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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.
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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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.
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?
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.
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.
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.