Fake DMCA Takedowns Blocking Journalists' Stories (bbc.co.uk) 47
The BBC reports:
Journalists have been forced to temporarily take down articles critical of powerful oil lobbyists due to the exploitation of US copyright law, according to a new report.
At least five such articles have been subject to fake copyright claims, including one by the respected South African newspaper Mail & Guardian, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). The claims — which falsely assert ownership of the stories — have been made by mystery individuals under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a law meant to protect copyright holders. Just last month, three separate false copyright claims were made against Diario Rombe, an investigative news outlet that focusses on Equatorial Guinea. The articles under attack are about the president of Equatorial Guinea's son, Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima, and his close associate, Cameroonian businessman and lawyer NJ Ayuk.
The OCCRP claimed in a report published on Wednesday that the DMCA process was often abused by "unknown parties" who create backdated fake articles to target critical news reports....
Climate Home editor Megan Darby told the OCCRP: "These bogus allegations look like a devious tactic to suppress independent journalism."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the story.
At least five such articles have been subject to fake copyright claims, including one by the respected South African newspaper Mail & Guardian, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). The claims — which falsely assert ownership of the stories — have been made by mystery individuals under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a law meant to protect copyright holders. Just last month, three separate false copyright claims were made against Diario Rombe, an investigative news outlet that focusses on Equatorial Guinea. The articles under attack are about the president of Equatorial Guinea's son, Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima, and his close associate, Cameroonian businessman and lawyer NJ Ayuk.
The OCCRP claimed in a report published on Wednesday that the DMCA process was often abused by "unknown parties" who create backdated fake articles to target critical news reports....
Climate Home editor Megan Darby told the OCCRP: "These bogus allegations look like a devious tactic to suppress independent journalism."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the story.
Who saw this coming? Everyone! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who saw this coming? Everyone! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oil companies have $9 Trillion dollars in identified reserves
Exploiting these reserves will result in the continued escalation in global warming and result in loss of significant human habitat because most humans live near coastlines
Oil companies have no intention to give up on these profits, so they have
1. Lied about global warming, even though their own investigators identified it in the 1960's [scientificamerican.com]
2. Paid other groups to lie about the safety of nuclear power [environmen...ogress.org]
3. Paid other groups to lie about environmental impacts of wind power generation [americanprogress.org]
4. Paid other groups to lie about effectiveness of solar power [reuters.com]
5. Influenced the major auto companies to abandon electric vehicles for decades [ewg.org]
Just be aware, they will work to get all of their profits, regardless of the negative effects on the entire human species
Now they are using deceptive means to quiet reporters from, um, reporting on these facts
Just wait until you see the paid trolls pile on to this article, remember their names and expect them to continue to lie
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Who saw this coming? Everyone! (Score:5, Interesting)
Facebook, too. Anybody who does classical concerts gets a barrage of abusive DMCA claims by big conglomerates like Sony and Warner-Chappell claiming that you're using their recordings. The tech for detecting this stuff is simply inadequate, and because the DMCA only prescribes perjury for false claims if you don't actually hold a copyright or represent someone who holds a copyright, not for situations where the claim is entirely bogus, there's no incentive for these companies to have a human review any of their DMCA claims before sending them out.
The DMCA is an absolute disaster, and these problems are probably by design.
Re:Who saw this coming? Everyone! (Score:4)
"Facebook, too. Anybody who does classical concerts gets a barrage of abusive DMCA claims by big conglomerates like Sony and Warner-Chappell claiming that you're using their recordings"
It's worse on YouTube because your video gets blocked, you get a copyright strike which is very difficult to contest and could get your channel disabled and any money your earned from views is given to the claimant.
Rick Beato has talked about this on his channel and in a Congressional hearing.
Re:Who saw this coming? Everyone! (Score:5, Informative)
"Facebook, too. Anybody who does classical concerts gets a barrage of abusive DMCA claims by big conglomerates like Sony and Warner-Chappell claiming that you're using their recordings"
It's worse on YouTube because your video gets blocked, you get a copyright strike which is very difficult to contest and could get your channel disabled and any money your earned from views is given to the claimant. Rick Beato has talked about this on his channel and in a Congressional hearing.
Both YouTube and Facebook give the accuser the option of either stealing your monetization (a copyright claim) or taking down your content (a copyright strike), at least if the accuser is big enough.
As for being difficult to contest... again, that's by design. Big Media doesn't like competition. Basically, unless you're willing to file a counterclaim and, if that counterclaim is rejected, take your accuser and YouTube or Facebook to court, you don't exist in the eyes of the law. You're a bug to be squashed. Welcome to the world of commercial content. It sucks, but that's why groups like the EFF exist.
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Both YouTube and Facebook give the accuser the option of either stealing your monetization (a copyright claim)
YouTube, at least, has started holding the revenue from claimed videos if you contest it, and if you end up prevailing and they remove their claim, they wait too long to respond, or you win in court, YouTube restores any money collected during that period to the video owner.
Re: (Score:3)
It's like designating schools as "gun free zones."
The people who passed this legislation are not the stupidest people on the planet.
They knew exactly what they were doing, and how it would harm people.
They just don't care about you one single bit. You are not the ones paying them. You aren't the ones giving their family and friends jobs that make millions. You aren't the ones covering for and providing their vices.
You have no standing until you make their lives uncomfortable in some way. They have comfo
Bigger Surprise (Score:2)
The only surprise is it took this long
The bigger surprise for me is that it worked. When did US laws start applying to newspapers in South Africa?
Re: (Score:3)
The only surprise is it took this long
The bigger surprise for me is that it worked. When did US laws start applying to newspapers in South Africa?
When you have the biggest dick, you can fuck anyone (over).
Re:Bigger Surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
When they were in the process of doing this in my country I wrote to my MP and asked him how harmonistion of intellectual property laws benefited our country, but his answer made it clear he didn't know. He voted for the new law though.
Re: Bigger Surprise (Score:1)
when in the course of human events...jussayin
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The bigger surprise for me is that it worked. When did US laws start applying to newspapers in South Africa?
When they use US based AWS for serving those web pages.
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The only surprise is it took this long, and that there aren't more people doing things like this. There's been a couple people doing the same to criticism of them on YouTube as well.Not as many as I thought though there'd be though.
I would be shocked, shocked I tell you, if this hasn't been rampant for a long time.
There were numerous online discussions as to how this could & would be abused; I'm sure there were a few here on Slashdot back in the day
Re: (Score:2)
The MAZZTer observed:
There's been a couple people doing the same to criticism of them on YouTube as well.
Such as has-been whiz-kid guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen [youtube.com], to name one notorious offender ...
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It didn't.
> and that there aren't more people doing things like this.
There are.
The CCP, just to pick on one prominent example, has been abusing copyright (among other features of Western law) to silence critics online as much as possible, for a couple of decades. It doesn't always work for them, but _sometimes_ it does.
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Ok, then let's ask, what DO you trust?
Re: (Score:2)
most journalism/journalist are fake!
miss and diss information
( THE RUSSIANS ... did it! )
Here's a clue, Vladimir:
Get better at English before you troll.
Simple enough (Score:5, Interesting)
If anyone raising a copyright claim or a takedown request is required to prove their identity. Then if the claims are fraudulent they can be prosecuted, sued, or both.
On the other hand, if a copyright claim or takedown request cannot be confirmed as coming from a real person or corporation, it should be ignored.
Re: (Score:2)
You want to sue an oil company? Be prepared to run this for a couple years, hope you prepared enough money for this endeavour.
Re:Simple enough (Score:5, Insightful)
You want to sue an oil company? Be prepared to run this for a couple years, hope you prepared enough money for this endeavour.
It's a criminal law. The government should do the prosecuting.
But yeah, no "mystery individual" should be able to file a claim and the penalties for false claims should be worse than the penalties for copyright infringement.
But they can, and they aren't.
America: The best laws that money can buy.
Simple Solution to illegal abuses (Score:3)
Not fake. (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets use the right terms: these take-down requests aren't fake (in which case there wouldn't be a take-down), they're fraudulent.
And the DMCA specifically bans issuing fraudulent DMCA take-down requests. How about we start enforcing the law, with sufficient teeth that the rich and powerful think twice about breaking it. Maybe bring in some of that German "the fine is X% of your yearly income" sanity to make penalties actually act as a deterrent to the rich.
Re:Not fake. (Score:4, Insightful)
How about we start enforcing the law, with sufficient teeth that the rich and powerful think twice about breaking it.
It's a great idea, but the copyright cartel has too much power for that to happen. Copyright is for them to use as a weapon, not to improve the lives of The People. Someone has to take whoever filed the request to court and show damages in order to recover any money, and then maybe if there is public interest there might be perjury chargers. The DMCA doesn't include any mandatory punishment for willful abuse, so the government isn't in any way obligated to punish the offenders.
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Not just fines. DMCA takedowns are supposed to be "under penalty of perjury". Well... perjury is supposed to be a crime. When someone (And there should *ALWAYS* be a specific, identifiable, someone. Automatic machine-generated takedowns should be banned.) commits that perjury by filing a DMCA takedown against content that is fair use, satire, news, commentary, or in any other way not an actual infringement; they should be prosecuted, imprisoned, and disbarred if a malpracticing lawyer.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think we need to ban automatic take-downs, just start enforcing the law, and establish precedence that a legal document filed by machine is still the responsibility of the person operating that machine. Automate things without oversight at your own risk.
Nobody would let a factory owner get away with an industrial robot killing its operators with "it was automated, it's nobody's fault" The rules shouldn't be any different for an information robot.
Linode is the United States nexus (Score:3)
The article states that the notice of claimed infringement was sent to the web hosting company Linode, a unit of Akamai Technologies. Akamai is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
I was hit by a DMCA lawsuit - sort of (Score:5, Interesting)
Circa 1999 / 2000. I reverse-engineered a tremendously stupid and completely obvious XOR-based "encryption" scheme in a well-know electronic device of the time. Fortunately, the company I was working for back then agreed to host my open-source code, so the maker of the device sued my company rather than me.
The ground for the lawsuit? I broke an encryption scheme, which is forbidden under the then-new DMCA. Nevermind that the "encryption" was just a XOR. In fact, they didn't want any encryption at all (the hardware was way too dumb to do encryption): they stuck the XORing thing there specifically to be able to sue people like me under the DMCA.
Long story short: my company eventually beat them in court, and it cost them a pretty penny in attorney fees. But they were happy to foot the bill for the publicity. Had the device's maker sued me personally though, they would have ruined me for life.
Re: (Score:3)
They might well not have sued if you had hosted it on geocities or whatever, on the assumption that there was no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.
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By any chance was this the Cue Cat?
Re: (Score:2)
Long story short: my company eventually beat them in court, and it cost them a pretty penny in attorney fees. But they were happy to foot the bill for the publicity. Had the device's maker sued me personally though, they would have ruined me for life.
Probably not, actually. For example, there was a man who back in the day who shot 3 people who were "probably" holding him up. He did various other things wrong. But then, they were also the "usual suspect" type, with extensive criminal records, history, and prolicivities.
Long story short, one of them got a multimillion judgement against him. How much of it had he paid over the course of 20 years, to either the person he shot or even his estate after he died? $0.
You can't get money from a stone, and mo
YouTube (Score:2)
On YouTube it seems particularly easy to submit made-up DMCA claims and there is no recourse for the target. You can file a dispute, but they don't pay attention unless your channel has tens of millions of followers. Even the most mainstream of outlets outside the US won't break high enough in the subscriber count to dispute a DMCA takedown. Much less anyone trying to do real journalism.
More or less WAD (Score:3)
Working As Designed.
Everyone knew the legislation was almost 100% weighted towards bypassing review and allowing rapid take down of anything claimed to be in violation without inconvenient legal review first.
And anyone with half a brain knew this would only benefit the deep pockets, and anyone without a big war chest would be too worried about a lawsuit to abuse the system against the big guys like the big guys abuse it towards the little guys.
Re: (Score:2)
+5 The Truth
United States legal jurisdiction (Score:3)
Unless the website in question is located in United States. DMCA requests means nothing and can just be thrown in the trash. It does not matter if the hosting is in the United States (I don't recommend it because of legal risk) or if the domain is registered there. The DMCA law is only within United States borders and anything outside of that can just throw such demands directly into the spam folder and have a good laugh about the demand.
This is a fact that not many people realize and are meeting the demands of fake DMCA requests in countries that do not have DMCA laws and are outside of legal jurisdiction of United States.
Companies and people that are inside United States are required to follow DMCA request. The rest of the world is not.
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Unless the website in question is located in United States. DMCA requests means nothing and can just be thrown in the trash.
Really? How come Youtube removed one of my videos if I don't live over there?
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Because YouTube (Alphabet) is located in United States with their headquarters. A company must be located in United States to be required to follow the DMCA laws.Unless a country has laws similar to DMCA laws of United States, this demands can be ignored. Some of those laws are because of a WIPO treaties that are in effect around the world. How much depends on the country, so there's no way for more to know for sure. Its complicated legal issue and there are no clear answers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.. [wikipedia.org]
Boo hoo (Score:2)
Awe, look, cancel culture works both ways.
This is why... (Score:2)
This, my friends, is why we shouldn't be putting everything in "the cloud". Any organization of any decent size should be running their own infrastructure so they can host whatever they want and they can tell people trying to abuse the DMCA to go duck themselves.
I do this, and I'm more than happy, as a real human, to look at a DMCA request and tell them to suck it because they're trying to play games. It has happened before and it will happen again. While big, faceless, dumb companies will just blindly foll
Po-LICE (Score:2)
The more po-LICEing laws and tools (should be classified as munitions for the damage they cause) are put on into the world, the more damage the bad guys will cause and the more life will be miserable for everyone.
The DMCA is a po-LICE munition no normal American citizen ever wanted.
But like... how? (Score:2)
Even YouTube has some kind of automated "We don't think you're correct about this takedown" things shown to some DMCA claimants. Can they really not say "Unless there's a name address and phone submitted, this claim gets kicked back to the su