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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.
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."
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.
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