Warner Bros Issues Takedown For Own Website (bbc.co.uk)

An anonymous reader writes: In a case of sloppy automation run amok, Warner Bros' copyright enforcement contractor -- Vobile -- issued takedown notices for legitimate distributors and Warner Bros' own website, according to the BBC. It also asked the search giant to remove links to legitimate movie streaming websites run by Amazon and Sky, as well as Amazon-owned film database IMDB. Fortunately for them, Google chose to cut them a break and ignore those requests.

Comments

Re: That's not how it works.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they do. They can choose not to comply with the notice, with risk of lawsuit and penalties, which in this case wouldnt happen since WB is probably thankful, and anyway if they also had automated trial lawyers and sued, they would be hard pressed to show they suffered damages as a result of Google not taking down their own content, which they have control over and could have taken down themselves.

Re:What about perjury?

[ganjadude]

I could have sworn that DMCA has a clause where if you abuse it you owe a fine

how come i have not seen one single time that fine has actually been applied???

also, google SHOULD have taken down those sites, just to prove a point

This is where automation can go seriously wrong

[blindseer]

We have computers trying to be lawyers now. Law is one part of society with so much nuance that it is very difficult to write it into any set code. This is why we have a court system, because legal code is something we must interpret with intention.

I am reminded of automated speeding tickets being issued and how they've gone wrong. In nearly every case the city responsible (because it's almost always a city that does this) will swear in a court of law that every ticket was reviewed but a sworn officer before being issued. When challenged it becomes obvious they weren't.

So now we have automated DCMA notices going out and obviously no one bothered to verify them before going out, or the person doing the review was not suited for doing the review. Here is a case of one large corporate entity going to battle with another large corporate entity and the problem seems to disappear, right?

When elephants battle it's always the grass that loses.