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Porn Companies Are Going After GitHub
rossgneumann writes Porn production companies are currently engaged in a scorched earth copyright infringement campaign against torrenting sites with URLs containing specific keywords and Github is getting caught in the crossfire. Several Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaints filed to Google by companies representing various porn companies in the last month alone have resulted in dozens of legitimate Github URLs being removed from the search engine's results, TorrentFreak first reported."
It's as if millions of left hands suddenly cried out in terror and stopped moving.
In theory submitting a false DMCA request is illegal. And there are theoretically plausible civil suits as well, if someone submits a false or reckless DMCA request that damages your business. But has anyone in history actually suffered any repercussions from submitting false DMCA requests? It seems people submit false ones all the time, and not only borderline mistakes but things ranging from reckless disregard for the truth to outright maliciously false requests (e.g. for SEO purposes). Yet I have never heard of anyone being prosecuted or sued for it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Yet another reason not to trust that your data will always be available in the cloud.
Not the porn companies.
In most cases these aren't even the porn companies. It's a scam. If they can get the ISP to hand over your name... and they can in some cases... then they send you threatening letters: "On suchandsuch date you downloaded our film 'Priests and Alterboys 5' illegally. Pay us $5000 or we will sue you" And then they send it certified mail to your front door. The signature requirement means there's a 50/50 chance they get your wife and how much would you pay to avoid that happening?
It's a scam, plain and simple.
So these companies are committing mass perjury by submitting false DMCA takedowns. If only there were a way to prosecute this sort of behavior.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I know the law requires you to be making a statement under oath ... but since it was bought and paid for by *AA lawyers, it has the "if we're incompetent but thought we were right" escape clause, they can probably weasel out of it.
I really hate this that piece of shit law was written in such a way as to stack the deck for those companies. Because it's not a level playing field, and they can go all scorched earth and later just say "oops".
Somehow they managed to put the burden of proof and cost onto those saying "WTF are you talking about?" instead of themselves.
Assholes.
There really needs to be some penalties for these clowns, otherwise they and every other copyright troll can just do this indiscriminately.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I don't want to know..
Google is caught in the middle on this one. GitHub isn't even involved indirectly. Nice headline to make your story look slightly nerdier, jackass.
make them post a bond for every URL they are claiming infringement.
an arbitrator (chosen by a neutral party (ie. not accuser, not accused, not isp), maybe ICAN?
But not a judge that can't tell a floppy disk from a drink coaster !
NO LAWYERS !
and if the arbitrator finds no infringement, the accused keeps the bond.
if infringement is found accused pays the bond amount it the URL was not removed within 3 days of being reported.
arbitrator gets 5% for ruling and has a limited time to make the ruling (3 days?)
5k a day for each URL disputed, sounds about right to me.
opinions ?
Good Gods, man, the skies are falling because there's absolutely nothing except THE Google!
Bah, lemme go see if the company beer fridge is still stocked.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Some of these takedowns (reading the public list github posts after hearing about it) are amazingly direct, as if you work for them.
In one situation, the letter was dated June 7th and after a few paragraphs said to remove the material as soon as you can, but no later than June 8th.
So if I have a website where people can download something, I have literally hire someone to check the mail multiple times a day in case some jerkwad copyright troll decides to mail a letter at 5pm demanding a takedown before the end of the very same day?
What if I was fishing or taking a day off.... where did they get off not only demanding a takedown, but demanding it RIGHT NOW. I gotta wait 6 to 8 weeks for a freaking refund that is already provably legitamate and MINE.
Yet when their crap is somehow posted to my site without my knowledge, it's my onus to not only validate the claim but verify with my legal council AND act all in less than 24 hours in some cases? Screw off, I'm going to publicly post a change to my TOS that gives me 6-8 weeks to judge if the removal is valid, and another 6-8 weeks to then act on the decision.
I'm done playing games and I run sites that host content.
eventually someone will.
because they don't have the rights to the shit they claim to have the rights to.
like, they don't think at all. basically running a google search on the word EDGE and banning that comes out. like what the fuck!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
On Information: Information wants to be free;
On Copyright: That porn is 7 years old and should rightly be in public domain now;
On Patents: Porn is just an arrangement of pixels and sound; There are only so many ways to express the 'mathematics' of fucking. It is obvious with thousands of performers that positions will be duplicated. Therefore porn should not be patented.
1. Create a copyrighted program called "Takedown Piracy" ...
2. Submit a DMCA to google on the website of "Takedown Piracy"
3. Watch as they are removed from Google's search results
4.
5. Profit
google no longer honors, or even acknowledges, take down requests for keywords.
better solution.... abolish the law, or at least rewrite it so that companies filing bogus requests get hit, and hit hard, with financial penalties and revocation of their take down notice rights. companies like google spend millions of dollars processing these bogus requests, it's about time the companies that file them get nailed to the wall.
Except M$ has falsely claimed that a archive of open_office was theirs and send down a DCMA notice, no repercussions except embarrassment.
And the DCMA take-down notice does contain the words: "Under Penalty of Perjury". Yet no perjury charges were every filed.
The "penalty of perjury" clause of the DMCA applies to identifying yourself, but the DMCA isn't the only law. Recklessly causing harm was a tort before the DMCA, and it still is. I believe there has been at least one law suit for tortuous interference and I'd like to see more. I think the plaintiffs could prevail where the notices were sent out recklessly.
In some cases, the person CONTINUED to send notices after being notified that many of them were clearly invalid. One can argue that they TRIED to come up with a good list of URLs, but once they've been informed that their list is crap, it's reckless to continue sending them.
Of course it's possible that they could show that they sent out 10,000 notices and 9,990 of those were perfectly correct. With a 99.9% accuracy rate the claim that they were reckless would be tougher to argue.
Wait, what?
So there are projects on Git called "Mother and daughter fucked with strap-on's"???
So can anyone of those whose site was removed with out notice take the porn companies to court for stealing their compyrights? After all these companies are saying that they own the copyrights to the aledged git hosted code. That would mean they stole the actual copyright not just infringed on it.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Sheesh, how many Edges have been the name involved in frivolous lawsuits?
If you rely on Google, an American company, hosting servers in America... what do you expect?
Stop using google, use something hosted else where on the planet.
You can get your stiffy reading court records (pdf). It doesn't get any better. This stuff would be illegal to publish in any other way.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
don't be labeling me with your druggy terminology.
We Have a Pron site of 6+,Years Now it is has been removed from Google Search and send it to Sand box.Is it Happening for GitHub .
Site of http:urbanwheel.net
this is a scam done to the porn companies, not to the illegal downloaders.
the way the scam works is that they contact the porn company and say "hey we can takedown things from google for you" and then they just run a lazy google search, send google some dmca notices based on that lazy search(without verifying, or attempting even to verify the urls) and bill the porn company based on how many links were removed(this is where the lazy search turns into a payoff for the company - they do have an incentive to send too many notices! they're not billing by quality but by quantity).
nevermind that it does nothing to stop the downloading of the stuff(you'll go to the torrent site anyways and search on that torrent site, circumventing the google in that regard).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The full tack-down list. It includes goodies like "https://help.github.com/articles/dealing-with-non-fast-forward-errors/". I got to that page via Google once and it was useful. I wish we wouldn't let these fools try and wreck everything.
GitHub went after "gamergaters". Let someone go after them.
0wn sh11ter fills gaping hOle.
Total Wipes, on the other hand, appears to target sites indiscriminÃately based on keywords,...
Wait, so there's a company called Total Wipes doing porn copyright infringement management? What a wasted use for the name in that industry.
Ridiculous.
Put a high financial penalty on false DMCA notices. This should force the party that issue the take-down notice to check better for accuracy of the claim.
Ridiculous
Well done Harry. You defeated the Boggart.
Sue back!
The copyright industry does the same for several years now - calculate a virtual lost in income, based on potentially lost sales due to downloads by simply claiming that each download would had been a sale. So all the blocked projects at GitHub should simply do the same back: Claim that each blocked link is lost income based on the daily download-rate and simply claim that each blocked download would otherwise have been translated into a sale without the free software license.
That's real damage the copyright industry is responsible for!
Edge and Hide are two of the words they went after
Well done, you have just got slashdot delisted
Based on the similarity in names, these porn movies are quite obviously infringing on the copyright of these open source projects.
How about sending DMCA requests to get these porn movies banned from Google?
Two can play this game!
(as a side note; cue bad joke replies in 3.. 2.. 1..)
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I can't believe there is still no comeback when companies interfere with other people's legitimate shit
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Could the extra attention on GitHib be due to developers being very lax about having licenses applied to the work there? I'm not hearing here about a similar plague at SourceForge, which has always required there to be a license for every project.
-- Who am I? How did I get here? My God, what have I done?!
Carpet bombing is the cheapest way to do things.
Now, when will we you see this happen between 2 'legit' industries? For a ( bad ) example Microsoft carpet bombs every link that has the word oracle in it...
github.com/knockout/knockout was one of the repos listed, and here is the letter they sent (which seems to be a reasonable template):
To: marketing@takedownpiracy.com
Date: Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 9:33 AM EST
Dear Sirs,
It has recently come to my attention that your firm has filed a DMCA notice to Google identifying copyright infringement for works to which I am personally associated. I apologize if this email is not directed to the correct address, but it was the only address apparent to contact your company and I would be grateful if you could forward this message appropriately or direct me accordingly.
The notice that has come to my attention includes the details from the web-site as follows:
https://www.chillingeffects.or...
This site identifies Takedown Piracy LLC as an agent of Wicked Pictures sending a DMCA notice to Google. The notice apparently references the following works, which works appear to have since been removed from the results of searches via the Google search engine:
https://github.com/SteveSander...
https://github.com/rniemeyer/k...
https://github.com/rniemeyer/k...
https://github.com/Knockout-Co...
https://github.com/knockout/kn...
https://github.com/knockout
These works are entirely software and are in no way associated with Wicked Pictures, nor do they contain any adult material whatsoever (which I understand to be the preponderance of copyright held by Wicked Pictures).
Through the above-referenced DMCA notice your firm has stated that I have committed or endorsed copyright infringement, as well as associated me with republishing unlicensed works of the adult industry.
[As a software developer], I am sure you can appreciate that the above implication and association could cause serious harm to my reputation.
I trust you will not mind issuing an appropriate revocation of appropriate portions of the DMCA notices to Google and any other recipient that may have received a notice referencing the above content, as well as similarly revoking and white-listing from any future notices any work referred to with a URL containing the following:
github.com/knockout
github.com/SteveSanderson
github.com/mbest
github.com/rniemeyer
github.com/brianmhunt
âAgain, these repositories contain entirely software and are clearly not the intended target of your operationâ, which you can readily confirm by navigating to them in a web browser.
âMany thanks for your co-operation on this matter, and I would be grateful for your âconfirmation that the DMCA notices have been appropriately revoked. If by February 7th, 2015 it is apparent that the DMCA notices have not been revoked, I will be obliged to pursue appropriate legal action, and will hold your firm responsible for all associated legal costs.
âKind regards,
Brianâ
...need to start sending back these DMCA requests as being non-specific and overly broad...
http://xkcd.com/624/
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
surely getting links to these movies removed from Google should also be easy ... and would harm the movie-makers much more than the Github projects are being harmed?
I promise "// Sucky" is just a self assessment of my code, and nothing else
The way you follow some people around and harass them for weeks on end just because they disagree with you could probably be considered stalking in some jurisdictions. Get a life for god's sake.