Slashdot Mirror
How Copyright Law Is Being Misused To Remove Material From the Internet (theguardian.com)
London-based resident Annabelle Narey posted a negative review of a building firm on Mumsnet. She noted in her review that her ceiling fell down in an upstairs bedroom. The Guardian reports about what happened to her in the aftermath of posting that review. Building firm BuildTeam sent a letter to Mumsnet, which the site passed on to Narey. According to Narey, BuildTeam found Narey's comment defamatory and untrue, and asked for the removal of the comment from the website. The original comment saw several other users also post similar grievances, though many of these users pulled their comments in response to the legal threats from BuildTeam. Narey wanted to keep hers up. Then things got even weirder, reports the Guardian. Narey says BuiltTeam staff visited her apartment, and instead of offering any apology, asked her to remove the comment. Mumsnet received a warning from Google: a takedown request under DMCA, alleging copyright infringement. This led Google to de-list the entire thread. From the report: No copyright infringement had occurred at all. At some point after Narey posted her comments on Mumsnet, someone had copied the entire text of one of her posts and pasted it, verbatim, to a spammy blog titled "Home Improvement Tips and Tricks". The post, headlined "Buildteam interior designers" was backdated to September 14 2015, three months before Narey had written it. BuildTeam says it has no idea why Narey's review was reposted, but that it had nothing to do with it.The Guardian deep dives into what is wrong with the copyright system, the issues Google faces in dealing with them, and the consequences many users are facing because of this.
She wrote all her own stuff; the company she reviewed bitched about the bad review; someone in Pakistan copied it to his blog and backdated it several months; and then Google got a DMCA take-down.
In other words: the copyright claim is fraudulent.
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It really is that simple. Where power exists, abuse exists. The more power, the more abuse. The only way to reduce the level of abuse is to reduce the level of power. This is the libertarian viewpoint in a nutshell, but I'm not bringing it up to promote libertarianism. I'm bringing it up to promote common sense.
"someone in Pakistan" - AKA the guy at BuildTeam using TOR to make his DMCA claim look legit enough for Google to reject any appeals from the original poster.
Could you use the wayback machine to go back to that date to show the post was never there? This kind of stuff is very scarry. I hope the Streisand effect kicks in and burns them big time.
Funny thing is, the Streisand Effect will most likely kick-in hard for them, especially once it made the papers there.
Seriously - a multinational corporation can put up with bad press and survive, but most smaller businesses cannot.
Given that this is a UK company, I'm rather surprised that they didn't reach for the libel laws - even if the lady was absolutely correct and true, the legal costs would have likely ruined her faster than a DMCA takedown would have.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
A company using bogus copyright claims to silence dissent and complaint? Nooooo, that's unpossible. Unheard of. Cannot happen!
Someone lying on the internet? And a company to boot? Stop being ridiculous.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is a reason why there is a legal process and this is exactly the reason.
If there is a dispute between people (in this case the posting) and one party feels wronged, they should take it up with the legal system, not with a third party.
The legal system wil then not only decide if something illegal went on, but also what the consequences will be.
Otherwise you will get an 'guilty untill proven inocent' or worse 'guilty by having less money as the other party'.
People must understand not only WHAT due process is, but more important WHY.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Backdating a copy of a work to make it appear as a original could theoretically be prevented in DMCA claims by requiring that any work for which a DMCA claim is made there must already exist an official record that the work actually existed previous to the work that allegedly copied from it. If the only proof that you have of the date is evidence that you offer yourself, then you don't get to make a DMCA claim at all. Typically, this would require going through more "official" channels of copyright registration, rather than relying on implied copyright that exists merely by publishing the work.
You could still allege copyright infringement without official registration.... but in that case, you couldn't use the DMCA until infringement was proven, which wouldn't be until after you have won your case and proven infringement in court.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Yeah Mumsnet, the site she posted on, should have simply sent back a counter-notice. I sure wish more people knew about DMCA counter-notice. Basically you just send back a signed note saying "I don't believe there is any copyright infringement in this case". Forms are available online.
Legal assaults have always been done against those who are not able to [usually cannot afford to] mount a defense. What is different nowadays is that the Internet allows the news of such tactics to be broadcast widely to a larger audience.
The problem here is that the attorney's fees and court costs associated with due process are often cost-prohibitive.
Of course they had something to do with it. They caused it to be there, to facilitate a DMCA takedown. The only real question is, do they have plausible deniability, or are they directly guilty?
Loser pays laws. You do not take on a civil suit unless you can win or at least your lawyers can convince you, you can win or you access the financial information of the opposition and figure out you can bankrupt them with legal costs before the case can conclude. In the interim, details of the case are published and what you are trying to hide is exposed any how. So as typical for this kind of incident all bluff and lies, they can not target the individual so they move their attack onto the forum. The best response for the individual produce their own documented web site, email a link to the company and let them fret over how many people will see it.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Because Google is a U.S. company. As I understand it, foreign entities can submit DMCA requests to Google for anything related to Google (USA).
It does raise some interesting questions, though, as many companies such as Google really are transnational in scope and activity, yet are subject to specific operating laws in various countries which have ramifications even for people not living in those countries, whether it's a DMCA request in the USA taking down content from people in Europe, or a Right to be Forgotten request removing links to US news stories about someone in France, even for US residents making web searches in the USA. It's really kind of screwed up.
"I'm rather surprised that they didn't reach for the libel laws"
They did. Mumsnet told them not to be so silly and kept the post up. Then BuildTeam sent the boys round to her place to demand she delete the post. At that point she should have told them to go fuck themselves and called the police on them for doorstepping harassment.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Checking Google reviews... Most telling is that Build Team is removing negative posts and people that say they did a bad job are routinely labeled as fakes or malcontents. Build Team states that they "hunt" people down on Google. Build Team seems surprised when projects take much longer than promised, when sub-contractors aren't working well, or when Build Team violates local ordinances. This is the worst kind of passive-aggressive PR management that I have seen. Now the real question is what other reviews and information is Google hiding from the public?
Please Build Team, don't sic your legal team on me. The comments above are entirely my own, until you backdate it and post it elsewhere. Knowing your PR strategy, you will probably report me for terrorism...
From Google reviews... (until they remove them)
(All one star reviews)
Martin Martin
Martin Martin
5 months ago-
Previous review disappeared.
Shoddy company - AVOID AVOID AVOID
Response from the ownerin the last week
This is a fake review by an individual purporting to have been a client of Build Team. We will report this to Google.
James Mcmillan
in the last week
Warning: DO NOT USE BUILDTEAM. I had one of the worst experiences with them. Very awful standard of customer service and of building. The company has many shoddy practices, and they're trying very hard to hide this from reviews. Please use someone else!
Response from the ownerin the last week
This is a fake review by an individual purporting to have been a client of Build Team. We will report this to Google.
David Murray-Thwaites
David Murray-Thwaites
a year ago
AVOID! We had a very bad experience. Build Team are well marketed but frankly awful group to deal with. Extortion is not too strong a word
Response from the ownera year ago
Build Team have not worked for this client, and having undertaken a Google search we cannot trace the individual. We have contacted Google to report the review as spam.
Great, now American law applies to foreign countries too.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Funny thing is, the Streisand Effect will most likely kick-in hard for them, especially once it made the papers there.
Seriously - a multinational corporation can put up with bad press and survive, but most smaller businesses cannot.
Given that this is a UK company, I'm rather surprised that they didn't reach for the libel laws - even if the lady was absolutely correct and true, the legal costs would have likely ruined her faster than a DMCA takedown would have.
Or instead they could do the decent thing and say sorry to hear your ceiling collapsed, hope everyone is ok, we'll come around have a look and fix it.
That way they get to be a decent company with good service, and this woman tells people about it. Sure it's not going to spread as far or fast as bad news, it never does. But when you're a dick about something everyone wants to know about it and it ends up on slashdot or some other website where way more people than ever would see it sees it.
Wanna buy a shirt?
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This law isn't being abused. It's working exactly as intended. What? You thought that the intent of the law wasn't to protect business' interests over the interests of the people?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Freedom of speech should trump* profits, but because of big-ass lobbying, it's the other way around. Gray areas default toward commercial and big-org interests in our current setup, and it should be reversed.
Perhaps the penalties for misusing copyrights to crush opinion and dissent should be made large enough to scare the big-orgs. Larger penalties would then make it worth it for lawyers to take on small cases.
As much as we dislike lawyers, they are often the only practical avenue for the little guy to fight back. Most regular folks don't have the time or knowledge to compete with big-org legal departments on their own. But big penalties will encourage lawyers to take their case.
* No candidate reference intended.
Table-ized A.I.
If you ceiling is on the floor in a wet soggy mess, proof is going to be really easy to provide. Which is why they never went straight for the civil suit but instead chose to scam their way around shutting down that forum.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The fine article explains that mumsnet refused to take the material down under the UK law. The builder then notified Google (a US company) per US law, law. Quoting the article for you:
----
Mumsnet received a warning from Google: a takedown request had been made under the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), alleging that copyrighted material was posted without a licence on the thread.
As soon as the DMCA takedown request had been filed, Google de-listed the entire thread. All 126 posts are now not discoverable when a user searches Google for BuildTeam â" or any other terms. The search company told Mumsnet it could make a counterclaim, if it was certain no infringement had taken place
---
they're dragging their own name through the mud by this. more experienced unethical builders and housing authorities simply change their business name to escape their bad reviews online.
there's an apartment complex nearby that is expensive (located across the street from a university) but looks kind of like crap. the siding is all dirty, and you can see horrible mold infestations growing in the wood under the walk-out patios on the 2nd and 3rd stories. this is in a town where every single place i've lived there has been mold infestations, even right next to campus. the town ... the entire state of michigan, really ... is just a drained swamp and wooden, dutch-style homes simply don't stand up to it very well.
well this nearby apartment complex has changed its name every year. from "Campus Hills" (with an umlaut over the u for some reason) to "Varsity" to now "Soho 700". The sign out front of "Soho 700" promises fast internet and other things among "newly renovated".
Well, I've lived here for two years and I walk by the place every night and day. There have been no trucks, no workers, no sign of any renovation occurring at all whatsoever.
Sadly here in Michigan there's no legal recourse for the students who get sucked into moving into that place and spending oodles of money on it. The Consumer Protection Agency actually makes things worse on people who complain about unethical business practices, by sending a copy of the complaint along with the complete identity, address, and phone number of the complainer to the company they're complaining about -- and then proceeding to sit on their own hands and do nothing. I've had a pretty scary experience due to the Consumer Protection Agency doxing me to a shady store.
You can't really rely on the Better Business Bureau, either. It turns out that the BBB is just a money-mill here in Michigan. You either apply to receive an endorsement from the BBB (which costs money) or you don't. There's no recourse for consumers who turn to the BBB to get things done. The BBB isn't actually in authority.
At any rate, in many U.S. states any business owner can get away with just about anything if they're willing to pay the fees and legal costs of incorporation on top of the fees and costs of obtaining a tax code, DBA and so on (which even for an LLC is several thousand dollars). Once you're incorporated, you get to enjoy a different set of laws and many of them don't even mention anything about jail or anything scary like that, just various monetary fines all in the thousands of dollars and upwards. I wouldn't be surprised if the UK's system is even worse, considering that heinous acts are kind of part and parcel with the British Empire, and power has a way of ensuring its own legacy.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
(Let's pretend this happened in US, where there's DMCA.) User knowing about counter-notice isn't enough.
Do you run any websites where the public adds content? Imagine what's involved.
You need think of every incoming DMCA notice as an ongoing project, rather than a thing that can Get Done by deleting a record. That means you are opting into something more pain-in-the-assy and expensive (both in terms of your time and technical complexity) than doing the cheapest and easiest thing.
First, you need to have content temporarily suppressed (rather than deleted) upon receiving notice. So there's a new status bit and everything that reads content needs to know to use that. Not a big deal, but it's something. (If it's a large legacy codebase, then I guess you've got an initial mini-project right here.) So I guess there's a presumption that you have the source code; you're not using some canned thing.
You need to have a way to forward DMCA notices to users, so you have to know who they are. Ok, you probably have an email address. Let's say your forward-bot doesn't get blocked by spamfilters. Fine.
The user has to provide a lot more than email address. They are going to be assuming copyright liability risk instead of you, so they have to be motivated enough to supply the required information. There is a lot more giving-a-fuck in a counter-notice than merely replying by email "hey, that comment was MINE!" You need their identity, and since most people still don't use PGP yet, email alone probably isn't going to cut it.
Let's assume the user has a fighting crusader attitude and sends back what you need, with proof of who they are (so that you're sure your ass is covered). Now you're spending time again, to forward the counter-notice to the original fraudster, and then you unset the suppressed bit on the content.
Do this right, and you've got a good system. But you just spent at least twice as much time, have a slightly more complex system, and then 99% of the time, the user never gives a counter-notice so your new process doesn't really get used often and your people are always rusty.
Are you sure you wouldn't just cut corners by having "DMCA notice means we immediately delete this stuff"? If you're sure you wouldn't cut that corner, then you're awesome. Kick ass, dude. We all love you.
But also: you're small-time and one-in-a-million.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Wow, that's some major bullshit going on there with "FACT".
* http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
I guess the take-away is that it doesn't matter if you know you are right; if the government (or business), thinks you are wrong, then they will try everything in their power (and money) to convict you.