We just wrote about how major Hollywood studios had included links to the freely available, Creative Commons-licensed documentary, TPB AFK, in a bunch of bogus DMCA notices to Google, meaning that perfectly legitimate links were likely being removed. The director of that film, Simon Klose, has now responded with an open letter in the form of a video, where he notes that this is a clear violation of his free speech. He points out that there are basically two possibilities. First, that these studios are purposely trying to censor a film about The Pirate Bay, which highlights the civil liberties questions raised by the studios legal pursuit of the founders of the site, and second, that their technology for finding infringing content absolutely sucks. He points out that neither of these situations is a good one. The first one sounds crazy, but, as he notes, not quite as crazy as some of the things that were revealed in the film, such as Warner Bros. hiring the lead investigator in the case while the investigation was still ongoing. But even if it was an accident, that doesn't change the fact that his legitimate content was being blocked from Google, and he considers it a free speech issue.

Reader David Sutherland emailed us this week about a DMCA notice that he received via his MediaFire account. The notice, which we've included below (including all of the crappy formatting) claimed that he was using MediaFire to host "one of the following files: Downton Abbey, CONTRABAND (2012), GRIMM (2011), House M.D., MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS, THE, The Office." The "file" they claimed was one of those TV shows/movies was "Cantha Cartography Made Easy 2009.tpf" which is actually a game mod for Guild Wars. You might possibly be able to argue that ArenaNet, makers of Guild Wars could have a copyright claim (maybe, sorta), but that's not who sent the notice and it's not what they claimed it was. Sutherland notes that he set up this MediaFire account solely to host game mods and has never hosted any other content there.

So, who sent the DMCA takedown? Dtecnet. And, as you can see from the messy, messy DMCA notice below, they tried to takedown a huge list of files. If Sutherland's experience is anything to go by, you have to wonder how many of them are actually infringing.

Of course, we've seen plenty of bogus DMCA takedowns. It happens all the time. But this one is doubly important, because it's from DtecNet, a division of MarkMonitor. MarkMonitor/Dtecnet also just happen to be the company providing the key monitoring for the new "six strikes" Copyright Alert System (CAS). The Center for Copyright Information has a web page on its site about an "independent expert assessment" of MarkMonitor's antipiracy methodologies. Except... that page is completely blank. Perhaps, if they're looking to do an analysis, figuring out why they're taking down content that has nothing to do with what they claim would be a good place to start.

Good thing the CAS works entirely based on accusations, without needing to show any proof at all, huh?

We've seen plenty of ridiculous stories about bogus DMCA takedowns, but none get so ridiculous as the ones in which the content being demanded taken down is the officially released content. This often happens because of shoddy / clueless middlemen, as is the case with the latest example being passed around. HBO hired DtecNet / MarkMonitor to keep infringing copies of its works offline, and as TorrentFreak notes, the company sought to achieve this by sending a DMCA takedown notice to Google that demanded the removal of links to HBO's own website (as well as links to legitimate sites that included reviews of the show in question, Eastbound and Down). Again, this kind of thing seems to happen all the time, once again confirming the key point that despite all the talk by maximalists that Google should just "know" when a work is infringing, copyright holders' own representatives have absolutely no clue at all, and that should weigh against the idea that Google or any other third party might magically know.

My real question, though, is just how much is HBO paying DtecNet / MarkMonitor for this "service"? Not only is it making a complete mockery of HBO itself, but potentially killing search engine optimization value that HBO might have towards its legit and authorized content.

Also, isn't it comforting that DtecNet / MarkMonitor are going to be the ones responsible for going after people under the new six strikes program? Stories like this really add confidence to the idea that they're going to make a complete mess of the whole thing.

With the entertainment industry and ISPs agreeing to a "voluntary" six strikes plan, which treats users as guilty until proven innocent and takes away completely valid defenses (for example: that file is in the public domain is not a valid defense!), you would think that the very least the public could ask for is that the system used to make the accusations is open to scrutiny.

But, of course, there was no one representing the public at the negotiations, so instead, the monitoring system is shrouded in secrecy. No one will speak about it on the record. TorrentFreak has gotten off the record sources to confirm that it's going to be handled by DtecNet, which means we should expect some problems with the accusations. This is, after all, a company that didn't even understand how BitTorrent works, but put out a totally misleading report about it, which was so bad that the company eventually retracted it.

Doesn't it seem highly questionable that no one involved in this plan is willing to discuss the monitoring technology publicly? If they actually had faith that it worked, wouldn't they be showing it off? The problem is they know it's not good. They know it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. They know there will be people falsely accused. But they don't care. As long as they think that they're holding on to some tiny bit of a business model that is pretty much dead... they can pretend that they're doing something smart. And the public and our culture suffers as as result.

Earlier this year, the RIAA dumped its longterm anti-piracy partner MediaSentry and hired DtecNet instead. MediaSentry had lots of problems in terms of credibility, but it appears that DtecNet may be even worse. It recently came out with a report claiming that file sharing decreased massively after The Pirate Bay went down temporarily. Not surprisingly, this report is getting some press attention. The problem? The report appears to be based on a nearly comical misunderstanding of how BitTorrent works. TorrentFreak details numerous basic mistakes in the report, nearly all of which suggest the claims made by DtecNet have little, if anything, to do with reality. Considering that DtecNet is going to be leading the charge for the RIAA in any future lawsuits and various "three strikes" plans, the fact that it doesn't seem to understand how BitTorrent works suggests problems ahead.

Over the past few days there's been a lot of attention paid to the news that the RIAA has ended its relationship with MediaSentry, the highly controversial firm that the RIAA used to try to find those involved in file sharing. There have been various lawsuits questioning MediaSentry's techniques -- and the sheer number of falsely identified people certainly suggested pretty strongly that the company wasn't doing a particularly good job. Of course, with the RIAA's "new strategy" of abandoning lawsuits in favor of having ISPs be their enforcers, the record labels still need a company to come up with whatever flimsy evidence it can find. So, don't think the ending of the relationship means that the RIAA has stopped monitoring file sharing. Instead, it's simply switched to a new company: DtecNet out of Copenhagen.