"Pixels" DMCA Takedown Even Worse Than We Thought

ForgedArtificer writes: So we all know about the Pixels takedown on Vimeo, and that it was pretty bad in a lot of ways. But did you know that they took down the short film that inspired the movie? Turns out, the 2010 Pixels, which was taken off Vimeo due to copyright notice, was responsible for inspiring the entire Adam Sandler flick. Unlike Sandler's film, it's critically-acclaimed and has won awards. Talk about kicking someone when they're already down. First Patrick Jean gets to watch them violate his work and now they're claiming that his work violates theirs.

Comments

Opportunity

[fyngyrz]

This is an opportunity. Anyone who knows anyone in the media should make it a point to make a story out of this -- it plays as big guy robbing, then kicking, the little guy. An opportunity for the little guy to get their head above water, which -- at times -- can work out surprisingly well.

Of course, we know that's not what's happening; this is rote behavior by uncaring people resulting in unfortunate collateral damage.

It's just as wrong, but it isn't based on specific intent.

Copyright, patent and trademark -- all broken as hell.

And I say that as someone who makes a significant income from all three.

Re: Opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I know what I'm going to do. Pirate this movie. I hadn't planned to do so, but now I will, it and a dozen, no three dozen others.

Except the Waterboy. That movie is punishment enough.

Re:Opportunity

[mysidia]

There should be a class-action lawsuit from all content creators affected against the DMCA letter spewing company AND the studio who hired them for gross-negligence And copyright abuse.

They should seek to have creator's copyright interest in the new film struck down by the courts.

Re:Opportunity

[bmo]

but it isn't based on specific intent.

You're kidding, right?

Copyright trolls and the publishers that love the concept know exactly what they're doing.

There is no punishment for even malicious DMCA takedowns. It's "kill them all and let God sort them out" behavior.

--
BMO

Re: Opportunity

[ColdWetDog]

You want to pirate an Adam Sandler movie? That is like cutting your nose off to spite your face.

Re:Opportunity

[Smallpond]

The 2010 film should file a claim of infringment against the Adam Sandler film and claim rights to all profits.

Re:Opportunity

[Forever Wondering]

IIRC, if someone files a takedown notice under the DMCA for a given work at a given website, the author of the work can file a counter notice under the DMCA with the website. Unless the original filer is willing to sue, the work can be restored. The DMCA does provide penalties for filing baseless/frivolous DMCA notices. And, the author can sue the filer.

The reason for the "hair trigger" effect is that if a DMCA notice is filed with a website, the website must remove the work quickly, or risk losing its "safe harbor" protections. To restore the work, the takedown must be withdrawn or the counter filed with the website.

In this case, if the Sandler film is too similar to the 2010 short film, it could be considered a derived work. That is, violates the copyright of the 2010 work. That would mean boatloads of cash for Patrick Jean.

That all said, DMCA abuse is obviously rampant.

Re:Opportunity

[CanEHdian]

There is no punishment for even malicious DMCA takedowns. It's "kill them all and let God sort them out" behavior.

And that was done *on purpose* to shield the "Rightsholders" from any harm (the strong worded "bla bla penalty of perjury bla bla" -- believed by some to be a check-and-balance -- in fact protects them too, namely that noone can run an extorton racket by make false claim of representing the "Rightsholders" -- to ensure any money flows in their direction and not some fraud).

There should be a "strike" system for takedowns too; x many false notices and you can only submit on paper, and this time on penalty of perjury that the work in question infringes on the work being claimed. That can eventually lead to JAIL TIME.

Re:Opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Revenue, not profits. Never go after Hollywood for profits, there never are any.

Re: Opportunity

[lucm]

So what's the master plan? Download the movie, put it on a USB stick and leave it on the subway? That should teach them.

That's like revenge porn without revenge or porn.

Re:Opportunity

[lucm]

It is people like you who fuck up the moderation on this website.

Mod -1 Redundant.

Re:Opportunity

[Cito]

You can't win

I had a YouTube video removed over similar issue.

I filed counter claim. I got served by some law office , I don't have money for lawyer, I tossed their paperwork in trash, I kept filing counter claims, I got a court date in California, but I'm in Ga. :-P

I just ignored them, eventually YouTube got tired of taking down then restoring then taking down then restoring so they deleted and gave a strike on my account which a strike bans you from monetizing for 1 year.

Oh well

Re: Opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

The master plan is to download it, put it on a spare harddrive somewhere and let it be. That'll deprive the movie company of at least one full ticket price of money.

If enough people do this, none of which will ever actually watch the darn thing, the movie company will go bankrupt due to the losses incurred.

According to the movie companies' logic, that is.

And that logic is correct, is it not?

Re: Opportunity

[DrXym]

The studio has probably figured a way of converting illegal downloads into a tax writeoff. If you want to hurt the studio, just ignore the movie entirely. It doesn't exist.

Re:Opportunity

[AmiMoJo]

I have found that the best tactic is to not only file counter-notices, but to then file your own DMCA take-downs against their content. Unfortunately some large companies are apparently immune to DMCA notices on YouTube, but many are not. For example, Sky News's live feed was taken down when their own parent company filed a DMCA notice over their coverage of the GOP debate.

Fight fire with fire. If they are claiming a clip you used isn't fair use then there isn't much you can do, but if they are claiming that some content you made is too similar to their own content then clearly that's because they are infringing your rights and you should scrub their shit off the internet for them. Hit the YouTube account, their social media accounts, their web host. There is no penalty for DMCA claims that don't stand up, so go nuts. Personally I like to rate-limit the notices, so that as soon as they deal with one another comes along and they have to file another counter notice. Only noobs file one notice with 100 URLs, when you can instead file 100 notices for 100 days. A trivial perl script can even automate the process for you.

Re:Opportunity

[SuricouRaven]

I've faced action for copyright infringement on youtube three times.

The first was pretty clear: I'd used an old cartoon, still copyrighted, to practice video restoration. At the time it was a vault-and-underground cartoon only, not legally available - the uncut version of Steamboat Willie, the version where Micky Mouse savagely tortures a series of animals in order to make music from their agonized cries. About a year later Disney republished it and DMCAed mine - possibly because my restoration was actually better than theirs.

The second was another thing entirely: Content-ID picked up some 'infringing' music on another video. The music was actually a recording from so long ago it was expired even in the US - recorded 1914, plus the composer was dead more than 70 years at the time I uploaded it. A collecting agency had still claimed they owned it and submitted it to content-ID though, so youtube detected it as infringing. A DMCA notification can be counter-noticed, but not a content ID match: There is very little in the way of appeal for those, it's an almost entirely automated system

The third was another DMCA notice, though my usage in that case was clearly fair use: I'd taken about thirty seconds from a TV program episode, no sound, in order to make a joke about it. I find it more interesting that the entire episode had been uploaded without permission by other users. This notice didn't come from a bot: I personally offended someone at the studio to the point that, while they didn't bother pulling entire episode uploads, they still thought my joke in sufficiently poor taste to merit removal.

Re:Opportunity

[Enigma2175]

No. The money you can get from a class-action is insignificant and not worth your time.
The affected content creators should pull out the same bullshit numbers that the copyright trolls do when they talk about potentially lost income and handle it individually.

Yeah, class action suits almost never give a real benefit to members of the class. Most of the time the "compensation" is coupons to buy more merchandise from the same manufacturer that screwed you in the first place. No thanks, Iomega, your zip drive already made me lose my data -- why would I want to buy another one from you?

Counter DMCA notice

[Todd Knarr]

The situation seems ripe for him to file a DMCA notice against all of Columbia's official film sites and materials. He can prove his film existed before Columbia's was even started, and he has Columbia's admission (in their DMCA notice against his work) that their work is similar enough to his for infringement to occur.

Re:Counter DMCA notice

[Travis Mansbridge]

The DMCAs are directed at Vimeo, and it's Vimeo's responsibility to stand up for non-infringing content, or it's their right to remove the content from their site for no good reason. I doubt they'd comply with an individual's request to have all of a major producer's works removed in the same way they'd comply with a major producer's request to have various individuals' works removed.

Re:Counter DMCA notice

[quantaman]

The situation seems ripe for him to file a DMCA notice against all of Columbia's official film sites and materials. He can prove his film existed before Columbia's was even started, and he has Columbia's admission (in their DMCA notice against his work) that their work is similar enough to his for infringement to occur.

Except he doesn't own the copyright to the short anymore, Sandler's production company who made the 2015 Pixels film does.

Now they made a really crappy movie based on the original short, but they had the legal right to do so.

the original intent

[circletimessquare]

of intellectual property was to protect the little guy with the good idea from being abused by the big guy with the deep pockets

the intent has been completely subverted and destroyed and now intellectual property simple serves as another club the big guy with deep pockets can use to rob the little guy with the idea

the concept of intellectual property, the very notion of it, is completely logically and morally bankrupt, and must die

now i'm no air head optimist, i may never see it happen in my lifetime. it's a slow change. but remember the printing press led to some radical changes in society. when education became cheap, a middle class grew from the previously illiterate serfs, and this class demanded power, giving rise to modern concept of democracy. it took centuries

likewise, the internet is going to radically change society. and it will also take centuries for all the implications of a new disruptive technology to work it's way out. just like the printing press

aristocrats then whined "not fair" like some do today as the changes begin. but on the contrary: the radical changes are all about making it more fair, for more people

give it time

Re:the original intent

[Anonymous Coward]

the concept of intellectual property, the very notion of it, is completely logically and morally bankrupt, and must die

Intellectual property is a false property right, in the same way that slavery was a false property right.

Eventually, we realized that the freedom of mankind was more important than the financial health of plantation owners.

And, eventually, we will realize that the freedom of our ideas is more important that the financial health of publishing corporations.

We live in a strange time in history. We understand that people must be free, but we inexplicably fail to realize that a person is not truly free unless his ideas are free as well. Future generations will look back on us for our barbaric, immoral selfishness -- in the same way that we look back on the American slave trade for their barbaric, immoral selfishness.

Re:the original intent

[circletimessquare]

the recent shrink of the middle class is awful. it mostly has to do with morons who think socialism is pure evil and the man with lots of money can do no wrong. this will change as more and more feel the negative economic effects of what kind of society this blindness results in

the nordic countries and canada show you can guarantee people basic standards of living and still be capitalist. capitalism is not automatically full social darwinism. because you won't let people lose their house because they get cancer, or that we educate people born in the ghetto well, does not mean capitalism has been destroyed and evil socialism wins

it's a retarded false choice believed by people who never think about this issue and act with an almost religious conviction about economic concepts they don't even understand the fucking basics of. the best societies are a *mix*. capitalist, with social safety nets, or socialist, with a capitalist engine. these societies are richest and happiest. the loser miserable societies are the ones that are ideologically "pure"

anyway, this all off-topic. this topic is not part of the conversation about intellectual property

we defeated the plutocrats before, in the gilded age, and got workplace safety, work week caps, end to child labor, etc. next we will get government child care, generous parental leave, good wage minimums, etc.

we will get that, we really will. the morons are dying off or waking up about the mindlessness of cold war era propaganda about "evil socialism." universal healthcare, cheaper (much much cheaper) and better quality care, as realized in canada, japan, germany, australia, france, etc.: all of our fucking capitalist democratic peers, is not the same fucking thing as the USSR with gulags, even though so many brain dead fucking retards in the usa believe this for some low iq reason

my point is simply: don't be so spooked and grow a fucking backbone. plutocrats are just rich morons, look at donald trump for example. there's nothing to be scared of, we beat the losers before, we'll beat them again. just beat the fucks and stop being such a defeatist weak piece of shit scared of his own shadow

Re:the original intent

[el_chicano]

Socialist: noun. A person who believes that a businessman with lots of money and power will inevitably become evil, while a politician with lots of money and power is incorruptible.

Not sure if you are trying to be serious or funny but Albert Einstein disagrees with you:

The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured? [1]

Nope, to a socialist a "politician with lots of money and power" is a corrupt symbol of free market capitalism, as seeking money and power are the primary goals of self-interested capitalists. Einstein again:

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals... The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society. [2]

If you are trying to be serious then you really don't know shit from shinola. Funny you definitely are not.

[1] [2] Why Socialism?

Reminds me of the The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy

[Darth Technoid]

Reminds me of the bit in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where ...

"The simplistic style is partly explained by the fact that its editors, having to meet a publishing deadline, copied the information off the back of a pack of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it with a few footnotes in order to avoid prosecution under the incomprehensibly tortuous Galactic copyright laws. It is interesting to note that a later and wilier editor sent the book backwards in time through a temporal warp and then successfully sued the breakfast cereal company for infringement of the same laws."

Justice

[Sponge Bath]

I would say Dinklage should punch Sandler in the nuts, but that may already be the plot of the movie. Anyone seen it to confirm?

Not sure what's up, here

[dwywit]

I just went to vimeo and searched for "pixels".

Lots of content with "pixels in the title, including the original short.

Perhaps someone at vimeo woke up, or perhaps someone at entura has been reading /. or other tech news sites.

Has anyone got a screen grab of that search returning nothing, or DMCA takedown notifications?

Re:Ehm, he is the executive producer of the new mo

[edjs]

Executive Producer credit is often given out as as an honorary title for some less-defined role in the film production; often that role is only to be "famous name on credits." I suspect that Patrick Jean (and the others involved in the original short) got the credit as part of selling the rights to make the adaptation.
 

futurama did it

[ganjadude]

didnt the futurama episode come out before that movie as well?

Re:What exclusive rights were bought?

[KGIII]

My understanding, from reading a few articles now, is that they licensed ONLY the ability to make a single derivative work. They have no rights beyond their work - including none over the original short.