Copyright Bot Can’t Tell The Difference Between Star Trek Ship And Adult Film Actress
from the porn-star-trek dept
Given that the overwhelming majority of DMCA takedown notices are generated by copyright bots that are only moderately good at their job, at best, perhaps it’s not terribly surprising that these bots keep finding new and interesting ways to cause collateral damage unintentionally. From publishers taking down YouTubers because of an oopsie to Viacom DMCAing its own Star Trek Comic-con panel thinking it was infringing content, the point is that these bots kinda suck.
And speaking of Star Trek, this story involves that franchise, in a roundabout way. See, that franchise being what it is and has been for some time, there are a ton of fan sites and blogs out there that cover and discuss every aspect of the shows throughout the years. One of them was a Tumblr site, called “Mapping La Sirena.” If you’re a fan of Star Trek: Picard, you will know that’s the name of the main starship in that series. But if you’re a copyright enforcer for a certain industry, the bots you’ve set up for yourself apparently aren’t programmed with Star Trek fandom.
Transparency.automattic reports Tumblr has received numerous DMCA takedown notices from DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc, a third-party copyright monitoring service used frequently by content creators to prevent infringement of their original work. And these complaints occurred all because of the name La Sirena which also happens to be the name of an adult content creator, La Sirena 69 who is one of Piracy Prevention’s customers.
In one copyright claim over 90 Tumblr posts were targeted by the monitoring service because of the keyword match to “la sirena.” But instead of Automattic being alerted to La Sirena 69’s potentially infringed content, the company reported many of mappinglasirena.tumblr.com’s original posts.
Pure collateral damage. While not intentional per se, this is obviously still a problem. One of two things has to be the case: either we stop allowing copyright enforcement to be farmed out to a bunch of dumb bots that suck at their jobs or we insist that the bots stop sucking, which ain’t going to happen anytime soon. What cannot be allowed to happen is to shrug this sort of thing off as an innocent accident and oh well, too bad, so sad for the impact on the speech rights of the innocent.
There was nothing that remotely infringed La Sirena 69’s content. Everything about the complaints and takedown notices was wrong. And we’ve been at this long enough at this point that we know the enforcement bots are so bad that they can’t tell the difference between an adult content actress and a fucking spaceship. With that knowledge, allowing the status quo to continue is a choice, and not a good one.
And the team at Automattic wasn’t happy about the reports as they manually investigate each notice of copyright infringement which takes a lot of time. The company suggests DMCA Piracy Prevention do a little more investigating of their own prior to making a copyright claim. A quick look at mappinglasirena’s tumblr site would have proven that the blog was discussing a speed freighter not their client’s customer.
So much wasted time and effort. The only other remedy would be to have the DMCA takedown notice rejection process also farmed out to bots that equally suck at their jobs. Then we can just let the robots fight and get back to studying our starships.
Filed Under: copyright, dmca, dmca abuse, la sirena, star trek, takedowns
Companies: automattic, dmca privacy prevention
Comments on “Copyright Bot Can’t Tell The Difference Between Star Trek Ship And Adult Film Actress”
This isn’t “collateral damage”. This is “stupidity damage”, brought on by a lack of meaningful consequences.
1) Plug in a word or phrase that is not unique, like Sirena. Given its latin roots, the word has meaning and cognates in Spanish, Italian, English.
2) Do exactly zero hand verification that the search is churning out useful DMCA hits.
3) Don’t get called on your bullshit because the companies you are bullshitting can’t afford to file a grievance against you because the law doesn’t expressly authorize one.
With La Sirena (the spaceship) your goal is to go where no man has gone before.
With La Sirena (the adult film actress) your goal is to go where quite a number of men have gone before.
Does that help the Bot out?
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With La Sirena (the spaceship) your goal is to go where no man has gone before.
Not anymore, it’s been updated. The goal is now “to boldly go where no one has gone before,” and William Shatner <a href=”https://medium.com/the-establishment/how-william-shatner-betrayed-autistic-peoples-trust-8f0470019697”>did just that in 2017.
Re: Re:
Could you give a TLDR for people who don’t want to sign up for a medium membership?
Also your link is broken.
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Which makes no sense, as there’s generally a green or purple alien woman already there, that Kirk inevitably makes out with
This is a parallel to trademarking common words. Either you think you literally and absolutely own the word forever, or you can’t be arsed to see what in the results of a word search actually might infringe on your works. Or probably both, because you’re an idiot already. It doesn’t matter if you infringe on everyone else, because the law says, “eh”, and so do your ethics.
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The thing is, her handle is supposedly “La Sirena 69” — the complaints are equivalent to if Disney sent takedown notices for every occurrence of the name “Mickey” found on the Internet, including the Mickey Rooney Fan Club website.
Re: Retail Design Agency
This is a parallel to trademarking common words. Either you think you literally and absolutely own the word forever, or you can’t be arsed to see what in the results of a word search actually might infringe on your works. Or probably both, because you’re an idiot already.
Any time some copyright enforcement makes a fuck up like this, they need to be sent coverage of Prenda Law’s encounters with the law.
A subtle reminder of what happens to those who think they can get away with shrugging and “oopsies”.
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The courts have already weighed into this issue. As far as they are concerned, so long as the takedown request is actually authorized by the entity listed in the request, it’s fine.
It doesn’t matter whether or not that entity actually owns the copyright to the work they are claiming was copied, or whether or not that work actually appears at the listed location.
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It’s not “fine”. It’s just not perjury.
The expressly law allows someone whose work was wrongly taken down to sue. The law does not expressly allow someone processing a great many false claims from the same party to sue, but someone needs to try this out.
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Nah, guy, you’re thinking Richard Liebowitz.
And another thing in my list of things that a normal person would have their entire lives ruined but rich fuckers don’t even get a slap on the wrist for.
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If you want the system biased in your favor, why don’t you try writing the law?
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On Star Trek: Picard
Picard was great actually, but did anyone else think this line in episode four was really weird?
“Computer, simulate a hypothetical version of the United States of America in 2023. Create new far-left radical blog, Techdirt, and situate its headquarters in California. Generate new character, named Copyright, personified as 50 foot tall woman with enough urine secreted from the vagina to propel her upwards constantly. Position her at least 2 miles away from the Techdirt offices and launch her into the air with a large upwards first, course set directly for Techdirt offices. As she is performing this action, make her recite the collective manifestos of all high-profile right-wing terrorists within the last 30 years at 4x speed. Disable safety protocols, override 4-7 Alpha Tango.”
It’s a good show otherwise, but it kind of dragged down the pacing of the rest of the episode, in my opinion.
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An interesting take on female anatomy you have. People with vulvas actually have their urethral exit between the vagina and the clitoris, not out of the vagina itself. But then, one can’t really expect an ignoramus to be well educated.
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As the superior gender I specifically avoid looking at women in order to avoid all chances of harming my masculinity.
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You should seek professional help.
Ah the problems that could be avoided if there were any penalties whatsoever for sending bogus DMCA claims…
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Exactly. Any system designed with no penalties for abusing it is designed explicitly to be abused.
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Or for having non-humans file them.
Oh these poor poor put upon copyright holders, we can’t possibly impose anything more on them.
Just because they often send thousands of imaginary “links” they assume exist, we shouldn’t fault them for that.
Just because to attempt to fight back requires you hand all of your information to a company who can’t tell a star ship from a vagina, we shouldn’t fault them for that.
Just because of the literally billions of defective notices is no reason to demand reform.
Just because somehow an industry, where block busters on paper earn nothing but the companies still show billions in profits, is no reason to think that they should have to pay a fine when they fuck up to encourage them to be less slipshod.
A person can end up in court facing hundreds of thousands in fines & penalties, based on a hunch.
But to require them to pay when the notice is defective or repetitive is unimaginable.
Courts are believing the “evidence” that mere accusation is proof of infringement, something something nothing from the Salem Witch Trials.
If I accuse you of “stealing” a movie 1 or 1,000,000 times in 5 minutes proves nothing & really shouldn’t be looked at as more than gossip for evidentiary value.
There is more than enough evidence to support that the law, in its current incarnation, is not fair, equal, equitable and is an affront to the very concept of justice.
the bot did it!
when you google ” La Sirena ” you get place, bar, wine, street, mermaid, and yes even star trek! but nothing on some blown out wannabe porn star! when you add “69” to the end if it. you then get pages of the blown out wannabe porn star!
we all know how bad the bots are! and it wouldn’t surprise me if the short list got a take down notice too! just imagine that a place now has to change it’s because of some cameltoe that stole the name!
DMCAs have certified signatures for takedowns. The purpose is so that a unique person has responsibility for ensuring the takedown is correct. Any organization that automates such certifications should be fined and banned from submitting takedowns.
Remember....?
Remember when the DCMA was being proposed, and the answer to “what about false claims” was that every takedown was supposed to be a sworn statement under penalty of perjury?
ha…
ha ha ha…
Re: A loophole big enough to fit a spaceship.
This is still valid, but has been interpreted as a sworn statement that you own (or that you’re mandated by the one who owns) the copyright of the work you report as infringed. Not the one you report as infringing.
This is so open for abuse (probably willfully so) that it makes the whole “perjury” part basically pointless.
Re: Re:
ie, the abuse is baked in by design.
Say what now?
Well the difference between the actress and the spaceship was somewhat greater before you chose that particular adjective to describe the spaceship.
It’s also the Spanish for “the mermaid”. Not quite enough to get Disney’s wrath (“the Little Mermaid” is “la sirenita”), but enough to cause problems with perfectly innocent content across the world.
Sadly, I suspect a feature rather than a bug. The legacy industry don’t want fair, accurate investigations, they want instant takedowns and payment no matter the guilt.
Well, most Republicans can’t tell the difference between the previous president and a future tyrant. Come to think of it, neither can I.
“A quick look at mappinglasirena’s tumblr site would have proven that the blog was discussing a speed freighter not their client’s customer.”
So what if they were talking about the client’s customer? She’s been discussed here as well. So is this article infringing? Is that what DMCA Piracy Prevention thinks, that any mention of a client online is infringing? If so, they’ll be lucky to ever accidentally land on an actually infringing site.
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This is what the DMCA is intended for. There are penalties for wrongly claiming that you are the copyright owner of the original of flagged content. Period. If you are, you are allowed to file a takedown notice without penalty. So why wouldn’t the copyright owners file takedown notices for things that aren’t a flying fuck in hell anything like a copyright violation but which do refer to owned content?
They are guaranteed to be allowed to do that without penalty. This is clearly the intent, and they follow through with it.
Man it's simple...
One will make a red-blooded engineer’s hormones rush when stripped down. And with the other he has no idea pressing what buttons would actually get him anywhere in the wide universe.
Copyright Bot Can’t Tell The Difference Between Star Trek Ship And Adult Film Actress
In a curious intersection of science fiction and digital mishaps, a copyright bot recently made headlines for its inability to distinguish between the iconic starship from Star Trek and an adult film actress. The incident underscores the challenges and occasional absurdities arising in the realm of artificial intelligence and automated content moderation.
As algorithms strive to police online content for copyright infringement, instances like these highlight the nuanced nature of visual recognition. The mishap occurred when the bot mistakenly flagged an image of the USS Enterprise, the famous starship from Star Trek, as infringing on adult content.
This incident raises questions about the effectiveness and accuracy of automated copyright detection tools, emphasizing the need for careful consideration in implementing such technologies. As discussions surrounding AI regulation continue to evolve, instances like these prompt a critical examination of the current state of AI governance and the challenges in fine-tuning algorithms for accurate content moderation.
For a deeper exploration of the evolution of AI regulation and its implications, check out The Evolution of AI Regulation: Where Are We Now?. This insightful article delves into the current landscape of AI governance and provides valuable insights into the ongoing efforts to regulate artificial intelligence effectively.
is it a boy or a girl? we just cant tell...anymore!
this is nothing more then the copyright cartel trying to have it’s cake and eat it too! and until the “oops! my bad!” stats coming with penalties. the copyright cartel will keep on coming up with new ways to make sure that there garbage is the only garbage allowed!
Just as a heads up, I was looking at the past stories linked in this post and noticed that spammers have gotten in the habit of commenting on old posts years later. The site owners ought to consider closing comment sections on posts more that a month old.
Zero due process + zero accountability = DMCA