Ubuntu Torrent Removed From Google Due To DMCA Complaint (omgubuntu.co.uk) 241
Reader LichtSpektren shares a report from OMG Ubuntu: Cited in a DMCA takedown request filed against Google on behalf of Paramount Pictures is an innocuous link to a 32-bit alternate install image Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS. The takedown request seeks to remove links to a number of torrent URLS that are alleged to infringe on Paramount movie Transformers: Age of Extinction. Ubuntu clearly doesn't. All it takes is a quick glance at the URL in question to see that. It's very much a stock ISO of an old Ubuntu release. And yet Google has complied with the request and scrubbed the link to the page in question from its search index.
Because it's fun to stay at the (Score:5, Funny)
DMCA!
Really?
but it can be used to download movies (Score:5, Funny)
And so it begins. (Score:3)
And so it begins.
Re:And so it begins. (Score:4, Funny)
https://xkcd.com/1656/ [xkcd.com]
The best law system you can buy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is anybody surprised that, this time, Google did not exercise discretion and retain the link as they did with Warner Brother's request to take down their own web site?
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Google probably has a whitelist of domains that, at the very least, will raise a flag in the takedown system. Anything not in that whitelist just gets taken down automatically without anyone even knowing about it.
Alternatives to Google (Score:3, Informative)
Is YaCy [yacy.net] worth using yet?
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I switched to https://qwant.com/ [qwant.com] a few months ago. Works fine for ~95% of all searches I do. The other 5% I manually route via Google's more advanced filtering.
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Being located in France would make it subject to EU rules, no? Like the "right to forget", and other mandatory filtering? These are the things we need to circumvent.
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While true, I consider this to be more important compared to Google:
"Qwant's philosophy is based on two principles: no user tracking and no filter bubble.
We do our best to respect the privacy of our online visitors while ensuring a secure environment and relevant results."
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ddg 0
bing 0
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"Niggers don't have empathy" = 6 results
"White people don't have empathy" = 3 results
"Honkeys don't have empathy" = 0 results
So, google's racist.
I checked (Score:5, Funny)
The ISO has more plot and character development than Transformers.
No similarity what so ever.
Re: I checked (Score:2)
Comparing the movie-viewing experience with the exclusive of reading the ISO as raw bytes in a hex editor.
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The ISO has more plot and character development than Transformers.
I really liked the epic battle between /dev/zero and /dev/null.
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Re: I checked (Score:2)
Laws should be changed... (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's just a nice fee that they are willing to pay to get rid of torrents.
If it's $1million for a false infringement it would be painful for the companies.
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What was it like when dinosaurs roamed the earth?
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I think all fines should be based on gross income or revenue. For instance, a first offence could be 1% of Univeral's gross earnings. Next offence would be 5%. And after that it goes up in 5% intervals until the company is destroyed.
Re:Laws should be changed... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with this is twofold:
1. It wouldn't work. Companies would just create shell companies that don't make any money, which are responsible for the take-down notice.
2. It unfairly punishes big companies which are involved in a lot of things, and as a result, make a lot of mistakes.
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Companies would just create shell companies that don't make any money, which are responsible for the take-down notice.
Make it so that the take-down notice must come from the copyright holder or from an entity appointed by the copyright holder with full "regress" ( I don't know the English legal term).
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Your number two ignores the damage that these takedown notices cause to independent artists and small businesses. This should be taken into account and significant enough damages against the parent complainer rewarded to make the injured party whole. This would be simple if we simple added an extension to copyright making the copyright holder liable for anything they pay other companies to do regarding that copyright.
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2. It unfairly punishes big companies which are involved in a lot of things, and as a result, make a lot of mistakes.
That's a feature, not a problem. A big company should have the resources to verify things before bot-filing a takedown and the legal savvy to understand what they're doing. If they're still generating a lot of false takedowns, they should be fined accordingly. Don't want to pay a lot of fines? Don't claim you own something that you don't.
I'd say at a bare minimum, a false DMCA takedown should be treated as willful copyright infringement. It's a claim by someone who didn't own the copyright that they di
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I'm not disagreeing with you that the penalty should be higher. Rather, I am simply stating that it doesn't make sense to scale cost on the fully company resources.
I do however disagree with the resources thing. Adding a torrent is far easier than finding it, properly verifying it infringes, and sending a takedown notice. If a company has a legit takedown notice for 10,000 items, 5 of which are wrong, it is really fair to fine them $750,000 despite having an accuracy rate of 99.95%? If it were 90% (which it
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If a company has a legit takedown notice for 10,000 items, 5 of which are wrong, it is really fair to fine them $750,000 despite having an accuracy rate of 99.95%? If it were 90% (which it probably is) then it is a problem.
Yes. When dealing in large numbers, it's more important to limit the rate of unintentional harm, not less. For example, a cure that has a fatal side effect 0.05% of the time might be acceptable if the disease was very rare and only administered to 10 people a year, but it would be totally unacceptable in a vaccine that was administered to 100,000.
For the large company, $750k is a drop in the bucket, but for one of those 5 people, you may have seriously harmed their livelihood. If the copyright violation
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No one would want to be leader of a country then. Every decision that is made can cost lives, whether it be sending troops into battle or allocating funds to one place or another.
If we worry about not hurting everyone with every action we take, we would get nothing done, which would end up hurting everyone in the long run.
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If the fine per instance is too small, it will have no impact. Just take a look at how banks behave if you want to see how useless small fines are. The fines will have to be big enough so that they add up to significant amounts or the fine schedule needs to be non-linear.
Unfortunately hell will freeze over before anything happens to limit the damage caused b
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You're talking about the earnings of a Hollywood studio? Clearly you know nothing of Hollywood accounting. It's zero in every context where they want to not pay something, and they've been doing this long before anyone had heard of "double Irish".
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I would propose instead, that in order for a DMCA to be valid, the party must name the work being violated.... and if the claim is found to be false, the original length of the copyright term is divided by two... I guarantee that will put a stop to this, and a lot of great works will fall into the public domain in a matter of weeks.
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Yes, but how often do you hear of a case of them using the DMCA to go after the wrong thing and it's for a great work. It's usually for some Michael Bay movie or Bieber song.
Now if the punishment was that they couldn't inflict the item of media onto the public for six months or a year for every false accusation then I would definitely get on board for that. No radio, no streaming, no sales for the period of time.
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You would have to prove it was knowingly falsely submitted, not just erroneously or even mistakenly.
So.. negligence doesn't count? Well that's very convenient, isn't it, if these are all generated by computer scan, then there's no one involved to make it "knowingly" falsely submitted.
"Reckless" is one legal standard (Score:2)
US law has a well-developed system for identifying different levels of "be careful". They are different types of negligence. For example, if you drop your watch in my house and I find it, how careful I have to be taking care of it is different than if you put in a safe deposit box in the bank, where you are paying them to protect it.
One legal standard that could be applied would be "reckless". You could have a penalty for recklessly sending a DMCA notice, which means doing so with little regard for wheth
Also strict liability (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, US law has something called "strict liability".
In strict liability situations, the actor is liable, period. That's regardless of negligence, fault, or intent. Using explosives and keeping dangerous animals are common examples that make the reasoning for sterict liability fairly clear. If you're using TNT, or you have tigers, you are -automatically- liable for any damage caused; it doesn't matter how careful you were being. Speeding is a more common, though perhaps less clear. If you are going faster than the speed limit, you owe the ticket. The state doesn't have to prove that you knew what the speed limit was, you knew how fast you were going, or that the intentionally drove faster than the limit. If you did in fact drive faster than the speed limit, it's case closed.
So you could have the following schedule of penalties:
Knowingly sending a materially inaccurate DMCA notice - $10,000 penalty.
Recklessly sending a materially inaccurate DMCA notice - $5,000 penalty.
Sending a materially inaccurate DMCA notice - $1,000 penalty.
If you send a bad notice, you owe at least $1,000.
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You would have to prove it was knowingly falsely submitted, not just erroneously or even mistakenly.
Not necessarily, negligence is a recognized legal concept. So is the idea of repeat offenses. Make the first one a slap on the wrist and escalating rapidly.
nothing ever changes (Score:2)
You can't change the law without changing the politicians who write them. That's not going to happen this year.
You're assuming it ever changes. The Clintons signed this stinker into law with bipartisan support. Whichever party wins the white house, the end result is the same. This year is just particularly distasteful.
Which is Stranger? (Score:5, Funny)
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Have you ever watched a video of a train approaching a broken track with excitement and anticipation? Some of us genuinely want to see Age of Extinction and gain some deep satisfaction for managing to kill more brain cells through Bayhem than through a solid drinking session, or in some cases even turn the Bayhem into a drinking game.
Yet we also don't want to give any money to Paramount as a result. It's a wonderful statistical catch-22.
Is it pirated a lot because it's super popular?
Is it pirated a lot beca
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I rather wish.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That there were some penalties to people/corporations who DMCA stuff that they clearly don't own.
Re:I rather wish.... (Score:5, Interesting)
That is called, "Slander of Title."
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That is called, "Slander of Title."
As I understand it (IANAL), getting a judgement of Slander of Title generally requires showing malice.
Maybe you could construe gross negligence to qualify?
New York Country Lawyer: Where are you?
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No there's not. There only are penalties to those who say they are working on behalf of a content creator.
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the problem is that they can spend more on lawyers to make your actions "bad faith" while theirs are still "good faith". I think a more effective route would be to hold this up as an example of their automated scanner being so bad that trusting it is no longer "good faith" but simple blind stupidity, with an eye to forcing them to expose the scanner internals and actually fix the damn thing.
I don't quite understand the confusion (Score:3)
All it takes is a quick glance at the URL in question to see that. It's very much a stock ISO of an old Ubuntu release. And yet Google has complied with the request and scrubbed the link to the page in question from its search index.
I'm surprised that the submitter apparently believes Google's takedown tool has a person behind it.
With Google, all this stuff is automated. And, as with most things Google, you're going to have a heck of a time finding a place to report this obvious problem.
Re:I don't quite understand the confusion (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I don't quite understand the confusion (Score:4, Insightful)
If it is automated, why is it that Google flags a DMCA complaint on WB vs WB earlier this month? Why does Google not automatically take it down?
Because Google does all of this to serve the Studios. They have a whitelist of stuff that they just ignore takedown requests for, to prevent DMCA abuse by ordinary people from hurting the sstudios. Abuse the other direction is just fine, of course.
What does a URL prove exactly? (Score:4, Interesting)
All it takes is a quick glance at the URL in question to see that.
To see what? That's it's not labeled as being infringing on something? Can Gawker publish http://gawker.com/definitely.n... [gawker.com] and point a 'quick glance at the URL' to claim they didn't distribute it (leaving aside the question of, if they did, was it tortious).
Of course, I'm reasonably confident that the torrent in question was not actually infringing. But to conclude that, you'd have to take a quick glance at the content or compare the hash against one you know is Ubuntu or ....
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Was probably removed due to a take down notice by Canonical, since that is obviously a link to an Ubuntu download....
false positives from auto bot take downs? (Score:2)
false positives from auto bot take downs? This is why ISP don't want a strikes system and it makes an criminal case hard with reasonable doubt issues.
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false positives from auto bot take downs?
The Autobots are seriously offended by your statement. Expect contact from their legal representatives at Paramount and Hasbro; you are obviously an agent for the Decepticons!
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This was clearly a decepticon action.
Google needs to be careful (Score:4, Interesting)
They've shown that they don't just blindly respond [nydailynews.com] to DMCA requests, that somebody is vetting them first and deciding whether or not to take down the supposedly infringing material. In the linked case, Google decided not to honor the request to remove Warner Brothers websites from their search engine, as it was obviously erroneous. Yet they do not provide the same service globally, as evidenced by the request to take down a Ubuntu torrent despite this request being farcical.
I can see this issue being used by both sides of the DMCA argument to show that Google is not handling these requests correctly. The fact that they aren't handling all DMCA requests the same leaves them open to a possible lawsuit.
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Yeah they're caught between the devil and the hard place though.
* If they don't ever take down any links: they might be legally liable for aiding in the distribution of copyrighted material.
* If they take down all links: Everybody/anybody can spam them with takedown requests.
* If they try and act responsibly and evaluate each list: They will now be working for free for all the giant media companies, who will just pam them with massive takedown lists of every/any torrent they can find (even legal ones),
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Found your problem.
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Please elucidate.
Fraud and Slander (Score:3)
Just wondering, but I don't think a DMCA request provides immunity from fraud nor libel laws.
http://legal-dictionary.thefre... [thefreedictionary.com]
libel
1) n. to publish in print (including pictures), writing or broadcast through radio, television or film, an untruth about another which will do harm to that person or his/her reputation, by tending to bring the target into ridicule, hatred, scorn or contempt of others. Libel is the written or broadcast form of defamation, distinguished from slander which is oral defamation. It is a tort (civil wrong) making the person or entity (like a newspaper, magazine or political organization) open to a lawsuit for damages by the person who can prove the statement about him/her was a lie. Publication need only be to one person, but it must be a statement which claims to be fact, and is not clearly identified as an opinion. While it is sometimes said that the person making the libelous statement must have been intentional and malicious, actually it need only be obvious that the statement would do harm and is untrue.
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In this particular case, who would have grounds to sue for libel? The only reputation that has been damaged here is Google's, and that was as a result of Google's own action (or automated inaction) and not the take-down request itself. (WB's reputation has also been damaged, but you can't sue yourself for libel)
The only party that would have been harmed directly would be extratorrent, for the implication that they hosted pirated content, but I'm pretty sure the operators of extratorrent don't want to get an
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Paramount has recklessly called the publisher of the Ubuntu ISO a copyright violator. Perhaps few here see that as much of a slander, but it is derogatory.
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That is a really tenuous argument in this particular case, because they weren't accusing Ubuntu itself of being infringing. If there had been more than the one solitary link then there might have been a case. I'm not a lawyer, but I would assume there is some minimum standard for establishing potential or actual harm.
There are other cases, especially with youtube videos, where slander/libel could definitely apply (especially when dealing with fair-use exemptions)
The issue really needs to be fixed from withi
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It wasn't Ubuntu that was slandered.
Youtube is an example of where the consequences are larger, including possible loss of an account if you get slandered too often, but you can face the same issues with other hosting providers.
Agreed, it should be handled by modifying the DMCA, but since the *AA have apparently kept up their payments, slander laws may be the best available defense for now.
Slander of title (Score:2)
The legal term you're looking for is slander of title [wikipedia.org], which came up in SCO v. Novell.
Nice studio you have there. (Score:3)
It would be a shame if someone was to program thousands of DCMA bots that reported everything you have on the Internet as infringing.
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And the US legal system is fundamentally broken.
Just this weekend I took Ryanair to court. I filed in the Irish small claims court for EUR25. I am disputing GBP200 that they are wrongfully failing to refund to me.
Here in the UK/EU I have access to low cost legal means of pursuing bad actors. Sure, I may easily lose my court case, but at least I will have had an opportunity. I doubt $25 is enough to even consider a civil case in the US, let alone cover the filing fees.
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Small claims courts vary in the US (as do most state level things) but $30 is typical for a filing fee.
SubjectsInCommentsAreStupidCauseTheSubjectIsTFA (Score:2)
Mind you: if i like something then i go buy it. But that's not always possible because of artificial scarcity.
So yeah, fuck them.
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licensing is intrinsically artificial scarcity, so even if it's stupid-ass, it counts.
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> Just curious, what do you have trouble getting due to artificial scarcity?
I'll bite.
Old DOS games that are no longer sold aka abandonware.
Obviously piracy is one solution but that is no longer an option for me -- which means scouring Ebay for old copies.
There should be a law that if software is no longer being sold for 20 years then it automatically falls into the public domain since obviously it has lost its monetary value.
Makes sense given the movie's plot (Score:2)
This makes sense, especially seen as an attempt to prevent the movie from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Transformers: Age of Extinction is about the final days of the desktop OS "transformation", with Microsoft Windows permanently losing the desktop war to Linux.
The last Windows users move to the moon and are banished from Earth, effectively becoming "extinct" from Earth's perspective.
So, in order to ensure this doesn't happen, they associate Linux distros with the movie, utilizing the DMCA as a prev
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Transformers: Age of Extinction is about the final days of the desktop OS "transformation", with Microsoft Windows permanently losing the desktop war to Linux.
If such a movie existed, Hasbro and Paramount would have to file the claim under trademark law, not copyright law.
DMCA Paramount? (Score:3)
Since Ubuntu is covered by the GPL then removal of links to source and by extension compiled images for comparison is a violation of Ubuntu's GPL, thus Copyright infringement, thus The Ubuntu foundation needs to be sending a DMCA copyright infringement notice to Paramount to take down anything they have or use that could mistake their own rights of other protected under GPL.
DMCA counter-notice (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice. I used to work in the security and abuse department of a major hosting company. Let me shed just a little light on the DMCA for those of you who don't know. Consult a lawyer for more details or about any particular case.
The DMCA requires that the recipient of the notice at a safe harbor host notify the party responsible for making the content available on the host. Then that party has a certain amount of time to file a counter notice saying the takedown request is erroneous and why.
Faking the takedown is punishable. Faking the counter-notice is punishable. Either party may make some mistake in that process, though.
The party that has no say is the safe harbor host. If you get a takedown notice and get no counter-notice you must take down the content permanently to keep your safe harbor rights. Most hosts take things down proactively and will restore them after counter-notice has been filed. This absolves them of legal liability from either side under the DMCA.
Google's doing what I understand the law says they must. Paramount / Viacom may have made an error or may have some hatred toward Linux, Ubuntu, Canonical, Shuttleworth, the FSF, or what have you. Google's doing what they are obligated to do in order to keep themselves out of the middle of any litigation over it.
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The only thing that is illegal in a takedown notice is if you claim ownership of something that's not yours. You think that applies but it doesn't, paramount actually owns the transformer movie they claimed ownership of. There is no cause of action for them claiming they own transformers and that X file is transformers when it's not. This is a very big hole in the law that allows these companies to make these fraudulent claims.
To sum up, the only thing that would have bee i
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Regardless of any weakness in actionability against Paramount / Viacom, a counter-notice of "This is not that work" is all it takes to clear Google of liability to Paramount and allow them to put the Ubuntu ISO back up.
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Google's network is Google's property. Paramount can't just log into Google servers and take content down. Google's very specifically not playing police, too, because it makes no real decision. It has a policy about how quickly it takes things down and how quickly it needs a counter-noticed should one be needed. It just needs to comply with federal law so it's not found to be complicit when someone uses its services to violate the DMCA. That's what safe harbor is all about.
Google has a double standard (Score:2)
When Google was requested by Universal Pictures' agent to nix their own IMDB site due to DMCA infringement, they did not comply. However, when a few days later when Paramount's agent clearly makes a bogus DMCA claim that an Ubuntu torrent infringes on their Transformers movie, the link gets taken down. Clearly, there's a double standard.
https://search.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
Does Paramount use Ubuntu or any other Linux? (Score:2)
If Paramount's servers, in any way, use Linux, they just committed a GPL violation and are open to be sued. And I think they should be sued hard.
Furthermore, as part of any settlement Paramount must agree to issue a DMCA takedown notice to Google requesting that the link to Android be removed, since it's related to a Transformers movie.
More than meets the URL (Score:2)
All it takes is a quick glance at the URL in question to see that. It's very much a stock ISO of an old Ubuntu release.
Eh... no.
The URL could have been: hxxp://sketchy-torrent-site.tld/wiki/FOIA-Hillary%20Clinton%20Does%20Trump.real-legit.torrent.html and have pointed to a torrent that was really a copy of some Transformers movie or whatever. URLs are only meaningful to humans and can be deceptive or -- pinky to lip -- more than meets the eye.
So, I don't see anything really extra chilling about this. It's not an official mirror that got dinged here, people. Sheeh; OP is dumb and this is not newsworthy.
More bullshit (Score:2)
KIND OF WORK:Unspecified
DESCRIPTION Without a Paddle (Original Movie)
ORIGINAL URLS:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt03... [imdb.com]
ALLEGEDLY INFRINGING URLS:
http://bittorrent.am/download-... [bittorrent.am]
Yeah, I'm SURE that "Rebel Without a Cock" is the same movie as "Without a Paddle".
But they flagged donaldjtrump.com that will not co (Score:2)
But they flagged donaldjtrump.com that will not come down by some auto bot system / if it did it would be a very big black eye for google.
Congress wrote DMCA law, not Google (Score:2)
FYI, Congress wrote the DMCA, not Google. Google is following the law.
Congress failed to include sufficient provision for reckless DMCA notices. A significant penalty for recklessly sending incorrect notices is very much needed. Since it's a law, Congress has to do that, not Google.
On the other hand, Congress DID solicit and make use of public input when writing DMCA, modifying the proposal based on public input. At the time, nobody foresaw that people would send Google would get three MILLION notices p
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Also, nobody has done a good job of informing webmasters and others about counter-notices. Under DMCA, if Warner Brothers sends a notice, the recipient has to take it down, BUT you can then send a COUNTER-notice saying "this isn't infringing" and they have to put it back up.
No. If you send a counter notice, Google has to ask Warner Brothers "are you sure this specific link is infringing?", and if WB says "Yes" then the link stays down and you have to take it to a judge.
The problem is that it's ALL automated, including the final confirmation from Warner Brothers (which is automatically "Yes")
Re:Congress wrote DMCA law, not Google (Score:5, Insightful)
But to go back to what someone else said in another thread, when Warner Brothers is asked if they're sure, and they answer yes, it becomes admissible evidence of a higher level of culpability. Knowing no other facts, a bad takedown could conceivably be the result of conduct that doesn't even rise to the level of negligence--maybe someone got bad info somehow, maybe someone copied all the torrents linked from a page that contains a dozen Transformers torrents, and inexplicably, one for Ubuntu. I can see a jury of reasonable men accepting that with the sheer volume of piracy WB has to deal with, its agents can still make mistakes even when exercising reasonable care.
The counter notice changes that. It's like the difference between an author making a typo even after a round or two of self-editing, and an author getting an marked up draft from his editor with a big red circle around the typo in question, and still not fixing the typo. The counter notice is a big favor to WB, it's a warning to pay extra attention to a specific issue, and WB, by responding Yes, is either saying "We looked again, and this Ubuntu torrent actually contains a terrible movie," or they're saying, "GTFO google, we don't actually care to check our work." At this point, it would be hard for WB to argue that its agents weren't extremely reckless, if not acting intentionally.
Sending the counter-takedown may not get immediate results, but it will yield a treasure trove of useful evidence for anyone with the standing to sue or to trigger relevant enforcement actions under the DMCA or related laws.
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But to go back to what someone else said in another thread, when Warner Brothers is asked if they're sure, and they answer yes, it becomes admissible evidence of a higher level of culpability. Knowing no other facts, a bad takedown could conceivably be the result of conduct that doesn't even rise to the level of negligence--maybe someone got bad info somehow, maybe someone copied all the torrents linked from a page that contains a dozen Transformers torrents, and inexplicably, one for Ubuntu. I can see a jury of reasonable men accepting that with the sheer volume of piracy WB has to deal with, its agents can still make mistakes even when exercising reasonable care.
The counter notice changes that. It's like the difference between an author making a typo even after a round or two of self-editing, and an author getting an marked up draft from his editor with a big red circle around the typo in question, and still not fixing the typo. The counter notice is a big favor to WB, it's a warning to pay extra attention to a specific issue, and WB, by responding Yes, is either saying "We looked again, and this Ubuntu torrent actually contains a terrible movie," or they're saying, "GTFO google, we don't actually care to check our work." At this point, it would be hard for WB to argue that its agents weren't extremely reckless, if not acting intentionally.
Sending the counter-takedown may not get immediate results, but it will yield a treasure trove of useful evidence for anyone with the standing to sue or to trigger relevant enforcement actions under the DMCA or related laws.
Very well said ... and sadly a day when I have no mod points.
Not quite. I'll copy-paste the law for you (Score:3)
> No. If you send a counter notice, Google has to ask Warner Brothers "are you sure this specific link is infringing?", and if WB says "Yes" then the link stays down and you have to take it to a judge.
I'll copy-paste the actual text of the law for you so you can read it for yourself. The complainant (Warner Brothers) has to "take it to a judge". Here's the exact text of the statute:
replaces the removed material and ceases disabling access to it not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days follow
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Sorry, you are right. I got the rules for Content ID takedowns and DMCA takedowns mixed up.
DMCA section "Information Location Tools" (Score:2)
> Google is hosting _links_ not the infringing material. It is not clear
It wasn't clear until DMCA. DMCA has a section titled "Information Location Tools" it's specically for search engines and indexes.
There is also a section for web hosting companies, who store the material, and a separate section for ISPs, who don't. It even explicitly talks about caching by ISPs. Other than missing appropriate penalties for recklessly sending inaccurate notices, the DMCA is pretty darn well written, specifying in d
I helped write it, MANY of us did, before Google (Score:4, Informative)
Actually most of the text, as finally passed into law, was written in 1997 largely by a bunch of people who mostly worked for themselves, a couple guys who did web hosting, a photographer or two, some "bloggers" (the word blogger didn't exist yet), etc. Most web sites at the time were run by one or two people, and most hosting companies were 1-6 people. There were a total of maybe 10 spiders crawling the web, none of them hunting for copyright violations. Anyway there was a pretty good cross section of people involved with the web commenting on the DMCA drafts. A few hundred of us submitted thousands of changes to the original draft, so I'd say that at more half of the text is now stuff we submitted.
Have a read of the law. The relevant portion, the bit people normally mean when they say "DMCA" is only a few pages:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us... [cornell.edu]
You'll notice it clearly lays out a specific procedure for web hosting companies, a similar procedure tailored for ISPs, and another similar procedure for search engines and directories. Notice the counter-notice part - they have to put the content back up if the respondent says "no, it's not infringing". Notice that the complainant is required to specify exactly which URLs they are talking about and other details - they aren't allowed to just say "that site has some of my pictures on it". You've probably already noticed what it does NOT included - appropriate penalties for recklessly sending a notice.
It was written in 1997, Google didn't yet exist as a company. At the time, it appeared that directories like Yahoo and DMOZ would beat spider-based search engines, though Altavista, HotBot, and Excite were obviously too big to just disappear. We didn't predict the 100% fully-automated complaints. We figured that in the rare case someone sent a completely crap complaint, the recipient would take five minutes to send a counter-notice, then maybe sue the guy who sent the complaint. Obviously it's time for an update, it's become quite obvious that a penalty is needed for recklessly sending automated notices. We didn't know that in 1997, there were no automated notices.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You only need to download the .torrent file (not the full torrent) to see that it's just pointing to the official Ubuntu torrents.
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The DMCA forces Google to immediately take action for every request. If they started manually vetting each request (or limiting request rate), WB would immediately accuse Google of violating the safe harbor provision by not acting as soon as technically possible.
Google shot themselves in the foot with the automated system. Now that the studios are used to the rapid automated results, any intentional slowing of the take-downs (even to ensure accuracy) could be considered resisting the DMCA.
Does DMCA rule out a demotion penalty? (Score:2)
Say company P or its representative sends numerous clearly false notices of claimed infringement to search engine G, and P has a website. Does the DMCA require G to keep P's website ranked highly in G's index?
If not, Google could just demote Paramount in search.
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Now THAT is an interesting idea, since the courts have already ruled that Google can do whatever it wants with search rankings.
I'm not sure there is anything Paramount could do against being de-ranked (or removed entirely) since removing links (outside of the DMCA) would be considered free speech on Google's part.
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All google needs to do is open the floodgates. Remove whatever it is that the use to not take down warner bros sites when warner bros sends a DMCA notice about them. Open up the fast track system to everyone.
I'm pretty sure people pissed off at the movie industry outweigh the movie industry in ability to send automated notices. And everyone has copyright to something - or can make something in 15 seconds that will be copyrighted for the next few hundred years anyway, The studios/etc might change their minds
Sure they can (Score:2)
Are you new to this country?