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."

Comments

automatic checking!

[psy]

Can you really believe that they are going to manually check 100,000 files for legimacy?

Re:automatic checking!

[kanenas]

Sure they have 100.000 monkeys

Re:automatic checking!

[.orvp]

They would need more than that, he said that %99.9999 of the people getting them were actually sharing the files illegally. That would mean that since there are 3 highly publicised mess ups, they have sent these notices to over 3 million people. And really, I bet there are more than just 3.

So if there are 10 people who get bad notices, did they really send out infringment notices to 10 million people? That is a lot of monkies you need.

Re:automatic checking!

[Gopal.V]

> 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 !!.

Re:automatic checking!

[SB5]

Sure they have 100.000 monkeys

They are rented monkeys from the RIAA, so they use RIAA math, its just two monkeys but they are really really really fast.

Re:automatic checking!

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

How do you fit 7 monkeys inside a light bulb?

Human Error ? Everyone has a bad day ?

[anti-pop-frustration]

I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.

Human errors will not be tolerated at MPAA

[JVert]

MPAA vowes to eliminate any posibilty of human error on their next "mailing" by incorporating high tech tools that will seek out and verify the violations using descriptive meta-data and file naming system. Furthermore any attempts to circumvent this proccess will be dealt with in a strict and obscure manner. We reccomend that you check your current library against known copyrighted work unless you want to get pwnd.

Thank you.

Yeah right.

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's so, I would be happy to serve any Adult Movie Industry Association for such antipiracy purposes.

Unsolicited emails...

[aaza]

Have the MPAA ever done business with Linux Australia?
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.

I'd love to try turning that one around...

[MachDelta]

MPAA: OMG! You're downloading movies you evil pirate! Why?! STOP IMMEDIATELY!!

Me: Human error. Watch. *Click* - OOPS! Finger slipped!

Re:I'd love to try turning that one around...

[hype7]

MPAA: OMG! You're downloading movies you evil pirate! Why?! STOP IMMEDIATELY!!

Me: Human error. Watch. *Click* - OOPS! Finger slipped!

What's more concerning is that this may open the door for spammers to pull the "accident" route and bypass the law. It wouldn't be a long running business practice, but what's to stop them setting up a shell company, "accidentally" spamming a lot of people, then closing the company up so it doesn't "accidentally" do it twice?

Set up a new company, wash, rinse, repeat.

-- james

Maybe..

[Wilkshake]

Maybe the MPAA needs to start basing their takedown notices on actual or proven infringement of copyright rather than just their current reign of circumstantial and claimed legal Gestapoing.

---

Re:Maybe..

[Tom]

you can still inform the *AA that what you're doing is, in fact, completely legal.

I could. But why should I? They are looking for something, it's their job to verify their search results. Why should I waste a second of my time pointing out to them what they should've checked themselves?

They're sending these messages out in the thousands. If we assume an error rate of 1%, and that is a very forgiving assumption, that's a hundred or so errors. If it takes 30 minutes to sort things out, that's 50 hours burnt on account of the **AA, 50 hours that they don't pay a dime for, but should.

Re:Maybe..

[BlueWonder]

Still, I bet that most people who get those takedown notices are indeed breaking the law.

Once upon a time, judging if somebody broke the law was not based on betting...

However, it is their task to find copyright infringers and bring them to justice, and that's what they're doing.

You seem to have missed the point of the article. It's about a case where finding copyright infringers was not what they've been doing,

Even those teenagers who get sued get sued because they are breaking the law.

So you're saying that Linux Australia is a bunch of teenagers who broke the law?

If you disagree with the law, fine, get the law changed.

Which law is it that gives the MPAA the right to harass innocent people?

future mails

[mirko]

Future MPAA mails will begin with some harsh accusations and end with some disclaimer in the fine print, thus making it even more surrealistic.
I can imagine it :

Dear xxxx
We ave strong reasons to believe you are infringing our members' copyright, please cease and desist.

Yours.. erm : Ours...

PS: Of course, it's also possible that our victim file got messed up by one of our million monkeys in which case you might disregard this mail.

Re:future mails

[wheany]

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."

Sorry!

[mrchaotica]

"We accused an innocent group of copyright infringment and threatened a lawsuit, wasting a bunch of people's time and possibly money and causing much emotional suffering, but we're vewy vewy sorry.

That makes it OK, right?"

Demoscene also under MPAA scrutiny

[andr0meda]

See here

Reading it, you can clearly see that their 'human error' is no other than an automated filename scan.

simple humans

[Aussie]

the answer is a simple human error

Yep, some simple humans made an error.

Human error, sure ...

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Everybody get's away with human error:

Some guy:
"No it ws human error, I didn't mean to:
- violate the speed limit by 100KM/h
- kill that guy
- steal money from tax payers
- cheat the stock market
- use an aimbot
- attack iraq because I thought they have WMD
- ..."

Judge:
"Oh, if it was human error then law doesn't apply, so it's ok."

Can somebody spell bullshit?

Possible

[Mr_Silver]

I know we'd like to think that it was all performed by some cool web-searching script, judging by the technical level I've seen of some sections of the music industry, it is entirely possible that they just recruited a whole bunch of temps with the mandate "find files which have our artists name in them" and left them to it.

In which case, human error (based on rubbish instructions) would be true.

What we need...

[marsu_k]

is more people running this script on their pages.

Who solicits takedown infringement notices?

[Cryptnotic]

Grossman further denied the MPAA was sending out unsolicited e-mails.

An infringement notice is an unsolicited e-mail, last time I checked. Can you imagine someone asking to be sent an infringement notice? Though, I don't think that you could say, "Hey, you're saying I'm infringing and you're going to sue me? Well, I'm going to sue you for sending me an unsolicited email! Ha!" I'm sure some lawyer would take your money to file a lawsuit against them, but I don't think you'd get very far in your case.

Human error? THEY ARE LYING

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what, the 100,000th incorrect 'copyright infringement' notice that's been sent out? And they claim it to be human error? Proof that they are FULL OF SHIT - this was received by someone at a board I frequent. Keep in mind this is a board where the topic is emulator-assisted videogame speed runs. Excerpts, since apparently in posting the whole thing I was using too many "junk" characters (the fuck?):

We have received information that you are providing Internet or Usenet access to the above
referenced account holder, or hosting the above referenced Internet site, which has made
available the download or streaming of copyrighted motion picture(s) including such title(s)
as:

SPEED

Infringement Detail:
Infringing Work: SPEED
Filepath: supermetroid-speedrunv3-frenom-avi.torrent/
Filen ame: supermetroid-speedrunv3-frenom.avi
First Found: 6 Sep 2004 00:29:14 EDT (GMT -0400)
Last Found: 6 Sep 2004 00:29:14 EDT (GMT -0400)
Filesize: 182,426k
IP Address: (removed)
IP Port: 26887
Network: BTPeers
Protocol: BitTorrent

If that's not patternmatching then they're hiring retards to send these notices out. I'm betting on robots.

Re:In their defense....

[Grym]

Exactly.

The truth of the matter is, we don't know how often this has happened before because the ??AA makes the accused sign non-disclosure agreements upon settlement. Something which shouldn't be considered admission of guilt, by the way.

The American civil justice system is broke. It operates under the false assumption that all parties have equal legal representation and funding. But that's not even remotely the case when a multi-billion dollar coalition of corporations sues a middle-class citizen for millions of dollars in "damages."

Given this, why should the MPAA care to check the validity of its legal threats? As far as they're concerned, they the only MISTAKE they made was to send the letter to another company/group. Had it gone to the low-income parents of another thirteen-year old girl, we wouldn't even be talking about it. No bad PR--just the life-savings of a person who strayed from the righteous path of consumerism.

-Grym

"Bad Day"? WTF

[fuzzybunny]

"Gee sorry, Mrs. Smith, but the officer who shot your dog made a human error. It happens; hey, everyone has a bad day occasionally."

What a crock of shit. IANAL and I haven't really thought through the consequences, but while "stealing" a song may or may not be wrong (let's not go into that argument), its net effect per incident on the "owner" is economically small. Conversely, hitting grandma with a $10k pay-up-sucka-or-we-sic-Joey-da-lawyer-on-you blackmail job, per inicident, has a relatively high economic impact on the target. Think speeding fines in Finland, commensurate with the level of your personal income and wealth.

When someone's committed a crime (once again, without going into whether this is really justifiable as such or not), punishment appropriate to the level of the crime is, well, appropriate. Speed, pay a fine. Kill, go to jail. Usually, even if it's "by mistake".

Governments, as enforcers of law & order authorized as such by the population of a commonwealth (yet again, please don't go into this argument, I think this is a fairly neutral way of putting it) will usually get away with making mistakes as a whole, even if the individual cop who shot Mrs. Smith's dog may suffer personal consequences. Restitution may be in order to the victim, but not consequences as such for the government as a whole.

Private entities have no such privilege of authority. I kill your dog, I probably must make some sort of amends to you personally, as well as suffer possible consequences to myself personally.

Soooo...taking this a step further, when someone's not done anything and is wrongly hit up for restitution for his supposed wrongdoing by a pack of malicious, thoughtless, greedy and unethical baboons (**AA for starts), they should be punished personally. As I would be if I nailed the Smith pooch, even by accident, and be forced to pay restitution appropriate to (a) the level of the wrongdoing committed, and (b) the relative level of nastiness of the wrongdoing.

In this situation, the corporate thuggery, racketeering, blackmail, bullying and generally being a slobbering pack of cunts (not a crime, although it should be) makes for a pretty awful bit of work.

In short, make the fuckers pay. Every time they "have a bad day". Through the nose. With criminal lawsuits and prison if possible.

Grr.

Auto-Generated Fake Warez Movie Site

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Jam MPAA

[uglyduckling]

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...?

Congratulations

[pjt33]

Can somebody spell bullshit?

As one of the /. spelling Nazis, it gives me great pleasure to inform you that you can. You even spelt it correctly.

The solution

[Siener]

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:

1. Anyone who administrates a web/ftp site put a fairly big random file on your site that is called >.mpg or .avi or whatever.

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.

RIAA Pit of Confusion

[salimfadhley]

My tarpit scripts are all GPL2'd for your lawbot defeating pleasure.

Re:In their defense....

[pjrc]

This can't have happened very often in the past or else we would have heard about a lot more cases like this.

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")
http://www.scene.org/showforum.php?forum=5&topic=4 0047

MPAA mistakes a file manager for X windows as X-Files movie based on television series.
http://lsolum.typepad.com/copyfutures/2004/09/dmca _iselfhelpi.html

ESA mistakes "INFMapPacks123FULL-MAN.zip" as Pac Mac video game.
http://gauley.ucs.indiana.edu/~cshields/dmca_lette r

RIAA accuses Penn State's Peter Usher of pirating music by rap band "Usher".
http://news.com.com/RIAA+apologizes+for+threatenin g+letter/2100-1025_3-1001095.html

RIAA admitts to "several dozens more additional errors" but won't disclose details. No direct link to Cnet coverage on May 13, 2003.
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/20030926_unsafe_harbors. php#_edn2

Diebold intentionally files false takedown notice to silence (very well deserved) criticism of its shoddly voting machines:
http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/001465. php

Cult of Scientology attempts (yet again) to shut down xenu.net, which exposes embarrasing truths about their documents made public in a court case:
http://www.peerfear.org/rss/permalink/2003/02/04/1 044497702-DMCA_Takedown_Notice_Scientology_and_Pac Bell.shtml

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.

Well MPAA can just pay penalties

[rfc1394]

U.S. Federal law specifies penalties for false or fraudulent takedown notices. Since these are sworn under penalty of perjury that the person who did so had a good-faith belief, this was obviously false and perjurous in nature.

Since the MPAA thinks a $3,000 to $11,000 judgement is acceptable for someone accused of 'stealing' music, then I suppose a $3,000,000 to $11,000,000 judgement is acceptable for someone from MPAA accused of fraud and perjury. I figure MPAA is at least 1,000 times the size of the average file swapper.