Hollywood Studios, Big Fans Of Automated DMCAs, Also Very Busy DMCAing IMDB For Some Reason
from the automatically-wrong dept
We’ve made the point repeatedly that when people think of the DMCA takedown process being utilized, they likely never consider how it’s actually used in practice. That is to say, the picture in the heads of many is some artist somewhere firing off an email to a service provider upon finding his or her work being pirated. How this typically works, however, is that the whole process is automated, with bots scraping internet content and issuing DMCAs automagically as part of its algorithm. And, considering how often the results include errors, this is a massive problem with speech on the internet.
Hollywood is of course big fans of this automated DMCAing of the internet. After all, real enforcement of their copyrights is a hell of a lot of work and what’s a few innocent websites getting caught up as collateral damage compared with a movie studio’s ability to silence anything it thinks might be infringing? And, yet, often times the errors are so laughable so as to make our point about the dangers in all of this, such as when Hollywood studios go about accidentally sending DMCA notices for content on IMDB.
This works fine, most of the time. But, in common with their human counterparts, these bots aren’t perfect. This was made painfully visible last month when Topple Track had to disable its reporting tool after it triggered a wave of faulty takedown notices.
That was not an isolated incident though. None of these takedown tools are perfect.
Over the past few weeks, we noticed another worrying trend. Suddenly, Google started to receive a lot of DMCA notices for the Internet Movie Database, with the majority of these requests coming from the UK-based reporting agency Entura International.
IMDB, which has been around for nearly three decades, is almost certainly not suddenly in the copyright infringement business. So what happened? Well, on many of the DMCA notices, the notice will include a reference link to the IMDB page for the pirated film or show to give whoever is reviewing the notice a sense of what the work is. But, apparently due to a bug in the software, if there is nothing listed as a “pirate link” in the DMCA notice, the automated notice automatically moves the IMDB reference link into that field. The result is that the notices are going out stating that a film’s IMDB page is the infringing content. This happened to the IMDB page for Amazing Spider-Man 2, for instance.
Now, as TorrentFreak points out, Google has wisely put IMDB on a whitelist that keeps most if not all of these notices from having their otherwise censorious effect. But does anyone really believe that IMDB is the only website that would otherwise have been mistakenly caught up as collateral damage? Of course not. There are likely much smaller, lesser-known sites out there that have fallen victim to this automated fuck up.
If that isn’t a problem for free and open internet speech, it’s hard to imagine what would be.
Filed Under: automated takedowns, copyright, dmca
Companies: entura international, google, imdb
Comments on “Hollywood Studios, Big Fans Of Automated DMCAs, Also Very Busy DMCAing IMDB For Some Reason”
What it really means...
What it really means is that there has to be a monetary penalty and/or a public service and/or a jail time penalty for ‘incorrect’ DMCA requests, even if they’re via Googles in-house system.
Can you imagine every employee of Warner Brothers having to do 10 days of community service after this event: https://hothardware.com/news/warner-bros-targets-its-own-websites-for-takedown-using-googles-anti-piracy-tools
There wouldn’t be a scrap of trash to be found in or around Burbank.
Re: What it really means...
Great! And for the millions of ACCURATE DMCA
notices, especially for anyone working at sites which average $150,000 a year income, punishment of life at hard labor.
Seriously, though, you are not just wrong, you’re Techdirt wrong! Not going to happen, and it’s JUST a programming error, kid, there’s NO EVIL PLAN here. Sheesh.
Re: Re: What it really means...
Your stupidity is usually flagged here before I read.
Just to let you know, yes, there is an evil plan here. And no matter how wrong TD is, TD does not hold a candle to you. But I suspect that you are trying to troll people.
Get a new hobby, you suck at it!
Re: Re: What it really means...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!
looks to make sure I read that right, yep
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!
Oh there’s definitely an evil plan here. It’s called legacy entertainment industry abuses copyright in futile attempt to stamp out piracy and squeeze consumers for every last red cent they have. But you wouldn’t know anything about that now would you?
Re: What it really means...
Yeah, if the law was actually meant to be fair and protect creators there would be some sort of penalty for filing bogus DMCA claims as that impacts innocent creators, yet would you look at that, not a single penalty to be found, such that companies feel free to send out as many notices as they can with not a single worry about who it might hit.
Put an actual penalty in the law and enforce it and stories like this would all but dry up. Until that happen however there is no reason not to hit as many sites as possible, whether deliberately or negligently, and as such stories like this will continue to crop up on a regular basis.
All heil -- er, I mean HAIL Google's infallible algorithms!
"Google has been bombarding me with ads for Russian mail order brides. I clicked the no-thank-you buttons to no avail. Only change is that I then got ads for overweight Russian mail order brides. So I took to the settings panel and unchecked the box that "offered" tailored (huh?) ads. It did not take much time for Google to serve up its revenge: now I am bombarded with ads for gay dating sites and services."
https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/3587458
Amusing too isn’t it? … No? Why not? — Oh, right, this is Techdirt.
Re:
Question: Will you only ever be satisfied by Google coverage on Techdirt if the site calls for a heads-on-pikes treatment of Alphabet’s top executives? Because it seems like you want them dead, judging by your 2000-inch hateboner.
Re: Re: Re:
“judging by your 2000-inch hateboner.”
well that was a hell of a compliment!
I doubt it gets any farther than the zipper!
Re: All heil -- er, I mean HAIL Google's infallible algorithms!
Are you really citing a random anonymous comment, with literally zero evidence of any sort, on an unrelated forum?
Just sad.
Re: All heil -- er, I mean HAIL Google's infallible algorithms!
Then maybe stop searching for Russian mail order brides and clear your cookies?
It’s amusing that you would trust some random person on the internet who has no evidence to back up his claims. Kind of sounds like someone else we all know. Oh wait, was that you that made that comment? Ooops.
All heil -- er, I mean HAIL Google's infallible algorithms!
As above, made BEFORE reading yours I advocate "punishment of life at hard labor."
Now, answered, so will you quit NAGGING me, kid?
Re:
Same death sentence, different method and length of time.
Re: Re: Re:
but the productivity benefits! You clearly are not seeing the positive side of putting El Goog in a chain gang!
Re: Re: Re:
I refuse to advocate for slavery.
“Censorius” is a rarely-used word, common to a rather small group of people.
Re: Re:
Well, it hasn’t had enough use to make the Oxford English Dictionary with this meaning, certainly. And given that first amendment scolarship is not a large group, it likely never will. (interestingly, Censorious comes from a different root then Censor). I am unsurprised however that journalists, bloggers, and other first amendment proponents use the word regularly to describe anti-free speech activity.
Re: Re: Re:
Does Ken White still have his “censorious asshat of the year” contest?
Re: Re: Re:
I cringe every time some idiot uses “optics” instead of “appearances”.
Re: Re:
Are you seriously complaining about specialized terminology?
One big internet company has a “DMCA Takednwn Notice” form that requires the copyrightholder to waive any right to file lsuit over the infringement, which is not what the law says. It won’t otherwise honor a DMCA request.
Re: Citation needed
So, which company? Without citation, your commentary is the equivalent of that kid whose brother’s friend got Mew from under the truck.
And do they require you to waive any right to sue them if the material is taken down, or to waive their right to sue them entirely, or to waive your right to sue anyone? I’d love to see the language. I figure the language is much less restrictive, but it might be porrly drafted, or as intentionally damaging as you suggest. Again, I’d love to know the company to do some research.
Re: Re:
Yeah, until you actually provide a citation (for once) I’ll just file that under ‘yet another lie from John Smith’.
Re: Re:
Then put your money where your mouth is and take them to court. If this company even exists. Oh, that’s right, you’re too busy milking the veil of anonymity, throwing accusations on a site you call a distraction.
Thankfully
Thankfully the search engines will help me find perfectly illegal sources for my entertainment.
Re: Thankfully
Ironically, going from the OP there’s actually nothing to actually prevent using official IMDB number listings in lieu of magnet links in order to get a torrent client to identify a file.
Wouldn’t scale well once you got duplicates but it would be an interesting experiment to pull in order to see whether IMDB would suddenly get shut down by a million auto-generated DMCA takedown demands.
Automation strikes again.
Hollywood DMCAing IMDB?
Must be all those pesky actress ages again…
Give them what they want
I say if the movie studios want their IMDB page taken down, then do it.
Then IMDB and Google should put up a page saying “Information about ‘Star Wars IX’ is not available due to a takedown notice by Disney.”
Then see how long it takes for the cast and crew (and hundreds of people who worked on the movie) to get rightly upset that their listing on IMDB has suddenly been taken down as if it were a pirating site, simply because the studio’s for-hire takedown service couldn’t/ wouldn’t get it right.
Sure, the cast and crew might get angry with Google for taking the page down, but the takedown was a legal notice from Disney, so everyone should complain to them.
And if the cast and crew of multi-million dollar movies start complaining that the studios are taking down legitimate sites, then maybe we’ll see some changes to the takedown system.
If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
We should obviously trust the entertainment industry DCMA notices. If their internet scanning tools are finding that the material in IMDB is screenshots cloned from the movies, with correct actor names, and bad review scores for the movie, obviously it needs to be taken away, removed from the google search engine. Obviously IMDB cannot handle these DCMA notices themselves, so best trick is to send those notices to google – a well known hub for pirated content. The real trick is to push enough notices to google that they have trouble handling them in the required deadline, allowing entertainment industry to sue google for copyright infringement in their google search pages. If their web page content is clearly ripped from copyright owners spread to the world, without paying required licenses, they should obviously be sued. This evil plan just requires 2 million DCMA notices be sent to them, so that there exists proof that the search engine has more pirated content than any other site on the planet. Given that they are also scanning the net for updates to their web page, these scraping tools need to be made illegal first.
Re: If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
I was wondering when the RIAA apologist was going to show up.
Go ahead, find pirated material on IMDB.
Re: Re: If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re: If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Even if those claims are wrong?
Seriously, there is no pirated content on IMDB. Not even the entertainment industry is saying that. Just you.
Because piracy has died with Captain Blackbeard. Reality check, piracy is alive and well. That will never change.
Re: Re: Re:2 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re:3 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
And they can never be accidentally mistaken or deliberately lie?
Also this is insulting to the entire human race. There are very clear rules as to what is copyright infringement and what is not. You don’t have to be the owner to do a "proper check". e.g. music by Beethoven. Or are you going to say we have to check with Beethoven to make sure we aren’t infringing his copyrights?
No, people pirate despite knowing they are pirating content.
Because they do. What’s your point?
Circular reasoning, insulting to basic human intelligence, and assumes copyright owners are perfect, never make mistakes, or deliberately lie.
Want to try again?
Re: Re: Re:4 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re:5 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
So what you’re saying is the average human being is too stupid to tell the difference between a movie they bought legally from Walmart, and the same movie they illegally downloaded from a pirate site. Shove off.
There’s plenty, you just don’t want to admit it. One of which would be avoiding fines and jail time.
…Right.
That would require them to do a "proper copyright check" now, wouldn’t it?
I’m going to regret this, I know it, but, how is it not a proper check? Isn’t the only way to check to compare the two? And isn’t that exactly what a copyright owner does? And if they are similar enough that a user can’t tell the difference, then doesn’t that meet the threshold of copyright infringement?
Stop trolling.
Re: Re: Re:6 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re:7 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
So yep, you’re saying humans are too stupid to do the checks themselves. (Which is funny because then you say only a human can do “proper check”) All while creating bunch of bogus “checks” that don’t actually exist, or wouldn’t actually tell you whether it’s infringing or not.
Shove off.
Re: Re: Re:8 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re:9 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
And at this point I am guessing you aren’t actually being serious, if ever you were.
Have a nice day.
Re: If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
And as usual, you have no idea how any of this works. You really think Google is hosting IMDB, or that a paltry 2 million DMCA notices is going to bring Google down?
I don’t know where you get your delusions, laser brain.
Re: Re: If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re: If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
The rest of your post is what, satire? I’m not sure.
Re: Re: Re:2 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re:3 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
I’m not questioning that. I’m questioning why you think Google won’t be able to respond to 2 million DMCA notices, and therefore be sued out of existence. The article in question only said the notices were sent. It never stated how many. You’re the one who picked the 2 million number out of a hat, and I quote:
Also, spelling man, it’s DMCA, not DCMA.
Re: Re: Re:4 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re:5 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
You still haven’t answered my question of why you think Google wouldn’t be able to timely respond to an arbitrary number of 2 million DMCA notices. And yes, the number is arbitrary because you just picked it out of a hat.
The entire rest of your post is just so much hot steaming garbage. None of it is correct.
Especially not this:
Tell that to every single Youtuber who puts out hundreds of videos EVERY YEAR. Or commision based artists who complete hundreds of requests every year. Or what about comic writers, web designers, software programmers, the list goes on and on.
Get help, you need it.
Re: Re: Re:6 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re:7 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Prove that your theory is other than the product of someone who wants to destroy the big Internet platforms.
Re: Re: Re:8 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re:9 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
The copyright industry has always been the holder of a minor fraction of copyrighted works, and are finding out just how much creativity exists outside their control because people can publish their works on various Internet platforms. That industry does not have an automatic right to exist, as they are realizing when they look at the floods of self published works. Trying to dam that flood only exposes them to total destruction when their hurriedly erected dams burst.
Re: Re: Re:10 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re:11 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
the copyright industry continues to exist for long time to come and they’re still teaching new people to follow their evil practises
Which is why their reputation is rightly in the crapper and their credibility is dying thanks to mindless mouthpieces like you.
Re: Re: Re:7 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Yeah, except for the point that:
– Warner lost the copyright to Happy Birthday and now it’s public domain
– Children who sing Happy Birthday generally weren’t touched by Warner, surprisingly enough, because Warner would get an even bigger PR shitstorm
– Beyond Warner quietly collecting several million dollars from performance rights organizations no private individual was ever sued for Happy Birthday
Oh, right… this is the part where you scream that the entire public domain, Happy Birthday needs to be purged so newer birthday songs can enter the market…
Re: Re: Re:8 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re:9 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
the kids tried to create a bigger product than what they’re capable of properly creating
Yeah, if you’re this triggered over a fucking birthday song maybe you should go petition the government about it.
And ask them to give you that mansion while they’re at it. Maybe let us know how progress on that front is coming along. We’ll wait.
Don’t count on us holding our breath for that though!
Re: Re: Re:10 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re:11 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
You’re a moron, and a troll.
Re: Re: Re:11 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Yeah, about your self-righteous petition on the kid’s behalf?
None of that has to do with copyright.
Absolutely none of it.
But since you brought it up, here’s a little news for you. Early child stars burn out no matter what industry or field they’re in. That’s life. Copyright does absolutely nothing to protect that.
And if you think a child singing “happy birthday” is enough to get him 3 million hits on YouTube, you have no idea what a viral video is.
Re: Re: Re:9 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re:7 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
And this just goes to show what a massive moron you are. Because if you have ever looked at any of those videos on Youtube, (or you know, not ignored all the other examples I put forth of artists who create hundreds of new original works every year) you would see that your pathetic theorem is false.
And so I say: GOOD DAY SIR!
Re: If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re: If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
No. Listing the names of the actors who are in a movie on a website is perfectly legal and is not any kind of infringement, copyright, trademark, or otherwise. You’re delusional.
Re: Re: Re:2 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Nor is it illegal to post an image on the site of said actors, since they are public figures.
That would be like saying it’s illegal to post a picture of Donald Trump on a website that lists all of the presidents of the United States.
Re: Re: Re:3 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re:4 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
I think you’re smart enough to figure that out on your own. Or at least I hope you are.
Have a nice day.
Re: Re: Re:5 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Re: Re: Re:6 If IMDB is hosting pirated material?
Wrong.
John Smith, out_of_the_blue and tp walk into a
BAR