Porn Companies Are Going After GitHub 165
rossgneumann writes Porn production companies are currently engaged in a scorched earth copyright infringement campaign against torrenting sites with URLs containing specific keywords and Github is getting caught in the crossfire. Several Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaints filed to Google by companies representing various porn companies in the last month alone have resulted in dozens of legitimate Github URLs being removed from the search engine's results, TorrentFreak first reported."
Dangerous to mess with ./ crowd on this one (Score:5, Funny)
It's as if millions of left hands suddenly cried out in terror and stopped moving.
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Re:Dangerous to mess with ./ crowd on this one (Score:5, Funny)
You've never typed with one hand?
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You've never typed with one hand?
stargate
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stargate stewardesses databases
Masterful stroke. I applaud your collective efforts.
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So how is it that you were able to type your comment?
Well, if Randy can do it... [youtube.com]...
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Unlike some slashdotters, *I'm* ambidextrous!
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So, you are typing with your nose?
Counter-DMCA them (Score:5, Interesting)
Based on the similarity in names, these porn movies are quite obviously infringing on the copyright of these open source projects.
How about sending DMCA requests to get these porn movies banned from Google?
Two can play this game!
(as a side note; cue bad joke replies in 3.. 2.. 1..)
any repercussions? (Score:5, Interesting)
In theory submitting a false DMCA request is illegal. And there are theoretically plausible civil suits as well, if someone submits a false or reckless DMCA request that damages your business. But has anyone in history actually suffered any repercussions from submitting false DMCA requests? It seems people submit false ones all the time, and not only borderline mistakes but things ranging from reckless disregard for the truth to outright maliciously false requests (e.g. for SEO purposes). Yet I have never heard of anyone being prosecuted or sued for it.
Re:any repercussions? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's because the only punishments for false takedown requests in the DMCA is for misrepresenting yourself as the owner of the alleged infringing material. There is no punishment for making a take down request against materials that do not infringe. It's one of the stupider bits of the law.
Re:any repercussions? (Score:5, Interesting)
If what you say is true, then the people submitting these requests certainly can face liability. I don't know how you arrive at the conclusion that because it's Github or because it's porn sites, somehow nobody owns all that code.
Re:any repercussions? (Score:5, Informative)
I know this is Slashdot, and asking someone to read the article is a bit much, but nobody is removing projects or any IP from Github. They are demanding that Google remove the links from their search results. From the article, emphasis added:
The exact same text appears in the summary at the top of this page. You do not even have to read the article, just the summary!
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I know this is Slashdot, and asking someone to read the article is a bit much, but nobody is removing projects or any IP from Github. They are demanding that Google remove the links from their search results. From the article, emphasis added:
The exact same text appears in the summary at the top of this page. You do not even have to read the article, just the summary!
The article itself is a bit misleading, as in the case of :
"Janczuk’s URL, “https://github.com/tjanczuk/edge,” was apparently too close to The Edge, a 2001 movie made by Adam & Eve, for the company’s liking."
Janczuk is still up, Googling for: Janczuk github and there they are, the article by not mentioning this infers they were also taken down, :)
cause you know, nobody reads the links
It's the fact that take down notices are being sent over keywords, phrases and mayhaps a bit of c
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nobody is removing projects or any IP from Github
In this specific instance perhaps, but I wouldn't say nobody. Remember Popcorn Time? [reddit.com]
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When you file DMCA Take-down notice, your claiming that someone is violating the law and commiting a crime, and it's in writing so a false DMCA Take-down notice would be libel, it's also an infringement of your right to control distribution under copywrite law, so I's sue those suckers; I'd bring in Google as a co-defendant as well. Now excuse me while I post my barely legal, Just turned version 18, MILF Multiple Interfaced Logistics Function up on github.
Re: any repercussions? (Score:2)
[citation needed]
Re: any repercussions? (Score:1)
No, he's done his work. Now you can search github for yourself.
Re:any repercussions? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the relevant bit from the DMCA:
A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
Note that the penalty of perjury doesn't apply to the statement that the information provided is accurate, but only to the specific claim that the complaining party is the authorized agent of the owner of the copyright that is allegedly being infringed.
It's got nothing to do with GitHub, or nothing to do with porn, it's all to do with the fact that the DMCA is a bad law, and specifically allows people to make as many fraudulent takedown notices they want, as long as they don't claim to represent an IP owner when they in fact don't. If they do represent an IP owner, then they have carte blanche to be as fraudulent as they want. Sure, they have to state that the information they provide is correct, but there's no penalty if it isn't.
Re:any repercussions? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can non-US citizens submit DMCA take-downs? Does Google even check? I suddenly feel like writing a script...
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No, you're misinterpreting it. The website does not have to do anything when receiving a takedown notice. However, if the content complained of does turn out to be infringing, the website is then legally a participant in copyright infringement (very likely criminal infringement), and is liable to be sued. If the website removes the allegedly infringing content properly, it isn't legally liable for any copyright infringement.
It's safer for
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The way I understand it is that if an ISP hosts $BAR, and I file a takedown request asserting the ownership of $BAZ, in the mistaken impression (intentionally or not) that you are hosting $BAZ, the takedown request is valid, even though the actual content does not match $BAZ.
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It's a little bit different than that. A DMCA takedown request is a statement that the submitter of the request is (a) an agent of someone who owns some IP, and (b) the material targeted by the request is believed to infringe on that IP. Not quite the same thing. If I have a copyrighted song and you use it in a video, everyone knows I don't have copyright on your video but your video can be infringing on my song copyright, and I could file a DMCA request on that basis.
The weak spot is "believed to infringe"
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It's one of the stupider bits of the law.
Only if you assume that the law was meant to fulfill its stated purpose, which is the only place that stupidity enters the picture: with your faulty assumptions. There's no valid reason to hold that belief.
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In this case, the porn owners are falsely claiming ownership of content on the Github pages.
No they aren't. There are two claims in a DMCA takedown notice. One is that you are authorised to act on behalf of the owners of copyright work A. The second is that work B infringes on work A. Only the first claim is made under penalty of perjury. There is a good reason for this: determining whether a work actually infringes (and is not covered by fair use and so on) requires a court ruling. The problem is that it's overly broad. I can write a DMCA notice that says that I own the copyright on this p
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No they aren't. There are two claims in a DMCA takedown notice. One is that you are authorised to act on behalf of the owners of copyright work A. The second is that work B infringes on work A. Only the first claim is made under penalty of perjury. There is a good reason for this: determining whether a work actually infringes (and is not covered by fair use and so on) requires a court ruling.
That's not a good reason. You should be required to have reason to believe that your request is valid. You don't. So now, it goes to court, and even if your DMCA request was outright malicious, you're not on the hook for that part, only if you claimed to be someone else. Intent is always relevant, unless the DMCA is involved.
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While we're talking about what "should" be, how about getting rid of DMCA requests 100%? No need for something that circumvents actual due process.
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What do you propose to replace DMCA requests? As long as we have copyrights, the copyright holders need some way to enforce their rights. Website owners need to have some way to publish third-party material without getting legally slammed for it.
If the website owner is liable for copyright infringements by material posted by third parties, then no legitimate website owner will be able to host third-party content. The legal liability is much too high. So much for YouTube and Facebook and blogging site
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What do you propose to replace DMCA requests?
The courts. You want something removed, you see a judge. I value justice and due process more than I do someone's ability to enforce copyrights, and anyone who wants to live in a free country would agree with me.
If the website owner is liable for copyright infringements by material posted by third parties
They don't have to be. Keep a concept similar to safe harbor but don't have DMCA notices. It's not hard.
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Considering the number of actual infringements that go on, resorting to the courts for each and every infringing post would be expensive. Either the filing would be costly and take a long time, or we'd have to subsidize the court system. Either we'd need tons of public officials to check up on each complaint or it would take forever. This is how it used to work, but then the copyright holder could directly sue somebody for damages, costs, etc.
With your proposal, the copyright holder effectively has to
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Considering the number of actual infringements that go on, resorting to the courts for each and every infringing post would be expensive.
I've already told you: I value freedom and due process more than I do making it easy for copyright holders to enforce copyright.
With your proposal, the copyright holder effectively has to file a lawsuit, but doesn't' get anyone to sue.
They do. If the website refuses to take down the material after they've been asked to by a judge, they can sue. They can also sue the person who posted the material. If they want to find out who that person is, they need to investigate.
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" Only the first claim is made under penalty of perjury."
Wrong.
"State that, “under penalty of perjury, that the information contained in the notification is accurate;” and"
That covers the entirety of the takedown notice.
http://www.anti-abuse.org/how-... [anti-abuse.org] - source
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In theory submitting a false DMCA request is illegal.
No. Falsely claiming copyright ownership is illegal, but claiming against the wrong thing isn't. You can claim against movie.mov, if you think (without proof or actual evidence) that the movie is your movie you actually own copyright of (even if you are wrong). You can't claim against Disney's_Frozen.avi if you think it's Disney's Frozen and you have no claim to that work.
It's almost like they knew the law would be misused and wrote it to allow abuses.
not barred by DMCA, but tortuous interference (Score:5, Informative)
The "penalty of perjury" clause of the DMCA applies to identifying yourself, but the DMCA isn't the only law. Recklessly causing harm was a tort before the DMCA, and it still is. I believe there has been at least one law suit for tortuous interference and I'd like to see more. I think the plaintiffs could prevail where the notices were sent out recklessly.
In some cases, the person CONTINUED to send notices after being notified that many of them were clearly invalid. One can argue that they TRIED to come up with a good list of URLs, but once they've been informed that their list is crap, it's reckless to continue sending them.
Of course it's possible that they could show that they sent out 10,000 notices and 9,990 of those were perfectly correct. With a 99.9% accuracy rate the claim that they were reckless would be tougher to argue.
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How about not? Each article has its own comment section for a reason.
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Not almost, guess who drafted the thing. It's acting as designed and the "perjury" that never applies was a trick to get it passed.
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That's why he suggested the stuff doesn't actually get removed until it's been determined to infringe.
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Yet I have never heard of anyone being prosecuted or sued for it.
Several have. Including Diebold.
http://targetlaw.com/consequen... [targetlaw.com]
But the penalty is so low, and takes so much money to even get a judgement, that nobody can do it.
Although... I have heard of great success from people suing telemarketers for robocalls in small claims court. Some places, like California, make it stupid easy to do it because you can file your case online. Obviously $10k isn't going to get you very far if a false DMCA ruins your business. But if you just want to send a message, or if you n
Re: any repercussions? (Score:2)
I honestly doubt any severe repercussions will occur, the DMCA is too weasel worded. Defamation is another matter. Accusing a company like Atlassian of hosting pirated porn is a serious commercial matter. (Slandering open source developers is another matter, freedom of speech and all that, America hasn't really grasped the concept of reasonableness and balance.)
Accusations that are clearly defamatory against a commercial entity can harm political donations, jobs in battleground states, and inflict restraint
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Granted most porn companies are not huge corporations, but even the small ones often have a lawyer or two on retainer and can easily suck
i lolled.
Cloud... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet another reason not to trust that your data will always be available in the cloud.
Nope (Score:2)
Not the porn companies.
In most cases these aren't even the porn companies. It's a scam. If they can get the ISP to hand over your name... and they can in some cases... then they send you threatening letters: "On suchandsuch date you downloaded our film 'Priests and Alterboys 5' illegally. Pay us $5000 or we will sue you" And then they send it certified mail to your front door. The signature requirement means there's a 50/50 chance they get your wife and how much would you pay to avoid that happening?
It's a
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In this case it appears to actually be a firm hired by the porn company in question. The complaint was sent by Takedown Piracy LLC [takedownpiracy.com], which is one of those fly-by-night operations that sends out mass incompetently drafted DMCA requests on behalf of clients (it's important not to do any competent lawyering, because that would reduce the profit margin). In this case they were hired by a company called Adam & Eve [adameve.com] (NSFW, obviously) and sent the letters on that company's behalf.
Pfft Adam & Eve NSFW? (Score:2)
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The other reason to avoid competent lawyering is because the DMCA takedown notice says that you must have a good faith belief that the material is infringing. If you actually check on things, you're opening yourself up to liability because you are likely not to have said good faith believe if you peek. It almost certainly won't matter, but if it does it's safer to be incompetent.
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Not the porn companies.
In most cases these aren't even the porn companies. It's a scam. If they can get the ISP to hand over your name... and they can in some cases... then they send you threatening letters: "On suchandsuch date you downloaded our film 'Priests and Alterboys 5' illegally. Pay us $5000 or we will sue you" And then they send it certified mail to your front door. The signature requirement means there's a 50/50 chance they get your wife and how much would you pay to avoid that happening?
It's a scam, plain and simple.
I have a wife?
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What does that have to do with GitHub?
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Github CEO was caught fapping to illegally-downloaded, interracial midget porn.
not that scam, a different scam (Score:5, Insightful)
this is a scam done to the porn companies, not to the illegal downloaders.
the way the scam works is that they contact the porn company and say "hey we can takedown things from google for you" and then they just run a lazy google search, send google some dmca notices based on that lazy search(without verifying, or attempting even to verify the urls) and bill the porn company based on how many links were removed(this is where the lazy search turns into a payoff for the company - they do have an incentive to send too many notices! they're not billing by quality but by quantity).
nevermind that it does nothing to stop the downloading of the stuff(you'll go to the torrent site anyways and search on that torrent site, circumventing the google in that regard).
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Not the porn companies. ...
It's a scam, plain and simple.
Yes, I could tell this is a scam because of the headline. If it was really the p0rn companies, it would have read:
"Porn companies are coming for Github"
(...and having seen a lot of pr0n in my days)
Mass perjury (Score:2)
So these companies are committing mass perjury by submitting false DMCA takedowns. If only there were a way to prosecute this sort of behavior.
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Nope. The bit in the DMCA that is protected by perjury is the bit where you say you are the holder of the copyright that is allegedly being infringed, or an authorised agent. There is no protection at all against lodging takedowns against material that does not infringe - at least not in the DMCA.
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Use the same amount of legal stuff that they do. Sue them anyways, and the parent company. At the very least it'll reduce their precious profit margin, and increase the expense for the company hiring them. Word will get around.
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Have you ever sued someone? It costs money, it takes years, and if you might prevail to the tune of a return, the llc just declares bankruptcy, then it takes more money, more time, and in my case, I couldn't stop the bankruptcy.
That was with a small firm - Ramp that up and you are fighting against lots of lawyers with lots of time and lots of nod and winks since the Judge was a lawyer too.
Unless "loser pays" is adopted in the US (with the cost being 50/50 paid for in a ratio that reflects the plaintiff and
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With "loser pays", those with deep pockets will be the only ones who could afford to bring suit.
Not sure how that fixes anything...
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if a poor person sues apple, then the proportioned 50/50 will have apple paying for the plaintiffs defense. The more cash apple throws at the fight, the more they will have to give to the plaintiff for the plaintiff's defense.
If Apple is in the right, then they win, and the poor defendant is on hook for the entire bill.
This insures that the rich megacorps only fight when they really have the high ground. This would also eliminate harassment lawsuits since if you are just being a dick, you're going to lose
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A, "loser pays", never heard about this 50/50 apportionment.
B, " If Apple is in the right, then they win, and the poor defendant is on hook for the entire bill.".
Quite. You don't think that will have a chilling effect? Consider the opposite, you are right, but Apple is big.
Being right does not mean you will win.
I would consider the potential downside before I launched a lawsuit, no matter how in the right I am.
I don't think this would stop harassment lawsuits, it might change how much money they "official
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Have you ever sued someone? It costs money, it takes years, and if you might prevail to the tune of a return, the llc just declares bankruptcy, then it takes more money, more time, and in my case, I couldn't stop the bankruptcy.
It also costs them money to defend, thus my comment about 'raising expenses'. Don't forget the sue the CEOs by name. It is explicitly a 'scorched earth' campaign where I wasn't intending to even cover my own expenses, the idea is to raise theirs.
Re:Mass perjury (Score:5, Interesting)
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Bear in mind that you have to claim ownership of a copyrighted work (or that you're the agent of the holder). The post above qualifies; it's automatically copyrighted by whoever Greyfox is in real life. You can then send legal DMCA requests, and you aren't going to get successfully sued.
Whether any host actually pays attention to your DMCA takedown requests is another question. The only penalty for them if they don't is that you may sue them (yeah, right), and if your infringement claim is true (which
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Could it involve that gun that streams to the interwebs [slashdot.org]? Please?
Yes, I know, I'm a bad person ... but .... they're only lawyers.
We could even hold out for the "varmint gun" version to make it sporting.
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Perjury, no? (Score:2)
I know the law requires you to be making a statement under oath ... but since it was bought and paid for by *AA lawyers, it has the "if we're incompetent but thought we were right" escape clause, they can probably weasel out of it.
I really hate this that piece of shit law was written in such a way as to stack the deck for those companies. Because it's not a level playing field, and they can go all scorched earth and later just say "oops".
Somehow they managed to put the burden of proof and cost onto those s
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Well, the lawyers that signed off on these false notices have sworn an oath to be upstanding officers of the court. The weasel clause of the DMCA doesn't absolve them of responsibility to be truthful in legal documents. Failure to live up to this standard can be construed as a form of barratry which can be used to slap down the sharks orchestrating this mess. If there was a real threat of being disbarred this sort of behavior wouldn't be so common.
We know no DA in the country can be bothered to police their
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lawyers... to be upstanding officers of the court.
That only means lawyers aren't allowed to lie to other lawyers (which includes judges). They don't hesitate to lie to the rest of us.
Glob watcher? (Score:1)
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make them post a bond for every URL they are claiming infringement.
That idea is horrible.
When I find that an advertising company has used my song without permission, and plastered it on fifty sites, I cannot afford to post a bond for each link. But Big Business can afford to do so.
Anything that requires fees or lawyers will benefit Big Business, who can afford it, and not the little man, who can't.
A better solution is to mandate a public fine for anyone who makes false accusations, whether due to negligence, incompetence or malice. And even better, to make fines propor
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Until Microsoft gets off their asses and makes sure their search engine is actually safe instead of just having shills insult anybody who suggests the truth about it in social media, there really is still only Google.
sue them. (Score:2)
eventually someone will.
because they don't have the rights to the shit they claim to have the rights to.
like, they don't think at all. basically running a google search on the word EDGE and banning that comes out. like what the fuck!
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you mean.. sue the pants of them, don't you?
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a partial solution...... (Score:1)
google no longer honors, or even acknowledges, take down requests for keywords.
better solution.... abolish the law, or at least rewrite it so that companies filing bogus requests get hit, and hit hard, with financial penalties and revocation of their take down notice rights. companies like google spend millions of dollars processing these bogus requests, it's about time the companies that file them get nailed to the wall.
Stolen copy rights (Score:2)
So can anyone of those whose site was removed with out notice take the porn companies to court for stealing their compyrights? After all these companies are saying that they own the copyrights to the aledged git hosted code. That would mean they stole the actual copyright not just infringed on it.
You don't need to buy porn (Score:1)
You can get your stiffy reading court records [bms11.com] (pdf). It doesn't get any better. This stuff would be illegal to publish in any other way.
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fictional
You sure?
The best thing about the real ones is the suspense. The story isn't over yet.
Good. (Score:2, Interesting)
GitHub went after "gamergaters". Let someone go after them.
Total Wipes? (Score:2)
Total Wipes, on the other hand, appears to target sites indiscriminÃately based on keywords,...
Wait, so there's a company called Total Wipes doing porn copyright infringement management? What a wasted use for the name in that industry.
instant fines for negligent or malevolent claims (Score:2)
I can't believe there is still no comeback when companies interfere with other people's legitimate shit
Licenses? (Score:1)
Knockout.js letter of response (Score:5, Interesting)
github.com/knockout/knockout was one of the repos listed, and here is the letter they sent [github.com] (which seems to be a reasonable template):
To: marketing@takedownpiracy.com
Date: Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 9:33 AM EST
Dear Sirs,
It has recently come to my attention that your firm has filed a DMCA notice to Google identifying copyright infringement for works to which I am personally associated. I apologize if this email is not directed to the correct address, but it was the only address apparent to contact your company and I would be grateful if you could forward this message appropriately or direct me accordingly.
The notice that has come to my attention includes the details from the web-site as follows:
https://www.chillingeffects.or... [chillingeffects.org]
This site identifies Takedown Piracy LLC as an agent of Wicked Pictures sending a DMCA notice to Google. The notice apparently references the following works, which works appear to have since been removed from the results of searches via the Google search engine:
https://github.com/SteveSander... [github.com]
https://github.com/rniemeyer/k... [github.com]
https://github.com/rniemeyer/k... [github.com]
https://github.com/Knockout-Co... [github.com]
https://github.com/knockout/kn... [github.com]
https://github.com/knockout [github.com]
These works are entirely software and are in no way associated with Wicked Pictures, nor do they contain any adult material whatsoever (which I understand to be the preponderance of copyright held by Wicked Pictures).
Through the above-referenced DMCA notice your firm has stated that I have committed or endorsed copyright infringement, as well as associated me with republishing unlicensed works of the adult industry.
[As a software developer], I am sure you can appreciate that the above implication and association could cause serious harm to my reputation.
I trust you will not mind issuing an appropriate revocation of appropriate portions of the DMCA notices to Google and any other recipient that may have received a notice referencing the above content, as well as similarly revoking and white-listing from any future notices any work referred to with a URL containing the following:
github.com/knockout
github.com/SteveSanderson
github.com/mbest
github.com/rniemeyer
github.com/brianmhunt
âAgain, these repositories contain entirely software and are clearly not the intended target of your operationâ, which you can readily confirm by navigating to them in a web browser.
âMany thanks for your co-operation on this matter, and I would be grateful for your âconfirmation that the DMCA notices have been appropriately revoked. If by February 7th, 2015 it is apparent that the DMCA notices have not been revoked, I will be obliged to pursue appropriate legal action, and will hold your firm responsible for all associated legal costs.
âKind regards,
Brianâ
Relevant xkcd (Score:2)
Sucky (Score:3)
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Edge and Hide are two of the words they went after
Well done, you have just got slashdot delisted
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F#, with some Python involved