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Automated DMCA Notices Still Full of Lies
dbaker writes "The MPAA filed a DMCA takedown notice against Superconnect, a software company. The letter is available here that demands the removal of roughly 120K of open-source TCL code that they believe to be a 'copyrighted motion pictures.' This is definitely a surprising case of the guilty until proven innocent world that the DMCA provides." And yet another: enrico_suave writes "The Entertainment Software Association falsely accuses the Interactive Fiction archive of pirating Doom 3. doom3.zip is a 114kb freeware DOS game from 1988. Reminiscent of when the RIAA sent C & D's to a Professor Usher who had an usher.mp3 file posted on his website."
Damn that's some nice gzip compression, where can I get some of that?!
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Is Linus secretly working for Microsoft?
Critical security flaws in Kerberos found in Unix, Linux, and Mac OS. Windows not affected.
The thing is, that I seem to remember a day when Slashdot was open and honest enough to discuss all sides of the issues. I guess this post will get whacked by an editor and my IP will get banned. Oh well... there are much better blogs out there nowadays anyway.
Oh, wait.
Why don't all the geeks in a collective act of corporate law disobediance just start using files with the names of copyrighted music/movies/literature/software and force the record and movie labels to waste tons of their financial resources sending out worthless legal letters?
That they are not as smart as you think. They probably dont even read or listen the content or compare the size.
WE'RE WATCHING YOU - doesnt sound as scary, especially if they really dont know what they are seeing.
Like it or not, they can't file "charges" because they have to get a REAL prosecutor to agree with them.
That begs the question, have they EVER filed real charges, like "in-the-ass-prison" charges or just civil suits? Don't they take years to resolve anyway?
More like mistakes.
The letter is available here that demands the removal of roughly 120K of open-source TCL code that they believe to be a 'copyrighted motion pictures.'
In other news, proof of life on Alpha Centauri was found on a Bazooka Joe bubble gum wrapper yesterday.
Yeah, makes just about as much sense as motion pictures in code.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
This also reminds me of when the BSA tried to get a university to take down unlicensed copies of MS Office that were, in fact, copies of Open Office. Link here.
Seriously, you'd think these people would bother to at least give files a once over before sending out cease-and-desist letters.
I'm half tempted to go putting up nonsence zip files with movie names just for the hell of it, see if I get any emails.
At what point can wrongfully accused parties level countersuits for harassment (if at all)?
INAL to the extreme, so I may be way off base here, but it seems like wasting peoples' time and resources like this should make you open to such suits.
Overseas, at least here in the UK, if you lose a court case you generally have to pay the other parties court costs. I can understand why you want people to be free to sue, but it seems that these days this is more a tool in favour of the big boys rather than a safety net for the little guy. Not that I expect the law to change, just making an observation.
This is ridiculous. The MPAA is sending off threatening legal letters to anyone who might even look suspicious.
Thank you, DMCA!
Someone with mod points mod this down, and don't go to the link... it's a troll and not safe for work
Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
"Also pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we hereby state, und
er penalty of perjury, that we are authorized to act on behalf of the owner
s of the exclusive rights being infringed as set forth in this notification..."
Is ANYONE that's gotten one of these ever going to call them on this bullshit and have them sent to jail for perjury?
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
The collective neural network of the entertainment industry seems to have its feedback and error inputs turned off for a very long time. Exactly how much intelligence does it take to realize randomly harrasing customers alienates them ?
The curious thing here is the dog that isn't barking. Where is the legal action against these companies for consistently, repeatedly and in the face of overwhelming evidence perpetrating the practice of harrasing legitimate users ?
Infringement Detail: Infringing Work: X-FILES, THE Season 1-7
There is nothing on their website that I could see that discusses an "xfile" as anything other than some organization software and certainly not any "seasons." These folks are very arrogant in their assumptions that the word "xfile" will always mean the tv show of the same name.
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Raise your hand if you are. Anyone? Anyone? You, you're raising your hand, why? Oh, you couldn't hear. You're not surprised either. Slightly more seriously, the whole purpose behind these campaigns is to scare people so why should they bother getting it right? That would require both effort and some comprehension of technology.
doom3.zip is a 114kb freeware DOS game from 1988 I knew Doom3 was a dupe!
If i record covers (I play bass, my friends play guitar and sing), and then post them on my website, am I breaking the law?
OK, I'm in the UK. What about now?
I think I know the answers - but it's a cheap way to get some insight. And a good way to start a discussion. And hopefully a fight. (It's Friday night here, but I'm indoors cos I feel like shit.)
...that no upcoming movie becomes named "stdio.h" or we're all screwed.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
I suggest we all hide random, public domain crap files in hidden or obfuscated links on all of our web pages. That way we can get back at the ??AA and ESA for spoofing files on P2P networks.
Yeah, that "master plan" they found was merely an upskirt shot named WMD.jpg
why would anyone click on a .info website anyways?
Like it or not, they can't file "charges" because they have to get a REAL prosecutor to agree with them.
That begs the question, have they EVER filed real charges, like "in-the-ass-prison" charges or just civil suits? Don't they take years to resolve anyway?
Ummm...Ths is total garbage. For one you can't prosecute on copyright disputes. It's a civil issue only.
Not to feed the troll, but you didn't even get a single octet correct. Sorry, try again.
Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
Don't takedown notices require sworn statements? I'm sure there must be some legal reprecussion by handing people takedown notices when not really knowing whether or not if they are even true. Maybe purjury or fraud?
Although there are disadvantages to a 'loser pays' system, it has the one big advantage of reducing frivolous lawsuits.
If you post it, they will read.
How come all the posters at the movie store say "Own it now on DVD?" If I own it, I can do what I want with it. I guess the posters should say "Own the licence to view the material in the privacy of your own home without making any sort of archival copy...on DVD!"
Can't the MPAA be sued for hacking? The MPAA was not given specific permission to enter another person's computer. Why can't anyone who's been sued by the MPAA countersue using the DMCA against them?
---
IMHO, of course.
May the SOURCE be with you.
WE'RE WATCHING YOU - doesnt sound as scary, especially if they really dont know what they are seeing.
Somehow, that argument doesn't sound right to me:
WE'RE LITIGATING AGAINST YOU - doesnt sound as scary, especially if they really dont know what they are litigating.
WE'RE SHOOTING YOU - doesnt sound as scary, especially if they really dont know what they are shooting.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
enjoy the mod down
This almost makes me want to start a DMCA honeypot. I could put a whole bunch of small meaningless non infringing files with names chosen to attract what appears to be a spider run by the MPAA.
Then I could see just how many automated C&D letters I could generate!
That would be fun. If only I had the time to deal with deluge of C&D letters.
What do you expect from someone who doesn't know what "begs the question" means.
On behalf of the respective owners of the exclusive rights to the copyright ed material at issue in this notice, we hereby state, pursuant to the Digit al Millennium Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 512, that the information in this notification is accurate and that we have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owners, their respective agents, or the law.
Anyone know how loosely interpretable the term "good faith belief" is? It seems like it would be trivial to prove (say, in court) that they obviously do NOT have any good faith belief, and that this is simply the result of some mindless spidering program. In a perfect world, you'd be able to force them into spending a little more money policing themselves, and every little bit counts, right?
Or someone who doesn't know how to punctuate correctly?
This is definitely a surprising case of the guilty until proven innocent world that the DMCA provides
Its is neither surprising nor does it have anything to do with "guilty until proven innocent". It is at best stupidity.
I can send a letter to Cowboyneal stating that I own a copyright on the color green and he should change the color of the slashdot logo. That doesn't mean cowboyneal is guilty of anything. Lawyers have always sent nastygrams around long before the DMCA.
The only thing new here is that they're sending out threatening letters without even bothering to have a human being take a quick glance at it. Well not new, it has been discussed here a long time ago.
Any casual look at the content of this 113kb file is enough to determine without a doubt that these are NOT infringing files. There should be a law against this type of harassment without so much as a glance at the facts.
The reply letter included these gems:
What about claiming dmages for aggressive (and illegal) prosecution.
If you have nothing useful to say post as AC.
Wow, that is incredible. I've got popus blocked and all the javascript options turned off, and it still opens up an infinite number of new windows in Firefox. Major troll, but I've got to admire his skillz.
Hate to beat a dead horse here, but by making a big deal out of a gross-out troll, you just cause more people to click on the link and give them what they want - attention.
Don't give the trolls attention.
Could I take a VIDEO TAPE (no deCSS, hence no violation of the DCMA) of a movie I own, encode it into , then encrypt it with some sort of trivial method and post it to a website with filename NAME_OF_MOVIE.xxx. Then wait to get a C&D from the MPAA.
At that point could I demand how they are CERTAIN it is indeed a copy of their IP. If they actually decrypted the file and checked it wouldn't they be in violation of the DCMA? If they didn't wouldn't their claim be baseless, and hence perjurous (sp?) under the DCMA?
Just a thought I had during my last 5 minutes of work...
Rob
That would bankrupt most of the lawyers in USA. That's like, half the population of United States!
I'm actually pretty jealous they get these kinds of things. I should put up a page on my site with some old junk files, like resumees or code from old projects tar'd and gz'd and see if I can attract one of these fine letters. I feel it's important to be the first one on my block to receive and frame one of these masterpieces, before all you other weasels realize what fun this could be and set up your own web pages with likenamed and structured directories and files.
Suppose after they've spun tens of thousands of these things they might realize they're on the wrong track with automating such a lame process?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
There was a sig from someone on here that linked to a bit of perl that would make a realistic-looking webpage that created fake download links of files to catch the RIAA/MPAA auto-C&D letter bots. Wish I could find where it was now - I think I might like to take part in laughing at them hehe
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
...the ability of corporate goons make themselves look like dumbasses by using lawyers inappropriately.
On another note, since turnabout is fair play, wouldn't it be fun for owners/authors the legally copyrighted X-File utility to sue the MPAA for trying to claim ownership of something that isn't theirs and issue a similar DMCA takedown order for all the X-Files-TV-show-related material on their web site?
Nahh, it's friday. Who cares? I just want my TV back for the weekend.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I'm sick of all the MPAA basing on slashdot. Leave the poor people alone!
We had one of these letters once delivered to Postmaster and Webmaster accounts for the company I work for. After a half hour of scurrying around trying to find the offending files on the system and failing, we double-checked the IP address that they said was the server with the offending files, and sure enough, they had made a typo between the time their script found the files, and they did a lookup on the ip address. The offending subnet, completely not owned by our company, was transposed a few digits.
So, we replied back to them, told them of their idiocy, and got a somewhat reasonable apology back - but nothing like what it SHOULD have been based on the language and severe tone of their warning.
This questions what really is automated and what has at least some human intervention. Of course, they should have realized that the entire X-Files series doesn't fit in a 113k file.
telling the WRITER and everyone else to read ALL the links given the doom3 C&D link proved this article to be pointless
This is a valid point.
of when i really would just want to send back a letter telling them to go sod off. You have to wonder how sane these lawyers are.
But they sure sound like our Vice President.
the company that is doing the crawling for them must be making a fortune off archie
Isn't anyone worried that it may soon be illegal to have a file with a name like a copyrighted work? The ones in the 'article' may have been just coincidences, but if you start intentionally naming things after copyrighted works to get their bots' attention... well, who knows what depths of stupidity they could sink to? I think it's worth worrying about, and maybe even a legitimate legal question. Even if it is completely stupid.
But they (at least if you were to question them on it) are referring to this part:
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
Paramount Pictures Corporation
TriStar Pictures, Inc.
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
United Artists Pictures, Inc.
United Artists Corporation
Universal City Studios, LLLP
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
I'm tempted to put some 1x1 pixel transparent gif images up on my site and link them to 0byte files called doom3.zip and stuff to see if I start getting some letters...
Gosh, I wasn't aware that my IF Archive mirror was harboring copyrighted material. You'd better grab it before it goes away!
doom3.zip
And while you're at it, check out the rest of the archive, text adventures aren't dead!
Hmm, looking at the copy of peter's email its pretty likely that I may have received one myself -- but my spam filter recognized what it was and deleted it.
bcl
Remember Lexington Green!
At this point, the BS takedown notices have reached such a fever pitch that I've started rolling around a couple ideas for eliminating them as attacks.
One possibility would be writing a script that simply mails bogus takedown notices (based on the official ones) for various files, flooding the "takedown notice" mechanism and making it ineffective.
Note that recent federal antispam laws may have eliminated this as a legal tactic, due to the "misleading origin" bits. On the other hand, it doesn't have to look like it's coming from the MPAA -- just send a takedown request from someone else, even yourself. Enough incorrect takedown requests and people will start simply ignoring them.
May we never see th
Back in the day, when some of my buddies had bar bands, they did have to pay fees to ASCAP (also squeeze to the business agent of the musicians local). It wasn't much, and they didn't get paid much anyway, but it definitely had to be done. If you perform in public, even for free, and posting an mp3 would count as performing in public, the rights holder has to be paid to be legal.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Well, there are legitimate .info sites...
Who doesn't like free music?
From watching musicians play live a lot and talking to them afterwards, I've had a couple ask for their set-lists back so they can fill in the PRS forms. Presumably that's all you have to do - fill in the form, pay the appropriate license fee, that is if you're performing it in public. Presumably they can't charge you to rehearse the song privately prior to doing so.
.. lzip is a must to have.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Other movie titles that are resistant to keyword-based searching:
:-) )
* One Point Oh
* XXX
* Thirteen
* M (Definitely predates P2P
May we never see th
This is fairly good news for your lawyer if you are in trouble.
The letter is truly an evidence of shooting in darkness. It proves that the MPAA have no clue whatsoever.
IP evidence would be turned down in court, because of the superficial evidence on this matter.
... and they no it. It is just there kind of scare tactics.
A countersuit could bring them in a bad situation, where they would have to rethink there tactics, because the cost would be to high.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
3. Sue MPAA for unlawfully accessing your FTP server. (profit)
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
You are doing an ASCII transfer of what is supposedly a binary file. Various combinations of 0x0A and 0x0D in the binary are not guaranteed to survive that kind of treatment intact (in ASCII transfers, line breaks are represented as CR LF regardless of the representation used locally at either end of the transmission).
Ok, but then what's the point? I mean if you just wait them out for court, then poof, your off. All you have to show is that they can't prove that they can't show any proof that you physically did it.
I am sure someone has a "how-to" text file, by now, on how to get out of this with a minimal investment.
I forsee an era when all sorts of organizations and software companies will send out their 'bots to troll the net for "offences" like this.
Its much easier than thinking, very much like the SCO gang suing all Linux users in the world for mis-perceived violations of their *nix license.
Let's just start sending C&D letters to the RIAA. Or more specifically their ISP which seems to be Verizon (ironic, eh?)
After all. I have a copyrighted image file named logo2.gif. Coincidentally, the RIAA seems to be hosting that very image. At least as far as I can tell, right? The filename matches, and I certainly can't be bothered to compare the contents of the file. Just fire off a letter! Damn, I just did some more checking. The FBI stole my banner and put it at http://www.fbi.gov/homeimag/banner.jpg. Bastards! I better send off a letter to their ISP as well!
Enjoy Since these clowns seem to be going by file name only, I wonder if a little turn-about poisoning would be in order? A zillion files names which all point to a file with someone screaming "What the hell do you MPAA/RIAA-hireling dumb-fscks think you're doing?" That should make entertaining evidence to play for some court.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Funny, I am using Firefox with the same and did not get a single popup (although the audio did play). Are you on Linux or W32? Maybe it was W32 specific or my squid filters blocked something.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
current job listings :)
who wants to volunteer for a covert subversion operation in database erasure?
you can help melissa_valenzuela@mpaa.org write their sniffing software with advanced skills such as Excel and Access... har har dee har har
http://madonna.nick.music.stodge.org/ This is a PHP based tarpit of confusion designed to annoy the ??IA enough to stop spidering your server. You need to be able to run apache virtual hosts, but do not need any database (it all runs of config files). You can read all about this tarpit on my wiki. Patches and improvements are welcomed.
Grandparent suit is completely wrong. Copyright infringement can be a crime in the USA at least. Otherwise you wouldn't hear about the FBI raiding people's houses and people getting slapped in jail for pirating software, DVDs etc.
They "declare under penalty of perjury" that they have the right to act on behalf of the identified infringing works.
Seems to me since they don't have that authority, they've committed perjury. This isn't even really contestable, it's a fact that they don't ahve the right to do what they claim . . . so why not call them down on it?
It exists!
o f+ Confusion
http://wiki.stodge.org/index.php?page=RIAA+Pit+
You can see an example here:
http://usher.nico.music.stodge.org/
These guys need to be taken down!
AC comments get piped to
They are authorized to act only on behalf of the MEMBER companies. Simply put, they're not authorized to act on my behalf or anyone else that doesn't meet the criteria.
That makes it definitely purjory and maybe even fraud considering that they're claiming that they're acting on those people's behalf when they aren't.
It's definitely actionable and someone should call them on it- it'll stop the whole thing pretty quick once they find out that they can be held liable under various other laws and can be stuck with some pretty nasty punitive damages as a result.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
If all it takes is to have a *file* named x-files or usher for them to send you a letter, then everyone start mirroring bogus junk files with similiar names.
Every second of time spent sending these stupid letters is money out of their pockets.
*ducks*
The whole thing's civil and is limited to what they're claiming. Any notice under the DMCA is a legal document and is limited in scope to what is claimed in the notice and nothing more. If they didn't check that the file was in fact infringing and they claim it is- and it's not... Well, that's purjory, pure and simple.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Canadian law is much the same as British law with respect to having the loser paying the other parties costs. IANAL but I think that the judge has some discretion in awarding costs.
The letter linked in the article asserts that the file in question is all or part of the "X Files" television show belonging to an organisation represented by the MPAA. Their assertion is NOT TRUE. The file in question is the source to a X Windows file manager that belongs to Mikko Kiviniemi.
The MPAA also states in their letter (in the excerpt shown in the grandparent to this post) that they are authorised to act on behalf of the owner of the exclusive rights to the material in question. The material in question really belongs to Mr. Kiviniemi, and I really doubt he authorised the MPAA on his behalf, so that assertion is also false.
I think that if they can't be charged with purjury then at the very least some or all of the recipients of these letters should pursue a court order to forbid the MPAA from sending legally threatening letters with blatantly flase information to innocent people. In any case, the MPAA should be banned from using a computerised system to scan file repositories and automatically issue such threats. The MPAA should be required to MANUALLY EXAMINE EVERY FILE they discover by automated means before making such bold assertions to minimise false accusations.
It's definitely world class as AI's go- Artificial Idiots, that is...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Sorry... I can't believe I misspelled perjury. Ouch! ;) Always preview!
I should have them handle my new and upcoming movie, "Index.html".
I suppose the robot scans HTTP servers too, not just FTP. Does it check for the existance of robots.txt in case they have been banned from a particular server? Not that I would expect it to, but I'd include it in my blacklist of misbehaving robots and refuse future requests from their IP addresses. I might allow them to see some file names, but not retrieve the files themselves...
Imagine sending notices to the equiv of *.htm and *.asp to the whole net at once, and how much good it would do for the world by eliminating non-standard compliant (ie specific) sites!
RIAA Pit of Confusion... enjoy. Patches and suggestions are very welcome.
Sickening.
I can't even think of anything else to post that would not be Troll or Flamebait.
I wrote that article! :-)
It's more like they have their collective neural net placed in their collective anus...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
IANAL, but maybe folks should hire one and sue for libel when they are the victims of wrongful DMCA takedown notices:
- A written notice was sent to an ISP, accusing someone of something defamatory (copyright infringement).
- In the case described above, the accusation is untrue and a quick glance at the webpage would've shown this.
- Not even bothering to look first might be considered "reckless disregard for the truth".
Certainly the MPAA and RIAA have the right to send DMCA takedown notices vs. actual infringing materials;
but don't they have a responsibility to at least check first (instead of blindly relying on filenames) ?
>;k
Do you really think that the XXAA is EVER going to run out of resources?
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
Paramount Pictures Corporation
TriStar Pictures, Inc.
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
United Artists Pictures, Inc.
United Artists Corporation
Universal City Studios, LLLP
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
With companies like that backing them, how the HELL will they run out of money? That's just a partial list of their clients I'm sure...
EVERYONE: While it would be fun to get your own autographed letter from the MPAA or RIAA and frame it in your cube, it's pointless. The "machine" that is the recording industry won't run out of postage or stupid ideas any time soon. We need a dramatic paradigm shift in societal thought patterns or legislation for any real change to occur.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
There's been some mention in the discussion of making phony files with infringing-sounding names (perhaps oops_i_did_it_again.mp3). This could at some point generate a letter from the RIAA to your ISP in which they accuse you of infringing their copyright.
IANAL, but that sounds an awful lot like libel to me - lying about me to a third party, trying to besmirch my reputation, trying to instigate problems for me. Would that work as an offensive tactic against the RIAA?
Yes, they made a big mistake in failing to manually examine the files in question before sending out a notice. Yes, that seems like it could be construed as harassment--it may even be actionable--due to that negligence or failure or due diligence or whatever.
However, it is in no way perjury. Here's what they said:
under penalty of perjury, that we are authorized to act on behalf of the owners of the exclusive rights being infringed as set forth in this notification
What rights are they talking about that were set forth? Go back earlier in the letter:
We have received information that, at the above noted date and time, the IP address 216.52.171.81 was used to offer or to materially contribute to the offering of downloadable or streaming copies of copyrighted motion pictures.
The rights they were talking about were the rights to the motion pictures.
They did not state under penalty of perjury that X-Files1.21b.tar.gz is a copy of the X-Files Seasons 1-7 video. They stated under penalty of perjury that they represent the owner of the rights that they are claiming have been infringed--i.e., that they represent the owners of "X-FILES, THE Season 1-7".
Perhaps there should be a penalty for knowingly or carelessly making a false accusation?
How would you like to be a multi-millionaire witnessing the destruction of the business-model that made you rich? These corporate suits might actually have to go out and earn a living someday doing REAL work for possibly the first times in their richly lived lives. How about a little sympathy?
Let's face it, most poor people were born that way and are used to it. But if you've lived the high-life for your entire life and are suddenly faced with the prospect of losing that life, it could be scary.
So let's cut some slack. Let's let them lash out with their feeble lawsuits and legal threats. We all know their time is almost up.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
1. Program two pieces of software, one called X-Files.zip with code to break the protection of the program called HalfLife.zip 2. Put them online always stating that downloading X-Files.zip is ilegal 3. Let's the bots come to you 4. ??? 5. Profit
How is it abuse?
baytsp is one of the bad guys. MGM uses them for scanning P2P networks for infringing works.
Whats really funny is the C&D letter I received was for a file that was just a trailer for a movie. Whats really really funny is the trailer turned out to be a clip from a porn that had been renamed to be the trailer I wanted. So, I received a C&D letter for a bogus trailer???
To top it off, my provider (COX), turned off my Internet access when they received the C&D, without even contacting me first. Too bad its my only choice for broadband access...
Casca
You know, instead of just filing a counter-notice, victims like this should take a different approach. Copyright law has penalties for trying to usurp or interfere with another person's copyrights. When a blatantly false notice like this is filed demanding the material be taken down, the victim should treat it as an ordinary attempt to falsely claim ownership of their copyrighted material and pursue it as such. Put the RIAA and MPAA on the receiving end of a copyright-infringement suit for a change.
I agree with the Citizen comment. Having fallen victim to one of these letters just a few minutes ago, I think I will now act upon the fact that I am a "Citizen" of the United States ...
The MPAA sent a letter to my ISP a few months ago and my ISP sent a letter to me stating that I had better stop sharing copyrighted materials. I ignored the letter from the ISP because I had not to my knowledge been sharing copyrighted materials. Today my ISP calls and says they received another letter from the MPAA. Since this is the second letter within a year they have now shut my service off. What did this accomplish?
As soon as I get home I will cancel my ISP service. I will no longer purchase movies for home viewing, and I will no longer go to a theater to watch movies. I will definitely adjust my taxes so that the government gets as little as possible.
Did this hurt me? Not really, it actually may make me a little more active. Did it hurt the MPAA, most likely not. Did it help the MPAA/ISP/Government? I can't see how, as now they just turned me into a pissed off "Citizen"!
Does anyone know the bot name to look for in my apache logs? If I can get that I can create a script to send them lots of random file names to trigger their letter writer/sender whenever their bot comes calling.
http://tinyurl.com/3t236
....just forcing them to actually have a hooman bean look at the dern file before they go cash shopping with thinly veiled legal threats. This is just another example of ambulance chasing. I know if I got some legal threat of action like that that was clearly false and that the file in question obviously wasn't looked at by a human I'd see the suckers in court. They've gone start raving bonkerts near as I can see. Not only are they chronic serial liars and abusers, witness multiple convictions of industry collusion to keep profits artifically high and to stifle true competition, and bribery/payola to manipulate the markets, but now they are automating what is *clearly* supposed to be a human eyeball task, and as such are tippy toeing pretty close to barratry. When law offices send official pieces of paper, or electronic notifications, they got to cross Ts and dot Is pretty carefully, and this shows WILLFUL negligence. It's not a mistake, it's the actual results of cutting illegal corners in order to maximise legal profits. And that's why folks hire lawyers, so that the law gets followed, and these bozos didn't do that, yet want to maintain their status as righteous lawyers representing their client. Both the recipient of the notice has a claim, and their original clients have a claim against them. They are double wrong on this little gem as far as I know. I'll let the branes at groklaw sort it out, but this is certainly what it looks like to me..
They tried to sue The Pirate Bay (www.thepiratebay.org), a swedish BitTorrent site.
t
:-)
Here's their mail and reply:
http://static.thepiratebay.org/dreamworks_mail.tx
Short and to the point.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
So MS was cheaper..
is this another of those dual-xeon vs. PPC970 mainframe deals? Given Forbes' mission, with whom would you expect them to side?
As for the other - "We have no reason to believe that anyone has produced an exploit program. Moreover, this is not something where we have seen an attack in the wild"
Like the man said, "patching is easy to do". Have fun with SP2.....
Thanks
Anacondas.zip and put goatse in there
The Forbes article is the same old same old Microsoft FUD we've been hearing for years, and it hasn't gotten any newer. The Kerberos vulnerability is minor compared to the wide-open doors with big neon "Welcome" signs in Windows. Saying that Windows is better because it lacks that vulnerability is like saying Lynx is the ultimate browser because it can't be hijacked by hostile ActiveX controls. Not news.
Infringing Work: X-FILES, THE Season 1-7
Filename: X-Files1.21b.tar.gz
Filesize: 113k
I want to know who figured out how to fit 7 seasons of the X-Files into a 113k tar file.
You'd think their stupid script would consider file size...
Do you have ESP?
"No known exploit" has never stopped Slashdot from posting front page stories about Windows flaws. For example, take a look at "New virus targets 64-bit Windows" posts we had here (yep, there were more than one). There was (and still is) no known exploit. It was fabricated in the lab by an anti-virus company to get press, and Slashdot played the fool for them.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Sure, maybe they are shooting you with an Airzooka from Thinkgeek ;)
RE: Litigating - So kindof like SCO then?
I wrote a quick script to make up files filled with garbage (streamed, created on the fly) with names from a text file...
c gi
Take that, MPAA!
http://www.scovetta.com/projects/mpaa-trap/index.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
The ESA sucks balls when it come to actually finding legit stuff. When they "suspected" someone was sharing the Spiderman video game, my university got a takedown notice:
[Blah blah blah legal stuff]
Infringement Detail:
Infringing Work: Spider-Man
Filepath: Spiderman 1988.torrent|Regular/
Filename: 03 Spectacular Spider-Man - #134.cbr
First Found: 24 Aug 2004 22:04:36 EDT (GMT -0400)
Last Found: 25 Aug 2004 06:04:42 EDT (GMT -0400)
Filesize: 12,076k
IP Address: 156.143.133.64
IP Port: 6881
Network: BTPeers
Protocol: BitTorrent
Infringing Work: Spider-Man
Filepath: Spiderman 1988.torrent|Regular/
Filename: 06 Spectacular Spider-Man - #135.cbr
First Found: 24 Aug 2004 22:04:36 EDT (GMT -0400)
Last Found: 25 Aug 2004 06:04:43 EDT (GMT -0400)
Filesize: 11,664k
IP Address: 156.143.133.64
IP Port: 6881
Network: BTPeers
Protocol: BitTorrent
[and then a bunch more files]
The network admin noticed something was up, but not enough to stop from posting the message on the campus's e-message boards. The file was on a computer on the main backbone of the network, not the student network.
Then he discovered it was in the CCLC, also known as the FURMAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY. So, we've either got a really smart guy doing P2P in the library where he can't get busted, or we've got a bum infringement notice.
Going back up to the filesize info, you see that the files are miniscule, NOT the size of the Spiderman game. D'oh.
We're guessing they are copies of the Spiderman comics from the late '80s. Perhaps someone is copyright-infringing, but the ESA is *not* the one who should be concerned.
Needless to say, they still got their way--the computer was disconnected from the Internet for at least a little while, as is usual for takedown notices. I'd be extremely pissed if they did that to my computer, and I'm now tempted to make and upload a "doom3.zip" bogus folder, just to see what happens . . .
..for hosting a little site that featured mirKx's RSS feed being processed by PHP. I'm not really up to date on IP laws, but being in the US, I took it down.
If anyone's interested, I have the letter and my reply up.
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
They're clearly just trawling the net for certain filenames. Perhaps thousands of us should create plain text files containing rude/amusing messages to these people, and give them names that their bots will pick up. They'd soon start looking stupid (well, *more* stupid) sending out thousands of automated letters to ISPs that were supposedly hosting "Return of the King" and "Spiderman 2" in twenty-byte files. They may try to poison the P2P file-sharers with duff files, so why not do the same to them to stop them using these bully-boy legal tactics against innocent people?
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
Are they numbered sequentially?
Their DMCA letter constitutes perjury, as they state under oath, that they are authorized by the copyright holder to take these acts. That is false, and it is not excusable as they have easy means at their disposal to check it out first (i.e. look at the file).
House your server/operations in a state where you can file a civil suot for perjury, and fry their asses.
This reminds me of the fiction short story about the guy who had an overdue copy of RLS's "Kidnapped" and the computers got involved, and it became a crime of kidnapping and he was executed.... all by computer.
"Dear idiots,
http://sc.com/~dbaker/dmca.html
You're all stupid.
Affectionately,
Charles"
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Hello, mods, that shouldn't be insightful, informative, or otherwise. Fact is, slashdot *is* a biased news source, and not everything gets posted. Don't mod this post up, mod the parent post offtopic/troll, which it is. If in his/her opinion there are better blogs, than he/she should go there and stop posting junk on our forum.
But have the exploits been fixed? That's the real question. I patched Kerberos earlier today. What's Microsoft's mean response time, hmmmmm?
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Maybe we should impose severe penalties on copyright holders etc who fire off these take down notices without due diligence. It's 137KB, and would have taken a matter of seconds to download (I am certain the MPAA has access to a high speed connection) and check it out.
Given that a simple check of the file would reveal that it wasn't copyrighted material, why not invoice them for the time spent doing their job for them? Charge them at your consulting rates, minimum of two hours.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Or Doom 3, for that matter. (It's actually a text adventure from 1980.) The ESA has not returned calls. I'm talking to my lawyer to ask whether I can sue them.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
The forbes article is good for a few laughs. Like .NET and J2EE together represent 100% of all development environments. Supposedly .NET is 56% and J2EE is 44%. LOL.
Ugh. Someone should send 'em a cease and desist!
One company I sub-contract for...hyper-sensitive about any ethical type issue. Suppose I lost that contract because of that reckless accusation. Or didn't get another contract, who could say that wasn't the reason? And let's suppose...and this is a reasonable assumption...that I had the time, means and the will to pursue that case?
I need a trial lawyer to tell me how much a case like that could potentially be worth. And whether that would be federal or state court and which state court?
Face it, they're going to keep doing it until the party they're acting on behalf of gets burned for a big judgment. At which time I'm guessing they'll become somewhat more judicious in their conduct.
Remind me again which one of the clowns running for president wants to limit liabiltiy awards in court cases? Because this type of treatment is what you're going to get, from a lot of different companies, the day after that passes.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
IANAL, but I believe there may be restrictions on using titles of well-known movies in your product.
For best effects, have no licenses slapped onto it, then you may claim that they infringed YOUR copyright!
How does this get around mozilla's popup blocker?
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
The 2nd coolest guy at PSU after a certain Joe Pa. Posted all the letters and his responses on his office door. When you see the full story unfold in front of you, then you can't help think about how much better the world would be without lawyers.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
I get a lot of hits from a bot at 212.95.252.15 using the ID "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"
It's quite obviously a bot since it retrieves only html files and not gif or jpeg. Real IE would of course load the images.
It's much like the illegal search and detentions that go on all the time on our streets. Nobody in law enforcement wants to put "good" cops in jail for "assult with a deadly weapon" because they illegally pulled you over on a dark, stormy nite [with 2 9mm's pointed at your head!] The govt has given itself corperate style immunity... it's no longer another citizen approaching you with a weapon that made an error in judgement, but a "law enforcement agent" of the government that made a mistake... as if it was no different from an assembly worker that inserted a widget instead of a gadget. Given the increasing severity of the laws it's creating a huge problem where "judgement" is being used "AS" the punishment [in legal fees, hassle, ect] by other citizens...
You mean like this Cascading Style Sheets tool?
Look, anyone can make a typo, and I know I'm not about to win any spelling bees, but this just offends the eyes. P-E-R-J-U-R-Y. If you wish to spell the verb form, as in "they perjure themselves when they state this", then it's P-E-R-J-U-R-E.
It's as bad as when my wife gets an invitation saying "your invited", or the sloppy crap in this stupid flash splash page. I'm not looking to find stupid spelling errors; the misspelled word just leaps out at me, repeated as it is in every title of every reply.
I say don't bother setting them up.
When you try to counter sue for libel/slander/whatever, they'll just say to the court 'Entrapment', the case will be dismissed (or tied up on appeal 'forever minus a day'), and that will be that.
Remember kids: In a government corrupted by corporate interests, Money Talks.
The best way to fight back is to boycott the ??AA's goods and services. 'Speak' to them in the only language they understand: Money Talks.
So does anyone have any identifying characteristics for the spiders they use to find files? Then all we need to do is modify our web/ftp servers to id them and serve up an infinitely large fictitious file system just to keep them busy.
1)the xxAA to issue C&D letters over data that is not theirs.
2)a public backlash against the xxAA (maybe even the DMCA, but that just wishful thinkig)
3)the xxAA to give you an excuse to sue
I propose that someone start up a web site that writes and accepts reviews of movies/music/whatever. The reviews can then be tarballed into (movie|game|artist/song)name.tar.gz so that users can download all the reviews about whatever at one time.
When the xxAA's bot sees these files and sends the C&D letters, you can accuse the xxAA of trying to shut down people who say unflattery things about them (you didn't think these would be good reviews, did you?). The xxaa then opens themselves up to lawsuits, because of the potential damage to you (maybe the ISP will shut you down, or, better yet, the xxAA will follow up on their threat). when this happens:
1) you have further proof of the xxAA's monopolistic (sp?) practices, and their hatred of the consumer, etc. to wave in the public's face.
2) the xxAA has just (accorging to a previous post) violated the DMCA, because there is no real reason to believe that these files contain whole games, movies, or songs or whatever (yeah, right judge... i fit the whole 3cds of this game into a 100K file...) these C&D letters even give the size of the file in question, and a 100k file should not look to a person like a violation of any copyrights.
There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
The thing to do is set up a site which has a few subdirectories for a spider to crawl through and find bunches of files that really do look like what they are wanting to find. Have everything, HTML pages as well as data files, accessed through a script that strips off the leading directory path for any request. But generate all the links with a generated leading directory that encodes in some non-obvious way the IP address the hit came from. Then when you get your C&D letter(s), reverse the encoding of the file path given to find where they came from to see the file. Then put that information out to the world. And make sure they, and only they, get the famous goatse.cx picture captioned "better check in here, too".
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Let them cry entrapment. The real idea is to have so many sites just flooded with these filenames that they would have to be sending out C&D by the millions. These letters do cost them money to send. The more noise there is, the more any signals are drowned out. They'll have to go back to pretending to be pimply faced kids in chat rooms to find where the real stuff is, while their spiders get stuck in tens of thousands of crawler traps, generating gigabytes of likely matches.
I'm going to be putting back a spider trap I used to have a long time ago. There will be a posted warning not to enter in the form of a standard "robots.txt" file. That will keep out any spiders that follow the rules, which I suspect MPAA and RIAA will not be following.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
"News for trolls; stuff that starts flamewars"
Anyhow, the forbes article already got mentioned on Groklaw. Perhaps you need to stop relying on one site for all your news?
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Why don't people start sending out DMCA letters to the ISPs of the folks at the RIAA and MPAA? Like to the ISPs that their kids use at school, the ISPs at thier homes, the ISPs that the friends of the family use to run thier businesses, the ISPs that run the servers that the various bands' websites are on?
I'll even let you use me as the copyright holder... I've just now created one song per letter of the alphabet, so go find an English on thier web site letter and threaten to sue them for me, all in good faith!
Fact is, there is no such thing as a unbiased news source.
and I'll say it again. While I certainly would like to think the automatic DMCA notices are faulty with any degree of regularity. I used to be in charge of getting the DMCA notices for a University and enforcing the notice. I didn't like doing it because I personally hate the DMCA>
However, out of ~500 notices, not a single one has been wrong. Only one person tried to get out of it, but he was lieing through his teeth, as he said he never traded files on IRC, when we have logs of him doing so. (And no, he wasn't hacked)
The DMCA notices are pretty reliable, but there will be errors, just like there will be with any system. For example, spam filters mis-labeling a real e-mail as spam.
And, if you want to fight the DMCA notice, all you have to do is fill out a really quick form, and that's the end of that. Not a big deal. You shouldn't have to do it at all, but it's still not a big deal.
Scared the **** out of me, as I hunted around for the file they said I was illegally sharing, I couln't find any file by the given filename on my sytemems, but I did find a file which matched the filesize exactly down to the byte.
So I had been given an official warning by my ISP because I had OpenOffice 1.1.0 Win32 Install (zip), available for download...
I hope smeone somewhere feels stupid for there mistake, and I hope I can clear my name with my ISP.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
The problem with a "loser pays" system is that it provides an incentive for one side to press its case in order not to be the one giving up on it (therefore paying for both sides' lawyers). If you're accused by the corporate megopoly, and they just keep throwing money at their lawyers, you're going to run out of resources to defend yourself. When that happens, not only will you lose the case, but you'll have to pay the very lawyers that dicked you over.
Sound like an improvement? Not to me.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
That link rules. I had to end the task, but it'll be useful as a prank. Excellent gag.
... when I submitted it. Wonder what happened in the meantime?
"The Entertainment Software Association falsely accuses the Interactive Fiction archive of pirating Doom 3. doom3.zip is a 114kb freeware DOS game from 1988. Reminiscent of when the RIAA sent C & D's to a Professor Usher who had an usher.mp3 file posted on his website."
A lot of people have posted comments about nailing the RIAA/MPAA etc. for purgery or liable. I have another idea.
When "they" repeatedly do stuff like this, it lowers their credibility.
Does even the spider download the actual files?
It seems to me that if someone was actually hosting infringing material, after getting a Cease and Desist letter, they can just change the file. Use the same filename, but replace it with something silly, like a tarball of your slashdot journals, or an mp3 of yourself reading the fair use clause of the US Constitution.
And if lots of people put out files like this that were not infringing in the first place, then it would make it more difficult to determine who actually was infringing and who was acting as a decoy.
At the very least it would force them to have a human being confirm that a particular person is really infringing, and to save the evidence, before they start sending threatening letters, and I think we can all agree that would be a good thing.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
"good faith" requires that a human verify the data before the notice is sent. Machines are not capable of being faithful, humans must look at the results and determine, with faithfulness to the law and honesty, whether a violation is probable.
Then, and only then, is it legal, right, moral, honest, ethical, or in any way acceptable to send the notice.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.