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MPAA Blames Linux Australia Notice on Human Error
rjch writes "According to ZDNet Australia, the MPAA is blaming their recent takedown notice to Linux Australia as 'human error'. 'MPAA spokesman Matt Grossman denied the MPAA's system, which sends out 100,000 notices of claimed infringement on an annual basis was flawed. He said the organisation was not doing blind keyword matching against Internet content and sending out automatic infringement notices without checks, as Linux Australia had previously claimed.' When asked why this slipped through their checks, Grossman told Builder AU 'the answer is a simple human error unfortunately. Everyone has a bad day'. Grossman further denied the MPAA was sending out unsolicited e-mails."
Doubtful, but I would need to check.
Is the mail sent of a commercial nature?
"Take this down or we sue." Kinda commercial, if suing people is their business (for the RIAA it seems to be, maybe it is for the MPAA as well).
CAN-SPAM?
Apparently they can.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, however, there is.
Isn't it easier and less expensive to just send the letters by hand? If it was someone other than Linux Australia, they could possibly have a nasty legal issue on their hands (IANAL).
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
See here
Reading it, you can clearly see that their 'human error' is no other than an automated filename scan.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
is more people running this script on their pages.
Hey, they already say "Also, we hereby state, that the information in this notification is accurate and that we are authorized to act on behalf of the owners of the exclusive rights being infringed as set forth in this notification."
At least in this forum post. MPAA is accusing that the guy was downloading the movie "Speed", when the file name is "supermetroid-speedrunv3-frenom.avi."
I would understand the mistake if the file name was something like "Supermetroid -Speed-frenom.avi", since many movies floating in p2p networks have the name of the ripper/encoder/releaser in them, but the name had the word "speedrun", not just "Speed."
Yeah, not only is this an automated checking with no human error, but it would appear that they have total idiots working on the coding side. They are simply looking at the filenames and not the content. It would indicate that a mapping of names to others might be in order.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I finally got around to scripting a dynamic fake warez site. There are currently 250 movies, but you can add your own to the flat text file. This should work on ANY php webserver.
If you try and download a file, you will get the correct mime-type, and filesize, but the transfer will gradually get slower and slower and it will never finish (well, maybe some day, but its garbage anyways).
Preview: http://ciagon.dnsalias.com/movies/
Source: http://ciagon.dnsalias.com/movies/index.phps
Movie List: http://ciagon.dnsalias.com/movies/movies.txt
Enjoy!
Remember Jam Echelon? Perhaps it's time we all filled our http/ftp servers with files whose names will attract attention but whose contents are completely legal...?
> So if there are 10 people who get bad notices, did they really send out infringment notices to 10 million people?
If they had that many validated email addresses - they'd be the king of spam !!.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
From many of the previous posts it is clear that the MPAA's explanation of "human error" is bull, so here is what we do:
.avi or whatever.
1. Anyone who administrates a web/ftp site put a fairly big random file on your site that is called >.mpg or
2. Look at the MPAA spam flowing in
3. Wait for the stage where the majority of the MPAA's spam is sent to people who are not actually infringing.
4. Complain to the relevant authorities.
PS It might be a good idea to put a disclaimer with the file so that people looking for movies don't eat up all your server bandwidth trying to download your random file. Even better configure you server to give an error when someone actually tries to downoad the file.
siener's youtube channel
My tarpit scripts are all GPL2'd for your lawbot defeating pleasure.
It might be the case that the majority of those who recieve a letter are breaking the law. The problem is, the DMCA (which is what this is based off of) invokes some executive/judiciary power against people by anyone who spends the time/effort to write up a letter. That's great if it's laid against the right people, but the second it's laid against the wrong people, it's an abuse of power. If the RIAA or MPAA were to off and sue one of the people (what they'd have to do without the DMCA), you could countersue if the RIAA/MPAA was in error.
It would seem to me that giving the RIAA/MPAA more direct power would entail not only being able to countersue for such a letter but also to get higher damages when they're wrong. Lastly, just because someone is sued doesn't make them guilty. Nor does them settling make them guilty. Sadly, even with the promise of countersuing few lawyers will risk a dragged out litigation against the RIAA/MPAA on commission. There's just unlikely to be substantial pay-off compared to just about any other form of litigation possible, which opportunity cost favors.
It does sicken me a bit, though, that you feel the RIAA/MPAA or any organization should be able to go around threatening innocent people until they're prove they're innocent. At least if someone issues a case against you, you can countersue for it being a frivolous case conceivably so they pay for your lawyer when they lose (depends on the state, obviously).
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Just in case anyone didn't see this as satire....
MPAA mistakes various free code in small zip files (all under 64k) as the movie "Basic" and television serial "Alias")4 0047
http://www.scene.org/showforum.php?forum=5&topic=
MPAA mistakes a file manager for X windows as X-Files movie based on television series.a _iselfhelpi.html
http://lsolum.typepad.com/copyfutures/2004/09/dmc
ESA mistakes "INFMapPacks123FULL-MAN.zip" as Pac Mac video game.e r
http://gauley.ucs.indiana.edu/~cshields/dmca_lett
RIAA accuses Penn State's Peter Usher of pirating music by rap band "Usher".n g+letter/2100-1025_3-1001095.html
http://news.com.com/RIAA+apologizes+for+threateni
RIAA admitts to "several dozens more additional errors" but won't disclose details. No direct link to Cnet coverage on May 13, 2003.. php#_edn2
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/20030926_unsafe_harbors
Diebold intentionally files false takedown notice to silence (very well deserved) criticism of its shoddly voting machines:. php
http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/001465
Cult of Scientology attempts (yet again) to shut down xenu.net, which exposes embarrasing truths about their documents made public in a court case:1 044497702-DMCA_Takedown_Notice_Scientology_and_Pac Bell.shtml
http://www.peerfear.org/rss/permalink/2003/02/04/
Apparant con artist David Waathiq attempts to use DMCA threat to shut down critical website:
http://mdwaathiq.worldwidewarning.net/DMCA.aspx
.
To be fair, many of these aren't the MPAA (though at least the 2nd one is)... but there is definately a pattern of abuse. These are just the ones I found in 5-10 minutes of searching. It's quite likely there are many more out there, and many that go utterly unreported.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
I'm going to start sharing a video of my kid playing and title it "PlanetOfTheApes.mpg".....
You said "good-faith belief," which are the words that are used in the DMCA. All the MPAA has to say is that they truely thought the files were infringing. Now, does "good-faith belief" mean that they have to actually have downloaded the file and analyzed it to determine if the file is infrining? That's a tough one. I would say that the MPAA's safest bet would be to do so. Otherwise, it could be construed that they didn't go far enough in asserting their belief. The problem here is that Mr. Valenti and his thugs have many more millions of dollars and evil, greedy lawyers than you will ever have. Therefore, if you decide to challenge them in court over something as simple as whether or not they actually believed in good-faith that the file in question was infringing, then you will have a big problem on your hands. It is unfortunate that we as individuals have little recourse. The only way that you could successfully sue and win is if they actually filed a lawsuit against you for that file. Then, you could prove, in a court of law, that if they decided to go so far as sue, they should've at least downloaded the file and examined it for infringement. Then, and only then, would you have a good set of legal legs to stand on.