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Movie Studios Ask Google To Censor Links To Legal Copies of Their Own Films
An anonymous reader writes "Several large movie studios have asked Google to take down legitimate pages related to their own films, including sites legally hosting, promoting, or discussing them. Victims of the takedown requests include sites where the content is hosted legally (Amazon, CBS, iTunes, Blockbuster, Verizon on demand, and Xfinity), newspapers discussing the content in question (the BBC, CNET, Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, The Independent, The Mirror, The Daily Mail, and Wired) as well as official Facebook Pages for the movies and TV shows and even their Wikipedia entries. There are also a number of legitimate links that appear to be completely unrelated to the content that is supposedly being protected. The good news is that Google has so far left many of the links up."
I'm thinking Google should just remove any and all links to anything that even just has the movie studios' name on it. Including their own websites.
Take them all down, plus any link relating to the studio, all studio movies, show times, or anything similar.
Make the bastards pay for promotion like they did in the days of newspaper advertising. Charge them 10 million dollars per movie studio, 1 million per movie, and 100k per site to get back into Google's index.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The good news is that Google has so far left many of the links up.
No, good news would be that Google has completely disregarded any communications. The fact that the word "many" was used rather than "all" means that it is in fact quite bad news.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
There has to be some sort of fine for this automated bullshit. The price for bullshit "take-downs" should be enough to discurage this automated take-down crap.
In fact, automated requests should not be allowed.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I'm thinking the net would be a much better place if Google just obeyed these requests, no questions asked. And did it very fast.
Seriously this sounds like an Onion article that someone copied and put on their site.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
"The good news is that Google has so far left many of the links up."
How is that good news? If the studio wants a link to their own Facebook page for a movie removed from search results, DO IT. Google should comply with the idiotic requests. I would imagine the response would be similar to those newspaper sites that have requested their stuff be removed from Google News: traffic dives and they change their tune rather quickly. IMO, the best way to show the stupidity of the DMCA is to plainly demonstrate it to the content creators.
First paragraph of TFA says "We’ve written about the ridiculousness of automated Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) requests before, including Microsoft asking Google to censor BBC, CBS, CNN, Wikipedia, the US government, and even its own Bing links, but this latest episode takes the cake." That would seem to imply it's an automated process in play, although there really isn't much information in the article, and it could conceivably be read another way.
Oh no... it's the future.
a) all takedown notices from a rights holder will be sequentially queued
b) right holder must provide complete history of ownership and demonstrate right to assert takedown
b) if item (N) is found to be an invalid take down request a fee of $ZZ,ZZZ must be paid
c) regardless of the validity of request (N+1) it will not be acted on until any fees requried for invalid requests (MN+1) have been paid
As long as the rights holders are making valid requests they get serviced. Mess around and they have to pay for the work done.
Or perhaps just the movie studios clearly mis-understanding what the internet is all about.
Perhaps? It's been a while. They've clearly demonstrated it beyond any shred of doubt.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
What's a Bing? Sorry, I'm just too lazy to Google it.
Oh, that's easy! I saw this hip new original television show called Hawaii Five-0 where the characters say "Bing it!" and the dialog flows so naturally in this scene you just have to see it. And when she looks up Clifton Bowles, she just has to push in "C" and then "L" and Clifton Bowles autocompletes because, let's face it, everyone's searching for Clifton Bowles and "CL" is more than enough to complete that search!
...
Oh yeah, as a viewer that product placement was natural and unforced and subconsciously I find myself saying "Bing it!" more and more in everyday conversations. I've also found myself buying a lot of Bing Crosby CDs, planning my trip to Bing, Iran and drinking a lot of British Bing Cola
My work here is dung.
So what does the "under penalty of perjury" part of a DMCA takedown notice mean?
AFAIK, a takedown notice has to include something like this:
Under penalty of perjury I certify that the information contained in the notification is both true and accurate, and I have the authority to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright(s) involved.
Doesn't that mean that someone can be held legally liable for fraudulent takedown notices? Who would have to sue to enforce it? Google? The legitimate site that was taken down because of the notice? The Department of Homeland Security since they are supposed to be keeping us safe?
I'm responsible for maintaining a marketing site owned by a sister-company of big Hollywoood movie studio. We market the DVD/BluRay/Online releases of major blockbuster movies. As part of a limitation of our CMS, we couldn't host trailers ourselves, so the marketing team was using a YouTube account.
The YouTube trailer for the DVD/BluRay release of a major summer blockbuster was taken down via a DMCA request. As a result, the trailer was broken on our marketing page for that release. Luckily, this was right around the time that we got our own video hosting resolved so we were able to solve it. But it was beautiful that for a couple days, the page running on OurCompanySite.com displayed a video with the message, "This content removed from YouTube at the request of Our Company"
Eons ago there was a magazine called Softside that published games written in BASIC for the Apple II, Atari and TRS-80. It soon got a visit from a Radio Shack lawyer asserting that only Tandy had the right to publish software for their computers, and demanding that they cease and desist from saying "Radio Shack" or "TRS-80" in their articles unless they paid Tandy a royalty.
The magazine complied by saying "S-80 Bus" which was not within the scope of Tandy's trademarks. Tandy got its wish: nobody ever writes about Radio Shack computers today.
Hobbit movie, suckered in?
I don't know whether to mod your Hobbit post -1 Troll or +1 Troll.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.