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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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

[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.

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

[Hatta]

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

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

[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.

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?

[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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lucid, but incorrect.

[argent]

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

-1 Astroturfing?

Which is it?

[jamesh]

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

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?

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...

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.

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.

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.