile had provided, to take down a variety of content that was (a) non-infringing and (b) had nothing to do with Warner Bros. at all (i.e., the company did not hold the copyright on those files). In that case, WB admitted that it filed a bunch of false takedowns, but said it was no big deal because it was all done by a computer. Of course, it then came out that at least one work was taken down by a WB employee, and that employee had done so on purpose, annoyed that JDownloader could help possible infringers download more quickly."
They did it to me... (Score:5, Interesting)
They're totally guilty as charged. They attempted to take down a video that (kinda) had some of their content. The problem was, it was a lecture about fair use AND the topic was about a song that should have been a fair use of their content. The band had been sued by Island back in the early 90's and there were lots of issues with the way the whole thing went down.
Not good at all (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh Okay (Score:5, Interesting)
The "penalty of perjury" language appears to only apply to the question of whether or not the person filing the takedown actually represents the party they claim to represent -- and not whether the file is infringing at all, or even whether or not the file's copyright is held by the party being represented. And, in the lawsuit, Warner Bros. is relying on that to try to avoid getting hit with a perjury claim.
Re:Oh Okay (Score:5, Interesting)
"I agree... Another loop hole in the laws and someone (big company) is abusing it..."
What in the world makes you think this is a "loophole"?
Loopholes are unintentional gaps in the law. The probability that this was not entirely intentional is pretty close to zero. The DMCA was crafted by lobbyists for the "big content" companies.
Re:Oh Okay (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny how "on a computer" works wonders for government (no expectation of privacy) and corporations (ditto plus magic patents) but has the opposite effect on common individuals, where downloading by script (violation of TOU, not even actually stealing) may well land you in more trouble than, say, jacking a car.
Re:The score so far (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a friend who has been in several not so famous bands. We worked together back when napster was still a place people went to get music.
His comment at the time was "if I found out someone had put my bands music up online for people to download, why I would hunt him down and shake his hand".
Re:Oh Okay (Score:5, Interesting)
these are actually feasible for static images.
http://rogeralsing.com/2008/12/07/genetic-programming-evolution-of-mona-lisa/
PERSPECTIVE (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh Okay (Score:5, Interesting)
You should check with other users on your ISP. In most cases the ISP has a policy saying you'll be cut off after so many complaints but in reality it's nearly impossible to enforce. In many places, if your ISP is the only company in the area they are very likely legally required to provide you service as long as you're paying your bill. We honestly treated it like the customers WiFi had been compromised and someone had done this from outside their home. Our letters even reflected this to the customer. If they got a LOT of complaints (like thousands) we'd even call them, concerned, because clearly their network had been hacked by some terrible software pirates. They'd play along, and the complaints would go away. Remember, your ISP is usually on your side in these cases. You clearly pay for the service so you can do this thing... and the copyright holders don't pay anything... and they're forcing you to pay staff to do something that actually drives customers away from your service. Many people, after getting a complaint, will call in and reduce the speed of their service. We had stats on this. You're getting thousands of complaints per day that if you send on to your customers have, lets say, a 20% chance of causing them to reduce their services or cancel service all together. Or in your case use a VPN and waste a lot of your bandwidth. It's ALL bad for the ISP. They hate the complaints even more than you do.