CoreCodec Apologizes For CoreAVC Takedown

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "In a follow-up to the previous story, CoreCodec has apologized for the incorrect DMCA Takedown notice that took the CoreAVC project offline. There's also a public statement by co-founder Dan Marlin saying in part, 'I'd like to publicly apologize to Alan [CoreAVC project lead] for the disconnect between him and us as well as the disruption to the project as there was no ill will intended and we were already working on a resolution with him before this went public.' They've also created a new policy for sending out DMCA Takedown notices, so that they won't misuse them in the future."

Comments

Will the Google project resume now?

[jkrise]

That is the more important question. I doubt Google will take it up again, though.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[klui]

If I were the ones working on the project, I'd make sure I would not host it on Google.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[argent]

Where do you suggest they host it? HavenCo? That's probably a bit pricey, yesno?

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[jimicus]

What, because Google complied with a legally worded (albeit faulty) DMCA takedown notice, as they are legally obliged to do?

IIRC, it's down to the project owner to then turn around and say "There's nothing the matter with it, you shouldn't have been served the takedown notice". Google is only a middleman here.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[Nullav]

Every ISP I've used has been courteous enough to relay takedown notices. If you have decent bandwidth, you could try running your own servers. Even if you can only handle serving images and HTML because your ISP throttles everything down to a crawl, there are plenty of non-Rapidshare file/imagedumps that you can use as mirrors and you can use torrents if you have to.

If you don't feel like doing all of that, you could always pick a host not in the US or a small host that will ask you to act on/respond to takedown notices, rather than complying instantly.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[dnoyeb]

Why does a takedown notice get more respect than the site owner? Because a person sending such a notice seems more sue-happy than the site owner?

Site owners can sue too. That is, unless when you sign up for hosting you agree that your site can be taken down for any reason.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[ShieldW0lf]

But the real question is, is there any such thing as bad publicity?

This whole drama seems manufactured to get attention for another *yawn* codec.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[Goaway]

Why does a takedown notice get more respect than the site owner? Because that's what the law says. When a host is served a DMCA takedown notice, they respond. Then the affected party can file a counter-notice to have the site put back up.

After that, it's up to the courts, if either party wants to take it that far.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[poetmatt]

There are even sites out there to generate your own DMCA counterclaim quick and fast.
One such is: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Terrorism/form-letter.html or here: http://www.ucmo.edu/dmca/counter.html

People unfortunately probably go to lawyers first, a little bit of knowledge goes a long way.

However, DMCA misuse is something that can be sued for and withdrawing the already DMCA'd request doesn't lift that vulnerability in court...there is a provision for DMCA misuse.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[_KiTA_]

Why does a takedown notice get more respect than the site owner? Because a person sending such a notice seems more sue-happy than the site owner?

Site owners can sue too. That is, unless when you sign up for hosting you agree that your site can be taken down for any reason. Except that the DMCA is specifically worded to screw Google and other hosting companies over if they don't take a "Shutdown Site Now, Think Later" position. I.e., if the DMCA complaints turn out to be true, and Google didn't shutdown first and think later, Google becomes liable for everything.

Brilliantly worded bit of kit there. It's like an anti-terrorism law that states "If you don't make a citizen's arrest, and it turns out that random Arabic/Mexican/Just-Not-White-Enough chap really is evil, you're liable for anything he does cause you COULD have stopped him."

Absolutely stupid idea, but hey, it's ""Intellectual Property" Law", leave your brain at the door.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[sm62704]

is there any such thing as bad publicity?

Yes. If your restaraunt is in the newspaper because someone died from salmonella poisoning and six more people are in the hospital, expect people to stay away in droves.

When someone in the press catches wind of your tryst with your secretary, expect to lose the next election. (Oops, this is slashdot; "loose" the next election - on an unsuspecting public)

Or you could just ask OJ Simpson how that film career is going.

BTW, as everyone with a grandma knows there IS such a thing as a free lunch and modey does indeed grow on trees (ask a lumberjack or an orchard owner).

The "old sayings" only hold up in a limited set of circumstances. The "free lunch", for example, only means that when a supplier offers lunch, watch your wallet carefully.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[Dragonslicer]

It's like an anti-terrorism law that states "If you don't make a citizen's arrest, and it turns out that random Arabic/Mexican/Just-Not-White-Enough chap really is evil, you're liable for anything he does cause you COULD have stopped him." To make that actually parallel to the DMCA, you would have to add that if the random person says to you "I'm not a terrorist", you have to let them go and you aren't liable for anything they do.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[mysqlrocks]

Why does a takedown notice get more respect than the site owner? Because a person sending such a notice seems more sue-happy than the site owner?

Umm, I'm pretty sure it's because that's how the DMCA is written. I believe they are obligated under the law to respect a DMCA take down notice. This is a good example of how flawed the DMCA is - it puts the burden of proof on the accused. Of course, in order for a DMCA take down notice to be valid it has to be signed "under penalty of perjury" so if you do file an invalid DMCA take down notice then you've opened yourself up to some serious liability.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[mysqlrocks]

However, DMCA misuse is something that can be sued for and withdrawing the already DMCA'd request doesn't lift that vulnerability in court...there is a provision for DMCA misuse.

It's my understanding that a DMCA take down notice has to be signed "under penalty of perjury" in order be valid. So, being thrown in jail for perjury sounds like it would be one consequence for sending a false DMCA take down notice.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[KiahZero]

Actually, it's specifically worded to help Google... before the DMCA, Google would have been liable for intellectual property suits for anything they provided. The "safe harbor" provisions were a step forward for service providers. If you want something specifically worded to screw Google, look at the claim that Viacom has against YouTube, claiming that it's unfair they have to use the DMCA takedown notices for each infringing video.

The process is a good one, and it removes the need to make a judgment about whether or not the material infringes from the hosting provider. If a copyright holder files a takedown notice, you take the thing down. If the user responsible wants to claim there's no violation, you put the thing back up. If you're *really* certain there's no violation as the service provider, you keep it up and brace for lawsuit.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[poetmatt]

I thought about what I posted a bit though, and since IANAL I don't know if it's different if the request is "withdrawn" since it wasn't officially withdrawn, it was more like the company saying "whoops, sorry" (as noted in the subheadline for the article about sorry for the nuke.

Wasn't there some part of DMCA that said like you can sue for DMCA misuse or abuse or something though?

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[mysqlrocks]

Wasn't there some part of DMCA that said like you can sue for DMCA misuse or abuse or something though?

I'm not sure but I would hope so. I was merely pointing out that you could also go after someone for perjury if they send a false DMCA take down notice. I imagine it doesn't matter if they withdraw the DMCA notice or not - damage has already been done.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[Sancho]

The bit that has the purjury penaltiy is strictly a statement saying that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright which is allegedly being infringed. This provides for damages against me for filing a takedown notice against Slashdot for one of your comments. It does not provide damages against me for filing a false notice, as long as its my work (or my client's) that I'm claiming was infringed.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[cyt0plas]

It's my understanding that a DMCA take down notice has to be signed "under penalty of perjury" in order be valid.

No, you have to sign "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the company whose rights are being infringed, and that you have a "good faith" belief that the work is infringing.

The work (CoreAVC for Linux), did in fact have a reverse-engineered system for emulating (breaking) the copy protection in CoreAVC. The DMCA takedown itself wasn't bogus, nor was any perjury involved.

It's use was inappropriate, however, as the software was designed to benefit our customers, rather than principally as a "circumvention device" (keygen, crack, etc.). Our policy is to go after people distributing illegal copies of our software, not customers finding new ways to use it.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[mrchaotica]

Yes. If your restaraunt is in the newspaper because someone died from salmonella poisoning and six more people are in the hospital, expect people to stay away in droves.

Yeah, right. There's a restaurant in Stone Mountain, GA imaginatively called "Asian Buffet" that recently got shut down for scoring about a 20 on its health inspection. This was reported in the local newspaper (Atlanta Journal-Constitution). It subsequently reopened, and guess what? People are flocking to it again in droves! Obviously, nobody gives a shit (or more likely, nobody reads the newspaper).

When someone in the press catches wind of your tryst with your secretary, expect to lose the next election.

Pfft. Nobody cares about that kind of thing either. If they did, then Hillary Clinton wouldn't be a serious candidate for President because of her lack of moral fiber (and simple self-respect) for failing to divorce Bill after the press caught wind of his tryst.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[mysqlrocks]

No, you have to sign "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the company whose rights are being infringed, and that you have a "good faith" belief that the work is infringing.

And that's different from what I said how? Isn't it true that the DMCA take down notice itself is not valid unless signed "under penalty of perjury?" Thank you for clarifying exactly what parts of the DMCA take down notice the perjury statement refers to, that is informative. It doesn't change my point that if you send a DMCA notice about something that you don't own copyright to (or represent someone who does) or the work you're asking to be taken down doesn't violate your copyright then you can be charge with perjury (yes, the "good faith" part gives you some wiggle room).

The work (CoreAVC for Linux), did in fact have a reverse-engineered system for emulating (breaking) the copy protection in CoreAVC. The DMCA takedown itself wasn't bogus, nor was any perjury involved.

I never said that the CoreAVC DMCA take down notice was bogus or that there was perjury involved. I was talking about DMCA take down notices in general, not about this specific case. I'm sure the DMCA take down notice in this case was perfectly legal - just bad business.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[Kjella]

It's my understanding that a DMCA take down notice has to be signed "under penalty of perjury" in order be valid. So, being thrown in jail for perjury sounds like it would be one consequence for sending a false DMCA take down notice. No. You are sharing a work A. I think it to be identical to my work B. I state, under penalty of perjury, that I'm the copyright holder of B. Nothing more, nothing less as not even the "good faith" part is covered by the perjury clause.

What you're looking for is section f):

(f) Misrepresentations. Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section
(1) that material or activity is infringing, or
(2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification,
shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owners authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.

However, that's only liability. I do not think there are any criminal charges for misrepresenting a DMCA takedown, though it probably would be covered under some sort of fraud/harassment/slander laws outside the DMCA.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

This whole drama seems manufactured to get attention for another *yawn* codec. Yeah, I tend to agree - CoreAVC is becoming less important by the day. A system running a modern CPU doesn't really need CoreAVC - on the windows front FFDShow works fine and its counterpart on linux should be just as good.

I've played a lot of HD-DVD and BLU-RAY h264 movies on my PC and the only time FFDShow on a 3GHz cpu was not sufficient was some whacked out DTS demo disk - don't ask me why an audio demo disc had intense video (just logos flying around) but its been the only disk out of hundreds that FFDShow could not handle.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[sm62704]

First, the restaraunt dodn't kill anyone, it failed an inspection. It stands to reason that the place is going to be squeaky clean before the health department lets it open again, and it will likely be the cleanest place in towm.

OTOH when Jack in the Box killed all those children it almost went bankrupt, and there are people who refuse to eat there to this day.

Hillary's moral fiber doesn't enter into it - she's not the one caught committing adultery. Rather you should look at Elliot Spizer.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[mcmonkey]

Why does a takedown notice get more respect than the site owner? Because a person sending such a notice seems more sue-happy than the site owner?

Because that's the law. Yes, it's stupid. It's a stupid law.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[nolife]

JackInTheBox share holders would surely disagree on your assumption that customers will instantly return..

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[multisync]

My understanding of the process is the site owner files a counter notice and the ISP is obliged to put the site back up. It is then up to the courts to decide who committed perjury.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[mrchaotica]

Hillary's moral fiber doesn't enter into it - she's not the one caught committing adultery.

On the contrary, she "merely" abetted it. And that's quite enough.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no legal obligation to do anything upon receipt of a DMCA notice. You do not even have to respond.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[sm62704]

My ex-wife (she and her family are mentioned in the link) was a serial adultress. Where do you get the assertion that I was responsible in any way for my wife's adultery?

Your post may come back to haunt you some day.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[Vancorps]

How would that be perjury? Unless they sent the takedown notice knowing it wasn't valid. Also, the government doesn't routinely go after someone for just perjury, it has to be associated with other crimes.

If you could prove that they knowingly supported a false takedown notice then you could probably use the perjury in your counter claim to get back any lost business you might have endured since the first action is to terminate your access.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[geminidomino]

My ex-wife (she and her family are mentioned in the link) was a serial adultress. Where do you get the assertion that I was responsible in any way for my wife's adultery?

Your post may come back to haunt you some day. I think his point was that its different because she is, indeed, your EX-wife, judging by his comment about her lack of "self-respect" for not divorcing Billy when he got busted.

I personally suspect that it has nothing to do with self-respect, but was a political decision. Not sure if that's any better, honestly.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[sjames]

and what would your solution be?

Add automatic minimum statutory damages to encourage senders of DMCA notices to be REALLY sure before they go around causing a bunch of trouble.

Double them if the sender fails to make a good faith effort to contact the alleged infringer before resorting to a DMCA notice (but, of course, only if the notice turns out to be in error).

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[mrchaotica]

I didn't say that Hillary (or you) was responsible for the adultery, I said that Hillary was responsible for her reaction to it. Since you refer to your ex-wife, I assume you divorced her because of the adultery. That's what makes you different from Hillary (who instead flushed whatever shred of dignity she might have had in her lust for power).

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[sm62704]

I don't know what Clinton's reasoning was but one has a tendancy to believe that they will, indeed, reform themself. I divorced Evil-X when the pain got too great. The divorce had nothing to do with my self respect or honor, and neither did my forgiveness of her dallyance. Both decisions were about pain, and only pain.

A man can punch me, kick me, hit me, shoot me, break my bones, cut me, stab me, but only a woman can truly hurt me.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[andybak]

If you devote more than half a braincell to it then I am afraid it doesn't. I'm sorry you feel so jaded today but may I suggest taking up caffeine again?

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[klui]

I agree. Shouldn't the company go to the project team with their notice and have them respond before sending to Google? I feel ISPs or hosts should respond to the takedown notice with "what have you done to work this out with the other party?" If this is your last resort, then fine, we'll take it down.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[cliffski]

fine, as long as we can charge the exact same fine to every single person who breaks the DMCA by uploading copyrighted material.
deal?

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[sjames]

And why would that be? The statutory damage is for sending a frivolous DMCA takedown. After all, you should be able to download the file and see if it's yours, there's no excuse for not taking that simple step. I'll offer the same statutory damage for falsely contesting the takedown.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Worse than that, there's a place called Market St. Deli in St. Louis, MO. An employee had hepatitis, didn't wash his hands after wiping his butt, and proceeded to prepare tuna for sandwiches, and other uncooked meals. All in all, 88 people were sickened, one needed a liver transplant, another was pregnant and spent the rest of maternity in the ICU. The restaurant was immediately shut, and the owners declared bankruptcy to avoid paying claims past what they were insured for. But this didn't stop them: they re-opened a month later. Same spot, same name. How could supposedly bankrupt owners then re-open the same business and be let off the hook? If there is a legal way to do this, it doesn't make it any more ethical. But people still go there.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has annouced that they've put the project back up. See http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;609783846

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[sumdumass]

The inspection reports in my area are published on the newspapers. They contain things like employee swept floor into a pile in the corner and went to help someone - gotta pick up the sweepings, employee left purse in prep area, personal objects need to be left in employee break room, and stuff like that.

There was one site that got almost a failing grade for having a refrigerator, a stand alone upright (restaurant commercial grade) that was empty but wasn't cooling to the proper temp. It even noted the sign saying not working on the door of it. One of the employees spilled an entire pan of boiling water on himself and started pealing cloths off on the way to the bath room,, the report noted that and then took points off because he dropped a towel, the pan, an apron, and a work shirt that was over an undershirt on the floor on his way back and the other two employees left them there and went to see if he was ok. There was another part about empty beer bottles beside the dumpster. And one of the employees was wiping stuff off the counters directly onto the floor then sweeping the floor which is guess was some big ass violation according to whoever the inspector on that day was.

You start reading things like that and think the reports don't really matter much and start ignoring them. This is especially true if you have ever worked in a restaurant. The reports sometimes have something that is actually a sanitary issue like employee didn't wash hands after their break or something. But for the most part, it is stupid filler stuff where most of the restaurants either pay a good bribe to keep the serious shit from showing up, or are actually playing by the rules and the inspector things they have to find something. I can see why the people ignored the Asian buffet if your area is anything like mine.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[sumdumass]

And that's different from what I said how? Isn't it true that the DMCA take down notice itself is not valid unless signed "under penalty of perjury?" Thank you for clarifying exactly what parts of the DMCA take down notice the perjury statement refers to, that is informative. It doesn't change my point that if you send a DMCA notice about something that you don't own copyright to (or represent someone who does) or the work you're asking to be taken down doesn't violate your copyright then you can be charge with perjury (yes, the "good faith" part gives you some wiggle room).

I don't think that you understand the weight that "good faith" adds to it. Someone could inadvertently make a claim to your copyrighted material as their own through a clerical error over a work for hire or because of a series lines that fair use would cover that made them think they had the rights to it or represented the rights holder and get by Scott Free.

The good faith part covers the "use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law." The penalty of perjury covers "the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed." So there is clearly room for mistakes to happen that wouldn't constitute perjury outright. In those cases, you only remedies are that they can be be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys' fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner's authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.

Now there are and will be situations of abuse where perjury is obvious. Then you can expect the government to attempt to add them on to the remedies described as above. But simply being wrong or finding that the use falls within a fair use exception wouldn't automatically trigger the perjury problems. You basically would have to be able to prove that they knew they were in the wrong before sending the notice which outside a few specific circumstances would be rather difficult.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[mrchaotica]

You start reading things like that and think the reports don't really matter much and start ignoring them. This is especially true if you have ever worked in a restaurant.

Actually, I have worked in restaurants. I remember one incident where the inspector happened to come while we were getting a delivery, and docked points for not having our fridge cold enough. Well no shit, Sherlock -- we had the damn door propped open to load stuff into it!

However, that was the only major incidence of bullshit that I recall. Otherwise, we always had almost perfect scores, which aren't hard to accomplish. Besides, for every bullshit issue that the inspector does catch, there's probably several sanitation issues that restaurants get away with, on average. Also, even that sort of thing only results in a score in the 80s or 90s; to get down to 20 there have to be real, serious problems.

Re:Will the Google project resume now?

[sumdumass]

There was probably a serious problem, my point was sort of that with all the BS reports I can read, people tend to brush it off without paying attention to them. I used to work in the restaurant industry too, I don't remember fluff pieces for inspections 29 years ago. Maybe my perspective is just different today or something.

I attempted to find the reports in the local newspaper's website but they have started some subscription thing for past issues. I think they only publish the reports once a month or maybe weekly or something. You would know what I mean if you say one with 5 things listed as wrong and they don't amount to anything more then what normal people do every day in their own homes. And I'm not talking about sick stuff either, stuff like locking a door to the outside open or product sitting in the middle of the floor when receiving a delivery and crap like that.

Uhrrr..

[theM_xl]

It's already back up, you know. http://code.google.com/p/coreavc-for-linux/

Ah, CoreAVC

[imsabbel]

And CoreCodec. The company that _seriously_ demanded online activation for a $10 video codec. Including dongeling it to your current hardware config.

Re:Ah, CoreAVC

[gunne]

So?

Is that so bad? Shareware would probably not cover their development costs, and 10$ is a small sum most everybody would be able to afford...
Can't really see the problem with their approach.

Re:Ah, CoreAVC

[Klaus_1250]

Yes, it is/was bad. It took time rather a long time (months) to get the whole process of activation more or less working. In the mean time, people were waiting for bugfixes and promised features, not understanding why it all was taking so long. Perhaps you can still get a glimpse of it all on the forums. As for development-costs, I don't actually think you can earn them this way. Some people will pay, most people will just try an alternative if paying/activating is too complicated. OEM Licensing is probably a better way to (a route which they also have taken) Last, codec is $14,95. There is a cheaper version, but that has no Interlace support among others, so pretty much useless in many circumstances.

Re:Ah, CoreAVC

[EdZ]

Don't forget the period of several months (!) during which they ACTIVELY REFUSED to sell anyone their codec.

Re:Ah, CoreAVC

[rsmith-mac]

CoreCodec really does treat their customers like shit. It's rather obvious at times that they want to license out their technology rather than sell it directly to consumers, meanwhile no one of note has been licensing their stuff. They're competent coders, don't get me wrong, CoreAVC has amazingly low CPU usage, but they're completely unable to run a business that deals with consumers. I have little doubt that that this is both a "sorry we got caught" and "we're genuinely sorry" situation; the former because they really don't want anyone jeopardizing future products, and the latter because once again no one was thinking when they enacted this.

I can only hope someone that actually knows how to interact with customers buys out the whole damn company, they're not getting any better on their own.

Re:Ah, CoreAVC

[karmatic]

Including dongeling it to your current hardware config.
Actually, it's tied to the windows product ID. Re-install windows, and the old serial number still works just fine.

This is designed to be "unique enough" that users can't copy all over the place, and was a direct response to the codec being used in large numbers of "Codec Packs".

Damage Control

[dreamchaser]

While I always admire when a company admits they were wrong about something, I have to think that this is just massive damage control. Imagine what their inboxes looked like over this fiasco :-)

Re:Damage Control

[91degrees]

I'm okay with that. I've long ago given up worrying about the intentions of companies. As long as the result is one I like, then I'm happy.

Re:Damage Control

[Swampash]

Judging by nothing other than his posts to the Corecodec forums, Dan Marlin is an arrogant fuckwad who knows nothing about the law or copyright, and he DESERVES to be prosecuted for his ILLEGAL DMCA takedown notice.

Re:Damage Control

[quarterbuck]

I think CoreCodec CEO is a decent guy.
But overall, I think this move is stupid. First mistake was made when the lawyer sent out the DMCA notice when none should have been sent. The second (as far as CoreCodec goes) was made when the CEO went public with the information. The lawyer sends out the takedown notice under the pain of perjury - so b admitting that the notice was a lie, the lawyer can now be tried in court.

Re:Damage Control

[91degrees]

Mistakes aren't perjury. The lawyer believed the information was accurate.

Re:Damage Control

[zappepcs]

Wait a damned minute here. I have seen some companies push even harder when their inboxes fill up... can you say Streisand effect?

Whether they, as a company, are worth a damn does not really bother me but I do have respect for anyone that on making a mistake, does the right thing. Whether it's for saving face or not, it still is good to see them shout mea culpa and apologize.

Re:Damage Control

[Jarik_Tentsu]

While I always admire when a company admits they were wrong about something, I have to think that this is just massive damage control. Imagine what their inboxes looked like over this fiasco :-) Agreed! I mean, a lot of companies/governments don't want to show any signs of weakness by admitting a mistake. Even if after that they regret doing it, they rarely pull back once it happens. I think this sign of 'modesty' is a good thing. IMO it attracts positive popularity. It must be a pride thing...

~Jarik

Re:Damage Control

[mpe]

But overall, I think this move is stupid. First mistake was made when the lawyer sent out the DMCA notice when none should have been sent. The second (as far as CoreCodec goes) was made when the CEO went public with the information.

It's only stupid if CoreCodec continues to use that lawyer (possibly the same legal firm).

The lawyer sends out the takedown notice under the pain of perjury - so b admitting that the notice was a lie, the lawyer can now be tried in court.

Has that ever actually happened?

Re:Damage Control

[Hatta]

They're hoping to avoid a perjury prosecution, and unfortunately it looks like it's going to work.

Re:Damage Control

[radish]

It wasn't the lawyer who sent out the takedown, it was signed by the CEO. His first mistake was sending & signing a document like that without actually understanding what it said. His next mistake was publically admitting that he knew that the takedown notice was inappropriate and in fact he didn't have a claim.

Re:Damage Control

[Svartalf]

How could he have believed ANYTHING? He didn't verify whether or not it was an infringing item or if it breached a circumvention measure. This isn't a mistake of a nature that would have been viewed kindly by a Court in the old way of doing things.

If you don't know if it does or not, you're taking a 50-50 chance on it being perjury or not.

In and of itself, that's something that'd get you in trouble in a Court if it was anything other than this stupid crap, which shouldn't be around in the first place.

Before the DMCA, you had to file an infringement case, go before a Judge in a hearing on the matter, and get an injunction to get the same effect. With the DMCA, they don't have to bother with that. With the DMCA, they only have to send takedown letters to the appropriate parties to get a result. There's no Judge in the middle, determining whether they, in fact, have a case or not- they don't even have to face any music for being wrong and doing it frivolously unless the person they do it to is flush with cash and pursues the counter hard. With the old way, you had to go to the trouble of filing a suit- and if you got it wrong, there was decent chances of the lawyer and the plaintiff being sanctioned for the sillybuggers we see these days.

There's a reason the stuff was the way it was before the DMCA. Congress was foolishly led to believe that the rights holders with standing needed a "quicker" way of fixing things and to treat ways of circumventing "protections" as criminal acts.

Re:Damage Control

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot

Re:Damage Control

[Skye16]

That's probably why he paid for legal counsel; so he didn't have to understand what it said, he just listened to his lawyer.

That's kind of what most people do when their lawyer explains something to them and advises them on a course of action.

Re:Damage Control

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think there is anything "ILLEGAL" (your caps) about his DMCA takedown notice, perhaps it is LIBELOUS, but not illegal. It is so unlikely that any freeware geek will pursue a claim of liability for something like this, you should just get over it.

I must say, you're use of colorful language and capital letters in public is so 'Insightful, Score: 5' --lol

Re:Damage Control

[stry_cat]

Here's the relevant thread in the cordcodec forum.

http://www.corecodec.com/forums/index.php?topic=981.0

I'm not sure exactly who is being arrogant, but I'd hope we'd all stand down now that this issue has been apparently resolved.

Re:Damage Control

[Wavicle]

First mistake was made when the lawyer sent out the DMCA notice

The CEO signed and sent the DMCA notice.

The lawyer sends out the takedown notice under the pain of perjury - so b admitting that the notice was a lie, the lawyer can now be tried in court.

One reason so many people doubt a real lawyer was consulted in this matter is this. The CEO sent the takedown notice under penalty of perjury. Who in their right mind would not have their paid counsel do it?

Re:Damage Control

[Wavicle]

I replied to one of the CoreCodec guys, in the previous thread on this subject, but I think it bears repeating. I don't think there was "no bad faith" on CoreCodec's part. I am not a customer of their's. This response was originally to someone claiming that avc-for-linux broke CoreAVC's copyright protection and now THAT is why the DMCA take down was sent:

1. The DMCA take down notice only referenced a single law in the United States Code - Specifically Title 17 Section 512; the safe harbor take down clause. There is no safe harbor clause for taking down a circumvention device. "This correspondence is a formal takedown notice being sent to you pursuant to Tile 17 United States Code Section 512, et seq."

2. The reasons in the in the DMCA take down specifically stated that something was downloaded and verified to be infringing. "We have directly verified by downloading the file from the Site provided by Google Inc. that the file does include CoreCodec's copyrighted Software."

3. The reasons for the take down have evolved, as anyone following the thread can see. First it was copyright, then it was reverse engineering without permission "this is not about copyright (even thought the DMCA deals with that), this is mostly about reverse engineering without permission under the DMCA", then it was anti-circumvention (actually your post was the first I've read of that and is indeed a strange argument), then it was oops, sorry about that!

4. There are repeated references to consulting with counsel and having to file the take down quickly to avoid losing rights to your IP "Under the terms of the DMCA we 'had' to act on that complaint and asked Google to take the project down."... If this was a trademark issue, that is true. It strains credulity that an actual lawyer would confuse this issue.

From the outside looking in (I don't use CoreAVC) it really looks to me like spin doctoring. Why has every new justification contradicted the take down notice?

Re:Damage Control

[SanityInAnarchy]

I have to say, this was the first I actually heard about the company -- they sent a takedown notice, and then they apologized.

I'm impressed.

Granted, after reading the comments and hearing about crappy activation for a codec, I'm not sure, but other companies should take note -- when you make a dick move, do the following steps, in order:

1: STOP what you're doing.
2: Apologize.

Most companies never manage step 1. But if you're going to stop anyway, admitting that you were wrong will buy you a lot of goodwill.

Re:Damage Control

[karmatic]

I have to think that this is just massive damage control. Imagine what their inboxes looked like over this fiasco

No, this wasn't just "damage control". We really do care about user's rights.

The CoreAVC on Linux project did break the copy protection in CoreAVC; a DMCA takedown was sent because of this, despite our internal policy of going after pirates, not customers. I _personally_ called up the person responsable at 4AM, and reamed him a new one. As long as I am a director in the company, I will not allow this sort of stuff to go on. It is a violation of policy, and poor business practice. We go after pirates, not customers.

Re:Damage Control

[karmatic]

How could he have believed ANYTHING? He didn't verify whether or not it was an infringing item or if it breached a circumvention measure. This isn't a mistake of a nature that would have been viewed kindly by a Court in the old way of doing things.

For what it's worth, CoreAVC for Linux does, in fact break the copy protection in CoreAVC. This potentially makes it a "circumvention device".

That being said, it is our policy to go after pirates, not customers. As such, this DMCA takedown was legally valid, but against our policy. Controls have been put in place to ensure it doesn't happen again.

Re:Damage Control

[karmatic]

The lawyer sends out the takedown notice under the pain of perjury - so b admitting that the notice was a lie, the lawyer can now be tried in court.

Please, before you post things like this, have the decency to read the facts (and the law).

1) The DMCA states that you must have a "good faith" belief that the rights are being infringed.
2) The DMCA also states that you must certify "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the party whose rights are believed to infringe.

This is because you can know with certainty who you work for, but it's up to the court to determine whether infringement actually occurred.

Regardless, CoreAVC For Linux does break copy protection, making it potentially a "circumvention device". This is why the DMCA takedown was sent.

That being said, we have a policy of going after pirates, not customers. That is why the takedown was wrong, and why we apologized.

Re:Damage Control

[karmatic]

They're hoping to avoid a perjury prosecution, and unfortunately it looks like it's going to work.

I've said this a number of times, but here we go again:
1) DMCA requires you to have a "good faith" belief that your rights are infringed
2) DMCA requires you to certify "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the party whose rights are infringed.
3) CoreAVC for Linux breaks copy protection, potentially making it a circumvention device under the DMCA.

The issue here is a matter of policy - namely, we go after pirates, not customers. That's the reason for the apology. It has nothing to do with perjury, as no perjury was committed. It's quite likely that the project was illegal under the DMCA. After the takedown notice was sent, we (before any publicity at all) started the process to grant them permission, in order to avoid any potential issues.

There were better ways to handle it, but there was no malice involved.

Re:Damage Control

[Hatta]

Did the CEO of CoreCodec have a good faith belief as such? I don't believe so. This statement is not true:

We have directly verified by downloading the file from the Site provided by Google Inc. that the file does include CoreCodec's copyrighted Software.

How can someone have a good faith belief that they directly verified something that is demonstrably false?

The fact that CoreAVC circumvents copy protection is irrelevant. The CEO did not swear under penalty of perjury that CoreAVC is a circumvention device under the DMCA. He did swear that it contained CoreCodec's copyrighted code.

The copyright cartels will not stop at anything to exercise their rights under the DMCA. Those who are victimized by the wrongful application of this power need to fight back with every weapon they have. Every CxO, lawyer, PR goon, etc that signs an invalid DMCA take down notice needs to end up in jail.

Maybe we can cause some chilling effects of our own.

Re:Damage Control

[karmatic]

How can someone have a good faith belief that they directly verified something that is demonstrably false?

He downloaded the code. It has a reverse-engineered approach to dealing with copy protection. He stated "We have directly verified by downloading the file from the Site provided by Google Inc. that the file does include CoreCodec's copyrighted Software." Having talked to him, he felt that the reverse-engineered code was, in fact, a "Derivative work", and that our code would apply - much the same way that the GPL applies to derivative works. The code (obviously) is dependent on CoreAVC, and does some things that don't constitute an "arms length" transaction.

There isn't really an exact way to determine what is, and isn't, a derivative work. To quote the GPL Faq:

What constitutes combining two parts into one program? This is a legal question, which ultimately judges will decide. We believe that a proper criterion depends both on the mechanism of communication (exec, pipes, rpc, function calls within a shared address space, etc.) and the semantics of the communication (what kinds of information are interchanged).

So, there's an argument to be made that it was, in fact, infringement. This was his "good faith" belief, however wrong it may have been.

That being said, he still took the wrong approach to dealing with this. When we found out what had happened, we did everything in our power to make it right, and make sure it didn't happen again.

He did swear that it contained CoreCodec's copyrighted code.

No, actually, he didn't. Here's what he said:
I hereby confirm that I have a good faith belief that use of the Software in the manner described in this letter is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law, and that, under penalty of perjury, I am authorized to act on behalf of CoreCodec, Inc., the owner of the exclusive rights in the Software that are allegedly infringed.

I would not have been able to sign this, as I believe that this activity was protected by case law and the DMCA allowances for reverse-engineering, even given the narrow scope which the court limited it to with DeCSS. The law is, however, open to interpretation. Regardless of whether or not it _could_ be taken down, or whether it was or was not permitted under US law, _we_ shouldn't have taken it down. That's why we fought to get it back up. Our policy is to go after pirates, not customers, regardless of a single mistake made by an employee.

Billable hours...

[Anonymous Coward]

So this whole thing was a private attorney trying to get a few more billable hours by sending bullshit DMCA notices?

Use == misuse

[Anonymous Coward]

so that they won't use them in the future.

There; fixed that for you.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[baadger]

Can anyone tell me why you would possibly want to plug CoreAVC into MPlayer and Xine or GStreamer based applications when these already have native H.264 playback?

For decoding, ffmpeg (Which has a code base used throughout a tonne of the Free Software world) already has a decent decoder, and for encoding we have x264 (Developed by the folks behind VLC)...

I know that CoreAVC claims to be super optimised, but is it really that much better? I have always assumed that they were just milking those Windows users that didn't know of ffdshow.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[Daengbo]

I read about this deal yesterday, and yes, it appears that the codec is much better than what's available on Linus right now. It's apparently using hardware acceleration and multi-threaded programming. Ffdshow is supposed to come out with those features soon, though.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[Barny]

Well, when decoding a 1920x1080 (1080p) image on a little bitty dual core AMD machine used as a media centre, you will see why :)

The ffmpeg decoder is awesome, it is a reference quality codec, it renders EVERY frame as good as it possibly can... which is not really how you want video, you want a usable frame rate FIRST.

As a customer of CoreCodec (both the windows h.264 multi threaded codec AND the symbian media player) I am glad its all sorted.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[MichaelSmith]

the codec is much better than what's available on Linus Linus was probably right not to name it after himself originally.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[FluffyWithTeeth]

CoreAVC is incredibly fast; a machine which could barely handle 720p with libavcodec can probably manage two decode two 1080p videos at once. It also tends to introduce a lot of artifacting errors, but if you couldn't play the video at all it's probably an improvement. Personally I've just been confused as of late after installing Linux on this laptop. On windows libavcodec would decode 1080p h264 video no problem, but in linux mplayer fails miserably on 720p videos..

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

as has been noted, coreavc is great on low end dualcore setups, but people having problems with mplayer where windows vlc shines can probably get a lot more out of their hardware. i can decode 1080p fine on an amd x2 3800, 1gb ram, nvidia 7800 using mplayer under linux. apparently the only decoder to harness multicore capabilities is coreavc, but setting mplayer to use two threads works rather well since one core handles the video and the other, i assume, handles the AC3 audio (or perhaps the smp kernel just splits things between the two in a slightly less efficient but workable way?)

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, sure.

stop spreading BS, h264-hardware-acceleration is not even necessary on linux systems!
i can play 1080p-h264 + dts matroska rips with mythtv htpc and mplayer on athlon x2 4600+, nvidia 7600 GT with 50% cpu usage on both cores.
framerate smooth as butter.

windows operating systems and players must be doing something wrong here.
even for media stuff windows is on the decline, those glory virtualdub days are over.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[maxume]

It's probably the compiler or video driver.

This laptop bogs down trying to scale video up to full screen in software but coasts along showing little more than disk activity when using DirectX scaling. A decent video driver can make a huge difference.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Windows user of CoreAVC, I can say it was a major improvement for me over the ff-codecs. I watch a lot of fansubbed anime, and the recent-year switch to h264 720p releases wasn't kind on my computer(P4, 2.4 GHz HT, 512 MB RAM, GF5600) for most releases. The h264 releases would always have bad stuttering and, equally annoyingly, the audio/video would always run out of sync. I don't remember how I found out about CoreAVC, but after I gave that a try, I had no more problems with those releases. Higher-quality or Full-HD releases are still very problematic though. Bottom line is, if you have a fast dual-core system, you might not really notice a difference - but if your system is stuck between new and very old, and you don't want to (or can't...) pay for better hardware, it's a worthwhile investment. -dgb

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Performance-wise, it definitely is. I tried lots of codecs on Windows (ffdshow, x264, Quicktime) and none of them was able to pull off 1080p at 60 frames per second on my Core2Duo at 3GHz. Some commercial hardware accelerated players were able to keep up with the rate but looked quite awful in comparison (might be because my GeForce7900 is one generation too old for that to).

Then I tried CoreAVC and it showed my 1080p@60 test files flawlessly, with the CPU being at a nice 60% all the time.

(No, not in any way affiliated with CoreCodec, just a satisfied customer. Yes, those do exist.)

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[bhima]

Hell, VLC has troubles with 1080p H.264 MKV on my Dual Quad 3.2Ghz Early 2008 Mac Pro. Somehow I'm thinking this isn't lack of compute power issue but rather the decoder just sucking issue.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's apparently using hardware acceleration and multi-threaded programming. Doesn't CoreAVC claim to be the fastest H.264 codec _not_ using hardware acceleration?

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[mczak]

ffpmeg's decoder may be "decent", but compared to CoreAVC it has still a few (depending on the circumstances, very severe) drawbacks:
- it is slower
- it doesn't support multithreading very well, so a slower dual-core cpu might still be not fast enough because it can only load one core fully
- it doesn't support some of the more strange features of h.264, which are often used with HDTV (such as PAFF deinterlacing - print an error and segfault)
So yes, I can definitely see why some people would want to use CoreAVC in MPlayer etc. At least right now, I guess once ffmpeg fixes points 2 and 3 above, few people would probably care that CoreAVC might be better optimized, since ffmpeg would be "good enough" (with better multithreading it should be "fast enough" at least with common dual-core cpus probably).

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the problem is that the codec is too good. That is, the codec favors correctness and quality over speed, where CoreAVC and many other codecs take shortcuts to improve the framerate at the expense of quality and correctness.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's apparently using hardware acceleration
No.

and multi-threaded programming.
Yes.

CoreAVC is also faster than ffdshow (rather lavc) on just one core. CoreAVC does have some minor image quality problems though.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have P4-2400, nvidia 6600 and can't play some 720p files with mplayer on linux. I faster codec could really help.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[AvitarX]

Your specs are considerably lower than the lowest I have seen playing bluray 1080p on Linux.

link

If you can fill in a gap on that table it would be great, since the best they have any AMD doing is a lower (half) bitrate 1080p. If a 4600+ can do better, it is info worth knowing.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[mczak]

btw I take that back that ffmpeg doesn't support PAFF interlacing - this was implemented sometime last year. Still, I get errors and segfaults with certain streams.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

> That is, the codec favors correctness and quality over speed

For H.264 there is no such choice. H.264 mandates _bit exact_ decoding. If it decodes to something different, it is not a H.264 decoder (strictly speaking). But apart from that, libavcodec/MPlayer/... have all the options to enable that kind of invalid hacks (fast, skiploopfilter,...), they just are disabled by default.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[yuna49]

Yes, it appears it really is that much better. Browse any of the threads in the Playback Help forum at AnimeSuki. You'll see lots of people complaining that they couldn't play H.264 encodes on their current hardware platform without installing CoreAVC. This is especially a problem for files in the 720p format.

I was consistently unable to play 720p encodes on my P4 running Fedora with either mplayer or xine as the engine. My newer Pentium D doesn't have the same problems, though it chokes on 1080p encodes.

The other alternative to CoreAVC is upgrading to a faster computer.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's apparently using hardware acceleration and multi-threaded programming. Stop the presses! Breaking news! Hardware acceleration *and* multi-threaded programming? Surely hell must've frozen over!

The sky's the limit now - ANYTHING is possible! Who knows, they might even decide to use *pointers* now!

the codec is much better than what's available on Linus right now. No comment.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[jedidiah]

...which is all fine and dandy but unless you are putting together your own STB
hardware I don't see the point. You can already do HD h264 with Linux using the
current state of the relevant codecs. Bluray might not work quite so well but
Bluray has other problems (like just accessing the disk).

CPUs have overtaken the problem.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[karmatic]

I know that CoreAVC claims to be super optimised, but is it really that much better? I have always assumed that they were just milking those Windows users that didn't know of ffdshow.

Yes. In fact, in many cases, we're faster than the hardware acceleration built into the video cards.

I have a demo I like to do where I take a Clevo D900k laptop, downclock it to 1GHZ, and do realtime decoding of 1080p H.264. For high-definition video on older hardware, it really makes a difference. Or, for laptop users, more efficient decoder translates directly to longer battery life.

As for ffmpeg, we're quite aware of it. We used it in the open-source version of our mobile player. It's not that one is "better" than the other - it mainly depends on your needs. If you want "free" (libre) software, ffmpeg is better. If you want every last bit of performance, CoreAVC is the way to go.

We pay a lot of money for patents, and developers have to eat. Our standard version is $8, despite the dollar dropping a lot in value over the past 2 years. That hardly counts as "milking".

FWIW, we did the "donation" game for some time, and had all of our software open-source. It takes developers to make a great product, and hiring people requires money. Given how many people in the SlashDot crowd are paid programmers, it always surprises me how opposed people get to selling software.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[p0tat03]

That to me seems a bit ass-backwards. The target audience of mplayer are clearly people who are going to be... er... watching videos. To me sacrificing some visual correctness for an acceptable framerate should be the *default*, especially considering how much horsepower it takes to do correct, high framerate playback. The hacks should be disable-able for people who have the niche requirement of visual acuity.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

ffmpeg got some option to make it faster. [1]
But it still lack some coreavc features.

[1]
skiploopfilter=
                                            Skips the loop filter (AKA deblocking) during H.264 de-
                                            coding. Since the filtered frame is supposed to be used
                                            as reference for decoding dependent frames this has a
                                            worse effect on quality than not doing deblocking on
                                            e.g. MPEG-2 video. But at least for high bitrate HDTV
                                            this provides a big speedup with no visible quality
                                            loss.

                                              can be either one of the following:
                                                  none: Never skip.
                                                  default: Skip useless processing steps (e.g. 0 size
                                                  packets in AVI).
                                                  nonref: Skip frames that are not referenced (i.e. not
                                                  used for decoding other frames, the error cannot
                                                  "build up").
                                                  bidir: Skip B-Frames.
                                                  nonkey: Skip all frames except keyframes.
                                                  all: Skip all frames.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

> CPUs have overtaken the problem.

More efficient code still means more headroom for running more than one program at a time.

Lower power consumption is good on laptops, desktops, and STBs.

Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

To bad that it's made by a company where certain employees really really (really) should spend some time in federal PMITA prison.

DMCA working as intended

[Anonymous Coward]

At least this segment of it, I'm not sure what else it contains.

1. If you post material online, someone can send a DMCA notice and have it instantly taken down. They must though state that legally and in good faith they have strong reason to believe they are copyright owners.

2. If you challenge it, you send a DMCA counternotice and the material is put back up. You must though state that legally and in good faith you either are the copyrightholder or its in public domain. By doing this you also have to reveal your name. Obviously if you are not willing to reveal your name, you can't counternotice.

(the only potential misuse I could see is if people have a good reason to post anonymously, like whistleblowers - anyone know of any use like that? Obviously this would however confirm that any material taken down is not falsified or the company could not claim copyright)

3. If both parties are in good faith, then obviously let the lawsuits commence. If one of the party was not in good faith - well, they can be smacked down very hard quite easily. It looks like CoreCodec just discovered they were not actually in good faith and are doing damage control.

Re:DMCA working as intended

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Wow, a lucid post from an AC. I hope it's modded accordingly.

The only thing I'm not sure about is this quote from Martin:

"The DMCA does allow for reverse engineering for compatibility purposes and hence in the end no matter what the 'other points' are the DMCA takedown request was wrongly sent."

I don't really believe that is the case. It was my understanding that DMCA prohibited any reverse engineering, but IANAL.

Re:DMCA working as intended

[Curunir_wolf]

Wow, a lucid post from an AC. I hope it's modded accordingly. The only thing I'm not sure about is this quote from Martin:

"The DMCA does allow for reverse engineering for compatibility purposes and hence in the end no matter what the 'other points' are the DMCA takedown request was wrongly sent."

I don't really believe that is the case. It was my understanding that DMCA prohibited any reverse engineering, but IANAL. Yes, the DMCA allows reverse engineering as a very narrow exception to the anti-circumvention provisions (see http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/1201.html#f).

However, I think it only applies to reverse engineering of a "technological measure" used to enforce copy protection. The DMCA doesn't single-handedly outlaw reverse engineering.

Re:DMCA working as intended

[Svartalf]

You don't know the whole of it.

The DMCA wasn't intended to be used for this situation. It just gets used that way.

There was no copyright being broken.
There was no circumvention of protection measures.

However, it was used to pull down a site and a project for a time- for no other reason than a company stating that either were going on.

Sure, it's working as it's intended- but it's not what should be allowed. You shouldn't have the ability to willy-nilly do things like this and then maybe, just maybe, face the music of your actions after the fact after you've screwed up like this. Other things in the civil space typically require an injunction which takes time and usually requires more actual effort on the part of the party asking for it to get things to stop. With the DMCA, you don't need any of that crap- not even a Judge to determine if you're even full of crap or not. With the DMCA, you get to send a legal looking, nasty letter filed with a court and sent to the people in question, stating under of penalty of perjury that this is so and that they have to remove it or face possibly being held actionable along with the "infringing party". If you're wrong with the old way, you could face sanctions amongst other things- with the DMCA, it's really cheap in comparison.

Sure, it's working as "intended"- but the problem is, that "as intended" is the very problem everyone's up in arms about. There's less legal consequences for a screwup of this nature. There's less consequences for someone going around and doing it for things like printer cartridges where the company's trying to use it to keep people from refilling the expensive ink on them- and to keep buying the wasteful expensive ink cartridges. The DMCA's busted.

Re:DMCA working as intended

[radish]

If you post material online, someone can send a DMCA notice and have it instantly taken down. They must though state that legally and in good faith they have strong reason to believe they are copyright owners.

No, not "strong reason to believe". By sending the takedown they are stating under penalty of perjury that they are the copyright holders. Read the letter, he says he personally downloaded the file(s) in question and verified that his copyright was being infringed. This is, however, impossible as he has since admitted nothing on that site actually did infringe his copyright. So he lied in the takedown notice.

As crappy as the DMCA may be, it is very clear that if you're sending a takedown you better be 110% sure you're in the right - because otherwise you are liable, no excuses. In this case it appears as if the resolution will be amicable, which is good, but the CodeCodec guy is lucky.

Re:DMCA working as intended

[kimvette]

It even allows for bypassing for the purpose of interoperability - which is why that clause is there to begin with.

Re:DMCA working as intended

[karmatic]

The parent post is correct.

The DMCA does, in fact, have exemptions for reverse-engineering, provided that any copyright infringement done is done only to the extent necessary for creating interoperable software.

This was, for example, a lot of the problem with BnetD - they copied some icons that didn't need to be.

The courts have further limited it to things that aren't "circumvention devices" - for example, while DeCSS exists solely for interoperability purposes, it was deemed that that exemption didn't apply.

Regardless, the project has been granted an exemption, making the issue moot. Ultimately, it would be up to the courts to decide whether this qualified, and CoreCodec's policy is to go after pirates, not customers.

The project is re-instated.

Re:DMCA working as intended

[karmatic]

There was no circumvention of protection measures.
Yes, actually, there was.

It still was against our corporate policy, hence the apology and reinstatement.

If you look at my post history, you will see that this is something that I take very seriously in this company.

Unfortunately, some of the people in the company come from other backgrounds, where things are done differently. I have to keep explaining internally _why_ we don't have EULAs, and why they are a bad thing in the first place. FWIW, the employee who sent this is a former DivX employee - they have a slightly different attitude to IP rights.

I am a Director in the company, and I will not allow CoreCodec to use the DMCA as a bludgeoning tool, no matter how legal it may be. The DMCA is a bad law, and the employee broke policy. The issue has been addressed, the employee has been dealt with, and polices have been put in place to see it doesn't happen again.

Re:DMCA working as intended

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite.

2. If you challenge it, you send a DMCA counternotice and the material is put back up 10 to 14 days later

So the complainant can get 2 weeks of censorship with no real comeback. I'm pretty sure that's a "potential misuse".

sometimes decent is not good enough

[someone1234]

I have a 3-4 years old machine (not real multiprocessor, just hyperthreading, 1G memory).
When i play HD movies, VLC works perfectly on my Windows, Mplayer playback is jerky.
I prefer not to boot into Windows, but sometimes i have to.

Re:sometimes decent is not good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

> VLC works perfectly on my Windows, Mplayer playback is jerky.

MPlayer has tons of options, especially on Windows the defaults are unlikely to be optimal.
Just in case you don't mind spending some time on it you should get MPlayer to be at least as fast as VLC IMO (though first make sure to use one of the more up-to-date "inofficial" builds or compile yourself).

Credit where credit is due.

[argent]

the only potential misuse I could see is if people have a good reason to post anonymously, like whistleblowers - anyone know of any use like that?

Scientology critics?

If one of the party was not in good faith - well, they can be smacked down very hard quite easily.

Inconceivable!

It looks like CoreCodec just discovered they were not actually in good faith and are doing damage control.

I think that's what they said, yes. Their message is basically "we fucked up, sorry, we're making sure we can't fuck up that way again".

Voluntarily admitting they fucked up when they fuck up, let alone bothering to figure out how they can avoid fucking up again, is unfortunately rare enough for organizations that it's actually impressive to see one do it without having to be dragged through a lawsuit first. I don't think you're giving them enough credit.

Re:Credit where credit is due.

[Svartalf]

I'm cutting them a small bit of slack- because it's an unusual thing to see a company DO that sort of thing. It doesn't get them a 'get out of jail free' card, though- what they did was quite a bit inexcusable.

Unfortunately for CoreCodec, they reached for the DMCA before actually finding out what was going on and whether or not what they claimed in the filing was even TRUE or not. They used the DMCA in an inappropriate way that smacked of quelling competition, even though they claim it wasn't that.

It's how they screwed up that's as much the problem as the what they screwed up on.

Lucid, but incorrect.

[argent]

Wow, a lucid post from an AC. I hope it's modded accordingly.

-1 Astroturfing?

Would Freax have worked better?

[argent]

Perhaps he should have called it Schroeder?

Which is it?

[jamesh]

So which is it? Is it "sorry we did this", or "sorry we got caught?"

Re:Which is it?

[thue]

"Sorry we committed perjury be sending a false DMCA takedown notice, please don't sue us"?

Re:Which is it?

[karmatic]

1) DMCA requires you to have a "good faith" belief that your rights are infringed
2) DMCA requires you to certify "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the party whose rights are infringed.
3) CoreAVC for Linux breaks copy protection, potentially making it a circumvention device under the DMCA.

The employee (the CEO) broke policy - we go after pirates, not customers. That is the reason for the apology. The takedown was legal, but the DMCA is a bad law, and shouldn't be used in this way.

One word: Speed

[pinkfloydhomer]

CoreAVC is by _far_ the fastest H.264 software decoder on the planet. Something like twice as fast as the nearest competitor.

Perjury

[Nuskrad]

I may be wrong, but when making a DMCA notice don't you have to swear under penalty of perjury that it's correct? Can you just 'apologise' when you get caught sending out bad ones? Or do CoreCodec potentially face legal action now?

Re:Perjury

[tinkerghost]

I may be wrong, but when making a DMCA notice don't you have to swear under penalty of perjury that it's correct? Can you just 'apologise' when you get caught sending out bad ones? Or do CoreCodec potentially face legal action now?

You swear that 'on belief and in good faith' the material violates your copyright. Essentially, 'we think that it's a violation and we want it to stop'. Now, if you have a history of sending DMCA notices for things you don't own, well then you expose yourself to loosing on the good faith issue and are in a very bad position.

On a side note, this is all you have to swear to get any lawsuit started - if it's BS & gets in front of a judge, well people have been smacked hard for wasting a judges time. Countersuits for SLAPP violations include penalties for time, expense, punitive damages, etc.

Re:Perjury

[Trailer Trash]

You swear that 'on belief and in good faith' the material violates your copyright.

Right, and that line of reasoning works with closed-source products. For open-source, there is *no* excuse, and their lawyer(s) should face sanctions.

Re:Perjury

[arkhan_jg]

You swear under penalty of perjury that you own the copyright material you're posting the DMCA takedown about. There's no penalty if it turns out your copyright has nothing to with the material on the website.

The perjury section is to stop people sending out fake notices pretending they own Disney's material, and thus getting websites taken down in Disney's name. Disney can send out notices all day long about their own material, regardless of whether the DMCA target is a valid one or not.

Mod parent up

[wrook]

OK, not sure I agree with the wording...

But in case you are wondering, click on the link about Dan Marlin's response and read part of the thread where he (BetaBoy) responds to his customers.

Judge for yourself what kind of person he is...

Re:Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging by the quality of his other posts, I'd say he didn't write the apology. I work with someone who insists on typing things like "thx" in formal letters. I don't think that type of person is capable of formulating the wording for something as well-written as the apology.

This is why you should need a court order

[houghi]

The reason this should go through court first is so there is an investigation as to whether or not the person is guilty of what is being said. Only then should you be able to be forced to take it down.

Sending a request to do so is another matter, but forced removal should be handled by court. Otherwise you are guilty until proven innocent.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[IBBoard]

Otherwise you are guilty until proven innocent.

But the huge majority of DMCA requests are probably from corporations against much smaller companies or individuals. In that situation then the corporation bribes...sorry, pays for....sorry, 'supports', more than the target, so surely it's obvious they were guilty? Such seems to be the way of capitalism and commercialism getting involved in democracy.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[Just Some Guy]

The reason this should go through court first is so there is an investigation as to whether or not the person is guilty of what is being said.

I'm pretty averse to involving the legal system unnecessarily. In this example, two private parties worked it out and moved on. Imagine the same scenario, except now the plaintiff faces penalties from a pissed-off judge if they admit they're wrong and want to drop their case. No, I think this worked exactly like it should.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, when you're accusing someone of breaking the law, isn't "involving the legal system" exactly what you want to do? The DMCA allows this extra-judicial, guilt-assuming procedure as a matter of convenience. It's an outrageous situation that really shouldn't be defended.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[houghi]

No, I think this worked exactly like it should.

The content was offline. I do not call that working like it should.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[swillden]

The reason this should go through court first is so there is an investigation as to whether or not the person is guilty of what is being said. Only then should you be able to be forced to take it down. Sending a request to do so is another matter, but forced removal should be handled by court. Otherwise you are guilty until proven innocent.

I disagree. The DMCA takedown and "Safe Harbor" process is the one thing about the DMCA that's good. You have to fully understand it, though.

The way it works is that if a service provider immediately complies with the takedown request, they are granted "Safe Harbor" status, meaning they cannot be held accountable for the infringement. The party that put the content up, however, can respond with a counter-notice, and the service provider can then put the material back up but does not lose Safe Harbor status.

The beauty of this system is that infringements can be shut down without involving a court, but invalid takedown notices can be immediately reversed, again without involving a court (or even a lawyer -- there are free on-line counter-notice generators). Further, as long as the service provider complies with the notice and counter-notice in a timely fashion, they are completely safe from any infringement suit and can completely ignore any court proceedings that happen thereafter (unless given a court order to comply with).

The only part of this process that could be improved, IMO, is that the service provider is supposed to wait two weeks after receiving the counter-notice before putting the data back on-line. The purpose is to give the plaintiff a chance to file a lawsuit. If they do, they can send notice of the pending suit to the service provider, who should then NOT put the material back up, until the situation is resolved in court. I think the service provider should put the material back up immediately, and taking it down again should require an injunction.

You might think that this process lends itself to abuse, with people issuing takedown notices for material upon which they don't hold copyright, but there's a protection against that. Notices and counter-notices are both made under penalty of perjury, and they're required to indicate that the issuer has a reasonable belief that the complaint is valid. If you issue a bogus takedown notice, you can be prosecuted for perjury.

I think that's why CoreAVC was so quick to apologize and is back-pedaling so hard... because their invalid notice could get at least the individual who signed the notice prosecuted for perjury. The max penalty for that is something like $10,000 and a couple years in prison. Not pleasant.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[Just Some Guy]

It's an outrageous situation that really shouldn't be defended.

Oh, I totally agree with that. It just seems to me that the alternative is the same situation with judges and lawyers thrown in for good measure. That's about the only way I can think of to make it even worse.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[russotto]

I disagree. The DMCA takedown and "Safe Harbor" process is the one thing about the DMCA that's good. You have to fully understand it, though.

The way it works is that if a service provider immediately complies with the takedown request, they are granted "Safe Harbor" status, meaning they cannot be held accountable for the infringement. The party that put the content up, however, can respond with a counter-notice, and the service provider can then put the material back up but does not lose Safe Harbor status.

Until the objecting party counters with a letter saying "I'm gonna sue". Then the provider has to take it down again or lose his safe harbor. That takedown is permanent until a judge says otherwise. And the case (if it is even initiated -- nothing in the DMCA actually requires the suit to go forward even if the objecting party says they will sue) could take years. It amounts to an automatic preliminary injunction outside the judicial process.

Further, the safe harbor -- without a takedown provision -- existed prior to the DMCA, in case law.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I disagree. The DMCA takedown and "Safe Harbor" process is the one thing about the DMCA that's good. You have to fully understand it, though.

I disagree with your disagreement.

The way it works is that if a service provider immediately complies with the takedown request, they are granted "Safe Harbor" status, meaning they cannot be held accountable for the infringement.

Service providers act as and have most of the powers of common carriers. Why should they be held accountable for one of their customer's infringements anyway? They should be just as immune to legal issues for hosting copyrighted materials as the phone company is when I sing "happy birthday" over the phone.

The party that put the content up, however, can respond with a counter-notice, and the service provider can then put the material back up but does not lose Safe Harbor status.

So, as in this case, perfectly legal content can be removed at the whim of, well anyone, temporarily disrupting its availability. It's like if I thought your art gallery was violating pornography laws I could go remove them from your gallery, legally, until such a time as you made a counter claim and waited a few weeks. How is this a good thing for anyone?

The beauty of this system is that infringements can be shut down without involving a court...

I consider that a violation of due process. If I can restrict your free speech, even temporarily without involving the courts, that is not a good thing.

Further, as long as the service provider complies with the notice and counter-notice in a timely fashion, they are completely safe from any infringement suit...

Which as common carriers they should be safe from anyway.

You might think that this process lends itself to abuse, with people issuing takedown notices for material upon which they don't hold copyright, but there's a protection against that.

There is no protection from that. There are repercussions for that, but if you have enough money those repercussions are fairly weak. If you care more about knocking down some offering temporarily, it allows you to abuse the system.

I guess I don't see how you can argue that a law which just resulted in a completely legal software offering being made unavailable because of false claims from one of their competitors is a good thing. What's wrong with actually requiring them to prove their case in court BEFORE the ISP is legally obligated to remove the content... you know like our legal system has required for every other form of media for the last hundred years.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[Uncle Focker]

Imagine the same scenario, except now the plaintiff faces penalties from a pissed-off judge if they admit they're wrong and want to drop their case. I'm failing to see the problem with that scenario. Maybe next time the person won't be sending out fradulent DMCA requests anymore.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[Trintech]

Otherwise you are guilty until proven innocent.
No, you are guilty until you have filed a counterclaim at which point you can resume using the DMCAed material until proven guilty in court.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[Just Some Guy]

I'm failing to see the problem with that scenario. Maybe next time the person won't be sending out fradulent DMCA requests anymore.

The problem is that it gives the plaintiffs a strong reason not to back down, even if they want to. Their choices become: 1) say "I'm sorry" and get fined by the judge, or 2) say "oh, crud" and throw in every legal resource at their disposal in the hope that you'll get scared (or go bankrupt) and give in.

I've read that when kidnapping became a capital crime, that the percentage of victims killed skyrocketed because the kidnappers perceived that their odds of escaping justice were better with a dead witness. If they were caught, they'd be executed anyway, so why not do everything possible to stack the deck? That may or may not be true, and there's a quantitative difference between kidnapping and a civil lawsuit, but I think the principle stands.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[Uncle Focker]

The problem is that it gives the plaintiffs a strong reason not to back down, even if they want to. Their choices become: 1) say "I'm sorry" and get fined by the judge, or 2) say "oh, crud" and throw in every legal resource at their disposal in the hope that you'll get scared (or go bankrupt) and give in. I'm sorry but this doesn't make any sense. If the judge has already ruled their claim to be fraudulent and is going to fine them, exactly through what mechanism is this supposed plaintiff going to have to go after you?

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[Lunix Nutcase]

The problem is that it gives the plaintiffs a strong reason not to back down, even if they want to. Their choices become: 1) say "I'm sorry" and get fined by the judge, or 2) say "oh, crud" and throw in every legal resource at their disposal in the hope that you'll get scared (or go bankrupt) and give in. Yeah, we sure can't have people punished for abusing the legal system. Chaos would ensue!

I've read that when kidnapping became a capital crime, that the percentage of victims killed skyrocketed because the kidnappers perceived that their odds of escaping justice were better with a dead witness. If they were caught, they'd be executed anyway, so why not do everything possible to stack the deck? That may or may not be true, and there's a quantitative difference between kidnapping and a civil lawsuit, but I think the principle stands. Yeah, that gets trotted out a lot but there is scant evidence to back up the claim.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[Just Some Guy]

If the judge has already ruled their claim to be fraudulent and is going to fine them, exactly through what mechanism is this supposed plaintiff going to have to go after you?

I'm talking about before the judge rules. Suppose that the plaintiffs realizes their mistake after the courts are involved but before the final judgment. In that event, unscrupulous plaintiffs may decide they're better off fighting tooth and nail to prevent being proven wrong rather than trying to back down and facing penalties.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[Uncle Focker]

I'm talking about before the judge rules. Suppose that the plaintiffs realizes their mistake after the courts are involved but before the final judgment. In that event, unscrupulous plaintiffs may decide they're better off fighting tooth and nail to prevent being proven wrong rather than trying to back down and facing penalties. So then we should cease to penalize anyone? This is what your logic dictates.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[Just Some Guy]

So then we should cease to penalize anyone? This is what your logic dictates.

Yeah, you're right. Saying that it's dangerous to take away someone's option not to penalize you is exactly like saying you should never be penalized. I concede. Whatever.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[Uncle Focker]

Saying that it's dangerous to take away someone's option not to penalize you Whoever made this claim that you are saying is dangerous? Care to give an actual quotation? No one said the judge should be forced to penalize in every case and as with anything it's up to their discretion. If this was the actual thrust of your claim you were attacking a strawman.

is exactly like saying you should never be penalized. You've been spending the last 3 posts bemoaning how if a plaintiff *gasp* might get punished for abusing the legal system that they will somehow go full steamroller ahead. We've all seen how the lack of accountability that the DMCA has offered has really prevented such abuses. *rolls eyes*.

Re:This is why you should need a court order

[BitZtream]

Forced removal DOES require court action. Google took action on its own to remove the 'offending' content in order to keep itself in the 'Safe Harbor' provision of the DMCA.

Google could have simply said 'No, we won't take it down' in which case what you've said would have had to occur. Under the DMCA, Google also has the option of honoring the take down request, in which case they are not liable for the infringment.

If they did not take it down when the request came in, then they too could have been held liable in court. This provision of the DMCA gives providers an out to be safe from proscution.

Likewise, the core for linux team members can send google a 'we're not wrong, put it back up' notice, in which case Google is supposed to put it back up and still not be held liable, until such time as a court orders them to remove it.

For all the craptasticness that is the DMCA, this really isn't THAT bad of a provision. The down side is the difficulting in prosecuting the jerks who issue invalid take down notices.

For a small team of open source developers, its not very likely that they'll want to spend the money on lawyers and court costs just to teach the offending company a lesson, IF they actually win. It very would could end up going the other direction and come out that they did infringe in someway and they really DO have to take it down.

Going to court doesn't always turn out the way you think it should.

This whole thing is emblematic

[Anonymous Coward]

... of the use of the word 'takedown': a hyper-inflated neologism borrowed from police terminology when the two words 'take' and 'down' just don't have the modern, aggressive, IP-violation-is-as-bad-as-assault feel.

I didn't like it when Shimomura and Markoff used it (not much more legitimately) as the title of their two-handed-circle-jerk/book about Mitnick, and I like it even less in this stupidly aggrandised field of threatening-letter-writing.

Kudos to them

[Anonymous Coward]

Because in this generally cynical and hostile atmosphere there's rarely a chance to add anything positive ...

I say well done chaps.

You fucked up. You know it. You're not too proud and arrogant to say so.

If only companies like Sony BMG had the good manners and humility.

This doesn't make any sense

[MobyDisk]

The DMCA takedown notice that they sent says:

We have directly verified by downloading the file from the Site provided by Google Inc. that the file does include CoreCodec's copyrighted Software. ...
Respectfully,
[private], CEO CoreCodec, Inc.

So according to this, the CEO has legally stated that his company downloaded the software and confirmed the violation. But today, he says it was just an overzealous legal department, and no such download happened. In that case, he signed a letter making legal statements that he knew were false.

If I ran this project, I would not be satisfied by an apology posted in a forum. They sent a legal statement and that requires a legal reply. I would continue as the DMCA stipulates, stating that the project does not infringe. I think I'd also be looking for a few lawyers to get fired. And the CEO needs to be quaking in his boots with the fact that his signature is on a legal notice that is a complete lie.

Why so harsh? They apologized, right? Because these stories happen all the time and I'm sick of companies getting away with it. If you send a legally binding letter with your signature on it, forcing someone to take down their web site, invoking a legal process - then you damn well better be sure that you were in the right. If we let this go, then the procedure becomes:

1. Company sends take down notice
2. Alleged infringer has to prove that they aren't infringing
3. Company allows them to put the project back up

That's not fair. That means any corporation can take down any site, any time, anywhere, with no fear of legal reprisal. That's not how the DMCA works and we need to stop them from using it that way. The DMCA is not carte-blanche to shut down web sites.

Re:This doesn't make any sense

[Hatta]

You're absolutely right. Hang them out to dry as an example to others.

Re:This doesn't make any sense

[Anonymous Coward]

It may not be fair, but you just outlined how the DMCA works. That is how it is written. The only part of a claim that can bite the filer is if they don't in fact hold copyright (or are an authorized agent of the copyright holder) for the work infringement is being claimed on. There is no requirement to verify that the copyrighted work is indeed being made available and no penalty for filing a notice which is not substantially true (again referring to the allegations, not to the copyright). To slightly correct your sequence:

1. Company sends take down notice
2. Material must be taken down
3. Alleged infringer can counterclaim which allows the material to be put back up
4. That is it unless the plaintiff takes it to court

Notice it is impossible to avoid step 2 whether the claim is valid or not.

The law is entirely one sided and decidedly not fair. But that's what you get when laws are bought by the highest bidder. The DMCA is the best/worst law that money can buy. It criminalizes bypassing technological controls, whether effective or not, and the courts are unwilling to rule on this. I wish I had the citation handy but where there was a ruling a judge chose to interpret the DMCA as meaning you could develop the knowledge of how to defeat technological mechanisms yourself and use that knowledge -- but you could not provide it to others or obtain it from others. And then had the audacity to claim that this effectively protected the rights of the property holder (believe it or not when you buy a DVD you *own* that disk and legally can make copies of it without limit so long as it is not distributed, broadcast, etc. -- although pushing the point and having a 1000 copies of one title is difficult to demonstrate a non-infringing intent)

Re:This doesn't make any sense

[Hatta]

The law is entirely one sided and decidedly not fair.

The law is not entirely one sided. If a claim is invalid, the claimant has committed perjury. They can and should be prosecuted for this.

Re:This doesn't make any sense

[karmatic]

I've said this a number of times, but here we go again:
1) DMCA requires you to have a "good faith" belief that your rights are infringed
2) DMCA requires you to certify "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the party whose rights are infringed.
3) CoreAVC for Linux breaks copy protection, potentially making it a circumvention device under the DMCA.

The issue here is a matter of policy - namely, we go after pirates, not customers. That's the reason for the apology. It has nothing to do with perjury, as no perjury was committed. It's quite likely that the project was illegal under the DMCA. After the takedown notice was sent, we (before any publicity at all) started the process to grant them permission, in order to avoid any potential issues.

The bigger issue here is that the DMCA is a bad law. Yeah, an employee screwed up. He broke policy - we go after pirates, not customers. The fact that a takedown is legal doesn't make it right.

Re:This doesn't make any sense

[Anonymous Coward]

If a claim is invalid, the claimant has committed perjury. They can and should be prosecuted for this.

Not true. The claimant must also have known at the time that the claim was invalid. To convict them of perjury, a jury must be convinced of this beyond a reasonable doubt, which is next to impossible.

Re:This doesn't make any sense

[BitZtream]

You're right, you go after them. You pay for the lawyers to take them to court for this case. If you're lucky, you won't get a judge who fines you for wasting his time on a trivial matter. Or maybe you spend a whole bunch of money and get a lawyer who can prove this event damaged you, but between the $30+?k (more zeros added as needed) in legal fees and court costs, its not real likely you're going to get anything out of it.

The actual proceedure is:
1. Company A sends a take down notice
2. Hosting servers remove content
3. Content owner sends a 'put back up' notice
4. Hosting servers restore content
5. Company A now has to sue and prove infringement in order to have the content removed.
6. Content owner counter-claims the take down notice was unlawful and damaging.
7. 8 years later, the little guy is bankrupt and out of business, whichever one was bigger won. Welcome to America.
8. Hosting servers continue to sell adwords thanks to legal immunity by complying in steps 2 and 4.
9. profit!!!

It is fair. The people hosting your data do not HAVE to comply with a take down notice. Its an option. Its an option that pretty much EVERYONE takes because it means the hosting service is no longer liable. Google could have told them to stuff it, and at this point its highly unlikely that the CoreCodec Inc would have done anything more since it was obviously bogus in the first place. However, if CoreCodec continued to court and won, Google is also on the hook for infringment. What would you do if you were Google? Remember, they have share holders who for the most part care about making money, not making a stand in court that could easily be avoided for practically zero cost.

Just like they have a way to take it down, you have a way to get it put back up, equally as fast as the take down. At which point you CAN go after them for false accusations if you want, again, if you have the money to waste on doing so there are plenty of people that would love to have you on their side. I'm sure the EFF would put your extra money to good use helping people out of these messes.

Re:This doesn't make any sense

[Frenchy_2001]

1. Company sends take down notice
2. Alleged infringer has to prove that they aren't infringing
3. Company allows them to put the project back up

your step 2 is out of line.
The DMCA has a very simple and well defined procedure to counter a take down.
You just send a counter-DMCA notice and your site is back online as fast as it had been taken down (same legal obligation for both action). Now, if they want to go further, they need to involve a court.

In this case, there is no question of privacy or anonymity. The main contributor was known, even of CoreCodec. So, no need to prove anything, just to send the same form letter than you received, stating you dont think you are infringing.

Of course, this does not protect the offending company of their perjury if their first letter (take down notice) was in bad faith. This procedure is in place to protect both party:
  1. IP holders can take down offensive sites very quickly
  2. site holder can put site back online very quickly if take down is abusive and then turn against the company in a legal court.

This is a problem of responsibility, to avoid the type of procedure the RIAA has been quite fond of: fight by proxy, where they bother the ISP for the name of the infringer. The counter notice is the accused volunteering his responsibility and covering the host.

Re:This doesn't make any sense

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not fair. That means any corporation can take down any site, any time, anywhere, with no fear of legal reprisal. That's not how the DMCA works...

Actually, that's exactly how the DMCA works. Further, that's how the corporations want it to work, so don't expect the situation to change any time soon.

The DMCA is not carte-blanche to shut down web sites.

Erm, yes it is.

The thing is, the best way to get a bad law repealed is to use it as much as possible. Send DMCA takedown notices to the hosting providers of the websites of all the senators, congressmen, aides, government workers, and their family members. Send some to the hosing providers of the top 500 companies in the country, and when you are done with those, send some out to the next 500 and the 1000 after that.

Dollar slide!

[nikanj]

Haven't you heard that $14.95 is the new $10!

What they are really saying....

[jskline]

What they are really saying is that they've already spoken with their legal team to find out what steps are needed to cover their asses in case of a backlash of re-percussive actions that can result. More lawyer mumbo-jumbo again.

I am loosing trust in all lawyers. They're dirty. Unclean. And unfortunately in many elected positions in government. No wonder my constitution has become so polluted...

Re:What they are really saying....

[karmatic]

What they are really saying is that they've already spoken with their legal team to find out what steps are needed to cover their asses in case of a backlash of re-percussive actions that can result. More lawyer mumbo-jumbo again.

Uh, no.

CoreAVC for Linux breaks copy protection. This potentially makes it illegal under the DMCA. As such, a takedown was sent. There is not, and has never been, any potential for legal recourse, as the takedown notice was legal, and valid. The DMCA is still a bad law.

It was, however, wrong. The employee broke policy - we go after pirates, not customers.

I say attack the DMCA

[JSBiff]

I totally agree with what you are saying, but it kind of assumes that the DMCA is legitimate, and that only the *abuses* of it are illegitimate. The problem is, the law was seeminly designed to be abused. The whole concept of a takedown letter means that if someone accuses someone else of a violation of law, they are to be presumed guilty until they prove themselves innocent. That just turns 200+ years of American legal doctrine, embodied in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, completely on it's head, in a very bad way.

In this case, we have a company that made a mistake. Yes, you are correct that they swore to something that couldn't have been true, by their own *later* admission, but they did quickly correct the mistake. I think that means something. They also then proceeded to work with the guy who maintains CoreAVC-for-linux to increase it's capability/compatibility, and they are talking about releasing official builds (gStreamer Plug-in, library, etc) for Linux.

I know there are those among us who believe all proprietary software is unethical/evil, and they are entitled to their opinions, but I really don't think there is any *real* benefit to be gained here from crucifying a company that, overall, appears to want a friendly relationship OpenSource/Free Software developers and users. I say save your ire for the idiots in Congress who sponsored and voted for the DMCA, and for companies that maliciously abuse the DMCA and don't repent.

Re:I say attack the DMCA

[Skye16]

Wrong. They do not have to prove them innocent. They merely have to state that they are innocent. There's a huge difference there.

Aside from that, I see your point, but you have to admit the other way things would have gone, ie: Google, itself, would have been libel in case of an infringement would make just about every single hosting company close up shop over night, or at least increase their monthly fee by an order of magnitude or two just so they could afford the staff and legal counsel to constantly peruse the files put on their servers, and even then it would be an incredibly risky venture.

No, no, without the DMCA, I don't see the internet working nearly as well as it does now, if at all - not unless everyone owned their own servers and hosted them out of their own homes.

Re:I say attack the DMCA

[NormalVisual]

I really don't think there is any *real* benefit to be gained here from crucifying a company that, overall, appears to want a friendly relationship OpenSource/Free Software developers and users.

Absolutely there is - making an example of CoreCodec will likely discourage future abuse of an already-bad law, which will benefit a much larger group of people than a small bunch of open-source fans. Whether the company is sorry or not doesn't matter in the least. Neither does their stated desire to work with the open-source community. The fact remains that CoreCodec out-and-out lied on a legal document to the detriment of someone else for their own convenience, and letting that go without any consequences will simply encourage others to do the same. I think we're much better off seeing corporate abuse of copyright laws curbed rather than letting it slide just so we can have a better codec.

Re:I say attack the DMCA

[MobyDisk]

Google, itself, would have been libel in case of an infringement would make just about every single hosting company close up shop over night, 1) I wasn't arguing against the DMCA. I actually think it worked in this case.
2) You're argument falls under the mistaken assumption that without the DMCA, the ISP would be liable. Are phone companies being liable for slander said over the phone lines. No... how about DVD companies liable for when music and video are copied onto their media? No... how about manufacturers liable when their hardware is used for copyright infringement? No... If the DMCA did not exist, and a sensible court system was in place (Yeah, that part might be unbelieveable - but this is a hypothetical...) then ISPs would be safe. This is one of my biggest complains with the DMCA. It gives these crazy provisions under which one can have a safe harbor. But ISPs should already have that safe harbor even without the DMCA. In a way, the law really makes it harder to get safe harbor by indirectly implying that they don't have it to start with.

Zero Tolerance for Companies Like This

[DeanFox]

The DMCA takedown notice [chillingeffects.org] that they sent says:

We have directly verified by downloading the file from the Site provided by Google Inc. that the file does include CoreCodec's copyrighted Software. ...
Respectfully,
[private], CEO CoreCodec, Inc.

So according to this, the CEO has legally stated that his company downloaded the software and confirmed the violation. But today, he says it was just an overzealous legal department, and no such download happened. In that case, he signed a letter making legal statements that he knew were false. A minor correction from: " So according to this, the CEO has legally stated that..." to: illegally stated that...

My experience with companies like this is if they do it once they'll do it again. Maybe not another fake DMCA (too much damage control when caught) but they will do something else like change the licensing terms, abandon the work, leave paid customers high and dry, start suing customers... Something.

The CEO gets a site taken down by lying but says there was no ill intent. Defends the DMCA notice in his early posts then graciously concedes to 'allow' the Linux project to continue only after changes are made... As if he's in control of someone else's project...

Reading the posts he made.. He's a real piece of work. Once a company gets caught pulling a strong arm stunt like this I would never trust purchasing their product. His codec may be superior today but won't be for long. Why waste even $10 taking the chance with this or any other of their products. Other codecs will come up to speed soon enough for high end users. They're already great for all but the high end demand and even then aren't too bad.

I'm at zero tolerance with companies that pull crap like this.

-[d]-

Re:Zero Tolerance for Companies Like This

[karmatic]

I've said this a number of times, but here we go again:
1) DMCA requires you to have a "good faith" belief that your rights are infringed
2) DMCA requires you to certify "under penalty of perjury" that you represent the party whose rights are infringed.
3) CoreAVC for Linux breaks copy protection, potentially making it a circumvention device under the DMCA.

The takedown was legal, and our rights were infringed under the law.

That being said, the law is wrong, and the DMCA is a bad law. The takedown shouldn't have been sent, as the purpose of the software was not piracy.

My experience with companies like this is if they do it once they'll do it again. Maybe not another fake DMCA (too much damage control when caught) but they will do something else like change the licensing terms, abandon the work, leave paid customers high and dry, start suing customers... Something.

I am a director in the company, and my take on IP is clear. We stopped selling CoreAVC for months because of issues with Vista - if we can't sell a good product, we won't sell it at all.

As for the licensing terms, CoreCodec products should be shipped without any form of EULA. If you read my post above, I remove them whenever I find them. They aren't necessary, and are detrimental.

We have no intention of suing the customers, and have turned down companies looking to buy us. We did so not because there wasn't enough money involved, but rather the purchase was to "make us go away", and that would have hurt the products and our customers. That's right - I personally (along with others in the company, including the CEO) have walked away from significant amounts of money because I care about the product, and the customers.

Yeah, we make mistakes sometimes. After sending hundreds of DMCA takedowns to rapidshare, forums, codec packs, etc, we screwed up and sent one that shouldn't have been sent, even though they did violate the DMCA. It was a legal takedown, but it was sent to someone it shouldn't have been. I reamed the CEO a new one, we apologized publically, had the project reinstated, gave them an exemption to ensure that the project is legal, and put controls in place to make sure it can't happen again.

What more can you reasonably expect?

Re:Zero Tolerance for Companies Like This

[gzunk]

You have my respect. Keeping cool even though it must get you down a bit to keep on posting the same information over and over again.

Not sure if I would be quite so ... understanding.

Re:Zero Tolerance for Companies Like This

[DeanFox]

I've said this a number of times, but here we go again:
1) DMCA requires you to have a "good faith" belief that your rights are infringed
3) CoreAVC for Linux breaks copy protection, potentially making it a circumvention device under the DMCA.
... and our rights were infringed under the law. What more can you reasonably expect? The truth?
From the DMCA Takedown...

We have directly verified by downloading the file from the Site provided by Google Inc. that the file does include CoreCodec's copyrighted Software. ... No you didn't and no it doesn't. That's NOT good faith. And, "Potentially" a circumvention device? I'm not 7 years old. Disassembly for compatibility is granted under DMCA. CoreAVC for Linux is not potentially anything except competition you falsely used a fake DMCA in an attempt to destroy.

So, you send hundreds of these things out a year? Good to know. I am going to stay far, far away from being one of your customers (which CoreAVC for Linux users are) whom you did threaten to sue.

Are you so blind to your own greed you can't see your attitude toward your own customers? You have a competing product (soon) you want them to pay for and use instead? Just keep threating them and I'm sure they'll be flocking to hand over their cash. I have Darl McBride's phone number if you want it. You may want to compare notes. If he's not in, there's always the RIAA...

-[d]-

Thanks CoreCodec

[Vegeta99]

I was kinda miffed about this, but I'm glad they took care of it. I bought their CorePlayer PocketPC that they reverse-engineered the video API on my phone for. I have an HTC TyTn II with a Qualcomm MSM-7200 chipset that has some ATI video stuff in it that can, among other things, play high-res video real smooth on the phone. BUT, Broadcomm sued them, so they weren't allowed to support the chipset anymore - hence not supplying the video overlay drivers. Of course, that didn't stop HTC from selling me a $350 phone that claimed to have video acceleration =( LESSTHAN /rant GREATERTHAN

The two aren't always mutually exclusiev

[phorm]

Sometimes, it's both. More often it's the latter, but sometimes getting caught doing something stupid, and paying the PR penalty for it, makes you realize that perhaps your goals have departed a bit from your original expectations.

Quote to take away from all of this

[whitehatlurker]

Having counsel at times and what advise they give is sometimes not in the best interests as was this case ...

I'll excuse the really poor English, as this presents the idea that your lawyer(s) might be doing or suggesting things that are not in your best interests. That concept doesn't always get through to some companies.

DMCA allows it for interoperability

[Anonymous Coward]

And do you MAKE a library for use in Linux?

No.

So it is for interoperability.

But then either you knew that and therefore lied or didn't check in which case Svartalf's point is correct.

Re:DMCA allows it for interoperability

[karmatic]

And do you MAKE a library for use in Linux?

No.

So it is for interoperability.

But then either you knew that and therefore lied or didn't check in which case Svartalf's point is correct.

No, I'm quite familiar with the reverse-engineering provisions of the DMCA.

If you will recall, the purpose of DeCSS was to be used to enable playback on alternative operating systems, specifically Linux, for which no player was available. The courts still held that it was a circumvention device, and did not qualify for the interoperability exemption.

As such, this would ultimately be a matter for the courts to decide, but it doesn't really matter, since the DMCA takedown violated our policy, and shouldn't have been sent. We have given them permission, making the point moot - the prohibitions in the DMCA no longer apply to that project anyway.

Re:DMCA allows it for interoperability

[91degrees]

Seriously, give it a rest. Nobody is going to prosecute. There's a perfectly reasonable case that the software is a copyright circumvention device (which is not to say it is a circumvention device. Just that it's a matter that would need to be decided by the courts). Even if there wasn't, it's quite possible that those involved believed it was. The oath is that the statement is true to the best of their belief. Even if they didn't believe it's true, it's extremely unlikely that you would be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that this is the case. And even if you did, what would there be to gain from it? Go after someone who actually is abusing the DMCA, rather than someone who was.

Scare tactics that don't work

[flibuste]

Oh, they apologized!
I am sure they feel soooo sorry.
Are they also going to get sued for using broad, blind scare tactics without checking their facts?

It seems it is getting a little easy...

-- Send take down notice
-- Threaten to sue and scare the shit out of honest people
--??????
-- PROFIT

There should be laws against this. Why is there none? Are we really allowed to threaten people freely? Really?

WORD: Believe NOTHING these JERKS say

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a pack of lies atop more lies drowing in a sea of lies.

Nothing anyone from there says is true. It's all a lie. Excuses are lies (the vista bit is surely one). Claims are lies (so many things are said to work don't and won't for years, if ever). Damn, if even their lies are lies - so many lies even the lies are lies. Sorry sods!

Former DivX employee? Tangential at best (he was

[Anonymous Coward]

Former DivX employee? You must mean Danny boy Marlin. Betaboy as he goes by now, worked on the website. He wasn't a coder, or much of anything really.

Enough of the Damn Spin

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen a fair bit of spin control from Karamtic attempting to put this into a good light. I've had enough from this "director" of CoreAVC (bus dev?) - so I'm going to answer these points - "one-by-one". I'm not a developer on CoreAVC-for-linux - but I am a user.

CLAIM: It circumvents copy protection of CoreAVC
CoreAVC-for-linux does not modify the protections in place by CoreAVC. It requires the same registry settings to operate as it does on Windows. If you are going to threaten legal action - go after regedit. Claiming this is a "Circumvention Device" is patently false - stop spinning and take your lumps like a man.

CLAIM: We were within our rights - the DCMA was legal but unintended.
Again more spin. CoreAVC-For-Linux did NOT circumvent your copy protection, and any reverse engineering done on it was within the scope of "interoperability". It contains none of your previous copyrighted code. In short - its NOT a DCMA target.

Bottom line here pal - you guys sent a DCMA request without cause, got caught at it, and no amount of spin doctoring will change that fact.

You don't sue customers? I'll give you that - but you sure picked an easy way to piss off alot of them.

Anon and Proud