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

What about perjury?

[itsme1234]

Isn't there some penalty (preferably disproportionately large to discourage such behavior) for trying to take down what shouldn't be taken down?

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

Re:What about perjury?

[Cajun Hell]

Isn't there some penalty .. for trying to take down what shouldn't be taken down?

Nope. There isn't. That's one of peoples' objections to how DCMA works: it wasn't realized back in 1997 that millions of bogus, negligent, bad-faith or frivolous DMCA notices could simply be spammed without any consequences for the attackers.

You might be thinking of the part of DMCA which says it's perjury to misrepresent your ownership of a copyrighted work.

Let's say I don't hold the copyright on Hogan's Heroes, and I send a DMCA notice about your Cowboy Bebop fan page, claiming you are infringing my [fake] Hogan's Heroes copyright. That's perjury, per DMCA.

But nobody does that. As long as you hold the copyright to something, and claim that is what is infringed, you're safe.

Let's say I do hold the copyright on Hogan's Heroes and I send a DMCA notice about your Cowboy Bebop fanpage (and your Ride the Lightning lyrics page) (and your game walk-through) (and your Scientology OT III tuition invoice) (and a poem you wrote when you were 12 years old), claiming you are infringing my Hogan's Heroes copyright. Consequences: none. I can be as wrong as I want about whether or not you're infringing, but as long I have the copyright on the work I'm incorrectly claiming to be infringed (Hogan's Heroes), there's no perjury.

Re:What about perjury?

[mark-t]

I thought it was established long ago that disproportionately large penalties don't actually discourage people from breaking the law. Isn't that the foundation of the argument against insanely high penalties for media piracy?

Re: What about perjury?

[tysonedwards]

They did abuse it, against themselves, and I hear they agreed to a settlement with the wronged parties to make them whole, and that appropriate steps will be taken to avoid inflicting further damages against themselves. Considering that corporations are people, attempted self harm is taken very seriously. Thankfully they already have an on-site Looney Bin.

Re:What about perjury?

[Luthair]

The DMCA is very unlikely to have anything to do with these as Google is not hosting the content so are not subject to takedown requests. This was one of those side things Google added to appease content holders.

Re:What about perjury?

[squiggleslash]

Because that's not true. It was assumed it wouldn't be abused because DMCA notice filers have to submit a signed affidavit claiming they're a legitimate representative of the copyright holder. Technically, filing an affidavit in bad faith is contempt of court. In practice, that's almost impossible to prove, especially when it comes to automated takedowns.

Re:What about perjury?

[davester666]

Yes, Google failing to take down the links makes Google legally vulnerable to being included with copyright infringement. And for them to pick and choose which DMCA requests to follow could open a big can of worms for them w.r.t. Safe Harbor provisions...

Re:What about perjury?

[Xenographic]

Yes, but it doesn't help much. Here's why.

Suppose for a moment that I own the copyright to Mickey Mouse and I issue a takedown for Itchy & Scratchy, claiming it infringes upon Mickey Mouse. That's bogus... but all I had to swear under penalty of perjury is that I either own or represent the people who actually own Mickey Mouse. The fact that the other work is simply not infringing doesn't even enter into it. Conversely, if I falsely claim to own a copyright and use that as the basis of a takedown request, for example by claiming to own or represent the owners of Mickey Mouse, then I have committed perjury.

So yeah, the law doesn't have much in the way of penalties for people who file utterly bogus takedown requests. In theory, if you drag them to court, they might get in trouble with a judge for lacking a good faith belief in the merits of their request, but you're most likely not going to get very much out of this so it really isn't worth it and it doesn't get punished like it should.

This isn't the first or the last bogus request to be filed. They're sending piles of nonsense out every day and we only notice the hilariously bad ones.

Re:What about perjury?

[Cajun Hell]

No, they are not legally required to. DMCA does not require that.

By failing to take down, they merely become potentially liable for whatever infringement may have occurred (which happens be none, in this case). Complying with the DMCA takedown notice procedure is a means of avoiding such potential liability.

If they're sure there was no infringement, and also if they're sure that Warner Bros' isn't going to sue in spite of the lack of infringement (because even winning in court, can be expensive), then this is a reasonable safe decision.

If they were less sure (e.g. if it were your video instead of Warner Bros') then they would take it down. Not because they're required to (they're not) but because they'd want to not be party for any resulting lawsuit between the other two parties (e.g. you and Warner Bros).

Re:What about perjury?

[Kjella]

Isn't there some penalty .. for trying to take down what shouldn't be taken down?

Nope. There isn't. (...) Let's say I do hold the copyright on Hogan's Heroes and I send a DMCA notice about your Cowboy Bebop fanpage (and your Ride the Lightning lyrics page) (and your game walk-through) (and your Scientology OT III tuition invoice) (and a poem you wrote when you were 12 years old), claiming you are infringing my Hogan's Heroes copyright. Consequences: none.

Actually if you ran some kind of targeted attack trying to harass someone there are penalties if you "knowingly materially misrepresents" infringing activity, even if you own the copyright. It doesn't cover accidental or reckless notices by a bot though, so ignorance is bliss.

Re:What about perjury?

[mysidia]

No. DMCA puts the onus on the accused to proof her innocense.

You just need to file a counternotice; you don't have to prove anything, but the problem is the damage is already done by the time your hosting provider processes your counter-notice. Your provider might choose not to put your site back online, Or if they're GoDaddy, they're likely bill you a $199 Administrative fee before your domain can be turned back on (Or transferred to a different registrar).

Re:What about perjury?

[dbIII]

Nope. There isn't. That's one of peoples' objections to how DCMA works: it wasn't realized back in 1997 that millions of bogus, negligent, bad-faith or frivolous DMCA notices could simply be spammed without any consequences for the attackers.

It was realized but it was pretended that the perjury clause would stop it and that anyone who disputed that it would not was just a foaming at the mouth geek software pirate. Some of the early stories on this site were about it.

remove wb

[Anonymous Coward]

Google should have removed WarnerBros from all search results as requested.

Re:remove wb

[mikeiver1]

100% agreed. Furthermore they should have been required to provide proof and go through the very same BS that anyone else must endure to get their content back on line. Just like you or I would when they issue fraudulent take down notices and hose valid content that they have absolutely no rights to.

How it often happens

[Tablizer]

Boss: "Take down those damned thieves now!"

Grunt: "But sir, they are..."

Boss: "Don't give me flack, takem down!"

Grunt: "Yes, sir."

That's not how it works.

[fahrbot-bot]

Fortunately for them, Google chose to cut them a break and ignore those requests.

Pretty sure Google doesn't get to pick and choose. They should have complied and make WB follow the process to get things restored -- like the rest of us would have had to do. No pain, no gain.

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.

Why did they "cut them a break"?

[slacka]

I don't know how much valid information has been wrongfully censored, but when I was doing school research for a movie, I noticed that some of my results had been blocked. So I followed the 'Chilling Effects' link and there was relevant, non-infringing content that had been blocked there. I was angry enough to start to file a counter complaint only to get stonewalled because I wasn't the original copyright holder.

The system is broken. The only fix is higher penalties and lower bar for enforcement on invalid DMCA requests.

Re:Why did they "cut them a break"?

[innocent_white_lamb]

The difference is that there are currently no penalties at all for filing a false dmca takedown. Even a small penalty would provide an incentive to fix that portion of the system; ten dollars per invalid notice adds up when you send out a hundred thousand invalid notices.l

Re:Why did they "cut them a break"?

[Voyager529]

You misunderstand my question.... I was asking why heavier penalties for false DMCA takedowns would make any difference when anytime high penalties for piracy are ever talked about around here, someone usually brings up the point that higher penalties for crimes is not an effective preventative.

Lemme break it down...

Suppose that I, Voyager529, were to download a copy of Fantastic Voyage, and that I was one of a million people to do so. Suppose I was stupid enough to leave a nobody-doubts-it evidence trail that I personally committed that specific act of copyright infringement. It goes to court, the judge decides to make an example out of me and give me a $150,000 fine for my misdoing. My current socioeconomic status is such that a $150,000 fine would basically be life ruining. Whether it was $150K or $150M, I'm screwed for life; the fact that there's a few orders of magnitude difference between those two numbers is inconsequential. I downloaded the film figuring that I wouldn't get caught, but since I did, I'm screwed. 20th Century Fox can try to file a few more lawsuits, but since I had the most clear paper trail available and the case was the easiest to win for them, even if they went down the line to the next 5-10 people who were similarly easy to successfully sue, any one person would have less than a 0.01% chance of being a target. Increasing the fines to "ruin the defendant's life even more" isn't going to be much more of a deterrent.

By contrast, 20th Century Fox sends a DMCA notice for Fantastic Voyage to one million random Youtube videos. that guy smoking a pipe? infringer. Pewpewdie? Infringer. Jenna Marbles? Infringer. Justin Bieber music video? Infringer. One guy who did, in fact, upload a ten second clip from the film? Infringer. Rinse and repeat a million more times, except that last one. 20th Century Fox has spent a few hundred dollars sending out those mostly-automated takedown notices. Google treats all million of those takedown notices equally, which takes weeks to sort out. The one guy with the ten second clip gets hit with an infringement suit. He loses and the judge says the defendant has to pay $10,000. 20th Century Fox says "oops" 999,999 times and made thousands of dollars on the one guy, meaning that there is incentive to basically treat DMCA takedowns like phishing e-mails - send 'em out, see who bites, and the cost of being wrong is $0.

Now, the GP says that $10 per invalid notice is a reasonable number. I'd personally make that $100 plus any expense incurred fighting the invalid notice (including down time, lost wages, etc.), but we'll keep the math simple and stick to ten bucks per 'oops'. Same scenario as above: one million takedowns sent, one technically-not-valid-but-judge-says-so $10,000 ruling. 20th Century Fox isn't making a few grand, they're paying $9,999,990. Even if they got ten times the maximum $150,000 penalty, it's still a losing proposition by millions of dollars.

tl;dr: The fines for infringement are extremely high, but the enforcement rate is very low. Increasing the fine without increasing enforcement isn't going to change things much for the unlucky person, but giving copyright holders a disincentive for sending out massive numbers of DMCA takedowns is clearly a requirement as a result of its abuse.

NO

[maugle]

Google should absolutely not "choose to cut them a break".

This is one of the biggest problems of the takedown system: the big boys get their own special set of rules and are insulated from the fallout of the horrible systems they put into use, while everyone else has to deal with the massive collateral damage of these out-of-control takedown bots. The only way it will stop is if Google stops shielding these companies from their own stupid decisions.

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.

Re:Depends on what "should" means

[Anonymous Coward]

"should" == Obey the law.

Apparently you don't understand that this isn't about google deciding what is best for their search results. There are many examples of abusive takedown requests, among them some big media company issuing a takedown against an original works owner because the media company borrowed or licensed the work. Imagine a TV show with "look what we found on youtube" who then issues a takedown against the youtube video because it 'violates' the copyright of the TV show. And the hosting company takes down the video because that's the process, doesn't matter if it's unfair to the victims of false accusations.

And some hosting companies have a 'strike' system where the victim is locked out of the service after a certain number of accusations (like 3 or 10) even if those are counterclaimed or provably false. Imagine if anyone in town only had to send police 10 pictures of your car with an accusation that it's a stolen car (despite the car being provably yours) to have your drivers license revoked. Then imagine if this system didn't apply to the police chief's friends (even though they're the ones sending out the false claims) because gee we'd had to have wrong results, so as long as the friends don't complain it's good right?

The post you replied to is saying if Google is following the law in most cases, they should follow the law in this case also, even though the victim happens to basically be the false accuser in other cases.

eBay

[xlsior]

Typical - the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

Back in the day when I worked for a web hosting provider, ebay once put in a take-down request with us for one of their own subsidiaries (co-op advertising program, their own on-site documentation had countless links to the site in question).

The best part of that was that in their take-down demand letter they claimed that they had already reported them(selves) to the FBI for being scammers.

I thought more along the lines of...

[pinzvidz]

...sufferin succotash.

BBC: "Warner Brothers has yet to comment."

[tlambert]

BBC: "Warner Brothers has yet to comment."

Are you blind?!?

It's right there, in the press release on their website!

Oh. Wait. Never mind.

google should have done the takedown

[roc97007]

The problem with cutting Warner a break is that no lessons were learned.