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.'"

Comments

Hilarious

[Synerg1y]

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.

Re:Hilarious

[tibit]

I called them and let them know that they won't be getting any more business from me. Easy peasy. They already had some sort of a ridiculous pre-scripted answer -- complete nonsense implying that there was copyrighted content that digitalrev used without permission. Well, the DMCA latter doesn't even raise the issue of anything copyrighted being used illegally, merely alleged trademark law violations. Personally, I want them to apologize, and they better be quick about it. I've had lots of fun recently with Sony Alpha cameras, and I may just get a SONY HDR-AS15 out of spite. It is a slower camera than Hero 2, but hey, Streisand effect FTW :)

Re:Hilarious

[amicusNYCL]

complete nonsense implying that there was copyrighted content that digitalrev used without permission. Well, the DMCA latter doesn't even raise the issue of anything copyrighted being used illegally, merely alleged trademark law violations.

That's the first thing I noticed. The letter isn't even consistent. Here it talks about the trademarks that it believes are being used improperly:

We have a good faith belief that the Internet site found at digitalrev.com infringes the rights of the Company by using the following trademarks of the Company:

"GOPRO" Registered: 3/3/2009 US Registration# 3032989

"HERO" Registered: 12/20/2005 US Registration# 3308141

And here they threaten ISP with copyright infringement:

As you may know, if this information is not removed after notice that complies with the DMCA, the Internet Service Provider may also be held liable for the copyright infringement.

The letter doesn't even keep it straight whether they're talking about a copyright action or a trademark action.

Re:Hilarious

[cdrudge]

Wait, you won't deal with GoPro because they are being a bully and bad netizen, but you'll happily give Sony your money instead? Way to hold true to your principals there.

Re:Hilarious

[TechNit]

Contour is a great option.

http://contour.com/

Re:Hilarious

[Beardo the Bearded]

I own a GoPro, a version 1, the Hero 960.

I've taken it diving and biking. It was down deep enough that I am undergoing continued health problems from that dive. (looong story) but the camera did fine. Diving cameras and housing start around $600, so the 960 was about half that price when I got it.

The problem with the camera is that it shows you what happened, but not in a lot of detail. You can't get really close to stuff and it's always fish-eyed. The basic models don't have an LCD display so you don't know what you've filmed.

The interface is also totally stupid (I've used worse, but only for weirdly specific electronics). They fixed that on the newer versions apparently. Same with the case, there was a chance it would pop open when surfacing. Workarounds exist but again, it was fixed in the 3.

The Hero2 suffers from too much heat, so taking it diving can make it foggy. That'll ruin a day's photos. Turns out you can cut up a tampon and that will do enough of a job dessicating the case that you can get a good day's shots.

Check out the threads on Scubaboard. They don't pull punches anywhere on that forum.

Would I get another one? No. It's great to have as a fun toy, but for getting really good pictures I'm going to have to spend double or more compared to what the GoPro sells for.

Re:Hilarious

[DragonTHC]

It's all BS anyway, as legitimate review is fair use.

Re:Hilarious

[plover]

because sony never tried to sensor a negative review.

That must be because they never detected them.

IANAL: DMCA and Trademark Infringement

[HaeMaker]

As far as I know, you can't use the DMCA for trademark infringement. They should have hired a lawyer.

Re:IANAL: DMCA and Trademark Infringement

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

As far as I know, you can't use the DMCA for trademark infringement. They should have hired a lawyer.

Given that the site's host folded like a house of cards, apparently you can use the DMCA for trademark infringement... It's just that doing so isn't supported by the DMCA or anything else.

It seems like a hilariously lousy PR move(especially for a company who, let's face it, is in a market that is highly likely to be commodified pretty hard); but it(yet again) establishes that you can scribble anything you want on a 'DMCA takedown request' and find somebody in the chain who will roll over and wet themselves, no matter how risible your legal standing.

Re:False DMCA penalty

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

Re:Wasn't over review according to GoPro

[Ksevio]

The letter they sent completely contradicts that though. There's really nothing in that statement that aligns with the DMCA notice.

GoPro sucks

[Archon-X]

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.

Not surprising.

[sidragon.net]

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.

My GoPro story...

[sdguero]

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