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"Internet's Own Boy" Briefly Knocked Off YouTube With Bogus DMCA Claim
An anonymous reader writes "In a bitter irony, a documentary celebrating Aaron Swartz, the late Internet activist who helped create the Creative Commons, has been taken down from YouTube by a misguided copyright claim." From the article: [O]ne of the dark sides of how copyright is enforced on the Internet is that sites that don't actually infringe are sometimes mistakenly swept up in rightsholders' takedown notices, which are frequently automated. Visitors who tried to watch The Internet's Own Boy on YouTube Friday were greeted by the message, "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Remove Your Media LLC," a reference to a company that specializes in sending copyright takedowns in accordance with the law that governs them, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). It's not clear who made the claim, but that's not the point—as activists are all too aware, false copyright claims can can knock legitimate content offline.
There is an argument to make that he was intentionally trying to make a martyr out of himself.
Considering he intentionally took his own life, partly as a means of highlighting his overwhelming situation, you're right. He paid an incredible price just so that the rest of us might take notice of the great injustice at hand, and that deserves at least this much attention.
Is it me or is the mere fact that they automated the takedown notices speaking volumes of how frivolous the whole matter has become? Take them all down and let God sort them out, or how is that supposed to be?
Am I the only one who thinks it's about time for some (serious) fines for frivolous takedown notices? It's not like they don't cost the media providers anything.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As long as our methods of content sharing are allowed to operate only by the grace of the major players (i.e. the rich), we will never be free.
We really should be recognizing him as the clown he was, and recognizing the administration and the cops and the courts as the tyrants the continue to be.
Instead he's been propped up as some sort of tragic hero figure and attached to things that have very little to do with him or the case against him, and thus the important shit (the tyranny) gets lost in the haze.
in corporatese is meaningless without paying money. Every false claim takedown should have minimum damages applied, with opportunity for more damages possible.
as activists are all too aware, false copyright claims can can knock legitimate content offline.
As not only activists but almost everyone aware of the rampant abuse going on has been claiming for years, it is high time that the "under penalty of perjury" part of the DMCA claims is actually enforced. Mistakes can happen, nobody is perfect, but some companies have been taking down large amounts of content for years, repeatedly and with not even a slap on the wrist.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Youtube should really stop accepting DMCA requests from these nobody companies. If you own an IP, then man up and have the balls to file the claim yourself. I had a video containing nothing but video game footage taken down by a "music society", whatever that is. I fought it and won, but I shouldn't have had to go through that process.
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
That's just the benefit of the doubt you get when you're dead. Your paintings are worth more, your songwriting suddenly carries new weight (see: Kurt Cobain), the awful shit about you is quickly forgotten, and the virtue embellished. The only thing certain about a martyr is that they're dead. The rest of their reputation may bear no resemblance to real events.
>[O]ne of the dark sides of how copyright is enforced on the Internet
Not exactly, it's just Google. I can understand that they want to automate as much as possible because everything else would make it more complicated on their side, but it's still just Google.
Take them all down and let God sort them out
Isn't that a quotation from the text of the DMCA?
I already migrated my videos from youtube to archive.org for other reason. The player has some issues but otherwise seems similar.
It looks like this
Karel Kulhavy Twibright Labs
There is an argument to make that he was intentionally trying to make a martyr out of himself [...] he wasn't exactly rational himself.
There is an argument to be made that Jesus was intentionally trying to make a martyr out of himself. He failed to put up a defense when asked.
Your statement fairly reeks of the innuendo "this isn't something to get angry over, because he wasn't normal".
It dulls the impact of an important event, it's unfalsifiable (you cite no evidence, just "there's an argument to make"), and it serves to quell any discontent over the current political situation.
I like it. Can the technique be reversed in future incidents? Can a properly crafted response be used to whip up political discontent and restlessness?
I wonder...
That is why I have always advocated strong penalties for filing false claims. Something the copyright industry lobbies heavily against because it would require them to prove infringement rather than automatically sending out thousands of claims in the suspicion that one or two percent of them might contain actual infringing content.
The summary makes it sound like bad faith DMCA takedowns are an accident. They're not. There is real malice here.
No claim can be made about the moment of his decision, it was his own. Clearly no plan had gone into a more peaceful exit via nitrogen or drugs, instead a more brutal immediate method was chosen on the spur of the moment, that moment where the stresses of continuing exceeded the survival instinct. No one is a slave not even to their own life. It is really rather shallow to pick apart someone's demise. The law enforcement agency was clearly to blame purposefully apply as much stress as possible on order to force compliance to their demands, a ludicrously inflated sentence or false admission of fault for a reduced sentence. That pressure succeeded forcing a spur of the moment decision, one that ensures escape.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
There is also an argument to be made that your statement represents a base misunderstanding or perhaps even willful ignorance of what a martyr actually is.
What's really needed (short of scrapping the whole thing) is to change the law so that DMCA takedowns must be of the form "I declare under penalty of perjury that I am the owner of this copyrighted material, and it is being used here in violation of my copyright." And start putting some of these bastards in jail for perjury if they keep this crap up.
I know you made this statement sarcastically but since you've referenced a very important and relevant point in history I'll mention for our younger readers that this is a popular paraphrase of a statement made by one Arnold Amaury during what has become now known broadly as "The Spanish Inquisition" when asked how he proposed they'd weed the heretics out of Béziers; his response was "Kill them all, God will know his own."
The chilling parallels between The Inquisition and the current comparatively passive-aggressive war on freedom of information ought not be trivialized by satire.
Is it me or is the mere fact that they automated the takedown notices speaking volumes of how frivolous the whole matter has become? Take them all down and let God sort them out, or how is that supposed to be?
Am I the only one who thinks it's about time for some (serious) fines for frivolous takedown notices? It's not like they don't cost the media providers anything.
They're already supposed to be sworn under penalty of perjury, which beats the hell out of a "fine". The mechanism is already there, it's just that nobody seems to be interested in enforcing it.
Whoever sent the takedown notice should be looking at jail time according to the law.
Do you have ESP?
How can you make a DMCA claim, while withholding both the name of the copyright holder and the particular copyrights involved?
If there is zero burden of proof, then what is to stop someone from sending a DMCA takedown notice for EVERYTHING on youtube?
Am I the only one who thinks it's about time for some (serious) fines for frivolous takedown notices? It's not like they don't cost the media providers anything.
Perhaps more effective would be to rain down takedown notices upon any group that shows anything. Just go through youtube and start at the A's. Claim copyright on every video, photograph, and PDF you can find - anywhere.
And don't stop until the whole internetz is thrown into chaos.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That's right. God planned for Jesus (god) to be crucified. So in effect, god sacrificed himself to himself to atone for the things he finds offensive according to his divine rules, so that he can judge you when he checks whether you complied with his rules.
Why again are we still supposed to use the ballot box instead of the bullet box?
That's right. God planned for Jesus (god) to be crucified. So in effect, god sacrificed himself to himself to atone for the things he finds offensive according to his divine rules, so that he can judge you when he checks whether you complied with his rules.
So what you're saying is that god was a narcissist.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
The perjury clause isn't for the claim of infringement or mistaken claim, it's for the statement that you are a copyright owner and/or authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. For the actually claimed infringement, it only takes a good faith belief that the use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
Misidentifying a file would not be perjury. The best that could happen is damages and law fees from the person making the claim of infringement.
Perjury charges were promised for false claims. If the DCMA can't be repealed why not amend it to what was promised when it was being voted on?
More importantly, if they're outside the US, why does the DMCA apply to them?!
When the DMCA laws were first proposed, there was supposed to be a penalty for making a false claim.
Obviously this needs to be re-visited.
Automated or not, someone set up the system. "Oh. I'm sorry. My Automated script did it". Make them pay a fine. One which increases for each false claim.
Another problem is third party enforcement. Rights holders hire companies to do this for them, then wash their hands of it. Make the original rights holders responsible. That's the way is works in the brick and mortar world. Own a building, you're liable. If a contractor does shoddy, you're responsible. Though you may be able to sue the contractor.
As people and companies are claiming (and in many cases justly so) real rights to content on the internet. It's time to bring the other side of that coin into play. If someone wrongly says they own part of your yard, you're entitled to damages.
Get off my yard.
1 - Write an automated take down script :
For each $contentProvider
{
For each $content in getCatalog($contentProvider)
{
if(true)
sendDMCATakeDownNotice( $contentProvider, $content, getRandomClientName() );
}
}
For each $counterNotice // Do not change anything...
send( $contentProvider, "My apologies, it is the automated script which made the mistake. Your feedback will help improve its detection rate');
2 - Sell the service to hundreds of these large companies.
3 - Profit!
What we need is a revision that turns incorrect automated takedown notices into a contempt charge. That is exactly what it is., a failure to show the care and seriousness due to the DMCA process.
But if the claimant doesn't have any copyright authority, I don't believe the claim is actionable under the DMCA. If I claim your video violates someone's copyright, YouTube is under no obligation. If I claim the video violates my copyright, only then is YouTube obligated to take down the video. And this triggers the perjury clause.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
The perjury clause doesn't say what you think it says. If I own the rights on work A, to file a notice on work B, I claim that work B infringes work A. The perjury clause kicks in only if I do not own the rights to work A (or represent the person who does). If work B doesn't infringe, then that's a matter for the courts. This is quite annoying, but it does make sense. It's clear cut if works A and B are the same, but not in the case that B is a derived work of A. A court has to decide whether the use of A in B counts under fair use or not.
The counterbalance for this is that the DMCA does indemnify YouTube if they respond to a counternotice and reinstate the work. If you, the owner of work B, think it does not infringe then you send such a notice to YouTube. I then have no further recourse against YouTube and must take you to court directly.
The problem here is that it's very easy to automate sending takedown notices, but very hard to automate sending counter-notices. Mass-sending of automated takedown notices was something that the authors of the DMCA didn't foresee and the act probably needs amending to require the notice to explicitly state (under penalty of perjury) the person who has compared the works and their reason for believing that they are infringing.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Don't claim copyright on every video, this will make you guilty of perjury under the DMCA. Claim copyright on one video and then claim that every other video appears to be a derived work of that video. This is exactly the mechanism that the big studios use.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You call that counterbalance?
What's keeping me, a rights owner of a movie that's a real stinker, from silencing everyone who dared to do a negative review of it by carpet bombing any and all media pages with takedown notices for those reviews?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You didn't read to the end of my post, did you?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Taking the DMCA in it's full wording, it seems it can be sufficiently twisted around to claim that a false DMCA takedown is in fact infringing the copyright management systems of the actual owner of the copyright who can then launch a DMCA claim against the false claimant who is using DMCA against them, especially via an automated system. This would enable the pursuit of criminal charges and the big dollar fines. So when a firm or individual makes repeated false claims thus impacting the copyright management systems of the legal owner and via that method stealing the copyright to the work, they are then criminally liable for that theft.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
To be precise, the Sack of Béziers took place in 1209, when the local bishops were in charge. The Inquisition took lead of the Albigensian Crusade in 1222. And that was the Medieval Inquisition. The Spanish Iniquistion was only established in 1478.
Man being stretched on the rack:(Screams) Mind you, I'm not complaining. I bless my stars every day that I am being interrogated by the Medieval Inquisition and not the Spanish Inquisition. I hear those Spaniards are right bastards. (Screams)
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
God gave you free will so you could voluntarily do as He wants you to do. Don't abuse the free will God gave you to do something God disapproves of, otherwise you will burn in Hell forever.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
>What we need is a revision that turns incorrect automated takedown notices into a contempt charge. That is exactly what it is., a failure to show the care and seriousness due to the DMCA process.
They considered this, but Goodlatte and other representatives in the pockets of industry explicitly rejected it because it might have a cooling effect on takedowns. :p
I've heard 9 and 3, 10 and 2 but never ten and four could you link something to that states ten and four? http://teendriving.statefarm.c...
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
Exactly which tools did he break, and in what way? Why didn't the people running those tools support charges against him? Also, what makes a "research tool" a "critical" system -- does someone die when the tool goes offline?
You don't have to venerate the guy if you don't want to, but please don't spread lies about the dead.
"Oh. I'm sorry. My Automated script did it"
Yeah, let's see that excuse save somebody's ass when it's a botnet taking out a media company's site. Oh wait, it won't. So why is it a valid excuse for media companies performing takedowns of other's people's content?
This outstanding article at Vice by Matt Stoller is well worth reading,
http://www.vice.com/read/aaron...
http://www.thestranger.com/sea...
The DMCA sucks. It may be useful to also pursue additional legal means. False/unwarranted takedown notices are a form of harassment, particularly when there's a pattern of such, and it's not "mere relatively rare accident". Sue the party submitting the takedown notice and the copyright holder authorizing the party to submit such, get a restraining order against them issuing any such unwarranted takedown notices against any of your content, and if/when they violate such restraining order, notify law enforcement - violation of restraining order is generally a felony. Can probably also sue them in small claims court for nuisance or the like.
40 years is already more than what's sensible. Imagine I invented something that ensures I'll get more money than I could sensibly spend per month. Where's my incentive to invent again instead of spending the rest of my life in a hammock?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You can have someone else than the actual copyright owner legally send the DMCA notice? So it is actually legalized one sided trolling. For the DMCA notice to be removed and the content restated you have to sent a counter claim including your personal details to the original claimant... which means that you have to give out your details while the "claimed owner" of the first notice, the one who hired this entity to send out the DMCA notice can stay totally in the dark? This system is even more fucked up than I previously thought.
Maybe there needs to be a financial incentive to make sure your take down notice is valid. A fine of some sort, of the take down has been found flagrantly bad.
Alternatively we need a legal precedent that a false claim of ownership of Copyright in a work is tort (e.g. trespass to chattels) as the real owner is deprived of the use/benefits of the work; moreover if the claim was made dishonestly (the claimant knew it to be false) then the claim should be tantamount to theft. Such a precedent could potentially be established in any common law jurisdiction.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net