Comcast Threatens TorrentFreak For Posting Public Court Document

Despite being part of public court proceedings, Comcast sent a notice of infringement ordering Torrent Freak to stop hosting a letter linking a subscriber to Prenda Law. From the article: "Comcast has sent TorrentFreak a cease and desist letter, claiming copyright over contents of an article which revealed that Prenda Law was involved in operating a pirate honeypot. Failure to comply will result in a lawsuit in which the Internet provider will seek damages, a Comcast representative informs us. In addition, Comcast also alerted our hosting provider, who is now threatening to shut down our server."

Comments

Dear Comcast, fuck off

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a public court document, you don't own it you fucking douche-bag.

Re:Dear Comcast, fuck off

[Culture20]

Maybe the judge is in their employ and has one of those "anything you create on or off Comcast time is Comcast property" and they think that trumps government.

Re:Dear Comcast, fuck off

[Jane Q. Public]

If we're going to have (I wish we did not... they're bad news) DMCA take-down orders, we also need a law WITH TEETH that criminalizes the abuse of same.

Once you start seeing actual damages for filing false notices, watch them stop.

Re:Dear Comcast, fuck off

[interkin3tic]

I disagree.

Dear, Dear Comcast:

Please spam everyone and everything with these cease and desist letters. For EVERYTHING. Especially politicians and voters who don't generally care about IP laws.

The sooner everyone realizes how thoroughly stupid it is to give you this as a weapon, the sooner someone will take it away from you and all the other sociopathic organizations out there.

Hopefully anyway. At the very least, it will be entertaining to watch you claim copyright over "#yolo" on twitter.

Re:Dear Comcast, fuck off

[mcgrew]

If we're going to have (I wish we did not... they're bad news) DMCA take-down orders, we also need a law WITH TEETH that criminalizes the abuse of same.

I agree that DMCA takedowns need teeth, and harsh penalties for abusing it. However, personal experience tells me we need takedowns of infringing material.

Fifteen years ago I started a Quake gaming site that I stuffed with all kinds of good contents, which included a huge trove of single player cheats, console commands and server commands that I meticulously tested and explained. Those pages may have been the most plagairized works on the internet; folks would take my content, remove my name, put theirs in, and repost.

My web host's IP address was used in one of the examples, and googling it brought up dozens of plagiarized pages. I'd email the sites and politely ask for simply credit and a link to my site. Very few complied and some were pretty damned hostile (most were at .edu domains so it was mostly college kids doing it, although a few were commercial).

Without takedowns there would have been nothing I could do about it. The same would apply to plagiarized GPL code someone posted and claimed credit for.

If someone posts my book on a commercial site I'll be issuing more (noncommercial use, including torrents, will be free). But bullshit like Comcast is pulling should result in someone's incarceration.

Re:Dear Comcast, fuck off

[Anonymous Coward]

"Update 7pm CET: Comcast’s Senior Director Corporate Communications, Jenni Moyer, responded and said we can disregard the cease and desist as it “was sent in error.” The company further apologized for any confusion it may have caused."

https://torrentfreak.com/comcast-threatens-to-sue-torrentfreak-for-copyright-infringement-130821/

Re:Dear Comcast, fuck off

[jythie]

No, but explanations and other added value content is. Sounds like people were not just taking facts, but instead duplicating entire pages and just changing the name from the poster to their own. I can actually recall seeing a lot of this type of plagiarism years ago, someone would write a walkthrough or FAQ and it would quickly show up in a number of places with the author's name changed to someone who wanted a little status or traffic.

Re:Dear Comcast, fuck off

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

There's an entire industry now in auto-rippiing help-based discussion forums (particular cars, appliances, anything) and re-wrapping the threads as-is with your own layout wrapper and then using Google promotion tricks to get your page ahead of the real forum. The fake forums have no log in or response capability, but as most older product issues are archive stage anyway, i.e. thread with full solution, no more than a reference page is all that's needed.

Re:Dear Comcast, fuck off

[Tokolosh]

Dear Comcast, we were never confused.

fair use

[shentino]

Of all things, court proceedings are one of the few exceptions to copyright law.

And if the lawyer who sent this notice doesn't know that, then someone at the bar association screwed up big time giving this guy a license to practice.

Re:fair use

[gstoddart]

Unfortunately, the host seems as smart as the lawyer, considering they're threatening to shut down the server according to the synopsis.

Because it's easier for the hosting company to just say "fuck it, not my problem".

This is what happens when the DMCA tells you that if you comply with a takedown, you are off the hook.

The law is written in such a way that the hosting company has no incentive to care.

That nobody seems to be doling out punishments for false takedowns is the big problem -- because apparently you can claim almost anything belongs to you with neither facts nor evidence on your side.

Re:fair use

[snadrus]

False takedowns are a felony that maybe a Comcast lawyer should experience, you know, to be made an example of.

Re:fair use

[DeathToBill]

Okay, now I've read TFA; the document in question is a court filing and definitely not subject to copyright.

Re:fair use

[cdrudge]

If you read the actual message they sent TorrentFreak, the ISP isn't as bad as the summary makes them out to be. The ISP said that TF needs to take appropriate action and need to respond back with the action taken. No where did it specifically state that the action had to be removal of the scanned letter.

The ISP isn't in and doesn't want to be in a position where they are the legal department for all their customers trying to determine if each and every notice is legitimate especially in very specific incidents like this. They just want to know that you a. received the notice and b. have taken some action regarding it. That's all they are really concerned about and all they are required to do under the DMCA.

It would be appropriate and satisfy all parties if TF responded to the ISP stating that they contacted Comcast/Cyveillance, asserted their right to use the content under fair use/public domain/whatever, and that it would not be coming down. Appropriate action would be then taken.

Re:fair use

[gstoddart]

False takedowns are a felony that maybe a Comcast lawyer should experience, you know, to be made an example of.

And yet, I don't believe a single person has been charged for it that I've hear of, even when it seems pretty blatant to the rest of us.

Apparently all you have to do is claim you did it in good faith or there was a clerical error ... presto, you're off the hook.

It's a system written by, and for the benefit of, copyright holders -- and they seem to be presumed innocent unless you can absolutely prove otherwise. Not just that they're stupid or incompetent.

Re:fair use

[Anonymous Coward]

No, false takedowns are in general not a felony. The DMCA is craftily worded such that the only thing that is perjury is if you misrepresent who hired you to file the takedown request.

I file a takedown claiming to represent Sony asking to take down Sony's material == perjury.

Sony files a takedown (as Sony) asking to take down my work which they don't own: not perjury.

That is how the law is written.

BTW, if you file a counterclaim, then 100% of it is covered under a perjury clause. So much for equality under the law.

Re:Expropriate Comcast under a workers government!

[dicobalt]

Comcastic!

The ISP threat

[Skapare]

The ISP threat contains the wording "PLEASE NOTIFY US WITHIN 24 HOURS WITH TAKEN ACTIONS". They did NOT say what actions need to be taken, other than to notify them. So notify them of exactly what actions were taken. Say "We have removed each piece of content listed in the referenced complaint. Since there were no items listed in the referenced complaint (see the referenced complaint yourself and you will see there there are none), there were no items removed and we have asked the complainant to provide us with the list. We will provide you with a copy of that list when we receive it. If you receive the list before we do, please send a copy of it to us as quickly as possible so we may act on it. For now, our actions are therefore complete.".

The reality of your plagarized website

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I am going to be the cold, hard dose of reality in your situation.

Takedown laws do not exist so one of the unwashed masses (this means you ) can protect their content. They exist so big business can protect whatever the the intellectual property du jour is that they want to be protected.

I can assure you that nobody in the government or judicial system has any interest at all in protecting situations like your web content. Don't know how you missed the memo, but the laws are for the benefit of the rich and corporations. If you were one of those, you'd be protected.

Re:Expropriate Comcast under a workers government!

[Muros]

I would absolutely love to see this go to court. Please, oh please let this go to court. Let Comcast seek damages for your posting of public court documents.

Never going to happen. These clowns (Comcast's lawyers), as soon as they saw the website was contesting it, realised that this particular line of bullshit litigation would be shot down in flames immediately by the first judge who saw it. Its one thing being creative with interpreting laws relating to technology and explaining it to old men with no idea what you're talking about, quite another trying to do the same with legal procedure to a guy who both knows damn well how the law works, and has the power to slap you down if he thinks you're trying to step on his toes.