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

Posted by timothy on Friday November 11, 2011 @05:31PM from the let-god-sort-'em-out dept.

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."

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Re:If they don't own it, then it's not a legal not by Secret+Rabbit · 2011-11-11 18:27 · Score: 5, Interesting

Yes, it is. However, if one submits such a false take down notice, the according to the DMCA they can be charged with perjury. It's too bad that (to my knowledge) no-one has taken advantage of this...