Universal asks Google to take down 127.0.0.1 for piracy
chillingeffects.org
chillingeffects.org
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9931404
TLDR; there is a sharing program which installs web service on localhost:4001 that handles sort of magnet links
If DMCA claims were expensive, companies would bother requesting takedown for the most profitable movies/albums/games only and they wouldn't go on autopilot, claiming whatever they think might infringe their copyrights. But then the garage bands and individual artists/musicians would be left out of the game completely, they couldn't use DMCA to take down their music.
On the other hand, how do you prove you are the author unless you have lots of money for lawyers? If you say "I composed this song at home, and published it under CC licensing" and MAFIAA say they represent the copyright holder, is it not clear who owns what?
If there was a digital notary service where you could digitally sign and timestamp a file, that might help a bit. But the downside is that people could take public domain works or someone's un-notarized works, claim ownership, have it stamped and they would begin to hold a stronger position pretending to be the author.
I think this is somehow similar to how indigenous people wondered how the white man could possibly think of owning forests, rivers, and land. They considered Earth unownable, not belonging to anyone but rather people belonging to the Earth. Similarly, natives to the digital world wonder how somebody could possibly think of owning bits, numbers, and copyable files.
And in the case above you'd have to sue the party claiming to have copyright on your creation but that's optional.
But if somebody sent a take-down request for my work, and it happened because they had sent a million take-down requests to everything on the internet matching a string search, then I would begrudge them and seek to penalize them. They would have done so KNOWING that a huge percentage of them would be wrong, but deeming it acceptable since it's no cost to them.
Edit: here's a snopes article regarding "poor man's copyright" with a few links to sources/more information: http://www.snopes.com/legal/postmark.asp
But an envelope could be circumvented easily.. Mail yourself an unopen envelope, then put whatever you want inside it later and seal it?
The Bitcoin block chain might fit this need. There are already multiple[1] services[2] out there[3] doing block chain notary.
[1] http://www.proofofexistence.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENotary
Electronic notarization is a process whereby a notary affixes an electronic signature and notary seal using a secure Public key to an electronic document (such as a PDF or Word document). Once affixed to the electronic document, the document is rendered tamper evident such that unauthorized attempts to alter the document will be evident to relying parties.[1] The e-notary will use cryptography and Public key infrastructure to create, manage, distribute, use, store, and revoke the digital certificate. The Electronic Notary also must keep an electronic register of each act performed.
A) North America has no indigenous people. B) The people who did live here when the Europeans arrived did have ownership and private property. Sometimes owned by families and sometimes by tribes. And anyone who has even a basic high school education should be aware of the fact that there were Native American nations who controlled and owned territory and would exclude other nations from land use, hunting rights, fishing, etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Am...
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/indigenous
Thought I suppose it depends on if you want the word to mean what it means or if you want to use it for some other meaning.
Followed, of course, by a file sharing service set up on tribal land.
If they can carve out an exemption for casinos, why not copyright? (I am not a lawyer, and am not interested in hearing about why this could or couldn't be done... I'm just fantasizing)
Federal laws, such as copyright, drugs, etc still apply.
Now that's not so funny.
And to answer your question, it's only perjury if it is a deliberate misstatement - which WB will argue this isn't.
More specifically, the lawyers whose name is attached claimed that under his best powers, the claims are known to be true. However, he knows the error rate of WB bots is above that human workers would produce parsing the same content. They fail to do an additional check on the machine parsed lists (or they'd remove many of these embarrassing links).
But they did sign, under penalty of perjury, that they did.
All they have to certify under penalty of perjury is that they own the copyright to the works they claim have been infringed. They do not have to certify that the works identified are the works they claim to own.
Read that again if it doesn't make sense, the only part that they need to certify is that "I own XYZ", it's up to the parties responding to certify that "I'm not sharing XYZ, I'm sharing my Original Content PQR." Or whatever other affirmative defense they can muster.
The law is built to recognize three parties: 1) accuser, or, party owning copyright to a work; 2) respondent, or, the person accused of violating that copyright; 3) safe-haven, or, let's say YouTube, who facilitates this transaction by responding to accuser's claim with an immediate takedown, to avoid any culpability for respondent's potential infringing action.
Then respondent submits their defense after a period of time elapses, and finally YouTube seeing the defense can optionally restore the service for the accused person until a court order says they were infringing.
The law is designed to make the job of respondent harder than the job of accuser, since they are the one accused they should obviously have to take steps to prove their innocence </s>.
The only thing that accuser has to certify is that they own a copyrighted work.
If YouTube has the desire to take on some extra liability, they can reject obviously incorrect take-down requests, and if they are ever wrong, they get the luxury of potentially losing their safe-haven status and being lumped in with accused party #2 when the lawsuit goes on to the inside of a court room.
If the court decides the take-down request was reasonable and accurate, but YouTube did not take appropriate steps to honor it or respondent lied in the response, one or both of these parties can suffer the penalties (and potentially perjury charges for their bad-faith responses claiming non-infringement.)
While it's not under perjury, WB is lying when they say they have a good faith belief in their notices, and the people damaged by them should sue the person who signed the notice for fraud or tortious interference, since the filing of the bad faith notice improperly interfered with your contracts with the complained to party.
The use of automated systems with no oversight is not a reasonable basis for the formation of a belief, and thus since WB is using that to base their beliefs on, they're not made in good faith -- they're intentionally trying to skirt that requirement because they want to externalize their costs.
I suggests suing the lawyer directly for his part in the conspiracy, since lying in legal notices isn't a (legal) duty he can fulfill for the company, so they're individually liable for their actions.
> has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized
What doesn't this line say? It doesn't say that the material identified by the request is known in fact to be exactly the thing mentioned here as the "material" the copyright owner has not authorized the use of.
They only have to certify that they own some material and its use in the manner complained of is not authorized. This is a gaping loop-hole and it has been known since the law was penned. If you think my reading of this is obtuse, I don't think we can resolve it here between the two of us, but I did not make up this interpretation.
For various political reasons, the parties with standing are either too poor or have various incentives to cooperate with WB, and so we don't see how these arguments actually play out in courtrooms -- we just end up with a de facto system that favors big players.
This is frustrating, because people buy in to the argument that the law is the problem, when really, it's the politics of corporations that cause the problems surrounding takedowns, and that's the issue we should be addressing our energy towards. (Were, for instance, Google to have the opposite incentives for some reason, again, it wouldn't matter what the law said, the de facto system would tilt the other way.)
I don't think we actually disagree on that point, and I think I articulated it poorly the first time.
WB can not argue that the 'chance' of 127.0.0.1 hosting copyrighted content is anything but non-zero. This means that sending out take down notices regarding 127.0.0.1 are nonsense (i.e. deliberate misstatement).
I stopped pirating music since Spotify came along - the price is right and the selection is good enough to keep me engaged for several lifetimes. There is no such thing for movies.
Maybe iTunes, but I'm not willing to pay their price and the selection is far from complete.
So instead of paying lawers and acting like clowns, these guys should invest in a startup which is the Spotify for movies without all the jurisdictional limitations that usually come with such services, because their lawyers are busy fishing pirates on 127.0.0.1...
Besides, these services usually let you watch a movie months after it has been released, wereas you can usually see the movie on torrents the day they're out, often in HD quality.
A service which does the same legally has my $20 every month.
Why aren't they submitting DMCAs to the places actually hosting the files?
https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/search?utf8=%E2%9C%9...
EDIT: Also, Universal's been doing it LOTS of times before too (via above link).
The lawyer sending these automated DMCA searches tagged their own computer, implying they were pirating the movie.
That's hilarious if it's true.