Movie Pirates flourish on Youtube
YouTube has always been a conduit for online movie and music piracy. Some copyright infringement...
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Tag: dmca
Google Drive remains a haven for movie piracy
Google ignores DMCA safe harbor requirements Writing about online piracy and Google is a bit like...
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Twitter sidesteps DMCA law ignoring notices sent via email
As many of you know all too well, successfully removing your pirated work from online sites is a...
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U.S. companies help piracy websites evade the law
U.S. based companies assist pirate websites by providing cover for their illegal piracy business while pocketing their own dirty money in the process.
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EU Moves Copyright into 21st Century while USA prefers to remain in the 20th
Unlike their counterparts in the U.S. who seem content with a creaky DMCA law more than 2 decades old, members of the European Council passed a directive to move copyright law into the digital age:
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Lumen database news
UPDATE: It seems that Lumen database has finally acknowledged that there is an issue and seen the light. Its operators have announced an important change, limiting access to actual infringing links. Per Torrent Freak:
In a nutshell, takedown notices presented in Lumen’s database will no longer list the precise URLs targeted by copyright holders. Instead, as the image below illustrates, the notices only list how many URLs were targeted at specific domains.
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Piracy’s scofflaws – All roads lead through Cloudflare?
The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) was signed into law nearly 20 years ago….yet here we are today, same old tired law but with an online ecosystem vastly different from what existed 2 decades ago. Despite this, no one in Congress seems in any great hurry to update law and as they drag their feet, creative artists continue to pay the price.
For creators trying to safeguard their work from online theft this leaves them with only one option, the DMCA takedown notice. This antiquated process works ok in very limited instances, but for most filmmakers (and musicians) dealing with a large volume of infringements, it’s like using an umbrella to stay dry beneath Niagara Falls. Not only is it inadequate, but the truth is– it’s a joke. Why? Because the DMCA’s safe harbor provision provides loopholes allowing many of tech’s piracy enablers–U.S. based companies play a significant role in allowing pirates entrepreneurs to pimp their stolen content across the globe–to sidestep any legal liability and happily accept the tainted profits filling their cash drawers.
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Update to Digital Millennium Copyright Act Long Overdue
Momentum is building for changes to the DMCA that will better protect creators
Content creators from all walks of life are coalescing around the need to update copyright law to protect their work against theft in digital age. A piece in yesterday’s NY Times, Music World Bands Together Against YouTube, Seeking Change to Law, is the latest to highlight growing calls by the creative community to update a woefully antiquated Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.
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More Google DMCA misdirection…refusing takedown requests for Blogger sites with custom domains
Hop aboard for another spin on Google’s DMCA Merry-Go-Round
It’s not news that Google-hosted Blogger websites are a favorite storefront for online pirates. It’s also not news that Google does its best to obstruct DMCA takedowns by setting up various roadblocks along the way. Today I discovered yet another example of just how difficult Google makes the DMCA process–this time with Blogger-hosted sites that use custom domain names.
When you create a blog using Blogger you’re given a domain that ends in blogspot.com. However users are free to use a custom domain name instead. That’s all well and good, unless the website distributes pirated content. In that case, if you’re a creator trying to get your pirated content removed (by Google), you’re likely to run into problems.
Usually, when one of these pirate entrepreneurs creates a site on blogspot.com a rightsholder can send a DMCA by using Google’s annoying web form (or annoy them by sending an email: dmca-agent@google.com). However, if you use the same DMCA form to report a blogger-hosted site with a custom domain, Google won’t remove it. They’ll just send you back to the beginning.
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Google-funded study on copyright takedowns drops the ball
Google-funded report generates desired headlines and conveniently downplays the role of DMCA counter-notices–ignoring fact the system is weighted against rights holders
A new report on the DMCA notice and takedown system, Notice and Takedown in Everyday Practice, was released yesterday. Co-authored by researchers at Berkeley Law and Columbia University (collaborators for The Takedown Project), the release is clearly timed to generate buzz to coincide with the April 1st deadline for comments to the U.S. Copyright Office on the state of the 512 statute.
The study is said to offer, “a rare, in-depth, empirical look at ways online copyright disputes are handled between Internet companies, such as Google and YouTube, and content creators, such as movie, music, and publishing companies.” Hmmm, color me a tad suspicious of any piracy-related report funded by Google*.
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Google really, really doesn’t like you to send DMCA requests via email
The Google team doesn’t seem to appreciate email as a form of communication
I’ve written about Google’s laborious and time-consuming DMCA takedown maze, a process that forces creators to find, then fill out cumbersome online forms. I’ve also written about the fact that Google makes it difficult, if not impossible, to find the email address for its DMCA Agent–in apparent violation of the law’s requirements.
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Why does Google make it so damn difficult to send a DMCA notice?
Google sets up roadblocks at every step of the DMCA process, doesn’t provide DMCA agent’s email address, and requires senders to login to a Google account
As the U.S. Copyright Office solicits public comments for its study to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of the safe harbor provisions contained in section 512 of the (DMCA) Digital Millennium Copyright Act it’s worth examining how Google–the Sugar Daddy of pirate purveyors– openly skirts the law to obstruct the process at every turn.
Of course Google would have you believe it’s the victim when it comes to enforcing the DMCA. Its flacks regularly bleat about the millions of DMCA notices the company processes each week–a small price for profiting (indirectly) off the lucrative myriad of online exchanges it provides for pirated content. As I’ve written before, Google’s millions of takedowns is a “mess of its own making.”
