Anti-Piracy Firm Sends Out Wave of Takedown Notices For Using the Word 'Pixels'

An anonymous reader writes: Columbia Pictures recently released a movie called Pixels to widespread ambivalence. As part of the movie industry's standard intellectual property defense strategy, it hired anti-piracy firm Entura International to try to police infringing downloads. The firm went at the task with vigor, hitting Vimeo with DMCA takedown notices for anything with the word "Pixels" in it. As you might expect, this disrupted a number of independent filmmakers and organizations who did nothing wrong, and in most cases picked a name for their video long before the new movie came out. Even worse, it's incumbent upon the owners of the targeted videos to prove that their content does not infringe upon Columbia's. Even if they get it restored, simply being targeted counts against them in Vimeo's eyes. And of course, Entura is unwilling to help.

Comments

Re:DMCA reform

[SuricouRaven]

It does, but it only applies if the false claim is false in the sense that it wasn't filed by the copyright holder or someone they appointed to represent them. There is no penalty for a claim made in error, so long as it was authorized by the copyright holder of the allegedly infringed work.

Re:5-year old video

[p.g.king]

The Columbia picture is acknowledge as being based on that film (and based on French director Patrick Jean's 2010 short film of the same name)

Re:DMCA reform

[SuricouRaven]

From section three:

---
(v) A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

'(vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
---

The perjury part applies only to (vi) - that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the copyright holder and that the contents of the claim are accurate. The actual infringement needs only a good faith belief. It's arguable if an automated enforcement system can really be called that, as the use of fully automated takedown bots was not envisioned when the legislation was created, but I have never heard of any prosecution for that, and I can't find any with a bit of googling

The DMCA makes it clearly illegal to knowingly submit a false DMCA claim, but there is no offense committed for submitting false complaints due to incompetence, haste or cost-cutting. This is not just my own uneducated reading: It's the defense used by some major copyright holders who have committed exactly the same overzealous errors in the past: https://torrentfreak.com/warne...
The judge in that case never decided if that defense was valid, as the parties reached a settlement.

Re:DMCA reform

[TheReaperD]

Apparently, part of the problem is that Vimeo has a DMCA copyright 'strikes' system where a certain number of 'strikes' gets your account deleted and you're banned from the site. It seems that the main issue here, other than the hassle of filing a DMCA counter-claim, is that when you get the DMCA claim pulled, Vimeo will put your video back on their site but, they do not remove the 'strike' from your record. The short version is that if you get enough bogus DMCA claims against your account they will delete your account and ban you from their service even though you did nothing wrong beyond happening to name something you created too close to a name a major studio chooses to use in the future.

Re:Seems simple enough to reverse this strategy

[cpt kangarooski]

Sorry, but that won't work.

You're citing 17 USC 106A. That only applies to the author of "a work of visual art." That term is specially defined in the Copyright Act, in the definitions section at 17 USC 101. The relevant parts of the definition are:

A "work of visual art" is--

(1) a painting, drawing, print, or sculpture, existing in a single copy, in a limited edition of 200 copies or fewer that are signed and consecutively numbered by the author, or, in the case of a sculpture, in multiple cast, carved, or fabricated sculptures of 200 or fewer that are consecutively numbered by the author and bear the signature or other identifying mark of the author; or

(2) a still photographic image produced for exhibition purposes only, existing in a single copy that is signed by the author, or in a limited edition of 200 copies or fewer that are signed and consecutively numbered by the author.

It really isn't possible for anything online to qualify, due to the requirement of there being only a single copy (a copy is defined in the Copyright Act as being a tangible object containing the work; a computer file isn't a copy, but a hard drive can be, which means that if other people can download it, they're necessarily making a new copy), or no more than 200 copies if each copy is signed and numbered and which are a limited edition.

What this is actually meant for is fine art, like a painting, art prints, etc. Not art posted online. It was a nice try, but you've got to check the statute more thoroughly if you want to cite it correctly.