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.

Comments

Not Stupid Enough

[Fire_Wraith]

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.

Re:Not Stupid Enough

[gstoddart]

This is what happens when you let industry write your damned laws.

The DMCA was written in such a way as to basically leave a wide trail for companies to totally abuse and misuse it. Because this was the law they bought and paid for to ensure they could do anything they wanted without penalty.

All of these issues were pointed out at the time, and the law got passed anyway, because these days the lawmakers are all beholden to industry and don't give a damn how badly the law has been written.

But nobody at all should be surprised at this crap. Because it is pretty much by design -- they can do almost anything they want with no real accountability. All they have to do is claim incompetence and they're magically forgiven.

It's a broken, lop-sided law which gave the copyright lobby the ability to threaten and intimidate as they see fit.

But don't think for a minute this was by accident. The DMCA is one of the most industry friendly laws in existence, and completely failed to hold them to any standard of accountability.

This is what happens when your legal system becomes co-opted to favor corporate interests above all else.

Re:Not Stupid Enough

[flopsquad]

I recently read an excellent piece that addressed this subject. The proposed two-pronged solution was quite modest and yet could fix most of the DMCA problems in one fell swoop.

1) Apply penalty of perjury to the entirety of the takedown notice, just as it is currently applied to counternotices.

2) Take away safe harbor status not only for failing to abide by the notice process, but also for failing to abide by the counternotice process.

Neither is earthshatteringly new, but it would take all of two lines of ink and a bit of political will. User-generated content companies like Google and Facebook could even provide that will. #1 is unambiguously good for them because it will lead to fewer DMCA notices they have to deal with. And even though #2 looks bad for them, it actually makes their lives much easier in that it legally mandates they do what they want to anyway (but which studios try to prevent): keep content up with minimal hassle.

Note the bullshit Universal that was pulling back in 2007--issuing blanket (i.e. not in good faith) takedown notices for Prince's music to everyone on the internet (including the mom who posted video of her kids dancing)--is still being litigated.

Google's Opportunity

[pubwvj]

This is Google's opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and do no evil:

Forget Universal Pictures and the contractor.

torrentfreak anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Charge for false requests

[Nyder]

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.

Re:Charge for false requests

[Anonymous Coward]

$1,000 for false requests. Payable in advance, returned if found legit.

Re: Web censorship

[silentcoder]

It absolutely does and every free country on earth recognises this. That is exactly why 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. The mechanism of expiration vary widely but they all expire. No physical property rights expire. You can inherited land for unlimited generations. But copyright and patents have time limits, trademarks have to be renewed and are lost if they become generic. These expiration are exactly because they are, all, censorship and the trade off is only worth while if that censorship is temporary.

Re:Redirecting 127.0.0.1

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Most people are.

On a more serious note ....

[whoever57]

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!

DMCA abused for SEO purposes

[BenJeremy]

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.

Just who's really being hurt here?

[Fortran IV]

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.