Bogus copyright and trademark complaints: EFF’s Hall Of Shame | Hacker News Reader

Bogus copyright and trademark complaints: EFF’s Hall Of Shame

eff.org

91 pointsumaar21 comments

I'd like to mention the most obvious abuse of copyright I've ever seen. It was featured in EFF's hall of shame back in January: https://www.eff.org/takedowns/ten-hours-static-gets-five-cop...

Long story short, a YouTube channel got five copyright notices on a 10 hour video featuring nothing but white noise.

It was also the story that kind of influenced EFF to re-introduce Takedown Hall of Shame: https://twitter.com/EFF/status/971541783380242433

And, finally, a link to the tweet that started this whole story by the uploader of the video: https://twitter.com/littlescale/status/949032404206870528

My channel was given a notice from Nintendo and I appealed it agreeing to go to court. They disputed and re-filed the claim multiple times and said I lost the claim after appeal.

The video was of me downloading via Github a NES emulator that someone wrote in less than 1000 lines of C++ not even minified or anything. It worked too and had many features. I made the video to show the developer a bug with the sound. None of the sound even played correctly which was the entire premise of the video itself. You could barely make out the tune of the original Zelda game even if you knew it, let alone enjoy it with all the random static, pops and clicks.

I was actually excited to make a series of videos showing me doing emulation from the ground up so that more could enjoy the hobby and teach people how emulators aren't always complicated black boxes of magic, but upon losing the appeal over the course of 2 months on my FIRST upload I gave up since it would have taken me hours to manage this for every video when I wasn't expecting to make anything from it.

Also Nintendo attempts to essentially bribe you saying they will make it all go away is you give them 60% ownership and sign their partner agreement. I declined, and they later said I violated the partner agreement I never accepted in the YouTube dispute.

Nintendo is trash in my book now.

Wait. So did you go to court or not?

No. I had to sign an affidavit as part of the appeal after Nintendo appealed saying I was willing to go to court and that YouTube was going to end their involvement in the dispute if it continued then the next email I received was saying I had lost my dispute and I could start the process over again for a third time. At that point I started considering the reality of doing this with every video and decided to cut my losses since it would never scale.

YouTube's content takedown/appeal process is both Kafkaesque and completely rigged in favor of large businesses. Even/especially when they claim content that they don't own.

And all thanks to the DMCA! I hate that law with a fiery passion.

> Nintendo is trash in my book now.

I just purchased a New 2DSXL (for Rhythm Core Alpha 2). I had to return it twice because the first two units I received were dead on arrival. Power lights but no sound and no screens.

Had it worked you could have played games on the virtual console via emulation, but when I do it they cast lawyers on me.

Organized Streisand Effect. I love it!

Might have this as a regular submission, for extra amplification.

They could link to the censored object in question in the articles. For example, in this [1] report they mention that the tweet was reinstated, but they never link to it. After some searching, I eventually found it here [2]

[1] https://www.eff.org/takedowns/critic-uses-dmca-avoid-critici...

[2] https://twitter.com/PhoxelHQ/status/991790495088173056

Unfortunately What Can We Do Worse? the Time Warner customer service parody on this list seems to be down http://twccustomerservice.com and https://www.eff.org/takedowns/what-can-time-warner-cable-do-...

Perhaps the listing of it here can help it get back up. ..

TWC took (or more likely, just threatened) legal action and now owns that domain. It's not coming back up.

I wonder how long it'll take before someone tries to takedown this page ;-)

I wish good luck to someone trying to DMCA the EFF...

I don't understand; is stealing Bethesda's artwork for the Fallout series meant to be ironic?

The "Bethesda artwork" that's a commonly used TV test pattern, in the public domain, designed in the 30s?

That one specifically is just a Photoshop'd Fallout "Please Stand By" test card:

Bethesda 'original': https://www.theworkprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/plea...

EFF 'version': https://www.eff.org/files/2017/08/01/no-downtime-1.jpg

Those look like their both from the same test card pattern, but not the same image of that test card. The paper grain/noise looks different between the two.

RCA original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian-head_test_pattern

Not searchable by name. There's a description like "video game developer says he won't take down had reviews but does" but you'd presumably have to watch the linked-to video to find out who.

I guess this is for legal reasons. "Hey, we didn't mention anyone". Means that the page needs to be monitored for dead links when the videos/articles get taken down.

The hyperlinks are not to videos. You might try actually following one.

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