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Piracy Google The Internet

Don't Use the Word 'Did' Or a Dumb Anti-Piracy Company Will Delete You From Google (torrentfreak.com) 165

Posted by BeauHD from the ridiculous-takedown-requests dept.
In 2018, the owner of Two-Bit History, a site dedicated to computer history, wrote a successful article about mathematician Ada Lovelace, who some credit as being the first computer programmer. Sadly, if you search Google for that article today you won't find it. Some idiotic anti-piracy company had it deleted because it dared to use the word "did." TorrentFreak reports: In 2018, [Sinclair Target, the owner of computing history blog, Two-Bit History] wrote an article about Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron who some credit as being the world's first computer programmer, despite being born in 1815. Unfortunately, however, those who search for that article today using Google won't find it. As the image below shows, the original Tweet announcing the article is still present in Google's indexes but the article itself has been removed, thanks to a copyright infringement complaint that also claimed several other victims.

Sinclair's article was deleted because an anti-piracy company working on behalf of a TV company decided that since its title (What Did Ada Lovelace's Program Actually Do?) contained the word 'DID,' it must be illegal. This monumental screw-up was announced on Twitter by Sinclair himself, who complained that "Computers are stupid folks. Too bad Google has decided they are in charge." At risk of running counter to Sinclair's claim, in this case -- as Lovelace herself would've hopefully agreed -- it is people who are stupid, not computers. The proof for that can be found in the DMCA complaint sent to Google by RightsHero, an anti-piracy company working on behalf of Zee TV, an Indian pay-TV channel that airs Dance India Dance. Now in its seventh season, Dance India Dance is a dance competition reality show that is often referred to as DID. And now, of course, you can see where this is going. Because Target and at least 11 other sites dared to use the word in its original context, RightsHero flagged the pages as infringing and asked Google to deindex them. In the complaint sent to Google, "the notice not only claims Target's article is infringing the copyrights of Dance India Dance (sorry, DID), but also no less than four online dictionaries explaining what the word 'did actually means," adds TorrentFreak. "Perhaps worse still, some of the other allegedly-infringing articles were published by some pretty serious information resources [including the U.S. Department of Education, Nature.com, and USGS Earthquake Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey]."
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Don't Use the Word 'Did' Or a Dumb Anti-Piracy Company Will Delete You From Google More

Don't Use the Word 'Did' Or a Dumb Anti-Piracy Company Will Delete You From Google

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  • There's no doubt there. Program one to self destruct and it will do it, no questions asked.

    • Re:Computers are stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @05:11AM (#59738854) Homepage Journal

      The problem is that there are no consequences for doing this. The victim has to waste their time getting it sorted out and the perp can just carry on spamming stupid take-downs. At worst Google may eventually ban them from submitting notices, at which point they will have to change the name of their organization slightly in order to resume.

      • They will never fix it, at least not properly, for that they would need to hire a team of auditors that give the last judgement before the whole copyright takedown machine gets started, but it's cheaper and way more convenient for them to put that responsability on an automated system, something goes wrong? The machines fault.

      • Re:Computers are stupid (Score:5, Funny)

        by Archtech ( 159117 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @05:51AM (#59738920)

        The most elegant punishment would be to find (preferably many) words that DID uses online, and submit similar complainst about all of them.

        • Re:Computers are stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

          by fuzznutz ( 789413 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @09:10AM (#59739246)
          Better yet, statutory damages for falsely claiming copyright ownership and issuing a takedown like phone "Do Not Call" laws. $10,000 per false takedown. This shit would stop immediately as claimants have to identify themselves to issue a takedown. Force foreign claimants to have a local presence financially responsible for false claims. Anonymous takedowns could safely be ignored. Trigger happy "rights" organizations would dry up overnight. If a copyright work statutory damages are valued at $30,000 each, falsely claiming ownership should be worth at least $10,000.

          • There is already a crime called perjury which is in the DMCA notice. These companies use shells that have no financial solvency so they can't be pursued.

        • But then they would shut down /.
          Were do we post nonsense then? Facebook?

          Hm, we could spam Facebook with DID ... perhaps they take that one down?

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Entrope ( 68843 )

          De-indexing requests are not DMCA takedown notices. You can send DMCA takedown notices to anyone who registers a designated agent, for content that they host on behalf of third parties. Google qualifies on the first part, but they do not host the content in question here..

          As far as I can tell, Google does this only to avoid lawsuits alleging that they are liable for contributory infringement, but cases like this are horrible abuses of that process -- the abusers here are alleging something like trademark

          • De-indexing requests are not DMCA takedown notices. You can send DMCA takedown notices to anyone who registers a designated agent, for content that they host on behalf of third parties. Google qualifies on the first part, but they do not host the content in question here..

            As far as I can tell, Google does this only to avoid lawsuits alleging that they are liable for contributory infringement, but cases like this are horrible abuses of that process -- the abusers here are alleging something like trademark infringement, not copyright infringement, except they are claiming trademark exclusivity for a dirt-common English word.

            The complaint sent to google is linked in the article, and for you convenience https://lumendatabase.org/noti... [lumendatabase.org] It only mentions dmca and copyright claim. Please explain how this is a de-indexing request based on trademark because nothing like it is mentioned?

            • Re:Computers are stupid (Score:4, Informative)

              by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @10:54AM (#59739552) Homepage

              The problematic claim is #9, which claims that the Wikipedia page for Dance India Dance is the infringed work, and the supposedly infringing pages use the word "did". There is nothing remotely close to a good-faith argument of copyright infringement for those pages. The closest legal argument is that those pages infringe on Dance India's Dance trademark, except any remotely competent trademark lawyer would tell them that they have no claim on the word "did".

              • The problematic claim is #9, which claims that the Wikipedia page for Dance India Dance is the infringed work, and the supposedly infringing pages use the word "did". There is nothing remotely close to a good-faith argument of copyright infringement for those pages. The closest legal argument is that those pages infringe on Dance India's Dance trademark, except any remotely competent trademark lawyer would tell them that they have no claim on the word "did".

                But afaik they have not made a complaint based on trademark, specifically it mentions the dmca and copyright. If your point was simply that _if_ in addition to a phony copyright claim they would also claim trademark to something they hadn't trademarked nor could trademark they'd be wrong there as well I'd just agree.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Google does occasionally ban companies from submitting notices. The only recourse is to sue Google. I'm not sure if anyone has tried yet, I don't think so.

      • Re:Computers are stupid (Score:4, Interesting)

        by alexo ( 9335 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @09:37AM (#59739320) Journal

        The problem is that there are no consequences for doing this. The victim has to waste their time getting it sorted out and the perp can just carry on spamming stupid take-downs. At worst Google may eventually ban them from submitting notices, at which point they will have to change the name of their organization slightly in order to resume.

        This is by design.

      • At worst Google may eventually ban them from submitting notices

        I don't think Google can do this. The DMCA doesn't allow platforms to ignore takedown notices.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by suutar ( 1860506 )

          true, but Google can ban companies from using their online submission system and require paper that has to go through a human.

          • true, but Google can ban companies from using their online submission system and require paper that has to go through a human.

            Which imposes a trivial additional cost on the fraudulent claimant, and a larger additional cost on Google. It would increase Google's costs, but produce no appreciable reduction in bad notices.

      • The problem is that there are no consequences for doing this. The victim has to waste their time getting it sorted out and the perp can just carry on spamming stupid take-downs. At worst Google may eventually ban them from submitting notices, at which point they will have to change the name of their organization slightly in order to resume.

        There's 512(f) misrepresentations, but I don't know if anyone has used it successfully https://www.law.cornell.edu/us... [cornell.edu] (you'll need to scroll down a bit).

      • At worst Google may eventually ban them from submitting notices, at which point they will have to change the name of their organization slightly in order to resume.

        At worst? Have you ever heard of them actually doing that? Neither have I so it's obvious they'll just keep sorting out cases and a slow case-by-case basis like they've done with all previous cases over-zealous automated takedowns.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Yeah Google has banned people from using it's API to submit URLs in bulk. Torrent Freak has a lot of coverage.

    • Any chance we can manipulate lawyers into becoming more computer-like?

    • or just plain out lazy to allow all this nonsense on the internetz.

  • Easy fix (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @05:14AM (#59738858)
    Maybe companies that make false copyright take down claims, be it maliciously or by negligence, should be held accountable. Fine them a sum X for the number of days a wrongfully labeled content is offline/not indexed.

    • Far easier said than done.

      Doesn't the DMCA make false claims perjury, but I cannot say I have ever seen any reporting of that being acted upon.

      • Re:Easy fix (Score:4, Informative)

        by dissy ( 172727 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @08:18AM (#59739114)

        Doesn't the DMCA make false claims perjury, but I cannot say I have ever seen any reporting of that being acted upon.

        The only false claim that is perjury is if they knowingly don't have the copyright over the work they claim.

        RightsHero is working on behalf of Zee TV. I have no doubt that Zee TV does in fact actually hold copyright for their show "Dance India Dance" and so is a true claim.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by iCEBaLM ( 34905 )

          The only false claim that is perjury is if they knowingly don't have the copyright over the work they claim.

          Not true, the notice has to be in good faith and with reasonable belief that their copyright is being infringed. The entire notice is sent under penalty of perjury that all information in it is true and accurate.

          I would say this fails these tests as they obviously either didn't know what the content was, or lied.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ChoGGi ( 522069 )

            Nope, you should re-read the law; the only perjury you can commit with a DMCA notice is misrepresenting who authorized you.

            (vi) 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.

            https://www.congress.gov/bill/... [congress.gov]

        • The only false claim that is perjury is if they knowingly don't have the copyright over the work they claim.

          But in these cases, surely they're claiming they have copyright over works that contained the word "did", which they obviously don't. "Obviously", because in order to determine whether they have a valid claim they should be actually looking at the works, rather than using the "blind man firing a shotgun indiscriminately" approach.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          The thing is, you can't copyright a name. You can in certain contexts trademark it, but the C in DMCA stands for "copyright". So the takedown claim would be frivolous even if the title of the article included "Dance India Dance".

          What's really going on here is an attempt to establish something like a *de facto* trademark over the un-trademarkable word "Did" by misusing the machinery of copyright law. This kind of behavior seems to be very common in IP oriented businesses, and it has a very simple solutio

      • Obviously the problem is not any particular case, however stupid, it's the whole, controversial takedown system.

        Yes, it would help to have reforms such as assessing real penalties for abusing it. However, I would go further. Replace copyright. No more copyright would put a quick end to all these pretensions of ownership over our cultural heritage.

    • Yeah, the focus of the article here is a little misguided.

      WTF is wrong with a copyright enforcement /system/ that would let such a stupid, trivially-based copyright claim take material down?

      You know, Google's working on advanced, subtle heuristics to ensure anything that isn't woke doesn't monetize on youtube; maybe they should spend that same effort on the system managing their copyright takedown banhammer.

    • It's easy to say that we need to hold people accountable for false (or stupid) claims. The catch is: how can we realistically force this change? Any change almost certainly requires legislation. Which requires the active interest of legislators. In the US, the only way to attract the interest of most legislators is with money - which is all on the side of the companies abusing copyrights.

      Good luck with that.

  • Story is bullshit (Score:5, Informative)

    by An0nYm0u5c0wArD ( 6251996 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @05:19AM (#59738864)

    I just Googled "What Did Ada Lovelace's Program Actually Do" (without quotes), and it found the article just fine.

    Does anyone on Slashdot bother checking their stories?

    • Re:Story is bullshit (Score:5, Informative)

      by hax 109 ( 6610968 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @05:49AM (#59738916)
      From the complaint (emphasis mine):

      Copyright claim #9
      Kind of Work: Unspecified
      Description Copyrighted work can be viewed in https ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_India_Dance
      Original URLs:

      No copyrighted URLs were submitted.

      Allegedly Infringing URLs:

      https ://www.yourdictionary.com/did
      https ://www.pcgamer.com/what-did-you-play-last-week-feb-8-2020/
      https ://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00364-2
      https ://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/did
      https ://www.essentiallysports.com/ufc-247-was-dominick-reyes-robbed-of-a-title-against-jon-jones-by-the-judges/
      https ://twobithistory.org/2018/08/18/ada-lovelace-note-g.html
      https ://theaviationgeekclub.com/did-you-know-the-su-57-felon-is-the-only-fighter-jet-equipped-with-dircm/
      https ://studentaid.gov/2021/help/student-schedule-1
      https ://fcpablog.com/2020/02/07/how-much-did-the-sfo-spend-investigating-airbus/
      https ://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/did
      https ://earthquake.usgs.gov/data/dyfi/
      https ://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/did

      • Re:Story is bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Gilgaron ( 575091 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @07:39AM (#59739050)
        Maybe it would just get gamed, but you'd think the script could check to see if dictionaries got hit by the complaint and then reject the complaint

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Sique ( 173459 )
          But then the script has to know what a dictionary is and how it differs from other types of text. There might be millions of dictionaries out there, and trying to compile a database of all dictionaries might be impossible.
          • You'd just need a few to be better canaries than the apparent non-existant controls now: if Merriam Webster and Cambridge are on the takedown list then a mistake has been made. Easier to verify MW hasn't gone rogue uploading copyrighted content than to control for bots uploading stuff to a wiki dictionary some place.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Sique ( 173459 )
              Merriam-Webster won't work for a word in French or in German. So you have to enumerate those dictionaries also. And there are 7000 spoken languages today (albeit many of them by only a few people), so you might have to enumerate the most important dictionaries for those languages too. And just because a word exists in one language, it might be trademark infringment in another language.

              There are no simple solution, when it comes to language.

              • How the fuck is this an objection? He basically said "2+2 can't possibly equal 379" and your response was "well it also can't equal 658 or 972". While your response may be true, it doesn't mean that excluding 379 from the lost of possible results would be a bad thing.

      • Google should be held responsible for this bullshit and have to pay. Obviously the copyright trolls are in charge now.

        The only reasonable response I see is lynching all of the executives at RightsHero and having google pay penalty fees for each stupid url they have pulled down.

      • Wow. They noticed up dictionary sites too.
        This is the kind of action that occurs because there is no punishment for doing it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by virve ( 63803 )

        Copyright claim #9
        (...)
        https ://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00364-2

        Oh, how could a piece from that rag Nature magazine about, eh, scary killer potentially pandemic disease Covid-19's origins be more important than the IP rights of Dance India Dance. Crikey.

    • The DMCA notice has been revoked because of this story.

      https://twitter.com/TwoBitHist... [twitter.com]

    • I just Googled "What Did Ada Lovelace's Program Actually Do" (without quotes), and it found the article just fine.

      Does anyone on Slashdot bother checking their stories?

      Nope. I honestly can't remember the last time that regularly happened here. Other fun things that drive us nuts are when people submit an article that was already submitted between 1-3 days earlier. In some cases, it will have been submitted just hours earlier on the same day. And finally there's always the fun that happens when submitters lack reading comprehension skills. Many times an article will say something akin to "It will never be X. No matter what you do, it will never be X. Can't be X -

      • I'm convinced the editors are bots written during a code bootcamp. Somehow they managed to build them on Electron. I don't know how or why, and neither do the people who wrote them. The bootcamp was teaching Electron so that's what they used.

    • It's almost like we don't exist at a fixed point in time...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      >Does anyone on Slashdot bother checking their stories?

      You must be new here . . .

      hawk

  • This is so stupid it actually makes me wonder what happens if I put in a request for THE?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 )

      Google is not really to blame here, for once. They have to comply with the ridiculous bullshit copyright law has become. They MUST do that. It's not like they can say "Dude, seriously, go away and play with something poisonous", as much as they probably want to.

      Get your politicians to correct the bullshit laws.

      • They are responsible for creating the system that allows scammers to steal ad money with bogus copyright claims. They created this mess, they better work on cleaning it.
        • No one deserves ad money. All of it is a scam to steal your attention..I have no sympathy for those that chose to suck on that teat.

        • Which has exactly nothing to do with removing links from the google search results in response to a DMCA notice.

      • but complying is the least expensive way to deal with this problem.

        • Of course it is, how else do you get a corporation to comply with your laws?

          Take a look at how corporations evade taxes and how much effort they put into it, and how powerless countries are essentially to stop them. Of course you will create laws in such a way that they are as cheap as possible to follow by corporations if that's not diametrically opposite of your own goals.

      • What if google simply ignored notices? What would happen?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          The profit for the entire year would go to feed lawyers for the ensuing copyright infringement cases. No, they're not hosting the content, but they've got a frack of a lot more money than Joe's BBQ And Web Site Hosting so they'll be the principle target as an accessory. Lawyers always go where the money is.

        • They'd have to deal with the legal BS that follows. For reference, see what corporations have to do to keep their money away from taxation and the battle between Google and the EU right now.

          It's simply cheaper to comply. That's all. The only reason Google stood up to the EU in that case was that the EU was cutting seriously into Google's profits, and the same applies to why it's financially opportune to fight against taxation.

          Money.

  • We couldn't get very far in life not saying the word "did".

    Auuuugh! I did it!

    I did it again!

    • We couldn't get very far in life not saying the word "did".

      Auuuugh! I did it!

      I did it again!

      And now DID and Britney Spears representation are issuing takedown notices.

    • Well, with a hint of luck we'll never have to hear "Oops I did it again", so something good might come out of this after all.

    • Actually an interesting challenge would be to find the word that, if copyrighted and if followed up with DMCA takedown notices, would Break The Internet.

  • Wonder if RightsHero has a Dial In Direct phone line at their office(s).
  • You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

    Even if lots of people use it that way.

    No doubt the dictionary even lists it as a one of the meanings now.
    • Isn't the definition you're alluding to considered archaic? *clears throat* or are you just being an idiot? /s

  • Death by torture (Score:3)

    by Dog-Cow ( 21281 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @06:36AM (#59738982)

    If the lawyers which make up RightsHero's staff were tortured for a couple years, until they expired, fewer lawyers would file fraudulent claims of this magnitude.

    Unfortunately, torture as a deterrence is illegal in the US.

    • Re:Death by torture (Score:4, Funny)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @08:37AM (#59739154)

      If the lawyers which make up RightsHero's staff were tortured for a couple years, until they expired, fewer lawyers would file fraudulent claims of this magnitude.

      Unfortunately, torture as a deterrence is illegal in the US.

      Send 'em to Gitmo. Apparently torture is all good there. Although I would really feel bad for the terrorists there, being locked up alongside lawyers. No one deserves that.

    • 1-If the lawyers which make up RightsHero's staff were tortured for a couple years... You don't know lawyers. They would line up for the chance to conduct the torture of other lawyers. 2-Unfortunately, torture as a deterrence is illegal in the US. I see no evidence of this so called "illegality". The Trump concentration camps along the Mexico border are designed to discourage migrants and refugees, using torture.

  • Doesn't surprise me (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sqreater ( 895148 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @07:35AM (#59739046)
    Computers are rewriting the language one absurdity at a time. I tried to use the word "retarded" to mean held back in a comment to an article on Yahoo and had the word blanked out because, well, the word can only be an insult to a person's intelligence and demean a group of people who are intellectually challenged, right? English is complex and words have multiple meanings and shades of meaning, but computers are simple-minded and apply simple-minded rules to written expressions.

    • Computers are rewriting the language one absurdity at a time. I tried to use the word "retarded" to mean held back in a comment to an article on Yahoo and had the word blanked out because, well, the word can only be an insult to a person's intelligence and demean a group of people who are intellectually challenged, right? English is complex and words have multiple meanings and shades of meaning, but computers are simple-minded and apply simple-minded rules to written expressions.

      When you get down to the root of this story, it is the humans that are absurd.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      It's going to make it harder for me to drive 1920s cars at the next auction if I can't retard the spark . . .

      hawk

    • /Oblg. That's retarded. /s

      Looks like Yahoo's view on censorship is not retardando but accelerating. /s

      --
      Yes it has been 18 seconds since I hit reply. Some of us can actually type and press enter -- you retarded /. code.

  • Don't default to one stupid monolith all the time. Ask the other stupid monolith, Bing [bing.com], has it.

    Shit, Google is dumb for listening to these idiot companies on common words but now I'll get modded down for saying they're dumb and stupid.

  • Don't Use the Word 'Did' Or a Dumb Anti-Piracy Company Will Delete You From Google

    Which explains the missing results for the historical documentary, "Debbie Did Dallas".

  • It's a private platform Google can do what they want!

  • My wife found a foreign language site that had stolen one of her poems and published it as their own. After researching who owned the site it turned out to be under Google's ownership. I sent a DMCA takedown to Google. Never heard back and now 8 years later it is still up. Looks like Google only pays attention to some notices.
  • RightsHero has made a libelous claim of copyright infringement against Target and as such he should sue them for several million dollars in punitive damages.

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