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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.
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.
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.
Take them all down and let God sort them out
Isn't that a quotation from the text of the DMCA?
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...
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
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?
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.
That's how the DMCA is already written. The problem is the lack of enforcement, not the law.
Do you have ESP?
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?
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.
Except the DMCA is *NOT* written like that.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/usc...
The relevant portion:
(3) ELEMENTS OF NOTIFICATION
(A) To be effective under this subsection, a notification of claimed infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated agent of a service provider that includes substantially the following:
(i) A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
(ii) Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site.
(iii) Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.
(iv) Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted.
(v) A statement that the complaining party has 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.
(vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
Notice the wording of section VI: A Statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY, THAT THE COMPLAINING PARTY IS AUTHORIZED TO ACT...
The only part of any of that in a DMCA takedown is a statement under penalty of perjury that you are actually authorized to send DMCA by the owner of the material you are saying this infringes against. There is no perjury on any other portion of it, including the good faith, or accuracy notification.
This law was written specifically this way to protect any agent of copyright holders from mistakes and/or malice.
Do you Gentoo!?
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.
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.
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.
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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
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