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Gentoo Package Accused of Violating DMCA
cshields2 writes "A recent post to the Gentoo mirrors mailing list passes along a DMCA violation claim that one of the mirror admins recieved. Supposively their bot saw the words "Pac" and "Man" in the filename INFMapPacks123FULL-MAN.zip and assumed it was an illegal copy of PAC-MAN. The file is actually for Unreal Tournament Infiltration. This is comical in one sense, but to be read by a hosting company who does not know any better can be frightening. Has anyone else ran into this with good (or even bad) outcomes?"
The note is just to make sure that if the letter gets to the wrong recipient, that recipient cannot disseminate the information in the letter. It does not restrict the right of the intended recipient to do whatever they wish with the information in the letter.
NMG
What is this all about? They are trying to hide the fact that they are sending out these letters?
That's all standard boilerplate that is included in most any legally confidential communications. My mom is a shrink, and every fax she sends contains that text. It doesn't restrict the actions of the intended recipient. My mom's clients can still show the fax to anyone they please. It's so that if my mom sends it to a client, and someone else picks it up out of the fax machine, they aren't supposed to give it to all their friends. It's weak juju to indemnify the sender of lapses in confidentiality.
If they wanted to stop the intended recipient from spreading the message around... they couldn't, but they'd be much more threatening.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Similar to the way people have salted web pages with phony email addresses to poison robots that scrape web pages for email addresses an effective way to poison the DMCA robots is to salt your web site with nonsense files with names the robots will pick up. There is a procedure for contesting DMCA take down notices. http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~benjamin-chapman/c le/dmca_summary.htm
As I mentioned in the list post, yes, this is silly and amusing, but it still has to be treated seriously. I met with our company lawyer yesterday (who is pretty well-versed in the DMCA, and hence has slightly less than glowing praise about it). The basic response of course is to reply, explaining that they are in error and to consider the matter closed.
While I would like nothing better than to go after these people for gross abuse of the legal system, my company, like many other companies, cannot justify the costs associated with going to court over something like this. This is why you should donate to an organization like the EFF, and tell them you are concerned about the DMCA and its effects.
(Standard IANAL disclaimer for the following:) Also, check out this form if you are a mirror provider. It deals specifically with the DMCA, but does not necessarily provide protection against, but it may help. It is intended for transit providers/datacenters (which we are), but from reading its defintion of a "service provider", mirror sites MAY (again, IANAL) qualify in the same respect.
When AT&T forwarded that threat to me, they included a legal contact at the company to speak to about any questions, etc (I removed this before I posted to the gentoo mirrors list, including just the stuff the ESA sent to AT&T). I called him up and got the general idea that companies like AT&T see hundreds of these per day, most of them invalid, and just forward them to their customers out of courtesy. They never seem to actually disconnect service because of an automated threat.
It seems the only people these days that take the DMCA seriously are organizations like the ESA.
Still, good point.