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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.
And screw Sony...
Considering how copyright law is being applied, the emails probably are.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
Sure, copyrighted... Whatever. Seriously, these emails are relevant only to a relatively small number of people in the entertainment industry, so publishing them is really nothing more than a "fuck you" to Sony.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Reporting on the emails is classic fair use.
is that this is exactly the sort of overreach of intent that people said would happen with the DMCA. There's a lot of dirt in those emails on Sony (like them coordinating with Attorneys General to attack Google). Much of that information falls under what used to be freedom of press. The DMCA screws all that. Now anything you don't want making the rounds you just copyright and an ironclad and unquestionable law shuts it down instantly. I believe the phrase is "Chilling Effect"...
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Why hasn't the dump been posted? years ago, there would of been 5 links to the data to sift thru in every article posted for consumption here.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Let me startbby saying, "rootkit" Sony sucks. With that out of the way:
The emails mentioned in TFA appear to be business emails from Sony people. Did they send a DMCA notice about any personal emails? Did I miss that somewhere?
Regarding perjury, the DMCA doesn't say that any erroneous or improper notice is perjury. The perjury clause refers to identifying yourself. If I were to send a DMCA notice about content owned by Dice, claiming to be a representative of Dice, that claim that I am Dice's representative would be under penalty of perjury. I'd be in trouble because I'm not actually a representative of Dice.
Any other deficiency in a DMCA notice is likely to be grounds for a civil suit, only, based on damages. It might be tortiuous interference, for example. It wouldn't be perjury.
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 must be small emails if someone can send them in tweet.
Sony employees communicate exclusively in Haiku.
That's why there are the DCMA takedown notices and the threats to sue. They figure that if they can keep it out of the press then it will soon be forgotten and they won't have much to worry about.
This might work for the general public, but in Hollywood it's not going to be that easy. Besides the powerful individuals that they trashed, it's now obvious that that they also engage in routine conspiracies to get what they want. That's what the Google maneuver was about. A lot of players are going to realize that Sony had done a lot of dirty deeds already, and some will see that previous problems may be the result of underhanded tactics. Not that anyone else is better, but having confirmation effectively raises the stakes.
Personally, I enjoy looking forward to some real pain in Sony land. They have a bad reputation among the Hollywood rank and file, so there will be a lot of schadenfreude in the new year. It's long overdue.
Why is Snark Required?
If emails are copyrighted materials, we may suddenly get the backing of giant industries in the fight against the villains at the NSA.
After all you wouldn't want "personal emails" to be a perfectly acceptable thing to copy and redistribute...
Email can be said to be a copyrighted work. They are also distributed only to one person, other person do not have the distribution right. Distirbution right is given temporary to an itnermediate to facilitate the email reaching its goal. Frankly I will take the contrary direction : DMCA is over reaching in all case, but using it for email is not an overreach.
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visit randi.org
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.
Is there a list anywhere of Sony produced films hitting theaters in 2015 so I know which films to boycott and not go and see?
I know The Interview is Sony (not that I had any intention of going to see it anyway) and Hobbit is Warner Brothers/New Line (saw it the other day and it was great) but I cant find any information to help me figure out what other theatrical releases of 2015 I should be avoiding (both going to the cinema AND pirating) if I want to avoid Sony.
Boycott all of them...To be honest, IMHO, the worst actors are Sony and Disney, however they are all the same scum and hide behind a MPAA label.
Sony can clean up their search results in Europe by (ab)using the "Right To Be Forgotten".
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
You don't need to register it, but doing so makes the legal proceedings more straightforward.
Is there a list anywhere of Sony produced films hitting theaters in 2015 so I know which films to boycott and not go and see?
How long will it take you to visit Wikipedia or the IMDB before you buy tickets for a given film, to make sure it's not published by Sony?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
however, in order to protect said automatic copyright, and have legal standing to win a lawsuit for instance, in the u.s. works must be registered with the trademark and copyright office.
Nonsense. That's only true if your lawyers don't have deep pockets, but Sony's do.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
however, in order to protect said automatic copyright, and have legal standing to win a lawsuit for instance, in the u.s. works must be registered with the trademark and copyright office. this, of course, was not done with the emails. this can be considered dissemination of proprietary and confidential corporate property and trade secrets, which should have at least as strong of a case for sony.. just not via dmca.
Very incorrect, on two counts:
(1) Copyright registration is merely a verifiable record of the date and content, in case of some future claim of plagarism or Copyright infringement by another party. Registration is only required on claims of statutory damages for an infringement suit, and that's valid as long as it occurs within 3 months of publication. For that to be useful to Sony, however, they would have to also establish value for the Copyright work. Since they were able to do this for the "Spectre" script, Twitter took the excerpts down. Email is a different matter.
(2) AT&T USL attempted to pull the "Trade Secret" trick of having their cake and eating it to in the AT&T USL v. The Regents of the University of California at Berkeley. The problem with Trade Secret disclosure is once a secret is disclosed, it's no longer secret. You can Patent something (requires disclosure) or you can Copyright something (also requires disclosure). In exchange for that disclosure, you are then granted certain legal protections, but those protections do not attach to Trade Secrets. For a Trade Secret, in order to collect damages, you, again, have to establish a value for the Secret. But - and this is a big one - you can only collect those damages against the original discloser - you are not permitted to seek out deep pockets. So Sony can take it up with North Korea (or whoever we've decided was responsible this week), but they can't take it up with this Twitter user, unless they can prove he was the disclosing party. So again: any trade secrets in to emails is *gone*.
The other problem is the use of the DMCA in this case: unless you are the Copyright holder, or you are a designated agent acting on behalf of the Copyright holder, you do not have standing, under the law, to assert a DMCA claim on behalf of someone else. This was the problem that a number of the DMCA takedown companies had with their third party takedown notices. This was actually precisely what occurred in the Righthaven v. Wayne Hoehn case.
If you cut and paste this message I will raid your kid's college fund.
Happy New Year!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
re "American laws better than the Americans?"
The Pentagon Papers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... did offer some insight into the idea that publication and discussion was the role of a free and unrestrained press in the USA.
The other legal idea is that of the Snowden GCHQ files and the UK gov understanding of the jigsaw quality of intelligence information.
Do people in the US want to enjoy the role of a free and unrestrained press or enter a new UK like legal system of professional responsibility and legal safeguards?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I wonder why people believe that? Where did this peculiar misconception originate ?
Pixels. The screenplay was one of the leaked documents. It actually looked somewhat amusing, skimming through.
Oh, well. To the torrents!
almost any commentary on perhaps several related emails should make significant portions fair use.
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.
No that is not true. If I create some software I can license it or effectively give it away, although I should have to explicitly state my intentions with regard to the mail and/or software otherwise that mail or software can be considered copyright however I would leave this up to the Lawyers.
If someone stole my mail or anything from my computer then they are effectively "Breaking and Entering" or to use the correct wording "Cracking" which is a crime. Now if that same mail and or software is given without permission from the company or originating user to a person who published it then that person or persons are effectively "Aiding and Abetting" which is also a crime. Again I would leave this up to the Lawyers to sort this out since software and data theft is not quite the same as hardware theft and the debate rages on this still.
Right or wrong I think the best way is to ask the question. If you had your mail and/or software stolen from your PC and that "Cracker" (learn the difference between a Hacker and a Cracker) gave that data to another party who published it on the web, then would you consider legal action against the party who published? It is basically a given that you would be pissed at the "Cracker" and would file legal action if that person could be identified.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Kim Jong-un since you have the fame, would you reap it and hack those SOB?
Not necessarily. People pay me to write code, and I keep the copyright. All they get is a license to copy/use it.
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.
Not in my country it's not. You have to register it first otherwise it isn't copyrighted.
If your country is a signatory to the Berne Convention, and it probably is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_international_copyright_treaties) you're wrong. Copyright is automatic upon creation of a work. This post I'm writing, right now, is automatically copyright... the TOS I agree to by posting it here allows[1] Slashdot to present it, archive it, etc. But you're not allowed to distribute it without my consent, except as per fair use and other exemptions, not that I actually give a damn or would even know about it, mind you.
[1]Is it 'allows' or 'allow'? If I read the sentence and think of 'TOS' as a word, 'allows' sounds right. But if I read the sentence and mentally expand TOS to 'Terms Of Service', 'allow' sounds right.
No that is not true. If I create some software I can license it or effectively give it away...
The fact that you - automatically - hold the copyright for the works you create doesn't prevent you from doing either of those things. Indeed, copyright is necessary for you to be able to license the work.
~Idarubicin
Nonsense. Business emails are often coming up with some nonsensical strategy, or attempting to paper over its failure. They can get very creative.
in order to qualify for the "Safe Harbor" part you have to take down the "infringing" content immediately. No questions asked. Only _after_ you take it down can the person who put it up apply to have it put back up.
It makes it really easy to get stuff silenced and much harder to get it back out there; especially for quasi-legal journalistic sources like leaks.
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US government owes each person of the world several trillons because copyright infringment in that case. And if the US government don't comply with copyright laws, why the rest of the world should?
This isn't true. Well, mostly.
Any work you create is copyrighted; however, it's unenforceable unless registered, assuming you live in the US.
Any work you create is copyrighted; however, it's unenforceable unless registered, assuming you live in the US.
And that's also not true. It's not a prerequisite to register copyrights for it to be enforceable. Having it registered however does make it a lot easier to enforce later.
About 95% of the people in this world do not live in the US, and will not register their copyrights in the US, yet the material they produce is fully copyright protected in the US under US copyright law.
Most of the software created by individuals and released under the GPL is not registered either. That doesn't make the GPL any less valid or applicable.
[1]Is it 'allows' or 'allow'? If I read the sentence and think of 'TOS' as a word, 'allows' sounds right. But if I read the sentence and mentally expand TOS to 'Terms Of Service', 'allow' sounds right.
Both are correct in American English. Anytime you can read an acronym as a word or as the represented words, you can treat it like either for things like subject verb agreement.
You can also view this as having an extra word with it in the singular case. For example, if you say, the TOS allows, what you really mean is that the terms of service *agreement* allows.
Anyway, pick the interpretation that you prefer (TOS is a singular collective or an abbreviation of a plural) and go with that. Don't switch interpretations though. Either make it singular for your entire writing or make it plural. Don't make it singular half the time and plural the other half.
>. include ones that describe Brad Pitt's reaction to certain movie cuts". If you read the email (God forbid), it seems the content is somewhere in-between personal and private and 80% of it is summarizing an email/text/conversation/whatever that, if anything, would be copyrighted by Brad Pitt
It describes a party contracted with Sony Pictures threatening to breach that contract; a contract to make and publicize a Sony Pictures product. It then addresses what Sony Pictures has done (reassured the other party) and what else Sony needs to do about it (nothing yet). I'm not sure how you can say that a discussion among Sony people about handling a Sony contract dispute isn't a business email.
The copyright goes to the author. If I write about what you did yesterday, I'm the author, and I have copyright. In California, you might have publicity rights, but no copyright on my words. Brad Pitt didn't write the email, so he has no copyright claim.
You asked about a post which DOES quote another offer. Would I have any say as to removal if _your_ post was infringing? Under current law, that's exactly the same as if a breakfast cereal contained oats, honey, and strychnine. It contains something unlawful, and can be removed from distribution. The fact that the unlawful stuff has some lawful stuff mixed in doesn't matter.
PS - in the example of you quoting me, you could of course try to claim fair use of my writing, but that's not the situation you're talking about. If I understand you correctly, you are talking about if "your" words were copypasta from someone else, in doesn't which case adding my words wouldn't give me grounds to authorize infringing their copyright.
You can license or give away software you write, but if you get paid to do it, the copyright is by default owned by the person/company that hired you, unless explicitly stated otherwise in a contract.
IANASCJ*, but I believe that copyrighting Trade Secrets would be unconstitutional.
*I Am Not A Supreme Court Justice
Unless you happen to be creating NEWS. Those emails are not copyrighted they are news-worthy and their publication and republication is to substantiate said news. Wouldn't it be a sad day if everyone could hide behind copyright. Politician - what I said was copyrighted don't repeat it. Court - this judgement is copyrighted you can't see it. Criminal - the slashing patterns on the victim are my copyrighted work, you can't reproduce it... etc. But first, "let's kill all the lawyers..." -- Shakespeare (proving you can still make money and be famous even 400 years after you are dead and copyright has expired).
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Copyright ownership does not mean something cannot be distributed or given away or copied, how would anyone publish anything then? Copyright ownership is merely legal control over how something is copied and distributed and the owner get's to define how people can and cannot copy their work. For example, the copyright owner of a book would allows a printer to create copies of their copyrighted content in each book that they print. There's limits on the control with things like fair use and the first sale doctrine.
A licence is merely a legal statement defining exactly how a given piece of copyrighted work can be copied. As the copyright owner, and only as the owner ultimately, you can licence the work in any way you want. The license may be fairly complex such is the case with the GPL however it does not need to be such as with the MIT license. A work with no copyright owner is in the public domain and can be distributed and copied and modified with no limits.
Licences differ from public domain in that the copyright owner can use the legal system to claim copyright infringement on those who break the licence. A work in the public domain has no copyright owner and as a result no one can take you to court over it or enforce any licence on the work (in theory, in practice money trumps everything).
U.S. law used to require "copyright formalities" of this sort (more or less - the details are a little complicated), up until it "implemented" the Berne Convention in 1989. Even though that was over 25 years ago, memories of this obviously still persist.
unless you create it as part of your job, in which case it's owned by whoever paid you.
Usually. If for instance youre an independent contractor and create the work as part of a solution you sell to the client, the copyright may remain with you.
Have you noticed right at the top of the comment section this text?
Whatever you right is automatically copyrighted as soon as you write it (or take a picture, or record a song). Marking it with a copyright symbol is not required, and is mostly useful to indicate who owns the copyright (who to contact for permission to use it) and to indicate that the author intends to enforce his copyright.
Very little copyrighted work is registered. Registration only serves as a verifiable record of when it was produced, and by whom. If there's another verifiable record, such as a published copy, then registration isn't even particularly useful. Which is why a lot of published work is not registered.
Do people in the US want to enjoy the role of a free and unrestrained press or enter a new UK like legal system of professional responsibility and legal safeguards?
I dont know. Does the UK system cause fundamental human nature to change such that you can trust those in power to act responsibly with no scrutiny?
The more companies try to cram under the umbrella of DMCA, I feel, the more opposition to the DMCA notices will crop up. This may end up being a good thing. Sure, cram it all under DMCA - start spamming everyone you can with accusations not befitting of copyright violation, and it'll only water down the 'authentic' violation notices - perhaps authorities will throw the baby out with the bathwater when evaluating DMCA complaints.
Anytime you can read an acronym as a word...
An acronym must form a word, that's what distinguishes it from an abbreviation (such as TOS).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Re: "Does the UK system cause fundamental human nature to change such that you can trust those in power to act responsibly with no scrutiny?" :) The US had a much more clear approach with The Pentagon Papers.
"You lose, journalism. Carrying GCHQ docs is terrorism" 19 Feb 14
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/ar...
"... because the journalist will have his own take or focus on what serves the public interest, for which he is not answerable to the public through Parliament."
The UK has other ideas on press freedoms and any scrutiny
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
and don't bother checking if the claim is valid
If a host receives a notice and wants to keep their 'safe harbour' privilege in the eyes of the law, then the host has no choice but to accept the claims in the notice and immediately take down the file. The host does not (and in most cases cannot) make any determination of validity. It's up to the person who posted the file to prove to the host that the claim in the notice is incorrect. - In other words the DCMA system operates under the assumption of "guilty until proven innocent". There are penalties for making a false DMCA claim but I've never heard of them being applied by a court.
BTW, it's DMCA not DCMA.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's not weirdly that email is copyright.. Everything you write is copyright by default, but you can offer it up 'for free'..
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Do those ideas involve super injunctions for libel? Blocking the mere discussion of a company and its doings in Africa because they might cause financial harm?
Yes, the US has issues, but our default stance is much more towards free speech than the UK.
The UK seems to want to offer next gen D-Notice for the public and private sectors with the chilling super injunctions and libel tourism :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
this is a myth