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Copyright Takedown Requests to Google Doubled In 2013
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Last month, a company working on behalf of the publisher Random House, asked Google to remove links to a free copy of Stephen King's Carrie from search results. Google complied for three out of the four requested links, but didn't remove Kim Dotcom's new website Mega.co.nz as requested — for even if Mega is hosting pirated copies of Carrie, they sure aren't on the homepage. But leaving that link up was an exception to the rule. More and more, copyright owners and the organizations they employ are cutting off where the websites and the public meet — the search engine. Google's transparency reports show that requests to remove links to copyrighted material rose steadily in 2013. The search giant received 6.5 million requests during the week of November 18, 2013, which is over twice as many as the same week a year ago. Google said it complies with 97 percent of requests."
I know someone who had his original work taken down by a Warner Bros DMCA bot (without recourse, naturally, since only lawyers are people nowadays).
We need a search engine that only searches DMCA takedown requests.
Google is halfway there, publishing every(?) takedown request they get.
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Don't worry content providers will just buy some new laws...
Maybe we can have a "war of the robots"? Google's web crawler finds stuff and the content providers have faster automated DMCA takedown notices?
This entire thing is a mess and only getting worse:
- YouTube scans music and sometimes mismatches public domain material with "copyrighted" material (public domain guitar solo of Bach comes to mind).
- "fair-use" is out the window.
- Selling "ringtones" for songs you already paid for (yeah, separate license, cant use it as a ring tone without additional license fees).
They need to start enforcing both sides of the law, if you put in a false DMCA takedown you should be held accountable. /rant>
They should actually be grateful to google for helping find the files on the internet that they claim infringe. They can then contact the web hosts that have the files to get them removed. They are not my files, I did not put them there, stfu.
But a lot of the time, they don't really care if the content is available -- what they care about is whether they've got a cut of the action. Google, by linking to the sites, is acting like a publicist and distributor -- and that's exactly the role that publishing houses are in. Therefore, Google is the competitor, and must be silenced. After they're silenced, then the publishing house can approach the hoster and talk license fees.
who decided a link can be infringement?
The final solution...
Since Google complies with 97 percent of the requests, we start a crowdsourced effort to digitize every law firm letterheads in the world, and start sending bogus takedown notices for EVERY Film Preview, Trailer, Announcement, everything the majors, publishers and media giants dare to put online.
With a little organization and templates for the letters, we can paralyze this nonsense, flood it and render it useless.
I know someone who had his original work taken down by a Warner Bros DMCA bot (without recourse, naturally, since only lawyers are people nowadays).
Really?
without recourse, naturally, since only lawyers are people nowadays
My experience with lawyers has really been contrary to this statement.
I really couldn't disagree more. It is one thing to claim that "information wants to be free" and disavow copyrights altogether, but simply pointing to a location and saying "this is what exists at website.com" should always be protected speech under all circumstances. I really can't think of any justification for preventing someone from pointing out a true fact about where something is located. Not even if it were something much worse than a bootleg copy of a concert video or a copy of a Hollywood DVD - like something really both illegal and immoral, such as kiddie porn.
That is all that google does. "Hey, you can find a web page that contains the words "banana hammock" at this address". I don't care what words you substitute for "banana Hammock" and what content you actually find at the web address, simply pointing to it should in all cases be a protected expression of the right to free speech. I don't care if you earn 8 trillion dollars for saying it, or it costs you three bucks and a half-eaten snickers bar to say it, the financial arrangements around your speech are perfectly irrelevant to your right to speak.
Every time there's a story about the trend of automating everything people worry that all the jobs are going to go away and there will be nothing left for anyone who isn't a brilliant scientist or talented artist. Well it actually makes sense to outlaw the automation of C&D letters by bots like the media industry is currently doing. One can make an entirely reasonable argument that this kind of legal activity needs to be performed by a human, not a machine. (At least up up until the point where we get true AI at least, and then everything goes out the window anyways.)
All we have to do is get a law passed saying that each C&D claim has to be reviewed by a real human who is employed by the company whose content is supposedly being infringed, plus specify a minimum amount of time necessary for the review. Huzah! At a minimum of one minute per C&D review (which could certainly be increased to five or even ten minutes if necessary,) 6.5 million C&Ds per week is at least 2,700 new jobs, and if the number keeps doubling every year... In less than two decades we could have an entire economy based around C&D letters!
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If notices are going to be sent and processed (then accepted/rejected automatically), followed by verbal fighting, why not simplify the whole exercise? Have a two-way corewars battle between the service and the complainant, winner decides if the link stays. Since the complainant is rarely the copyright holder and the service rarely provides the material, you can extend this to a four-way battle using crobots.
This is just as logical as the current system and has a higher probability of protecting original content from abusive/malign notices.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This model is wrong, and unfair. Google+YouTube should have a much stronger financial disincentive in place against facilitating rights violations, at least to the point where they are more proactive about it and don't simply wait for takedown notices to flow in. In other words, yes, the DMCA actually doesn't go far enough.
Why? Would you like more ads, or perhaps you would like to pay a subscription fee to access Goole+YouTube? Labor is not free. How do you propose they pay the people who will implement your suggestions?
Also, so that myself and other copyright holders can empathize with you....what copyrighted works of yours have they abused? I mean, it would be rather illogical for someone who holds 0 copyrights to post your comment. Certainly you have created something of worth(that happens to be copyrighted), and you aren't just a troll.
Trackball users will be first against the wall.
Free speech is a real right. Copy"right" is a synthetic one. Free speech trumps copyright each and every time.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
How does "fair use" come into play here? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
If i make a video of my cat and lay down an audio track should this fall under "fair use"? Will youtube flags it as a copyright violation?
This sort of thing is "copyright escalation" which gradually chips away public rights in favor of rights holders.
Cant remember the link, but i was looking for royalty free music the other day for youtube to avoid this sort of problem. Someone recorded a Bach song on his guitar and warns you cant use it on youtube as it will be flagged.
Bach (21 March 1685) getting royalty checks as the composer?
Did the person who recorded his song and manage to protect it pay Bach a royalty?
It seems commercializing the public domain is a disturbing trend.
I have friend who's a slightly computerhobic musician. They were so proud about learning how to synthesize on their computer, that they decided to try making a YouTube video. They spent hours peerfecting some classical piece (Handel, I think). They created a YouTube account, figured out how to put the mp3 to a static picture, and posted it privately, intending to figure out how to animate the music score. Before they had the chance, (and while the video was still private), they got a takedown notice. They were totally in a panic that this could impact their day job. I helped them put together a counter notice. When they got the demand to "prove" they owned the content, there was much more panic. Even though the-powers-that-be took the notice away, there was nobody they couldd call about the notice, nobody but me for them to yell at about how unfair it was.
Upshot: to this day, they've never gone back to finish that video, and publish it. And if you talk to them about synthesizing music, instead of happy pride, you hear panicy shuddering and unhappiness.
I think there's a serious imbalance of power when legitimate owners have to prove their innocence, and the spawners of that notice get off with no consequences. How do we fix this?
Agreed that simply posting links to hosted content is less of an issue than hosting it on YouTube directly, but it still amounts to facilitating rights violations. I don't know if doing so should be illegal per se, just that doing so should hurt Google's bottom line, in such a way that they proactively try to prevent it.
Let's try explaining it by absurd example.
I don't know that Scowler complaining to his friends about the drug dealers that hang out behind the 7-11 should be illegal per se, but it still amounts to facilitating illicit drug use. I'm not saying he should go to jail, just that providing information about the location of drug dealers should hurt Scowler's pocketbook, in such a way that he'll proactively try to prevent it.
Substitute any other behavior you'd like for drugs in this silly vignette and you'll see why your financial solution is no improvement. I'm not saying that homosexuality should be illegal per se, just that engaging in that behavior should affect your bottom line...
Free speech is free speech. Anything that chips away at our right to freely express our ideas is an abomination. "Facilitating rights violations" is an absurd, made-up weasel word to get around protections for free speech. Substituting financial penalties for criminal violations doesn't change the calculus at all. And no, the fact that there are government officials at the highest levels who agree with you doesn't make you right, it just makes it more terrifying.
None of that means that there isn't a real problem that the entertainment industry has to face with piracy. It just means that I'm not willing to trade any of my freedom for their security. And you shouldn't be willing to make that trade either.
I don't know if doing so should be illegal per se, just that doing so should hurt Google's bottom line, in such a way that they proactively try to prevent it.
I don't think it should be illegal at all, personally, but courts have ruled repeatedly that linking can and often does constitute contributory infringement, going back to the original 2600 ruling. Bottom line nothing, Google is legally obligated to comply and the courts could get really nasty with them if they just refused.
(Disclaimer: I am a Google employee, but that has nothing to do with this post. I've been fascinated with online copyright law for decades, and you can find many examples of me saying exactly the same things long before I started writing code for Google.)
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
you could just google for the dozens(hundreds?) of examples.
what part of error ratio and "millions per week" you don't understand?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I made a time lapse video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVbBfUWq3mU
I used background music from ccmixer
Gave the full attribution too!
Music : Improvisation On Sunday, by Alex Beroza(http://ccmixter.org/files/AlexBeroza/...)
Uses : http://ccmixter.org/files/The3amAssoc... again under the following license.
And got a notice that it matches. I filed a dispute, and haven't heard from them again, and my video is up and running. However, if they had filed a counter claim, they would have taken it down? My account gets a copyright strike? I dunno
anyways, I notified the actual music composer about the claim, and maybe he is also trying to get it removed from their DB.
But its scary, if somebody puts a takedown notice, I cannot seek recourse. I am not in the USA and that makes it even more difficult.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
I know someone who had his original work taken down by a Warner Bros DMCA bot (without recourse, naturally, since only lawyers are people nowadays).
Really?!? That's the best you've got?
At least offer a SOURCE or a FRAME OF REFERENCE.
"I know this one guy..."
Fuck you. You are part of the problem.
No, YOU are a part of the problem. Why do you need more details? - Do you want to fight for this guy or something?
The details doesn't matter. There are millions like him out there. People recording themselves (thus owning the rights) playing classical music (which isn't copyrighted anymore) gets taken down daily. I've even heard of videos with no musical content - pure nature stuff - being DMCA'ed.
The system is severely broken and severely abused, yet it is still exceedingly easy to find any kind of pirated content online. DMCA is a complete failure.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Ultimately this is where it all started to go wrong, when we lost the war as to whether a link could or couldn't be infringing.
We need a roll back and a retrial that determines that a link can't be any more against the law than pointing at someone's open front door can be incitement to rob the place.
If the media industries want to go after unlicensed content then it should be simply about them going straight after people who have the actual content on their hard drives and nothing else. If they can't do that, or that's too hard, or time consuming? tough shit. It's a business decision, either it's worth your time to chase up or it's not, if it's not then don't go manipulating the law in your favour to bypass well established historical precedent on such issues like the right to a trial if you're accused of a crime rather than the corporate summary judgements that are DMCA takedown notices and their enforcement.
This is something that must not be overlooked. This is becoming a plague on Youtube...especially on that platform and the people who are the victims most of the time are the people who put the video up on youtube.
For example, the video Day One: Garry's Incident video on youtube (the one released by TotalBiscuit...just search for it)... it was available to some poeple and then because the company got too much bad press on it cause the game sucked way to bad and it seems like the game was in alpha stage...just too much problems and most reviews (including steam comments) told to not buy the game.
The company got around and requested the video to be removed. The user had no choice but to agree to this non sense. In the end, (not me cause I already saw the video ahahah), the consumer don't know what the game could be liked... But not in this case since youtube wasn't the only source of info lol.
What I want to say is simple...companies got too much power when it comes to this. The consumer or the other party or customer who has no ressources at all is the victim in this. Google seems to be bending way too easily and I hesitate to say this but I will, I feel like Google is feeding the trolls sometimes because they don't fight and automatically agree.
That can't possibly be true. If free speech trumped copyright every time, there would be no copyright since it restricts my ability to copy and book and print it myself (which is considered speech).
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
Cant remember the link, but i was looking for royalty free music the other day for youtube to avoid this sort of problem. Someone recorded a Bach song on his guitar and warns you cant use it on youtube as it will be flagged.
Bach (21 March 1685) getting royalty checks as the composer? Did the person who recorded his song and manage to protect it pay Bach a royalty?
It seems commercializing the public domain is a disturbing trend.
The music isn't copyrighted, but the specific performance of it is. If you want to record your own performance of Bach and use it on your video, have at!
I make time lapse videos as a hobby, and I spend hours searching for CC licensed music. After finding such music, I go through the license type to make sure I am not using the music in a way it was not intended to.
Yet, anybody can file a claim.
Remember that fiasco about the video that had no music, just some background of birds chirping?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120227/00152917884/
It was so ridiculous that everybody from slashdot to tech portals picked it up, and the guy won. However, what about countless others who are impacted every day.
Here see, they take down classical public domain music
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110421/10280813987/uk-music-publishers-issue-dmca-takedown-public-domain-sheet-music.shtml
Search google and stories are literally unlimited. Its a sad state of affairs, with everything heavily stacked in favour of those who can afford an expensive lawyer.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography