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Universal Music Uses Bogus DMCA Claim To Take Down Negative Review Of Drake's Album
from the free-speech? dept
We keep talking about how the DMCA takedown process, all too frequently, is used to stifle speech, and defenders of the system claim that it's ridiculous to bring up the First Amendment in a discussion on copyright. But here's yet another (in a very long list) of examples. Henry Adaso wrote a short, but marginally negative review of Drake's album Take Care. The review was posted to About.com last November. The entire review reads:
Either way, both of those links are gone from Google's search. Why? Because just as someone filed a bogus DMCA to take down one of our key SOPA posts, Universal Music, via the BPI (British RIAA) filed a DMCA notice with Google claiming that both of those pages were infringing. That's clearly a false takedown, and pretty clearly designed to stifle a negative review.
Adaso discusses all of this in his own blog post, in which he suggests that perhaps Universal and BMI are purposely trying to take down negative reviews, though it's equally likely that they're just incredibly incompetent. Still, whether incompetence or malice, it's clear that the DMCA is being used to censor and stifle speech, and in this case it just so happens to be speech in the form of a negative review of a Universal Music Artist (a Universal Music artist who has also expressed displeasure with how Universal has used copyright law against his own best interests).
But, no, there's no free speech concerns around the DMCA, right?
Drake - 'Take Care'Not particularly positive, but not particularly scathing either. He also posted another post on About.com that merely pointed to that review, but included no additional content other than that he wrote a 50-word review.
A briefly entertaining, occasionally ponderous, sometimes lazy, sometimes brilliant, slow-rolling, rap-singy, bulls-eye missing, kitten-friendly, runway-ready, mega corny, lip-smacking, self-conscious, self-correcting, self-indulging, finely tuned, Houston infatuated, crowd pleasing, delightfully weird, emotionally raw, limp, wet, innocuous, cute, plush, brooding, musical, whimsical, exotic, pensive, V-necked, quasi-American, strutting, doting, cloying, safe alternative to sleeping pills.
Best Song: "Lord Knows"
Release Date: November 15, 2011
Either way, both of those links are gone from Google's search. Why? Because just as someone filed a bogus DMCA to take down one of our key SOPA posts, Universal Music, via the BPI (British RIAA) filed a DMCA notice with Google claiming that both of those pages were infringing. That's clearly a false takedown, and pretty clearly designed to stifle a negative review.
But, no, there's no free speech concerns around the DMCA, right?
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Reader Comments (rss)
(Flattened / Threaded)
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You know what this needs? More Cowbell
Who's with me? We will DMCA the HELL out of everyone...
Who doesn't need more cowbell?
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Proof Positive
Don't think I will be using google for searching anymore. If they mess with results because of stuff like this, I am sure they mess with their search results in other ways too. So much for customer oriented.
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Re: Proof Positive
I guess one good thing about it though is that the more people they chase away the better the peer-to-peer options will become. That is the fun of peer-to-peer, they always suck to start with as there are too few peers, but if you can get them to reach that tipping point and become mainstream they become great.
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Re: Proof Positive
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Troll bait
"Pirate Mike and his freetard piracy apologists are just conspiring to defraud the labels just to have their free content." am I correct?
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Old browser poo.
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Maybe these people should trying reading a little story called The Boy who Cried Wolf.
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Ever since then, I've been doing my part to help the good fight, especially since it affects my position.
I've always raised the warning it won't be too much longer before corporate interests start trying to take over the internet, and this is just another example of the warning.
It comes as no surprise, either, since they see this as a method of distribution, and not communication.
Through distribution, they've always tried to control what we see, hear, and read.
Should this news be of any surprise? Of course not.
Yet, we still lack the laws to prevent corporations from trying to take it over.
That's when I came up with the slogan. ;)
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Re: Old browser poo.
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But that's only fair!
Since people sometimes talk about stuff they read on the web, we can state with absolute certainty that one pageview equals five lost sales.
Since the review is on the Internet, we can state with absolute certainty that the review has been read by 1.4 Squillion pira- erm, people - Who will (as we have already proved, see above) cause at least 5 other people to not buy the record.
Therefore, our minimum losses are:
$12.99 * (1 Sqn * 5) = 7.6867 Myxonatophrilllian dollars
But you can't do math, can you freetards?
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Here's my review
Expect a DMCA takedown request soon.
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Re: You know what this needs? More Cowbell
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Re: Re: Proof Positive
It sure looks like Google has decided that keeping the RIAA happy is more important than keeping the internet audience available for advertisers.
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Mind if I blatantly copy your slogan? ;D
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Dumb
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Last time I contacted them for comment on a story, they gave the details I asked about to a "friendly" industry lawyer, who wrote up a different story that got published in another source specifically bashing me and trying to pre-diffuse my story exposing something they were doing.
Going to them for a comment is not exactly a reasonable move. If they have a comment, they're free to comment here in the comments or on their own blog.
Frankly, the list looks as if it was automatically created using unspecified software to comb the web.
Which, er, is unacceptable when filing DMCA takedown notices that are designed to censor information.
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“False Affidavits in Foreclosures: What the Robo-Signing Mess Means for Homeowners” by Stephen Elias, Nolo
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"if it was automatically created"
Does not matter if a billy goat initiated the request it is the accuser that needs to confirm if their request is accurate.
In case you missed it:
Under penalty of perjury I certify that the information contained in the notification is both true and accurate.
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Re: Re: You know what this needs? More Cowbell
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That only applies to non-corporate people, not corporations.
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Re: Re: Re: Proof Positive
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Re: Re:
10 prt "I swear under penalty of perjury"
20 end
What do I get?
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Re: Re: Proof Positive
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Re: Proof Positive
I started shooting in the single digit years, with family. Guess they're censoring what 'family safe' actually means.
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Re: Proof Positive
I started shooting in the single digit years, with family. Guess they're redefining what 'family safe' actually means to their own standards.
That's fine. I'm going to redefine what 'best search engine' actually is, based on this kind of criteria.
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Re: Troll bait
(Not sure if there are actual tropes number related, its just one of their "I can't really defend this" defenses.
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Re: Re: You know what this needs? More Cowbell
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Can a third party bring charges of perjury?
A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly in-fringed.
It seems to me that Henry Adaso might have a good case for enforcing that part of the DMCA that is supposed to ensure that the DMCA isn't abused. The question is, can he bring charges, or must the court do that? The next question is whether or not there's enough money available to pay the legal bills needed to see this case through to the supreme court of needed.
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Please
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Re: Re: Troll bait
And then they accuse Mike of saying "you're wrong because you're wrong" despite the fact that's all they do!
Judge not MPRIAA shills lest ye be judged
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Also would it be a waste of time to watch THE COMPLETE DARK KNIGT RISES MOVIE?
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Re: Firearms
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Re: Perjury
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Re: Can a third party bring charges of perjury?
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Re: Re: Perjury
So... minus 10 thousand!
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Re: Re: Re: Proof Positive
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Re: Re: Can a third party bring charges of perjury?
The best way out of this is for Google to buy the recording industry and run it honestly. That would certainly be less evil than working with it.
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Or maybe it was that band that was covering Marylin Manson.
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Re: Re: Re: Can a third party bring charges of perjury?
Its like there was a lawsuit over it that got stopped when the cartels made a final payment to the DoJ.
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Re: Please
1. There's arguably no harm done (financial harm, I mean). Info about a negative review disappeared from one search engine's index. So what? A counterclaim is filed, they figure out it's a false positive, eventually it reappears in the search results, problem solved.
2. If there was harm, the person who was harmed has to be the one to file the lawsuit. Who would that be? Not the users of the search engine. The writer of the review? They were probably paid a flat fee already; they haven't lost anything. The publisher of the review? I'm skeptical they could say that Universal getting one of their pages deleted from Google search results could be tied to a dollar amount worth pursuing in court.
3. There's no way to prove the false takedown was issued "knowingly", which the DMCA requires for action to be taken against the issuer. Just because the takedown had the effect of censorship doesn't mean Universal knew the takedown was bogus. Maybe discovery would reveal some internal memos saying "we gotta get these bad reviews to stop showing up in Google's search results", but by the time you get to that phase, you've committed to an expensive litigation process.
(Universal would also probably argue it was an honest mistake, and that the bad review itself wasn't censored, only its appearance in one search engine's index—and thus it isn't really censorship.)
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Re: Please
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Re: Re: Re: Proof Positive
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Leave it to the government to ruin everything, they only listen to those filling their coffers (aka war chests) with cash.
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Re: Re: Firearms
While I don't think I'd have an emotional response if it was something I didn't care about, I still think that Google has a duty to treat all goods equally (though I'd probably base it more on legality than some arbitrary "family values" BS).
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