Slashdot Mirror
Starz Goes on Twitter Meta-Censorship Spree To Cover Up TV-Show Leaks (torrentfreak.com)
American entertainment giant Starz is continuing to remove tweets that link to a TorrentFreak news report about leaked TV-shows. From a report: Last week we posted a news article documenting how several TV-show episodes had leaked online before their official release. Due to the leaks, complete seasons of unreleased TV-shows such as "The Spanish Princess," "Ramy," and "The Red Line," surfaced on pirate sites. In most cases, there were visible signs revealing that the leaks were sourced from promotional screeners. The leaks also hit Starz, as three then-unreleased episodes from its TV series "American Gods" appeared online as well. The American entertainment company was obviously not happy with that, but its response was rather unconventional.
Soon after the news was published, Starz issued a takedown request through The Social Element Agency, requesting Twitter to remove our tweet to our own article. Twitter was quick to comply and removed the tweet that supposedly infringed Starz copyrights. We disagreed. The article in question never linked to any infringing material. It did include a screenshot from a leaked episode, showing the screener watermarks, but those watermarks were central to the story, as we explained in a follow-up piece. The good news is that many legal scholars, journalists, and lawyers agree with our stance. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), for example, responded that Starz has no right to silence TorrentFreak and also shared that opinion on Twitter, where many others chimed in as well. That's when things started to spiral out of control. Starz takedown efforts only encouraged more people to share the original story about the leaks, which is a classic example of the 'Streisand Effect'. However, Starz didn't budge and issued takedown notices against those tweets as well.
Soon after the news was published, Starz issued a takedown request through The Social Element Agency, requesting Twitter to remove our tweet to our own article. Twitter was quick to comply and removed the tweet that supposedly infringed Starz copyrights. We disagreed. The article in question never linked to any infringing material. It did include a screenshot from a leaked episode, showing the screener watermarks, but those watermarks were central to the story, as we explained in a follow-up piece. The good news is that many legal scholars, journalists, and lawyers agree with our stance. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), for example, responded that Starz has no right to silence TorrentFreak and also shared that opinion on Twitter, where many others chimed in as well. That's when things started to spiral out of control. Starz takedown efforts only encouraged more people to share the original story about the leaks, which is a classic example of the 'Streisand Effect'. However, Starz didn't budge and issued takedown notices against those tweets as well.
Doesn't this Capitalist American Company have morals of their own or so... right, forget I asked.
Take the Streisand effect, and multiply it by six!
AC comments get piped to
Never seen anything made by them - they are at best an analogue to a copyright troll.
At best they are some bottom feeder distribution company who buys US rights for unpopular shows after they've ran on air to prevent them from being streamed. They just sit on these.
Anytime an episode gets leaked, simply re-edit and add a couple more minutes of footage, taking up time that would have been given to promos. Those who watched the leaked version will still have to watch the broadcast version, and it might even help sell more spots.
I wonder if this was a "leak" or if this was done intentionally as marketing. Up until this moment I wasn't aware that the show existed. Advertising costs a good amount of money, but why pay for that when you can just leak a little bit of content and then run around screaming about it in the exact kind of way that is guaranteed to draw attention to yourself?
Can the Streisand Effect be harnessed to achieve greater awareness?
There's really no reason that promotional material would be the full series or even a full episode.
Chop off the last 10 minutes of each episode so there's no value in it outside of what it is intended for: general review. The ending of an episode is the big reveal anyway that isn't supposed to be spoiled.
Not that piracy matters anyway. Fans will wait for episodes to air.
Work Safe Porn
This is a story about censorship, while Slashdot is actively deleting comments in this story that they disapprove. While the deleted comments are of low quality, it is still censorship. Moderation was created to avoid censorship and Slashdot was once a bastion of free speech. No longer, as the editors are now deleting lots of posts. It's hypocritical to be deleting comments in an article critical of the censorship of tweets, which are effectively comments. Deleting comments without a valid DMCA takedown notice was once unthinkable, but it's now commonplace on Slashdot. The editors need to come clean about why they're engaging in so much censorship.
By the way, it obviously takes quite a bit of time to go and delete all these comments. If the editors let moderation do its job and, say, directed that time toward fixing and improving the code that runs this website, Slashdot would be a much better place.
To summarize, the editors thing it's bad when Starz engages in censorship, but it's good when they do so.
Broadcast networks are in the business of selling ad time. Anything that reduces an audience, also known as the advertising audience, is not desirable.
And they already have a way of leaking upcoming shows; they are called promos.
More Slashdot lies. Takedowns are down by agencies employed by the media giants- and these agencies are paid per takedown notice. Thus 'truthiness' replaces truth (did you know it was Starz that made The Simpsons, not Fox?).
Takedown agencies are notoriously dishonest, using vague string match algorithms to determine 'infringing' material, then LYING to claim Human oversite tests these hits for validity.
NSA big Internet assets like Google and Twitter have EXPLICIT policies allowing the so-called 'victim' to be the ultimate arbiter of whether the infringement is actually real. Only when the complainant is small fry and public outrage against the abuse of takedown is massive do the NSA net giants relent. Big media can be proven 100% to be in the wrong, and twitter will still let their takedown stand.
The usual neoliberal filth will 'remind' you this is not 'censorship' since the censoring is being down by an NSA entity outside a court of Law. It is the constant Orwellian scream of the warmongering Clinton/Obama loving neolibs that corporate censorship ain't 'censorship' no matter how large a percentage of public space these corporations control.
Of course these vile NSA entities all follow warmongering weaponised-SJW neolib agendas, so of course the neolibs defend them.
Anyway Starz itself would not issue complaints against these tweets, but sheds no tears when the criminals it employs do so on its behalf.
Didn't think so
The one studio whose content remained stubbornly in poor quality SD on Netflix long after everyone else had moved over to HD.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Since when are comments deleted? Last I checked, only one comment had ever been deleted from Slashdot, and that was in response to a formal notice of claimed infringement from Religious Technology Center, the publishing arm of Scientology. (This is the same sort of notice that the agency retained by Starz has been sending to Twitter.) Unless I'm missing something fundamental, most comments you claim are "deleted" have only been moderated down to score -1. As long as Slashdot isn't in "offline mode" due to server overload, you can change the score threshold if you want to read everything, including the Score:-1 comments.
Your legal stance on your screenshot will be your downfall. All the studio has to do is to never actually release those episodes, then you're completely fucked.
I'm on the side of the studio here. You should not have that 'screenshot' no matter what as it's not been 'released'. The promo screeners were to select people, which you were not part of.
Torrent is GAUCHE.
Thank goodness the EFF is there to protect us from STARZ..because banning entire authors' works and personages from Amazon ala the Hollywood Blacklists of the 50s and the systematic removal of speakers and entire POV from universities and social media is, as we learn from EFF's deafening silence on those events, nothing to worry about.
But STARZ TV ...trash?? Man the ramparts EFF!!!
I have a reason to create a twitter account.
It's not your soapbox. It's not your printing press.
Dude, you need to adjust your meds.
Starz and Twitter hate journalism. Starz and Twitter hate free press. Starz and Twitter censor content, not due to copyright infringement, but rather because it makes them look bad. F*ck Starz. F*ck Twitter.
File a counter notice
You're implying that Twitter has morals to sell?
Please provide evidence of this exceptional claim.
The good news is that many legal scholars, journalists, and lawyers agree with our stance. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), for example, responded that Starz has no right to silence TorrentFreak
Twitter can take down anything they like, independent of what the EFF et al. say. Maybe Starz advertises on Twitter. Maybe Twitter just thinks that annoying Stars will cause them more trouble than complying with their request. TorrentFreak is not silenced and is free to speak out in many other ways, just as Twitter is free to control content on their own platform. There's no law that platforms have to dishonour take-down requests because they're invalid.