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Universal Pictures Wants To Remove Localhost and IMDB Pages From Google Results
Artem Tashkinov writes: We've all known for a very long time that DCMA takedown requests are often dubious and even more often outright wrong but in a new turn of events a Universal Pictures contractor which does web censorship has requested a takedown of an IMDB page and the 127.0.0.1 address. I myself has seen numerous times that pages which barely include the title of an infringing work of art get removed from search engines.
That 127.0.0.1 site is nothing but trouble. That's why I redirect it in my HOSTS file to localhost.
Unfortunately, I have a feeling that no matter how blatantly bad and stupid these companies get with takedown abuse, it won't be until some senator or congressperson's page gets sent a spurious takedown notice. Anyone with any awareness or interest in the issue already knows how bad the situation is.
Maybe this incident will get more press, but I'm not holding my breath.
Sorry, but this isn't a service position, nobody who really has to experience this will ever go through it, and thus they won't notice how full of stupidity the process can be.
No wake-up calls will ever happen.
This is Google's opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and do no evil:
Forget Universal Pictures and the contractor.
Oh the bots, always doing dumb things
So we're just reposting torrentfreak articles now? Ok, sounds about right.
This is a prime example of how the DMCA is a farce. The entire burden is loaded onto the user, not the ones demanding things to be taken down. How the hell local host even showed up in their crawl is something I want explained to me, that simply does not compute, 127 would NEVER be involved in a torrent pool, so how did they crap that address?
and shouldn't imdb be flagged as save at the base url? Don't these companies actually PAY to be on imdb? I might be confused there, but in any event, IMDB is fully operating within the law and in no way infringes any copyrights.
So they run a script and scrapes, I guess the entire internet and their local network, and this automatically sends DMCA takedown requests, which for the most part are honoured without question. Then the user, who had every legal right to do whatever they did, has to spend their time and money to try to get this undone. The system is broken and ripe for abuse.
DMCA takedowns for bird chirps? Sorry, you can not own a copyright to generic bird songs, that's insanity.
Here's a funny thought... 3 bad takedown requests in a month means you can no longer make takedown requests. Hows that sound? Seems fair to me.
It's not the "DCMA"; it's the "DMCA", also known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
There should be a comma before the word "but" in the first (run-on) sentence.
And it's not "I myself has seen"; it should be "I myself have seen".
Even blogs need editors.
Wow, inflammatory language much? Protecting people's intellectual property doesn't really count as censorship.
If only they DID take down his 127.0.0.1 machine - wouldn't the problems be solved?
from INSIDE THE HOUSE!
Best Slashdot Co
I checked out that site, and it's clearly infringing on Universal Pictures' recent film "You Have Successfully Installed Apache".
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
I think Google should start charging them for false requests. $1 each and I bet sooner or later they are going to start having a human check them before sending the take down requests.
Be seeing you...
You're confusing celebrities with media companies.
That's akin to greenpeace blaming you, personally, for the Texaco spill.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Apologies to Walt Kelly
We have met the enemy (Pogo)
Letter To Iran
Remove all the links for fuck the physics 7, They want it removed, it's their content, who cares?
Maybe they learn how to write a spider/crawler next time.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
Better yet, amend the DMCA to automatically remove the all copyrights from companies making such obviously false requests.
Does you yourself has cheezburger?
Well, aren't you then? If you didn't buy oil, they wouldn't spill it. The less oil we use the less it will be handled, the less it gets handled, the less the risk of leaks and other accidents.
"I need gas!" is all good and well, and quite understandable, but do not shirk from your part of the responsibility.
I volunteer to com round and remove local host for them. They just need to sign something saying that they understand the consequences
As all my recent encounters have been of the 127.0.0.1 variety, if they take that away I'm in trouble.
Can someone enlighten me on how Google search can have "127.0.0.1" entries at all - what they refer to - or if the whole point here was that the request was absurd?
To fix their scripts that crawl content, they're afraid someone may inject some fake 127.0.0.1 url which may exploit a webserver running on the local machines that the scripts are running from, however they lack the expertise to fix their shit.
You're confusing celebrities with media companies.
That's akin to greenpeace blaming you, personally, for the Texaco spill.
They just about do, when they tell me I have to stop using oil.
Yeah you shouldn't listen to them on that point... I stopped using oil in My lawn mower (drained the horrible stuff out into the street sewers of course) and after 5-10 minutes it stopped running and I can't restart it...
Suspect that Green peace might just be part of the Sales arm of Toro.
Isn't there a fine for making a false takedown request? Each one of these wrong requests should be treated that way.
Google seems to be censoring 127.0.0.1: https://www.google.com/#q=site:127.0.0.1
What this implies is that the contractor that Universal employs to send takedown notices has an illegal copy of Jurassic World on their own system!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Out of every million requests you are going to have some obvious mistakes. That's human nature. But it's a huge problem when companies just "throw a bunch of requests at the wall and see what sticks" without much cost to them for invalid requests.
Google and others who receive large volumes of requests should have some procedure to weed out those who send too many requests where the sender obviously didn't do his "due diligence" or worse, is trying to game the system.
Hopefully they can work out a voluntary system with the high-volume DMCA-takedown-notice requesters where the requester agrees in advance to pay "liquidated damages" (aka a "Google fine") for every rejected request and where they accept that they will be put into a "slow processing lane" if their rate of such requests gets too high.
If Google etc. can't come to a voluntary agreement with a particular high-volume sender and that sender's rate of invalid requests gets too high, Google, etc. should take the requester to court to get an order prohibiting the requester from sending any future request without an affidavit declaring that they have done "due diligence." If they don't sign the oath, it won't be a valid request. If they do sign it and didn't do the due diligence, they will be found in contempt of court and face criminal perjury charges.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Eat chili!
the more this stuff happens, and is publicised, the more legitimacy the DMCA takedown system loses.
If a company has been shown to have falsely claimed copyright, in such a silly thing as these claims, simply remove that company's copyright and place it in the public domain.
If it happens a second time, remove ALL that company's copyrights, and place them in the public domain.
In the case of a third party claiming copyright infringement by contract with the copyright holder, have both the third party AND the copyright holder's copyrights forfeit.
We all agree that it's a bot being used to detect references to Universal Picture's works... but the purpose? Not to stop piracy, but to eliminate search results from competing with United's own marketing. While the IMDB link is obviously unintentional, it is also most likely the top result.
Basically, they're knocking out anything that competes in searches, regardless of actual pirated content.
Vote against politicians that don't understand technology (ie the world we live in now). All this sad/funny behavior is a result of bad laws created by our (depending on where you live) elected officials.
Copyright violations, IMHO, are not a tangible "taking"; The real problem with a true copyright violation is an effective "easement".
That being said, parodies get to be taken under attack.
SME, for instance, went WAYYYY out of their way to suppress a parody of "Uptown Funk!" done as "SpacEx Launch You Up!"
Frankly, sometimes the parodies are far more entertaining than the originals... I am surprised that Weird Al hasn't been so suppressed.
The real problem, here, is the same one most of us have working within corporations: the executives give orders and don't listen to feed-back from people who better understand reality.
(One comment I have made is that off-shoring is popular 'cuz techies in other countries will follow executive's orders without question... Which helps explain why off-shored work seems to not adequately match reality.)
So, in an effort to suppress anything that *might* infringe the burden of proof falls more and more on the "defendant" rather than the plaintiff. If the DMCA doesn't have some (bleep)ing heavy consequences for those who abuse it-- using DMCA as a means of suppression, for instance-- then it protects the wrong people.
Mind you, the whole question for this thread is that the companies are "going cheap" and using people who do not understand.
Without Xfinity, which shares a corporate parent with Universal Pictures, how will Google reach much of the United States market?
If those damn actors, directors, and writers would just stop making movies then we wouldn't have this problem.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
all the disparate laws with so many differences you deceptively lump together as "intellectual property " do have one thing in common : they all have limitations that make them temporary.
Patents expire after twenty years, exclusive rights in "mask works" (integrated circuit layouts) after ten. As for the rest, where did you get that information? Trademark registrations are indefinitely renewable as long as the mark remains in use, and the U.S. copyright term is routinely extended for 20 years at a time (Copyright Act of 1976; Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998; ruled constitutional by SCOTUS in Eldred v. Ashcroft, 2003).
Ha ha ha .. boy are you naive.
See the DMCA was written in such a way as to shield the people filing the requests. When they wrote the law (and, yes, it was corporate lobbyists who wrote it) they gave themselves a get out of jail free card ... so while they are effectively making a sworn statement, all they have to do is say they genuinely believed it was infringing and all is forgiven.
The DMCA is badly written because it was designed to let corporations do anything they want without consequences.
Talking about adding a voluntary system whereby they are held to some level of accountability? Not gonna happen.
Because the people who were on the corporate payroll to pass the laws in the first place only care about what the corporations have told them to do.
Welcome to a world in which governments are basically working to advance corporate interests above all else.
Crap like this is kind of the inevitable outcome of that, and the copyright lobby have bought themselves the keys to the kingdom.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I see you've been doing business with Forte Payment Systems, sometimes called Federal Payments. The convenience fee is how much they charge to run the CC, which is $1.50 or 2.5% of the total charged amount, whichever is greater. Most governmental entities (and I guess some businesses) pass this off as a convenience fee to the paying customer. As I recall it was $40/mo, too, but that may vary based on number of CC transactions. I suspect for commercial businesses the fee could be as high as $2.50 or 4% of total
On the positive side, developing a program that interfaces with Forte Payments is easy. They have a well defined API that is very straightforward: Open SSL encrypted port, dump CC numbers with merchant ID and authentication in, and get XML/Json request back with thumbs up or down with a clearly defined reason why, and they provide a nice sandbox to test things in.
All I got was something called Lorem Ipsum.
I imagine type geeks might be interested in a film adaptation of M. T. Cicero's On the Ends of Good and Evil .
But how would it play out? Would it become a drama with characters who act in ways that represent Epicureanism and Stoicism and then show where those philosophies fail?
Maybe they learn how to write a spider/crawler next time.
Sony and Marvel might have a problem with that.
Google, etc. should take the requester to court to get an order prohibiting the requester from sending any future request without an affidavit declaring that they have done "due diligence."
Each notice of claimed infringement under OCILLA is supposed to already include such an affidavit. Universal's former parent company has already been in trouble for this.
You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU COWS!!
I am surprised that Weird Al hasn't been so suppressed.
He has. How many parodies of songs by Prince are included on "Weird Al" Yankovic's albums? None. The closest he comes are a single line at the end of the first verse of "Amish Paradise" and a line in the second chorus of "Word Crimes".
Actually, who's hurt if Google delists the movie's IMDB page? Heck, Google should just delist every page about every Universal Pictures title in current release. See how fast Universal finds the problems with their automated takedown notices when all their titles—all their theater listings—disgoogle at once.
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
A 90s romantic comedy about a man and a woman on the path to true love....featuring Meg Ryan and Richard Gere.
I won't be satisfied until I can't find Universal's content ANYWHERE.
See, you just don't get it, that's exactly why you're not allowed to use oil. If people could use oil responsibly then you'd be allowed to use it. It's just the same thing as everything else, liberals are here to make sure that you're not allowed to do anything you can't be responsible for.
People misuse oil, so you're not allowed to use oil.
People misuse guns, so you're not allowed to use guns.
People misuse religion, so you're not allowed to have religion.
People misuse big gulps, so you're not allowed to buy big gulps.
People misuse drugs, so you're not allowed to buy drugs.
People misuse porn, so you're not allowed to have porn.
People misuse sex, so you're not allowed to have sex outside of marriage for purposes other than procreation.
Remember: the government is here to protect you from yourself. Stay safe by voting for the liberals who support the above statements!
It's what collection agencies do with lawsuits and what many mortgage holders have done when going after homeowners.
The collection companies have gotten bad press from filing bogus lawsuits with inadequate documentation. Like sending summonses for their suits to the wrong address, resulting in bench warrants being issued to people who never got the notices and ignored the default judgements that resulted. I don't think most county level civil courts did much about it, though.
The mortgage industry I think earned more heat from bankruptcy courts when they showed up with bad documentation that basically couldn't prove they owned the mortgages. I think some judges got annoyed with the mass litigation many engaged in and started discharging the mortgages unless they could provide accurate documentation, but I think it only happened after a few savvy defense attorneys began to understand the maze of paperwork and lack of legal documents (ie, pen and paper notarized paperwork) that actually proved the plaintiffs owned the mortgages.
IMHO, there ought to be a set of steep progressive penalties imposed on both counsel and plaintiff who file serial/mass litigation with flimsy or substantively inaccurate documentation. Like the first one is a slap on the wrist, the second within some window of the first is a $10,000 fine and the third in the same window is a $100k fine, risk of disbarment to counsel and perjury charges to the plaintiff. You need these kinds of penalties to restrain counsel and clients.
That is only because Weird Al always asks for permission to parody a song, he is not required to.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I think you meant DMCA...
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
As long as we have to live with DMCA, it seems only fair that there be a compensatory mechanism requiring payment for false claims.
You can't keep calling the police or fire dept on spurious emergencies, why can you do it in this context?
-Styopa
I am doing my very best to burn as much of that pesky oil as I can in order to take it out of the environment. Seeing as how dangerous it is when spilled, any sane environmentalist would come to the same conclusion. Oil is just too dangerous to be left in the wild!
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
"I myself has seen numerous times that pages which barely include the title of an infringing work of art get removed from search engines."
I Can Has Cheezburger?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
" I myself has seen numerous times..."
That 127.0.0.1 address is coming from INSIDE YOUR COMPANY!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
About 10 months ago, I found my high school graduation video cassette from 1987, so I picked up a used VCR and ripped it and put it up on youtube for family to view. Last month, I uploading another video and noticed that a DMCA claim had been placed on my graduation video, but the "copyright holder" would allow the video to remain, they were just going to monetize it. My graduation video was shot by my brother and had our high school band playing Pomp and Circumstance, which is in the public domain. There is no way this is under copyright, so I looked them up and the "song" that I was allegedly violating the copyright of. It turns out that the "copyright holder" was a crappy English DJ duo who had appropriated Pomp and Circumstance in one of their soccer fight songs. The funny part is that my video is 28 years old, their song is about a year old.
I countered their claim with all the info above and the claim was removed.
I realize this was probably a simple signature match, but it only goes to show how broken this system is. I didn't actually received an email about the DMCA claim. There are only 2 emails in my inbox containing the video title, one was when I published it and the other was when the copyright claim was removed, so they don't appear to even be notifying people when a claim is made, at least in the case where the "copyright holder" decides to monetize rather than take the video down, and that is even more nefarious in my opinion. I wasn't monetizing my video, and it has less than 50 views, but if I had been monetizing it and had a larger audience, they would have been stealing from me without my even knowing it. I only noticed the original claim when I uploaded another video to youtube.
Speechless.
Given the frequency of mistakes that slip through around here, that probably has been "edited" already.
those guys are shamelessly using Universal content
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
You forget, it's not just the little guys being hurt by this. It's also Google, etc. It takes them time to go through these and they take the hit to their reputation if they always blindly process obviously-bogus requests without so much as looking at it.
Google has the money, the clout, and the legal talent to fight back even if the law seems to favor those making the bogus complaints. As Tepples said below, there is precedent.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You forget that people misuse procreation.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/23/universal-pirated-copy-jurassic-world-seeded-from-its-own-servers
LOL
'Aside from Furious 7, the same notice targets “copyright infringing” links to the movie Hacker. Here, the movie studio also made an unfortunate mistake asking Google to remove a news article from Techdirt, covering the Hacking Team leak.'
"And while we’re on the topic of self censorship, it’s worth noting that Universal Pictures also asked Google, in a separate notice, to remove127.0.0.1 from the search results. ref
Anyone that deals with complex computer programs knows they make really really really dumb mistakes all the time. Here someone will say "but they only do what the programmer told them to do"... yes... exactly what the programmer told them to do. And that means they have no sense of judgement. Every little thing has to be explained in complete detail or the fucking thing fucks it up eventually.
And that's fine. You just have to understand that's how it works. Too often people look at computers as these mad little demon geniuses in a bottle that can do calculation magic. Forgetting that computers are actually extremely fucking stupid and will fuck the pooch in the ass at the drop of a hat if the program directs that behavior in some unusual circumstance.
and because its funny:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
point is, you can't just trust these lists the computers kick out. You need to have someone eyeball these things. Failing to filter out localhost? Fuck you. That's just incompetence.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
And the fact that he does ask for permission is why he doesn't appear suppressed to the general public. There are plenty of parodies that casual fans may not be aware of, such as "Chicken Pot Pie". In practice, it's often not a judge as much as an E&O insurer that decides what's safe to release.
Great editing there.
i'm always finding new and interesting stuff there. that's why i made 127.0.0.1 my home page. i guess i might have to switch to [::1].
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
No, it's saying that "these people don't want us to talk about them, so if you want us to talk about you, you'd better not either". Then again, why aren't they shunning Universal Pictures too for the good of the community?
Oh, of course, it's because they're Americans, and Americans have been programmed from birth to believe solidarity is cheating even while the rich collude right in front of their faces every day.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
Here is another fucking NAZI that thinks they can control everybody else.
Bad writing slows down people's reading. It is a royal pain. It is also a favor to let someone know what they need to do, to be read.
It has gotten so bad that many people just skip over badly written messages, including me.