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Google Pulls Open Source CoreAVC Project Over DMCA Complaint
rippe77 writes "Google has taken down the open-source project CoreAVC for Linux due to a DMCA complaint. The CoreAVC codec is a commercial high-definition H.264 DirectShow filter for windows provided by CoreCodec Inc.. The CoreAVC for Linux project provided various patches for Linux applications (mplayer, MythTV, xine) to use these DirectShow decoder filters in Linux. The takedown is quite controversial, as the CoreAVC project did not provide any copyrighted material — only the means to use the DirectShow filters in Linux."
(The takedown notice is not yet up at Chilling Effects, but Google's page has a link that will take you there when it is.)
They drop projects faster than Paris Hilton's panties in the face of legal threats. Version control over Freenet or the like would be a good start.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
If Google have received a notice then they have no option but to take down the site. Someone needs to file a counter notice, then Google will reinstate them.
Google and SourceForge may be convienent, but US coders should really start to consider hosting in countries that do not have DMCA-esque laws.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You appear to have missed this sentence:
"If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal at ChillingEffects.org."
Slagborr
If you click the DMCA complaint link on the Google project page it takes you to the specific takedown to which the submitter refers, not the main page.
There isn't anything controversial in the fact that they responded to the takedown notice. If they don't, they can lose their common carrier status and become liable for all content on their servers, which they surely do not want. If they fail to put the project back up given appropriate counter notice, that's controversial.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Or post a bittorrent link with the word "banned by DMCA" in the title, ensuring it will NEVER go away and may in fact increase distribution by increasing demand.
It's 1st year economics: scarcity creates demand.
If it will help keep the panties on Paris Hilton, then I'm all for it.
The DMCA is starting to rear one of its real intent. Its use of takedown notices to suppress Linux and other OSS operating systems ability to get advanced technology because if the OSS OSes gain traction they could lose the control they have over multimedia and users could regain fair use rights.
Hopefully, this project made it to the mplayer people in Hungary, or PLF. So it will still be availible.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is there a mirror of the project outside the US?
Pretty simple really. All they had to do was give it a name more like "MPEG-4 AVC for Linux" and they would have been ok. It's really pretty simple, they DONT have the right to use their name in a product that isn't truly related to anything the CoreCodec company.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
And I'm guessing you didn't actually read the summary above (not even TFA), where it says:
(The takedown notice is not yet up at Chilling Effects, but Google's page has a link that will take you there when it is.)
Unless you want to prove you are a dickhead.
Regardless, names do not have copyright protection and there is nothing about trademarks in the DMCA. So either their lawyers are dumb, they intentionally misuse the DMCA or there is something else amiss.
---- Don't lick something unless you really mean it.
Gentlemen and Gentleladies, please refute it here (2003), here (Mar 2007), or here (Dec 2007), or or not waste your time at all.
I once had a signature.
http://www.corecodec.com/forums/index.php?topic=981.msg5695
it looks like coreavc are looking to work with the project to get it all legal and hunky-dorey.
Yeah, by that logic Microsoft's EULA grants them ownership over anything you create in Excel or Word. Or Outlook. Or SQL Server. Heck, pretty much any data file created on Windows suddenly becomes property of Microsoft.
Of course, I'd imagine that Intel has a similar EULA for the microcode on their processors....
Here's a hint: Input and output files are data files, not code. They have nothing to do at all with the licensing of the input or the output.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
If they took down the project based on an unfair DMCA claim, just file a counter claim.
In case anybody has not seen this before, the above story could not actually have occurred (because it contains glaring legal and technical inaccuracies).
Some asshat needs to post this same story, verbatim, every few weeks.
I forgive you for getting it wrong, since there keep being stories about "Canadian DMCA about to pass!!!!1" but as it turns out we've had really weak governments for the past while and thus in fact a full equivalent of the DMCA has yet to pass (unless I've missed something in the past month?). Key word being "yet", but it has never been a priority of the recent minority governments, nor have they quite had the time.
In terms of oppressive new legislation and expansion of corporate rights, Canada tends to lag behind the States just a tad, enough that in Canada people feel smug, all "oh, silly Americans. We would never trample the citizens in *our* country like that". And of course a Canadian from 10 years ago transported to today without having experienced the slowly rising boil would be aghast. But to degrees it's like that in many countries as of late.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Folks - DMCA covers copyright, but also circumvention and reverse engineering stuff. I wonder if this complaint was specific to copyright?
...followed by this one ;-)
PROTIP: When you say "copywrite" (and the past participle "copywritten"), and you're not talking about advertisement text, that makes you look uneducated. Copyright statutes, such as Title 17, United States Code, consistently spell it "copyrighted", not "copywritten".
</national-socialist>
From http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=1134322&postcount=3789
"Also before the Slashdot crowd jumps in here.... Last week we received a complaint noting a DMCA violation on the Google Code project for "CoreAVC for Linux' (MPlayer). Under the terms of the DMCA we 'had' to act on that complaint and asked Google to take the project down.
Now... did we 'want' to do it? No and I am working with Alan (the project creator) now on what the complaint addressed so we can have Google restore the project."
I don't understand the DMCA completely, why would corecodec 'have' to act on it? Aren't they the ones making the complaint?
Is the Australian legislation really identical?
I ask because I can't recall any DMCA style take down (ie notification, counter notification etc) taking place here.
I think we've adopted certain aspects of the DMCA (such as banning circumvention of "effective technical measures") but I don't think it's reasonable to suggest we have adopted the DMCA completely.
There doesn't seem to be anything similar to the DMCA's takedown notices mentioned in the agreement
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
If that is true, (which from all the fud spread about the GPL would not surpise me) you should take all your documents and go to a lawyer.
Especially if you can get someone to say they did not hire you based on your previous bosses' comments.
Well, yeah, it was open source, and the copies they released with OSS license are likely still freely distributable under the license they released them under.
Using a different license and releasing new code doesn't suddenly make the old one less enforceable, an OSS should be able to use that code as long as the license permitted it, however the DMCA take-down implies they are using code from the closed source version.
Of course as a user of both CoreAVC for windows (the multi threaded h264 codec) and CorePlayer (the mobile phone media player) I hope they are doing this above board, would hate to think my dollars are funding a bunch of tools.
Assuming they are tools and this is all over the name, then this should be a Trademark dispute correct? And isn't the burden of proof on the the plaintiff and not the defendant?
...
Seems there was evidence the writer of CoreAVC-for-linux reverse engineered their codec to get his patch working, they have since given him permission to do so, the DMCA take-down has been withdrawn.
A company not only defending their rights honestly, but then when malice is not shown backing off and giving their blessing to an OSS project, back off
...
See! That's what Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have been telling us all along. This real life example proves it!
You'd think rather than just trying to take down CoreAVC-for-Linux immediately, CoreCodec might try to release a Linux version of the codec first.
~Jarik
Well, they can't license anything that they don't have copyright to. End users create the content, and thus own the copyright. It's not a derivative work (as defined by 17 U.S.C. 101).
Internal data files are exactly code. They're data objects in descriptive binary code necessary for the program to function, they're owned and copyrighted by the code author, and they've necessarily already been distributed as a component of the program under the same licensing restrictions. How do we know? Because they're in the same distribution that contains the source code and LICENSE.TXT.
This assertion can be extended to ridiculous lengths. Music would by copyrighted by microphone manufacturers. Television and photographs would be owned by camera manufacturers. Oh, except those tools were built from other tools, so cameras are all owned by chemical producers, which are all owned by oil companies, which are all owned by oil field owners, who are all middle eastern nations.
Copyright only applies to the work itself and derivative works (which has already been strictly defined). That's it.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Paris doesn't need to take her panties off to blow some loser.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Use it like it was intended. Host your own official, public one if you like, but that can be over DSL, even.
Push the real traffic (patches, updates, etc) onto some mailing list, newsgroup, even forum -- those can be moved trivially, and your DVCS doesn't care what you're using, or can be adapted relatively quickly.
Freenet has been generally useless, as far as I can see. It's a very cool idea, but the only implementation I've ever seen is terminally fucking slow. Seriously, I browsed the Internet from a 200 mhz eMachine, running Windows 98, on a USB modem that lagged the system as badly as a floppy would (hey, remember Windows 98?) -- and that was faster than Freenet.
It's gotten better, but all of the above statements remain true. I'd consider Freenet if I really had something that needed that much hiding. For something like this, simple non-US development and synchronization via mailing list is enough, I think.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Well, perhaps they should host on CoreCodec's CoreForge open-source hosting site instead.
(specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we
were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process
went smoothly.
Yeah, and my company was going to use Windows Vista Ultimate network server sql, but it did not supported WWMCCS and the RSTS file system.
What an utter crap is this Windows Vista...
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I find myself relieved that at least this DMCA complaint actually has something to do with technical copyright controls, on some level at least. Not about a security vulnerability, or making printer cartridges, or a person's resume.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
First off a quickie status update: The user "BetaBoy" on coreavc forums has stated that CoreAVC has revoked the DCMA notice, and granted the projects lead developer permission to continue the project.
He has also stated that this was not so much about copyright infringement, but reverse engineering the codec without permission.
The DCMA takedown notice (which was just today posted to Chill Effects) references "links to copyrighted code". Yet Betaboy makes reference to this being about "reverse engineering without permission" - not copyright.
As a user of CoreAVC for linux, and a frequent visitor to the google code site, I can attest to the fact that NO CoreAVC code was contained there. It was (and is) a simple DirectShow Filter Host optimized for use with the codec. Thats it.
The bottom line here is this is as clear a case of reverse engineering for interoperability as there ever was (an activity PROTECTED and ALLOWED by the DCMA), and the DCMA take down notice was a perjured statement by not claiming illegal reverse engineering, but instead claiming copyrighted code.
The only good thing in this mess is the company did the right thing and apologised. The downside is they only did so after perjuring themselves, misusing the DCMA, and generally making an ass of themselves.
In the past, it wasn't uncommon for EULAs on compilers and other content creation tools to claim that stuff produced with it was derivative. After all, there's a lot of stuff besides what you wrote in a word document, or in a compiled executable. I don't know that there's ever been any sort of legal case that created a boundary here, it's mainly been market pressure that's ensured that tool creators stopped making these claims or have elected not to pursue them.
Replying to parent, not myself - OP (which was modded down below my threshold when I posted) is an old, old troll that gets posted at least once in any thread even remotely relating to OSS and licensing. It's nice that there was some moderately interesting conversation that came out of it, though.
As a user of the codec, perhaps you could explain why it's better than x264? If people are willing to jump through hoops to get an unsupported, closed, binary running on *NIX then it must have some advantages, but it's not obvious what these are to someone who hadn't heard of this project until reading the summary.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You are responding to a troll, and you are wrong. The GPL does require code generated by GCC to be GPL'd since any compiler inserts portions of itself into the output making the output a derived work of the compiler. This is why GCC is not licensed under the GPL, it is licensed under the GPL with a special exemption for code compiled with GCC but not including any GCC code other than that inserted by the compilation process.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
At least the "Goog" took it down under protest, posted a link to chilling effects, and included a link on how to protect your rights.
This here is what we call a logical fallacy. You propose a comparison between two things that are not alike and ask us to determine which is better. In this case, no comparison exists because CoreAVC is a decoder and x264 is an encoder. Maybe you should read a little bit on what each are? Like what x264 and CoreAVC are?
Now, assuming that you meant to ask "what advantage does CoreAVC hold over other (free) decoders such as FFMPEG?", the answer is as follows:
CoreAVC is much faster in single-threaded operation than FFmpeg, especially in the deblocking routines. It supports interlaced H.264 which FFmpeg did not until recently support. It has much more efficient multi-threaded routines than FFmpeg. All of these matters because 1920x1080i/p H.264 videos such as HDTV broadcasts in some countries as well as Blu-Ray/HD-DVDs are being increasingly common. In order to play these videos using FFmpeg, one would need something like a 3GHz Core 2 Quad whereas a much lower-clocked Core 2 Duo is sufficient with CoreAVC.
Although you are an anonymous coward, I am still going to respond. Perhaps I'm feeding a troll here, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.
For the record, my name is Carlos Averett. I'm not particularly hard to find - I used to go by "cyt0plas" here and on other sites. I have anti-EULA posts going back several years.
Nuff said on "CEO" claim. And it's about as Inc. as my toosh.
The CEO, "betaboy", as you put it, is Dan Marlin. I'm sorry if his handle isn't "manly" enough for you. As for the ",Inc." part, we are incorporated. It is part of the legal name, and serves to identify that this is a legal entity, and that it is a corporation (as opposed to, for example, an LLC.)
This is a fly-by-night outfight that lies, cheats, steals, and covers it up as best he (betaboy) can.
This is a strange claim to make - our customers come by the web site, and buy our products. Our products do what they claim to do, and Do them very well. We have never refused to give a refund. If selling software is "theft", I guess we stand guilty.
As for the "fly-by-night" aspect, we have multimedia software (written by us) for PalmOS, Symbian, Linux, OS X, Windows CE/Mobile, and Windows NT2+. We run on ARM, MIPS, x86, x64. This is the result of years and years of in-house development.
Only thing is, he's an idiot that lies so much he can't keep it straight himself.
We're a company, and made up of a number of different people. Sometimes, this leads to differences of opinion and/or policy. It happens. Since I am not, for example, Dan Marlin, you shouldn't really be surprised if he says different things than me. If you really don't believe it, our "Contact US" page is at http://www.corecodec.com/contact-us.html . Heck, we can set up a conference call.
Those that uncover this are banned and forum threads deleted.
Disjointed, irrelevant, factually incorrect threads (such as this one) get deleted in our forums. A couple of Google searches show your post to be utterly false. So, don't be surprised when we delete threads like this from our forums. It's hardly some "mass censorship" on our part when we delete posts by trolls.
Webpage cites registered trademark status but nowhere is such a trademark registered.
Well, this one is bogus. Check Tess if you don't believe me. Do an advanced search for "CoreCodec". We currently hold trademarks on Matroska, CoreAVC, CoreCodec, BetaPlayer, CorePlayer, CorePhone, CoreOS, and the CoreCodec logo.
It's all a sham based on previously-done but modified open source projects.
We wrote players. The (mobile) players originally used open-source decoders, and were released as open-source. The decoders were slow.
We have some phenomenal developers, and developers (unsurprisingly) want to be paid. Good developers want to be paid well. It happens, and that's a good thing. So, we re-did the decoders, removed all the open-source code, paid all the patent fees, and put out a legal player that can be used by companies, and in products. It's more efficient than any other software product, and often faster than hardware solutions on the same device (Google "CoreAVC Benchmarks") if you don't believe me.
Some of our projects are still open-source (Matroska, for example), and we are in the process of reworking and releasing several of our internal projects (Enterprise-grade Certificate Authority) as open-source. I make no apologies for wanting to pay the developers well - they certainly earn it. This does take money, and selling software is a reasonable way to earn it.
It would appear that you're re-posting the same troll, so I'm going to link to my answer to the last one. Yes, I have a name - it's in the post.
Simple Solution in my eyes, would be take it down (for now), but provide links on how to dispute it. This way Google, is yes taking it down, but also providing the developer(s) steps to get his/her code back up. I see this as a "do no evil" mentality. While covering their own legal behinds.
Ah, sorry, I thought x264 was the decoder. Irrespective of this, I am slightly puzzled by your CPU usage claims. I have a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo (the low-power mobile version) in my laptop, and VLC is able to play 1080p H.264 with under 50% CPU usage (QuickTime uses a shade over 60%, but has slightly better visual quality).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Thanks, Mr/s. AC, for the link to the thread on their forums.
(I'm not so critical of betaboy. It kind of looks to me like he just has a little trouble communicating, lacks some experience with the law and with understanding what is still, to him, technical legalese, something which is not all that uncommon among geeks, especially young geeks.
Admitted, some geeks follow the siren call down the marketing path, like the Bill & Steve Show, but this does not seem to be the case here.)
(Oh, and for those of us still puzzled by the spelling challenge, I think that "counsel's advice" seems to be what he was trying to say, whether he was talking about pro se or getting advice from his law student roommate or just trying to appear like he could afford more legal help than he can or whatever.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Apparently the DMCA compliant states that CoreAVC did include copyrighted software: "We have directly verified by downloading the file from the Site provided by Google Inc. that the file does include CoreCodec's copyrighted Software."
It appears Google has changed its mind: "http://code.google.com/p/coreavc-for-linux/downloads/list"
If you want to protest something, protest the poorly conceived DMCA which was enacted by a legislature that is in the pockets of certain groups of copyright holders. The DMCA requires hosting providers like Google to take downn material upon receiving a takedown letter. It's sad, really, that a law gives the power to the accuser to force legal 'remedies' to be taken against the accused, *simply* based on the word of the accuser (I guess when it comes to copyright, you're guilty until proven innocent).