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Sony Sends DMCA Notices Against Users Spreading Leaked Emails
Dangerous_Minds writes Last week, Sony threatened legal action against users spreading information obtained through the e-mails that were leaked as a result of the Sony hack. Sony has begun carrying through with those threats. Twitter, after resisting demands that a user account be suspended for publishing leaked e-mails, has received a DMCA notice saying that the e-mails are, weirdly enough, copyrighted.
No, the weird part is not that they claim the emails are copyrighted. The weird part is them claiming they own the copyright. While it's almost certainly true that most the email would be considered work-for-hire and hence default to Sony Pictures, it's also a good bet that there's plenty of emails that are personal in nature and would fall into the camp of abuse of network services by their users but that would simultaneously amount to the point that the emails were copyrighted by the actual sender and not Sony Pictures.
And that alone would seem grounds enough to move against them for perjury charges since as been pointed out many times, you can't legally send a takedown notice over a copyrighted work that you don't own the copyright on. So, I can't send take down notices for "The Interview" but if I made a game called Interviewers and had a bot that send auto take down notices that accidentally flagged "The Interview" over my Interviewers copyright, that'd be okay. Of course, either way I could be sued, but it wouldn't be outright illegal in the latter case.
Not that I think Sony Pictures gives a fuck. Hmm..is that libel? Nah, that's just an opinion.
Everything you create is copyrighted automatically; unless you create it as part of your job, in which case it's owned by whoever paid you.
They'll suspend the accounts of people like Milo Yiannopoulos for holding the wrong views on things like GamerGate (Milo Yiannopoulos is hardly a troll or a stalker), but someone who is trafficking in stolen IP/personal details they'll reluctantly defend until someone from legal tells them that Twitter will probably get its ass reamed up and down the sidewalk in federal court if it continues to turn a blind eye. Got it.