Warner Brothers: Automated Takedown Notices Hit Files That Weren't Ours

itwbennett writes "In a court case between Hotfile.com and Hollywood studios, Warner Brothers admitted they sent takedown orders for thousands of files they didn't own or control. Using an automated takedown tool provided by Hotfile, Warner Brothers used automated software crawlers based on keywords to generate legal takedown orders. This is akin to not holding the Post Office liable for what people mail, or the phone companies liable for what people say. But the flip side is that hosters must remove files when receiving a legal takedown notice from the copyright holder — even when the copyright holders themselves don't know what material they actually own."

Comments

Re:If they don't own it, then it's not a legal not

[Cyberllama]

Especially since they were repeatedly warned that they were misreporting files and refused to stop and it just so happens they had a financial motive in acting improperly given that the page generated by using the removal tool had links to purchase the alleged infringing work legally--free page views on free advertisements, effectively.

Re:Takedown?

[TheRaven64]

Nope, it's perjury. A DMCA takedown notice is (according to the DMCA itself) issued under penalty of perjury. It may also be fraud, anticompetitive behaviour, and a variety of other things, but issuing a DMCA takedown notice without being sure that it is accurate is perjury. It is not analogous to perjury, the fact that it is perjury is written into the DMCA. It's time someone started prosecuting people who send false takedown notices.