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

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.

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: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.

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: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: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: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?