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MPAA Sends Linux Australia Dubious Takedown Notice
L1TH10N writes "News.com has a story on how the MPAA sent a takedown notice to Linux Australia for the movies 'Twisted' and "Grind.' What was actually hosted with Linux Australia is Twisted (being a Python framework) and Valgrind (being a tool for finding memory management problems in programs). An interesting question that the article raises is whether automatic takedown notices based on blind keyword searches constitutes spam."
"This seems to be a huge misuse of resources, an infringement upon various global spam laws, an infringement upon our own Copyright Act under Section 102 and needless stress and cost upon small Australian organizations and companies," Smith said. ......
"Linux Australia is concerned that this kind of shoot-in-the-dark approach to copyright protection is potentially damaging for Australian organizations and companies," Smith added. "Organizations that participate in such behavior should be held accountable and forced to put at least some effort into researching the validity of their keyword searches."
Why aren't there any similar laws in the United States? Or are there similar laws that are applicable here (in the States)? I mean, it's understandable once or twice (ie- story where professor posted an mp3 of his lectures and RIAA hounded him for it), but any more than that and it just doesn't make any sense...... "Should be held accountable" indeed......
Offtopic - what movies were named "Twisted" or "Grind"? Anybody?
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
It constitutes stupidity and makes them hated by even more people (is that possible?). If it happened to me I'd be very pissed, especially if it happened in my workplace.
Someone else already had this idea:
.jpgs of kittens :-)
http://www.xzzy.org/warez/
But they're actually just
A more interesting question is whether a takedown notice from a party who does not own the copyright on the material in question and who, given the nature of the material subject to the notice, could not reasonably have believed they owned the copyright constitutes illegal interference with the right of the copyright holder to distribute his works, and if so exactly what civil and criminal penalties does the law prescribe?
How about creating a video in povray of a matrix of objects being. Call it MatrixRevolutions.avi and host it on your site. Make sure your site has clearly posted TOS that the MPAA and RIAA and all associated and employees are prohibited from accessing your site.
The worst part of this are two very big lies.
When they send out these bogus takedown messages (which has been happening often lately), they will claim they are acting on some kind of "good faith" belief that the work is copyrighted and should not be distributed. LIE. They are simply doing keyword searches and auto-spamming people when download matches come up.
Then, they will claim that they are acting on behalf of the copyright holder of the work. LIE. The work in question is not really a film, so they are NOT acting on behalf of the real copyright holder of the item in question.
If you ask me, they should at the VERY least be legally liable for the second big lie, and be forced to pay some kind of damages every time they send out something this blatantly false.
This is ridiculous and it has to stop.
to see more of this hilarity in action, see the recent copyright infringement notice sent to scene.org
4 0047
:) "
http://www.scene.org/showforum.php?forum=5&topic=
" But it is kind of flattering for them to think that the demoscene coders now have found a way to pack 1 whole tv series episode into a ~30KB file
Actually the one nice thing about the safe harbor provision for ISPs is that the ISP has the ability to deligate a DMCA contact at their company, and the provision specifically states the notice -must- be delivered to this contact.
D 129
The way we handled this at the ISP I used to work at was, on the main webpage, as an image of course, was a message stating all DMCA and copyright notices must be sent to [address here] which was an address at our domain which forwarded directly to our lawyer and not us.
We also had to file this address somewhere, I believe the copyright office, but I am not sure on that detail as it was our legal department that handled it.
If a bot is doing whois lookups for an email and it is sent to one of the addresses we get at the NOC, the letter can be legally ignored.
If its not sent to the specific address, we have not been notified as per the safe harbor provision and thusly have a legal defense.
In our case, one would have to go to our website to look for contact addresses, and look either on the main page or the contact page to find the right address.
Any emails like that sent to us were ignored.
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi#QI
The above URL is the only quote I can find at the moment, but it states:
In order to facilitate the notification process in cases of infringement, ISPs which allow users to store information on their networks, such as a web hosting service, must designate an agent that will receive the notices from copyright owners that its network contains material which infringes their intellectual property rights. The service provider must then notify the Copyright Office of the agent's name and address and make that information publicly available on its web site. [512(c)(2)]
Seeing as we did get a large number of claims of copyright infringement sent to our staff and support addresses, and to my knowledge our legal team never mentioned any, it looks like both bots and stupid people don't look up the correct address at all.