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Google's Information On DMCA Takedown Abuse
Binestar writes "According to a PC World article, Google has submitted a brief to New Zealand about its proposed copyright law (section 92A). "In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.""
In a world where executives of companies that lose money expect as a matter of course to be paid millions of dollars of bonuses, it is a given that a tool such as the DMCA **WILL** be abused to silence opposition or competition...
oh shit -- they really oughta have a preview button or something.
"It's" == "It is"
"Its" == (possesive)
I am not left-handed, either!
57% are from businesses targeting competitors, and only 37% are invalid? What does that mean? 1.) That up to 20% of notices are from businesses who are catching their competitors in the act? 2.) Or is it not 37% of total notices? 3.) Or am I getting mixed up on something?
There was a time when music was sold as sheet music. Somehow Joplin was making a $100,000 a week in the 1920's, even though it's fairly trivial to simply hand-copy someone-else's work.
I know I'm preaching to the choir on this one, but copyright law is increasingly working more against society than in its interests, and this story just goes to prove that yet again. When laws hurt more than they help, they need to be changed or abolished.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
Now show me one sentence where the meaning becomes different depending on which way you spell it(')s. Any sentence. Don't have one? Still feel like you know something important?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
"Its" == (possessive)
In its submission, Google notes that ...
So the summary is correct...
"The New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, stated that the stronger copyright laws, including the controversial section 92a, were required for New Zealand to be able to negotiate a free trade agreement with America."
DMCA notices are filed under penalty of perjury. Has anybody, ever, even a single case, been punished for filing a false takedown?
*crickets*
Do you know what makes money the root of all evil? It[']s love.
Could mean "Love, in general, is the answer to the question" or "Love of money is what makes it bad."
See? Its absolutely possible to make a sentence where, when the apostrophe is misused, it's presence or absence matters.
Its a thing and it's a thing (off the top of my head). Totally different meaning
U r right, it really dusnt matter how u spell. Its not like their are standards to maintain. Or that its just plane irritating to sea.
(Pedants aside, a large proportion of Slashdot readers are programmers whose brains sound an alarm bell when a sentence doesn't parse correctly.)
Hoist by thine own petard. By the way it's "ought to". See, we can all be pedantic grammar nazis too.
It's easy. And yet... so pointless. Language is a means of communication. For millennia, it had no agreed, defined structure. Then along comes Dr Johnson, the world's first grammar nazi, and spoiled things for everyone by stifling creativity. Shakespeare, a man who -- you know -- was and is, widely renowned for being quite good at English, used to make words up all the time, and bend others to his will. You'd have him shot, no doubt. Or his books burned for grammar crimes.
Did you understand what the summary meant? Yes, you did. So... shut up.
This is just one more reasons why section 92A is nothing but trouble for 99% of the population. But how do we go about solving the problem. Moaning about it doesn't seem to have much effect.
Look up Venom Fang X on Youtube.
Good point. I never thought of things that way- it's just needless formatting. I mean, taking things one step further now, I guess it doesn't really matter if you don't
haveanyspacesat
allinyoursenten
ces.Iguessyoudo'
n'treallyneedth
oseafterall,ori
nfactorevenpunc.
tuationatallorc
apitallettersim
eanalltheconten
tisthereandther.
estisjustformat
tingdesignedtom'
akethesentencee
asiertoreadandr
emoveambiguitie
sbutimeanheyify
oucouldntbeboth-
eredspendingthe
typetypingoutyo.
ursentenceaccur
atelyandmakingi
teasytoreadwhys
houlditaketheti
metoreadit-
Edit: Even the filter won't let me post sentences like this without putting in some junk.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
How about:
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas was our sign to get in the car and go shopping.
Oops, I meant 'its'. Yeh, there's only one way to parse it, but you don't find out which is the right way till the end of the sentence. (And don't ask me what 'it' is referring to there).
I think I agree with your general sentiment though. Special cases aren't special enough to justify completely breaking the regular rules. Both meanings should be written "it's". And like so many other things in English it would be the writer's responsibility to write sentences that parse unambiguously.
Good example. And 3 how you then misused the apostrophe right there in the last sentence.
The content of the Google submission to TCF can be found here. Some of the other submission (including the Auckland District Law Society and the Radio New Zealand submissions) are worth a read.
I get that wrong all the time even though I'm fully aware that the possessive of "it" is "its". It's not that I'm bad at English, I just don't give a fuck about that particular apostrophe.
In fact, if it wasn't for the squiggly red lines I wouldn't care to correct my mistyping. I just can't stand those awful squiggles, it's like they're Satan rising up from ashes to haunt me with the terror of a thousand mad-libs...
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
This is exactly how people used to write. The use of a punctuation marker between words didn't catch on in Latin until sometime between 600AD and 800AD. A lot of punctuation marks, and grammar in general, is a relatively recent fad.
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
In its submission
about its proposed
Both are possessive. Both are correct. Did they change TFS? Or did OP screw up?
Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
Now show me one sentence where the meaning becomes different depending on which way you spell it(')s. Any sentence. Don't have one? Still feel like you know something important?
I feel it's nuts.
Completely off topic but very insightful. Thank you.
Since the advent of the internet and the laws governing it and how it affects copyright, the government has passed laws which turn the judicial system into an arm of major corporations.
Copyright needs to be protected - as a photographer I know this well. However, the rights of the populous must also be protected: isn't that ostensibly the role of government?
Douglas Whitaker
That's a good question. I think the penalty of perjury clause serves as a mild deterrent, and I think to an extent it does work. It takes a pretty dishonest person to sign on the dotted line, under the penalty of perjury, things to which the person is attesting falsely. Of course, that doesn't stop unscrupulous individuals who use the same logic - that the penalty is really not enforced.
/. members do. I think legitimate copyrights, trademarks and patents deserve reasonable protection in an information-based economy. Yes, the Act went far too far with the anti-circumvention clauses that obviously thwart innovation. However, in the electronic world where bad actors can instantly steal and widely disseminate other people's work and pass it off as their own - and even masquerade as the owner of the work maliciously, it is very helpful to have a method within the law for protecting ownership rights short of always involving lawyers at substantial and on-going costs. Every once in a while my organization has to send out a DMCA take down notice against those who are using our trademarks to sell counterfeit merchandise. If the DMCA were not in force and we had to file a lawsuit over every small act of infringement, we would not be able to afford to protect our rights. On the other hand, we once also faced a scum bag lawyer who fraudulently abused the DMCA (under the penalty of perjury) and caused us huge problems because of the incompetence of Network Solutions. We had to remedy that situation in court.
I don't hate the DMCA like the vast majority of
The DMCA is a legal tool that can either be used properly or misused. The most important thing for web hosts and other service providers to do is to abide by the protocol established by the Act for handling take-downs and counter-notices and to publish a DMCA policy that recognizes that protocol. Unfortunately, in hotly contested situations many web hosts will be more responsive to the threats of abusive lawyers than to the letter of the federal law and their own stated policies. A lot of providers don't publish any information on how they handle DMCA notices, and that is a problem. YMMV.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Unrelated to the point being made but IIRC it's "The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." Not of all evil. But do carry on :)
I thought that google liked the DCMA as it protects them from lawsuits and other more extensive harassment. As it is now, all the have to do is take down the content. If this wasn't there they would be overrun with lawsuits. The only thing it seems to fight are things that might hurt it's ad business.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Do you think this would be enough to force the DCMA to be kneecapped? Clearly this was not it's intended purpose so the law needs to change.
The unwanted child cries unheard, it's life ends too soon.
Its love? What does money love?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
My fear is that-that any law that is put forth to replace (fix?) the DMCA's problems might well more Draconian then the DMCA itself. It's as if the bad known is better then the possibly worse unknown
OR is their stock too low for that now.
This is my sig.
The word "kinds" is redundant, unless of course you can find an evil that is not a kind of evil...
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I don't even notice squiggles anymore. They squiggle on HTML, they squiggle on computer terms (agregator), they squiggle on biology and physics terms (saurichian, Hermetian) ... I just can't win.
Blog
Yeah let's just keep doing what people in the past did. It's worked out so well before.
(Pedants aside, a large proportion of Slashdot readers are programmers whose brains sound an alarm bell when a sentence doesn't parse correctly.)
Some slashdot compilers are more verbose than others, it seems.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
Now show me one sentence where the meaning becomes different depending on which way you spell it(')s.
Never drink wine before its time. (Don't drink pre-vintage wine)
Never drink wine before it's time. (Don't drink before 12pm)
Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
If you look carefully, you'll see that artor3 misused both apostrophes in that last sentence.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Too fucking shay!
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Google's proposal. (Warning! .pdf, stab their eyes)
Here's Google's citation to the numbers. (Another .pdf, damn them)
I must admit that my comment comes from a /. sig
And believe you me, it was not easy finding a way of phrasing that that gave me the opportunity to mess them both up. =P
I just can't stand those awful squiggles, it's like they're Satan rising up from ashes to haunt me with the terror of a thousand mad-libs...
I don't like the squggles much either, but when I see the wrong "it's", the wrong "you're" and other such errors in any context, squiggles or no, I get the reaction you described.
Additive identity, multiplicative cancellation, distributive multiplication over addition: pick any two (unless 1 = 0)
100% of those get modded troll when they post.
They're trying to eat you! Run away, poor geek!
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
How about use the simple his/he's test that Dictionary.com suggest?
http://dictionary1.classic.reference.com/help/faq/language/d62.html
Then you'll be able to find out for yourself
If I was witty I'd put something funny here but, as it stands, I am not and have just wasted seconds of your life
One more abhorrent device created by Microsoft. Or at least made popular by them. I don't know where it started.
(Pedants aside, a large proportion of Slashdot readers are programmers whose brains sound an alarm bell when a sentence doesn't parse correctly.)
Well when they read slashdot they should be compiling with gcc -w or at least without passing -pedantic
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Kinda like how medicine is a recent 'fad'.
I mean, people were dying for thousands of years!! Stop complaining when people don't use medicine properly!! It's constantly evolving and changing! Okay, so you took a poison pill. Did you survive? Are you okay? Yes? Shut the fuck up then!
One more abhorrent device created by Microsoft. Or at least made popular by them. I don't know where it started.
Uh, Duh. Hell, obviously.
I think they're a great idea really, I never believed in spellcheck because I've always had faith in my own spelling. However, my unwillingness to check for mistyping even though I know I have terrible accuracy is pure arrogance.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Saurischian
is businesses targeting their own customers - RIAA and MPAA.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I suppose calling them abhorrent was probably premature on my part. I do use them and have found them to come in handy. However, I've also been the type to be asked by numerous people in my life "How do you spell $WORD" because I've just always been a good speller. Although, I'm also the type to read, re-read and re-re-read anything I write just to ensure that my grammar makes sense and the spelling is as close to perfect as I can make it.
I just don't give a fuck about that particular apostrophe
It's called an elevated comma. Jeez don't you no good English?.
In the line of Shakespeare, here's a little fabricated sentence I just coughed up, with the help of a script I wrote:
The Repanal's thiout lived in Reluggia, a very reonancid place with plenty of neute senables that wore large undatinks. The tounthude of Reluggia, luckily, spoke Iingic, telling the thiout that jenigircer left her fers in Resepro. It was an inverish statement, but a bit afty and plumboob, so the thiout believed the tounthude.
Schose, the reshil, was rubbling near the paybacinnion, playing with the harnemy and the canths, who looked very sompery.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
However, I've also been the type to be asked by numerous people in my life "How do you spell $WORD" because I've just always been a good speller.
Out of curiosity do those folks also ask you how to spell Micro$oft?
I thought we were living in a democratic society, so why do the minority (big business) have the power to push through ridiculous legislation with absolutly no regard to the human rights nor the innocent until proven guilty legislations, which our grandparents and ancestors fought and died to implement in the name of making our cuntry a better place to live. Its great to be an underdog in a society that favors only money... ahem
they squiggle on computer terms (agregator)
That's because it's aggregator.
I usually buy it a drink first
firstly it's likely to be abused - as demonstrated by the failure of the copyrighteous to use the existing laws correctly. Secondly it reverses the onus of proof and removes even due process - which makes the abuse much more potent and the chilling effect on legitimate activity that much more powerful.
The people pushing these laws want to be sure they are the only conduit by which any (even perfectly legal) content can be distributed. We all know how well monopolies work out - why make it easier for the incumbents to maintain and extend theirs?
My take on this. EVERY law that was passed in this country from 1900 to the present should be REPEALED.
Every. Single. One.
Why?
Because they are all GARBAGE. That's why. The DMCS is only one small and trivial example.
This is more like Lewis Carroll than Shakespeare. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonsense_verse
See? Never check the squiggles. I've even taught a class on saurischia and am working on a paper involving them. Whoops. Pie on my face?
Blog
Duhhh. People don't speak like a textbook. I often use such words as "oughta", as in "oughta be tarred and feathered". It isn't ignorance, nor is it carelessness - I type it that way intentionally, because people all over America TALK THAT WAY. Ain't you glad that it's so? (Don't bother telling me that "Ain't ain't a word", I've heard it enough times, and it IS A WORD, commonly used by uneducated and educated people alike.)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The word "kinds" implies that evil is not homogenous, and clarifies that this statement does not conflate the various kinds, but merely identifies a common root between them.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I have an easier rule: "it's" (with an apostrophe) is always a contraction for "it is", and is never possessive. Therefore, if you can substitute "it is" without changing the meaning, use the apostrophe in "it's". Otherwise, using an apostrophe would be wrong.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Did you understand what the summary meant? Yes, you did. So... shut up.
Man yo bunnies no crap that is! Chairs flying exclude inclusion of exclusion rabies! ... and that's why the language should have a clear structure, you wouldn't want half of your country to speak the way you do now and the other half to speak like my first sentence.
Want proof? Yo shit nigga, that motha fucka's going down tonight or we dead, man! (no offense intended) And that's why words should have a clear meaning.
The only one that still gives me that reaction is when people turn "would've" into "would of" (or "should've into "should of", etc.) Most grammar and spelling errors are excusable, but not that one. People who can't get that right should not be allowed to type or write anything that will ever be seen by anyone but their family or English teacher.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
I hate to have to be the one to break this to you, but there are still languages that are writing without spaces or any interword separation of any sort at all. And even worse, it works perfectly fine*. Horrible, I know, but it's true.
*Unless you are an automated translation program, in which case it'll trip you up pretty well.
Coincidentally, so is writing.
It's a poorly phrased sentence either way, i don't think anyone in the world would go "oh there's an apostrophe there, they must mean one or the other", they'd just guess.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
That's nice, it's a good thing I can hear apostrophes when someone speaks english...
OK, I'm undoing five moderation points to comment on this. Thai is a language without spaces or punctuation. I'm relatively fluent. Reading is a PITA. It requires special word-parsing libraries (libthai on your Linux setup -- Thanks, Mr. Choke) to get line wrap to work correctly. There is great opportunity for misunderstanding.
It's not a great way to go.
Put identity in the browser.
Rhiza gar panton ton kakon estin he philarguria. So it's literally "all the evils".
I'm not sure which is more fucked... that I could read that just fine, at 6am in the morning (on the down side of the day, no less), or that I actually bothered to read half of it. :-/
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Saramago, is that you?
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
the meaning of all kinds depends on the context, and can still be ambiguous. eg the truck sold all kinds of ice-cream , does not mean it has every variety on the planet. However as far a biblical quotes are concerned its not really worth discussing further until you go to the original greek/hebrew etc :)
it's presence or absence matters.
I'm sorry, I don't understand your point. "It is presence or absence matters"? I think you misused the apostrophe.
I mean, people were dying for thousands of years!!
Did they suddenly stop ?
Why didn't I get the memo ?
That would explain a lot of the problems we've been having lately...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
You're a frickin' genius, Ben!
Oh shit, this is slashdot. Your a frickin genius, Ben!
Free Martian Whores!
His
Hers
Its
He's
She's
It's
Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots (that's the cartoon's actual title)
And, you know, Bob's a nerd.
Free Martian Whores!
Shakespeare, a man who -- you know -- was and is, widely renowned for being quite good at English, used to make words up all the time, and bend others to his will. You'd have him shot, no doubt. Or his books burned for grammar crimes.
I'd have him shot for being boring and overrated. Millions of high school students would thank me.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
http://www.tcf.org.nz/content/d543212c-ab29-42dc-8fa5-de14710785f6.html
Scroll down to "Google" and click, you can also read any of the other comments, they are overwhelmingly in favor of repealing 92A.
Scoop has extracted some choice quotes: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0903/S00207.htm
Sam Cemons (Mark Twain) was roundly criticized for the characters' speech in Huckleberry Finn. However, my take on it is if you're quoting someone, "oughta", "wanna", "gimme", etc are perfectly valid, while if you're making a first person statement you ought to use the proper word so as not to make people think you're an illiterate whose opinions therefore can easily be ignored.
Free Martian Whores!
Did you get your tax return, after sending in a detailed list of every expenditure you made (including the dollar you gave to the pan handler that time in New York), had the list stamped by a notary public, provided a list of all family members out to 3 generations (living or dead) with their social security numbers, who can testify you are who you say you are? You did? So... shut up.
Just because something is possible despite obstacles, doesn't mean you should not complain about the obstacles.
"I am the owner of all houses"
"I am the owner of all kinds of houses"
See the difference?
The one that makes me see red is the "loose-lose" swap.
Like: I'm going to loose my house!
Loose it from what? Is it tied up or something? Some of the others I can forgive (its-->it's, you're-->your, their/they're-->there) because at least they're pronounced the same, but lose/loose, I mean honestly...
Oh, and to anyone who *ever* says "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes" you are going up against the wall after the loose/lose crowd.
The population crisis will be solved with grammar nazism.
functional illiteracy for the fucking lose
That is the reason the music distrubution industry should die off completely - they simply, no longer offer any service of any value. Songwriters and artists should of course ba paid (at reasonable rates of course, today 90-96% of the cost of music is for the distribution), and artists in turn pay for studio time etc. as needed.
FRA: STFU GTFO
I'm not sure exactly how to do it, but I feel like this problem of wanting the internet tweaked to protect this or that group, that
A) having a free, neutral internet is flat out beneficial to the society that has it.
B) tweaking that from being completely free and neutral puts that society at a competitive disadvantage versus any society that doesn't, and
C) unless you can prove that the benefits to society outweigh the competitive disadvantage gain by 'tweaking' the internet away from being a free and neutral common carrier, you are arbitrarily laughed out of the room.
We invented the Internet, the largest change in the ability to transmit ideas since the printing press.
Every time we decide that we need to arbitrarily lower the ability of the Internet to transmit ideas, we are seriously considering undermining the exact thing that as made it useful to have, but generally without explicitly admitting to that.
Now, I'm will to concede the possibility that undermining the Internets ability to transmit information may in fact involve less opportunity cost in a specific case than simply putting more people to fix the problem caused by transmitting that information - the obvious example is 'child pornography', recidivism of sexual offenders being a notoriously difficult issue to 'cure', even in comparison to things like drug addiction.
But even in a case like that - I'm at the point of being willing to wipe the slate clean and forcing people to measure the actual damage caused by lowering the Internets ability to transmit that information compared to simply using the same amount of money to catch the people that actually cause the problem.
And frankly, if I am willing to force the advocates of that to make their case for it in mathematical precision, you can imagine how sick and tired I am of hearing the intellectual property lobby scream over and over that they need the internet redesigned to their personal specifications because someone somewhere may theoretically be keeping them from making 231% profit on every dollar of investment instead of the mere 230% profit margin they have now.
I don't care how many billions of dollars you're losing because of the internet. You have to prove that *I* am, as an average citizen of the country that has an internet, going to be inconvenienced more by retaining net neutrality and forcing you to do the work of having to prove your case than I am by compromising net neutrality.
If, taking into account all the opportunity costs involved in each possible solution, you can't mathematically prove that - then shut the fuck up and quit throwing fits.
Pug, who is evidently more pissed about this than he had realized.
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
ok,ok, I took it too far and fucked up....I withdraw the comment.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.