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GoPro Issues DMCA Takedown Over Negative Review
skade88 writes "Ars is reporting that GoPro, the company that makes cameras used in extreme sports such as sky diving and swimming with dolphins has issued a DMCA take down notice on a review at DigitalRev that they do not like. See DMCA notice here. From the article: 'DigitalRev has a blog post up about the takedown, suggesting that most DMCA takedowns are "abusive" in nature. "We hope GoPro is not suggesting, with this DMCA notice, that camera reviews should be done only when they are authorized by the manufacturers," writes DigitalRev. "GoPro (or should we call you Go*ro instead?), we'd be interested to hear what you have to say" about the infringement notice.'"
Issue BS DMCA notice, get negative PR and lose millions. Maybe the system works after all... though in my vision it has a reliance on the media.
As far as I know, you can't use the DMCA for trademark infringement. They should have hired a lawyer.
I'll be definitely looking into the Sony AS15 now.
Sony has copyright bullying skeletons in its own proverbial closet. Search keywords: Lik Sang; George Hotz
According to their response on Reddit, it was a disagreement over how their products appear in DigitalRev's "ecommerce section." http://www.salon.com/2013/03/20/a_lesson_from_gopro_dont_mess_with_reddit/
Isn't there some sort of purjury thing for filing false DMCA claims?
Lenz v. Universal suggests that there are theoretically penalties for bad-faith filing of false claims; but that particular result also took on the order of five years of litigation(only possible if you are an EFF test case or made of money), and didn't actually include any punishment for Universal, so practice suggests that there are no penalties whatsoever.
Welcome to the 21st century version of a SLAAP.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
This beahviour is sadly is very typical of GoPro.
1. I bought a GoPro HD Hero a few years ago, to take video and stills on a car trip from Paris to Mongolia. We were shooting timelapse of the entire trip, to be compiled at the end.
However, when we were in the middle of Kazakhstan, one day, the camera stops working. I poke around, and see that the filenames havd gone up to DCIM_9999.jpg - and worked out that they had never engineered them to loop back to zero, so the unit had a buffer overflow, and wouldn't work.
We finally got phone access to call a friend, who saw similar threads on their forum. GP refused to acknowledge the bug - they said you had to take out the battery for at least 12 hours, and then it would work. Naturally, this didn't work. Their suggestion was: "If you believe" your unit is faulty, you can send it back to GP in the USA, but you will be liable for freight both ways, and customs import again upon reception."
I emailed them, expecting that because they put such a customer-oriented public face forward, that they'd be decent guys. They were absolutely not.
Finally, 6 months later, they released a firmwire upgrade that fixed the issue. The fix wasn't mentioned in the CHANGELOG.
2. Friend driving across the USA, his unit started recording everything in a deep magenta, for no reason, with no fix.
3. Fast forward to this year, doing an enduro motorbike race across africa. Two friends have the new GP3 cameras - which constantly bug. Out of 15 days of riding, they managed to get about 3 hours of video. The unit would power on - when switched to 'video' mode, the screen would freeze, the unit would suck down power, and empty the battery in 20 minutes. This happened on both units, on the latest firmware.
I have been constantly amazed that a company that tries to push an 'extreme' image hates their customers - and the very people that are trying to do 'extreme' stuff. You have the impression they're just guys making hardware for people doing amazing stuff, and they love what they do. This isn't at all the case, as this latest episode only goes to further illustrate.
GoPro easily produces one of the worst products I've ever had the misfortune of using. The HERO3 I received shipped with a barely working wireless feature, which a software update disabled, then a following update bricked the device. After over one month of going back and forth with technical support, they finally got around to issuing a replacement. The replacement had a bad lens. At last, I finally got one that works! But now more than two months had passed since my initial order. Alas, the video quality is poor, it can no longer be made to record 1080p wide video, and the battery gives me about 30 minutes of recording time. Their product design and engineering is laughably sloppy, and I'm eagerly awaiting the day we see some competition move in and offer decent alternatives.
Thanks for the heads up on this issue. The letter that was posted next to the review on DigitalRev was not sent in response to the review.
That explains why their DCMA request clearly pointed to the URL of their online store:
Accordingly, we hereby demand that Softlayer.com immediately remove or disable access to the Infringing Material at:
http://www.digitalrev.com/article/gopro-hero-3-vs-sony/Njk3MDQ3MDg_A
Yup. Nothing to do with the review here...
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
I surf, and ride motorcycles, so my girl decided a gopro would make a cool xmas gift this year. We went to New Zealand in December so she gave it to me early...
Strike 1:
So before we left on our trip, she ordered a Hero3 silver from gopro's website, which advertised "ships by Nov 30th" when she placed the order. After hearing nothing for 4 business days, not even an order confirmation, but having her CC charged $300+tax, she checked the website again and it said the Hero 3 cameras were on 14 day backorder. She then attmpetd to call GoPro. Big mistake. It took 54 minutes to get a live person on the phone. They stated that they could not guarantee when the camera would ship, and could not cancel the order. She gave up, called her Credit card company and disputed the charge, then she went to Best Buy and bought the camera off the shelf there for the same price. The camera from the gopro website never showed up and she got a cryptic email two weeks later from a manager saying the order was cancelled.
Strike 2:
Fast forward two weeks. We used the camera in New Zealand while enjoying our trip, and I was learning to use the camera etc... It seemed ot work OK but had really bad battery life but not a huge deal as I ordered the extended battery pack along with several other accessories, totall around $120. Then we went on a road trip to Baja for New Years. While driving south the GoPro locked up. At that point it wouldn't record at all, evena fter removing the battery and memory card and reinsterting. When we got back I found out it had corrupted the memory card so badly that I couldn't get any videos from that trip off of it. I then followed gopro instructions to reset the camera, and the website said there was a known issue and directed me to update the firmware, but I already had the most recent. Long story slightly shorter, I spent several hours messing with the camera, was hung up on after waiting on hold for 45 min by gopro support, and bought another SD card ($20), before returning it to Best Buy and getting a replacemnet camera.
Strike 3:
Now I have my new camera #2 all updated with the same FW (12/15/2012) and new memory card (which I have two of now) and it seems to work. Yay! So I start recording my commute to work on my motorcycle. After a couple weeks, this camera starts doing the EXACT same thing as my last one. Locks up, corrupts memory cards, factory reset/FW flash/Card reformat doesn't help for more than a few videos. This took about 30-40 videos to start happening, just like the first camera. This time I email gopro support hoping fro better luck. I didn't hear back for 9 days, when I got an email telling me to do all the things I had already tried (and I ahd told them I tried in my first email) and suggesting that I had bought a substandard memory card, which is the same thing their website says (I bought two class 10 san diesk cards along with teh class 10 best buy gave me with the camera). So, I took this camera back to Best Buy as well and complained heavily to their staff about GoPro and the camera. They urged me to try one mroe camera so I did.
Strike 4 (yes there are more than 3):
GoPro Hero3 camera #3 seems to work, jsut like #1 and #2. I start recording videos on my motorcycle and in my truck and what do you know... After about 2 weeks and 25 videos, it locks up, same symptoms as the first two. I waste another 2 horus messing with camera #3, then give up and take it back to Best Buy. They refuse to give me a full refund and I end up with store credit instead. I really can't blame then since it took me 2 1/2 months to ask for my money back after replacing two of them already.
Strike 5 (poosibly another gopro strike):
I write a review of the camera on Amazon and state my experience. Within 2 weeks my review is removed, no word from Amazon about it. I also noticed that sevveral other negative reviews had been taken down (all with the same problems I had) and the camera's rating had actually increased from 2 stars to three. It seems t
It isn't clear that you'll hit the bar for perjury by doing just about anything related to DMCA takedowns; but the US District Court specificially agreed with Lenz's lawyer that fair use is one of the elements that the copyright holder must consider in order to file a takedown request meeting the standards set out by the DMCA:
(Quoted from pages 5-6 of the above):
"Fair Use and 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(3)(A)(v).
When interpreting a statute, a court must begin “with the language of the statute and ask
whether Congress has spoken on the subject before [it].” Norfolk and Western Ry. Co. v.
American Train Dispatchers Ass’n, 499 U.S. 117, 128 (1991). If “Congress has made its intent
clear, [the court] must give effect to that intent.” Miller v. French, 530 U.S. 327, 336 (2000)
(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Here, the Court concludes that the plain meaning
of “authorized by law” is unambiguous. An activity or behavior “authorized by law” is one
permitted by law or not contrary to law. Though Congress did not expressly mention the fair use
doctrine in the DMCA, the Copyright Act provides explicitly that “the fair use of a copyrighted work . . .
is not an infringement of copyright.” 17 U.S.C. 107. Even if Universal is correct that
fair use only excuses infringement, the fact remains that fair use is a lawful use of a copyright.4
Accordingly, in order for a copyright owner to proceed under the DMCA with “a good faith
belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright
owner, its agent, or the law,” the owner must evaluate whether the material makes fair use of the
copyright. 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(3)(A)(v). An allegation that a copyright owner acted in bad faith
by issuing a takedown notice without proper consideration of the fair use doctrine thus is
sufficient to state a misrepresentation claim pursuant to Section 512(f) of the DMCA.
The Supreme Court also has held consistently that fair use is not infringement of a
copyright. See e.g., Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 433
(1984) (“[a]nyone . . . who makes a fair use of the work is not an infringer of the copyright with
respect to such use.”). "
Since the boundaries of fair use are not terribly clearly defined, it could easily be the case that a DMCA takedown is judged to not be a 'misrepresentation' under Section 512(f); but that a counterclaim on fair use grounds could still end up being accepted. However, the courts have apparently decided that, while they may be the ones to step in on disputes over whether something is fair use, 'fair use' is something that you have to take into account to file a valid DMCA takedown. Not that this has had much deterrent effect in practice, of course.
This is why I was against DMCA and am against six strikes on the ISP side because there is no penalty no matter how bullshit the claims are as long as you own the copyrights and trademarks.
You could put out a review saying "This product sucks and here is why" and the way the rules are set up now the owners of that product line could get it yanked from the web and possibly lose you your net connection depending on how many bullshit strikes you have already gotten, which if you are reviewing anything its really not hard to rack 'em up, look at how several got their YouTube channels banned for talking about a 20 year old fricking game series after Sega spammed DMCA notices to anybody that dared speak about it, and it wasn't a product they sell anymore or even bad reviews!
The entire system is tilted so damned far in favor of those with copyrights its not even funny, as TFA shows you can use DMCA to get rid of anything you don't like and there is zero penalty for filing blatantly false claims, any way you slice it that is fucked up.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I emailed them this just now: "Your use of an inappropriate and unfounded DMCA takedown notice has made my decision to purchase a new FPV camera for my R/C planes easier. It will not be a GoPro camera. Issuing a DMCA takedown notice for a bad review is childish and shows that you, as a company, have little faith in your own products if you are afraid that a negative review is going to hurt your business. I actually own a GoPro camera that I have used for a couple of years and was planning on upgrading it soon. I will NOT upgrade it to another GoPro camera as I simply cannot do business with a company with a severe lack of morals and respect for their customers." I also posted on their FB page.