File Hosting Service Hotfile Sues Warner Bros. For Copyright Fraud and Abuse
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
Despite all that it's nice to see someone stand up to the content czars.
And anyway, they provide a valuable service: illegal file sharing using only Google and HTTP. I've long since abandoned networks like gnutella, edonkey, bittorrent, etc in favor of a good blog search engine and file-downloading sites. Similarly there's hundreds of streaming video sites to watch TV series on without the need to download. I can ignore an ad here or there for the convenience of pirating media from any web browser in the world.
It seems a little unclear from the post.
wow... I thought they were focused on removing the 1-click-hosting-sites, but no, those sites are actually means of driving revenues.
This is really bizarre. Hotfile might technically be right in suing Warner Bros. for pulling content they don't own the rights to, but it's not as if Hotfile had a legitimate claim to having those files on its servers. Those files are copyrighted by someone, and surely the real rights holders would want their intellectual property removed from Hotfile if they knew about it. And now that Hotfile admits knowledge of these files, aren't they compelled to remove them anyway?
[edit]
Perhaps I should have said ironic instead of bizarre. I don't disagree that there's a legal case here.
(...) and surely the real rights holders would want their intellectual property removed from Hotfile if they knew about it.
You don't know if the uploader of the books has license to publish them, and you cannot act under assumption they lack one.
I was questioning the assumption that because they use the law this way they are necessarily bothered one way or the other about the laws and regulations as they apply in contexts other than this one.
Behind WB's ham-fisted tactics may well be conflict of interests: if WB are to distribute multimedia themselves, they sure would consider Hotfile competitors and want to slow them down.
"The software publisher that uploaded the file used Hotfile.com as a means for distribution of its open source software. Warner was not authorized by the software publisher to delete the file"
1. It was an automated script from Warner Bros responsible for the abuse of the taketown tool and filing requests for content they don't hold the copyright to.
2. The taketown tool built by Hotfile doesn't require any sort of manual review from any human before the file is taken down.
edit: by "odd" I mean "unexpected"
"I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner, of the copyright(s) that is(are) allegedly infringed by the aforementioned content."
That doesn't include any exceptions for "my automated script screwed up" or "we didn't check carefully enough", nor should it.
Is this for real, or is this just a lawyerly, overly cautious opinion? Are there cases where this has happened? Does the DMCA itself have wording to this effect?
Basically, as soon as you take responsibility for any of the user-generated content, you can be held liable for all of it. Either you're responsible for the content on your servers or you're not, you can't really pick and choose.
Keep the automatic "take down" (which should be flipping a bit in your database that hides the content) and flag the replacement content for human review. Without a thumbs up from the human, WB gets no referral link.
P.S. The human reviewer really can't put things back up even if they notice it's Linux kernel source code. That puts Hotfile back in the legal hot seat.
Likewise, anyone who instructed that this be done or was otherwise responsible for the conduct of those people should be treated the same as someone who had told an employee to lie under oath in court.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but there doesn't seem to be any scope for interpretation here at all. I think that was rather the point of requiring that declaration as part of the DMCA.