Cloud Firm MediaFire Flags Malware Samples For DMCA Violation, Bans Researcher 125
chicksdaddy writes "A malicious software researcher finds herself in company with First Lady Michelle Obama and science fiction author Neil Gaiman: booted from the Web by hard-headed copyright protection algorithms, according to the Naked Security blog. Mila Parkour, a researcher who operates the Contagio malware blog, said on Thursday that she was kicked off the cloud based hosting service Mediafire, after three files she hosted there were flagged for copyright violations and ordered removed under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The files included two compressed and encrypted malicious PDF files linked to Contagio blog posts from 2010. The firm responsible for filing the DMCA take down notice was Paris-based LeakID, which describes itself as a 'digital agency ...founded by experts from the world of radio, television and Internet.' LeakID markets 'Leaksearch,' an 'ownership tool that will alert you within seconds if your content...is being pirated.' According to Parkour, Mediafire received a notice from LeakID claiming that it was 'acting on behalf of the copyright owners,' though the owners and presumed copyrighted content weren't named."
Re:Simple solution: (Score:2, Informative)
Reread the terms, most unfortunately, only part of a proper DMCA takedown notice is made "under penalty of perjury", and it's not the part most of these vandals (with apologies to the Vandals) get wrong.
Re:Paris? (Score:5, Informative)
Thanks to international copyright agreements, French (and a shitload of other countries') copyrights apply in the US as well. And since you don't have to be a US citizen to take legal action to a US company or citizen under US laws, they can. It's the same reason why a certain Swedish site can be sued for infringement of US copyrights according to Swedish laws.
You see it's a trade-off between security and freedom; companies gain security in exchange for citizens losing freedom.