Key Techdirt SOPA/PIPA Post Censored By Bogus DMCA Takedown Notice
from the dmca-abuse dept
We’ve talked a lot about how copyright law and the DMCA can be abused to take down legitimate, non-infringing content, interfering with one’s free speech rights. And we’re always brushed off by copyright maximalists, who insist that any complaints about taking down legitimate speech are overblown.
So isn’t it interesting that we’ve just discovered that our own key anti-SOPA blog post and discussion… have been blocked thanks to a bogus DMCA takedown?
Last November, in the heat of the SOPA fight, I wrote a blog post, where I tried to pull together a bunch of the different reasons why SOPA and PIPA were really bad ideas. It was a very popular post for us, and I heard directly from many people that it was quite helpful in getting them to understand the real problems of these two bills.
Well, as I just discovered, that post cannot be found directly via Google any more.
I actually discovered this entirely by accident. I was looking for a totally different old Techdirt post, and was scrolling through Google results, when I saw a note at the bottom of the Google page saying that results had been removed due to a DMCA takedown:
If you’re scratching your head, you’re not the only one. There’s clearly nothing infringing in our post. I just wasted too much time going through all 300+ comments on that post and I don’t see anything that includes any porn or even links to any porn as far as I can tell. Instead, it seems that Armovore and Paper Street Cash sent a clearly bogus DMCA takedown notice, which served the purpose of censoring our key blog post in the SOPA fight. And they did it on January 20th… the day that SOPA was officially shelved.
There are some other oddities in that list as well, including TorrentFreak’s article about how ICE took down 84,000 websites illegally by seizing the mooo.com domain and saying that all 84,000 of those sites were involved in child porn.
In other words, two separate articles that have been key to the discussion concerning abuses of copyright law… both taken out of Google’s index due to a bogus DMCA takedown. Hmm….
While many of the other links do appear to go to sites that may offer up infringing content, just looking at the URLs alone make you wonder what most of them have to do with Paper Street Cash or TeamSkeet. Some of the links talk about top Christian albums. One is to some Dave Matthews songs. Another is to Wiz Khalifa music. There’s another one that appears to be a link to downloads of the TV show Prison Break. Obviously those things may be infringing, but the notice itself only talks about TeamSkeet, and if Armovore doesn’t represent those other artists, it may have broken the law in pretending to.
Then there’s a really bizarre one. Entry 533 on the list is… TeamSkeet’s own website. I don’t know how much Armovore charges Paper Street Cash, but they deserve a refund.
Most importantly, though, our page clearly is not infringing. This is a 100% bogus DMCA takedown — something we only discovered by complete accident over a month later — hiding one of our key articles in an important fight about abusing copyright law to take down free speech. Seems like a perfect example of how copyright can be — and is — abused to suppress free speech.
In the meantime, we’ll be exploring our options for responding to this obviously bogus takedown from both Armovore and Paper Street Cash.
Update: After “further review,” Google has reinstated our story to its index….
Filed Under: censorship, copyright, dmca, pipa, search results, sopa, takedowns
Companies: armovore, paper street cash, techdirt
Comments on “Key Techdirt SOPA/PIPA Post Censored By Bogus DMCA Takedown Notice”
First off I’d contact Armovore to ascertain if this was genuine. We may be seeing a new kind of scam?
DMCA this!
Abusive Copyright used to censor articles on Copyright Abuse!
Ridiculous! We need to get that post back up. This is EXACTLY why SOPA/PIPA are a bad idea.
DMCA this!
Abusive Copyright used to censor articles on Copyright Abuse!
divide by zero!!!! oh nooosssss!!!!!
There’s a ‘Yo Dawg’ joke in there somewhere
Government bends over backwards to try to cater to hollywood so that together they can use the propaganda maching to brainwash the public and censor out any free speech which goes against the…
I hope it’s some sort of scam because the alternative is just outrageous and unbelievable.
They can’t be that dumb right? Really? Censoring articles with DMCA take down requests?
armovore
Most of us know what is an herbivore and what is a carnivore, but what the hell is an armovore?
Wait...
…that post cannot be found directly via Google any more.
So what you’re saying is that the page itself isn’t censored, just that no one else can find it by searching through the regular mainstream search engines.
…Why do we need SOPA/PIPA/acronyms-for-internet-censorship-bills again?
Other interesting hits...
There seem to be a few other odd entries in that list, such as this article from the Independent (one of the UK’s major newspapers) – I wonder if they’ve simply done a search (presumably on Google) for certain terms (possibly including “torrent” and “innocent”, both of which appear in the Independent article) and submitted that list to Google.
Sic 'Em
Definitely grabbing the popcorn for this one. I’ve never seen the process for disputing a bogus claim from the beginning.
If there is no penalty for a bogus DMCA takedown notice, maybe some “anonymous hacker group” should set up an automated process to spider the web and send a takedown notice for every page! That could be a very significant political statement that would get a lot of attention.
Re:
512(f) does create liability for knowing misrepresentations
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#512
Pre-emptive shill rant
blah blah piracy blah blah techdirtbag blah blah freetard blah blah where’s the data blah blah lies rambling i can’t back up my argument blah blah
Misrepresentation and DMCA Notices
The DMCA and supporting case law will favor your situation because you actually responded by removing the posts. Had you not removed the posts, then you would not have a cause of action under DMCA for misrepresentation which is a violation of 17 USC s. 512(f)(1).
Re:
Yo, sup dawg, I herd you like censorship, so I censored your censorship article so you can [censored] while you…
In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed this comment from Techdirt. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal at ChillingEffects.org.
How to see Google's DMCA notices for your site
I actually discovered this entirely by accident.
Add your site to Google Webmaster Tools and go to “All Messages” on the left and you can see Google’s DMCA notices as they come in (not sure about the historical ones). You should also go to “Preferences” and have them forward notices to an email account so you don’t have to log into Webmaster Tools all the time to see them. IIRC they added this ability last year but not too many people know about it.
A Most Awesome Case Study...
This would be a great case study; see how the DMCA provisions for wrongful takedowns play out. Couldn’t be better subject matter. (Damages may be problematic; but getting returned to the search index does require time and effort, and even attorney fees for donated lawyer time might be recovered – reasonable value.)
Too bad one of the *AAs didn’t yank it … what a watershed that would be.
17 USC ?512(f)
Re:
Not really. They already proved numerous times they don’t need SOPA to censor, arrest, threaten, detain, rape your dog, kill your kittens, and eat your children without any extension or rewriting of the law.
Re:
But there is a penalty. Or at least there’s supposed to be.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512
section f
quote:
(f) Misrepresentations.? Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section?
(1) that material or activity is infringing, or
(2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification,
shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys? fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner?s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.
/quote
If people would actually start suing these jerks then the number of false take-downs would probably drop substantially. I know it’s intensely time consuming and expensive to do this but someone has got to start doing so or they (the great nebulous ‘they’), are just going to keep filing those false take-downs.
Re:
And they’re doing such a good job that any one that doesn’t think like that is either a nut, a freetard or a conspiracy theorist.
armovore
Something that eats love
Makes you wonder why an amendment to add the words “… upon penalty of perjury…” to takedown notices was unilaterally rejected.
What I read between the lines: The MAFIAA is setting up porn companies in order to use them to discredit opponents through bogus DMCA take down notices. I wonder if the article from last week about being blacklisted in Germany is also related to some new strategy to silence critics.
Re:
how about teaching them about the basics of security?
google for armovore shows the second result linking directly to their “DMCA login” page. Clearly a genius company.
MEC DMCA System – – Login
gcc.armovore.com
all it would take is a simple submittal to anonymous and I’m pretty sure this would escalate. How do people manage to be this stupid in the first place?
also, wow! they requested takedown for 500 links!
http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=189468
Re:
TechDirt would have to prove damages. The cost of calculating and proving those damages is probably well in excess of the actual damages. And, proving *knowing* misprepresentation is nearly impossible. Therefore, there is no practical consequence.
Interesting, but not complete
You left out that this was just an index removal on Google only. Bing and Yahoo have your post on the top when “site:www.techdirt.com sopa” is entered. So, the complaint is only for Google?
I understand the complaint, but please be complete when explaining what is going on.
Awww man. I thought I was finally going to get an entry on my “Submitted Stories” list when I discovered this while searching for Techdirt articles on Google last Tuesday and sent it in to Techdirt via the “Submit a Story” page.
Oh well. C’est la vie. Always a bridesmaid or something to that effect.
Re:
“The MAFIAA is setting up porn companies in order to use them to discredit opponents through bogus DMCA take down notices and so they have more ways to fuck young artists.”
ftfy
Pre-emptive shill rant
That is one of the better reasoned troll responses. Well played sir!
armovore
Or arms.
They’re just trying to make the web ‘armless for their clients.
Interesting, but not complete
Psh. Who care’s about the other, little, search engines?
Pre-emptive shill rant
Thanks, I’ve been practicing in the shower. 🙂
Re:
Awww man. I thought I was finally going to get an entry on my “Submitted Stories” list when I discovered this while searching for Techdirt articles on Google last Tuesday and sent it in to Techdirt via the “Submit a Story” page.
Dah… we missed it. Been getting a ton of submissions lately, so haven’t been able to review them all…
Don’t settle. We need precedent.
Re:
“TechDirt would have to prove damages.” Easy. Ask Google how many times people searched for SOPA, then assume one in ten of those would’ve donated at least $5. This will range in the millions of dollars. That’s how it works, right? 😛
Here you go, Mike. Instead of whining about copyright abuse, you can actually do something about it. Are you considering filing suit? Hope so.
Interesting, but not complete
But Google is the Internet as viewed by RIAA/MPAA.
takedownpingback
Seems like there needs to be a pingback mechanism built into ChillingEffects.org — so that you get an email whenever a domain you control is mentioned in a DMCA takedown request.
DMCA this!
Totally stole that line. Have an insightful as recompense.
Admit it...
This is just one more way to get another SOPA article out there. 😉
But on the other hand....
….perusing this DMCA Notice, it seems to be an excellent index for my torrenting needs in and of itself. No more digging through all that useless legal stuff, just pull up the DMCAs. Yay!
Article fodder
Please keep us up to date on what happens. Like one of your other posts mentions, I am grabbing a bucket of popcorn and watching what happens. What I think would be particularly interesting to know is how long it takes to get the page back into circulation. What impact does it have if people can get pages down faster than they can be restored? What happens if I type in “TeamSkeet porn torrent download”? Is this page now going to be the subject of a DMCA takedown notice? If it is then we’ve now discovered a way to take down any page on any site that allows comments. Denial of service via DMCA attack (DoS via DMCA (TM) )
Misrepresentation and DMCA Notices
What are you talking about? He didn’t remove any posts.
Re:
Dah… we missed it.
No worries. Just glad you did a post on it. Be sure to keep us updated on the outcome. Should be interesting.
Reinstated
I’ve just been informed that after “further review” the link has been reinstated to Google’s index..
Re:
Using record label math, it’d be more like 100 out of every 10 would have donated $5.
There are no typos in the above sentence.
Re:
Hmmm, 1 lost download = 1 lost donation? Novel…
While Techdirt may be responsible for the content of its articles, the comment section should definitely be covered by DMCA “safe harbor” provisions and any takedown notice should’ve been sent to Techdirt, not Google.
Furthermore, the have only been a couple of cases where linking to infringing has been found to be illegal (by way of contributory infringement) and both of these involved there having been an actual judgment — not merely an accusation — that had found the material being linked to infringing.
The fact that Google was notified, while Techdirt was not is extremely dubious in itself.
DMCA this!
church ain’t the only one tucker
Reinstated
To use one of the MAFIAAs favorite “analogies”, I wonder if they think returning your car a month later makes up for stealing it in the first place?
Re:
I wonder, do any politicians use the internet to raise donations?
If so, i can think of a few certain politicians that “anonymous” could take a look at!
If politicians want to destroy then mould the internet, then i say “anonymous” should kick them off the net(if they can), see how they like it, fucking plonkers, its not enough that you have what you have, now you gotta break something that aint broke, because you see a new avenenue to rip us off……….PLONKERS
Re:
“512(f) does create liability for knowing misrepresentations”
Laws are meaningless without enforcement.
I found it odd that Google did not inform TechDirt that a DCMA had been filed against 2 of the posts – essentally that deprived TechDirt the ability to respond to the take down.
Chilling, indeed.
Holy smokes, that list reads like a Who’s Who on where to find infringing content. I mean, seriously — why is everyone ganging up on Google for suggesting search terms like ‘torrent’ when all you need to do is read just one of these DMCA notices to find over 500 torrent sites to get stuff? Sheesh.
Reinstated
What a joke. “Further review” is just lip service. More like “inital review” because everyone knows this stuff just gets rubberstamped.
Ha.. poor misguided greed monkeys. The people behind this BS really ought to have appreciated the fact that the *had a few companies they could lean on for Search related concerns.. like Google.
goodbye Google, hello P2p everything.
Keep your investigation on the downlow mike, at least at first, no point bringing attention to yourself just yet, lest they start covering their bases, find out, if you can, just how far up the ladder this goes
As others have already said, i’d be interested to see where this goes
Reinstated
No lawsuit? That sucks. At least challenge them to a dual for the honor of your post or something.
Reinstated
I’m betting it was this comment:
“Modplan (profile), Nov 23rd, 2011 @ 4:14am
I guess we should repeal it then.
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-blogger-law-student-raided-by-police-for-file-sharing-articl es-111121/”
Re:
Ron Paul does.
Re:
Section 512(c)(3)(A)(vi) also requires that the complaint must include:
Failing to check before complaining might get a handslap from a judge. Being called on it, and still claiming copyright in the work cannot be anything other than willful action, and that would leave the complainant open to a perjury charge.
Of course, the big question is, as always, “is nailing this company worth the expense of going to court?” Unless you’re willing to put a lot of money on the line in an attempt to set a precedent, the answer is probably “no”
armovore
It’s funny because it’s true.
Misrepresentation and DMCA Notices
….Had you not removed the posts,…
Techdirt didn’t remove any posts. The DMCA notice was directed at Google to remove the Techdirt article from Google’s search results.
Re:
don’t forget to log your time and change them your daily rate
http://www.techdirt.com/rtb.php?tid=600
since all the time you waste restoring those links could have been sold at your available offering.
Re:
don’t forget to log your time and change them your daily rate
http://www.techdirt.com/rtb.php?tid=600
since all the time you waste restoring those links could have been sold at your available offering.
Reinstated
The VM instance that does the automated reviews is named “further”. Thus, they were being completely truthful.
Re:
That’s a good point. Techdirt is selling the ability to shut Techdirt down for $100,000,000. With Google shutting them down without cause, they have deprived Techdirt of the ability or potential to sell that service.
It seems pretty clear to me that Techdirt is owed $100,000,000….
I wouldn’t contact anyone but a lawyer – sue them. If it’s clearly not infringing take them to task on it.
Re:
Yeah, but the hourly rate of $100,000,000 divided by the end of time is really sucks…
Re:
Exactly. And the rules against abuse are never enforced.
Now, if the takedown process were more like calling the local police to complain about neighbors, the party lodging bad complaints can end up with a citation or in court. Regardless as to whether any neighbors made a complaint against the nuisance complainer.
apparently someone has copyrighted a song birds call. I wonder if i can copyright a fart?
Interesting, but not complete
The evidence was on display. Google was the search engine mentioned. What confused you?
Devil's advocate
To defend the stupid, whatever stupid person they had searching logs or urls. The comments do mention ISOHunt and the word innocent. Since most of the infringing urls had the title “Innocent High” in it they assumed that the url was infringing.
I hate to defend the stupid, but sometimes you have to.
Re:
I was looking for the GNU Compiler and this confused me. Someone should file a trademark suit.
@ Mike Masnick & Team
Go get ’em Mike.
This is EXACTLY the type of crap we’re fighting against to keep the internet free from these CopyWrong Trolls and anti-freedom of speech fascists.
This shit is why censorship laws such as the existing DMCA, plus the proposed SOPA, OPEN, ACTA, TPP etc. are all worthy of being resisted and binned.
So sue their sorry asses.
Re:
But the $100000000 is the price for shutting down for a year, not for eternity, so if my calculations are correct the hourly rate is about $11416.
Pre-emptive shill rant
They say that can cause blindness.
Re:
the problem is that the penalty structure is entirely one sided. The standard to prove a bogus takedown request and get compensated is higher, one would practically have to prove intent, and the compensation is much lower than what one can get for infringement.
Not to mention that IP extremists generally get the high court treatment.
That needs to change. Those who make bogus takedown requests should be penalized much more severely than those who infringe and the government should not go after those who infringe, it should go after those who make bogus takedown requests. But, like usual, IP extremists get the high court treatment.
Also:
250. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-plot-thickens-was-woman-drinking-with-captain–or-an-innocent-aboard-6292246.html
251. http://www.piedmont-digital-graphics.com/
Reinstated
no harm, no foul
the ends justify the means
Re:
Well it would be a bit difficult to associate the cost for the maximum joke offer.
The real offer of spend a day with tech dirt staff offer could be real economic loss.
As long as they assign one of those 4 people to the task of reversing the bogus take down.
add the cost of buying the traffic that was lost because the article was not find able during the key period when it was relevant. The long term link juice from all the blogs that would have found it and linked to it.
And the loss of authority status due to that lost link juice.
And you could get a “real” value of damages.
Pre-emptive shill rant
Well played!
But it's not "abuse"
Great post, and only one quibble: you say that this is an example of how copyright is abused. But it’s not abuse. This is a natural result of having state grants of monopoly privilege over ideas, and administered by various bureaucratic state agencies/procedures. It’s not abuse at all. This is like SOPA: the problem is that that it goes “too far” in protecting copyright. The problem is copyright itself. SOPA, and DMCA takedowns, are just a symptom. Copyright is the disease.
Devil's advocate
So all MAFIAA has to do is have a troll post an infringing comment on an article they don’t like and then have someone else take it down?
Sock puppets FTW!
Re:
When it comes to estimating losses based on “potential woulda could shoulda”, they are all jokes.
Re:
not really follow the first link
one of the people who you get to have lunch with is a lawyer
his day rate would fall under the legal expense of getting this resolved.
Interesting, but not complete
You left out that this was just an index removal on Google only.
No, he didn’t. “Well, as I just discovered, that post cannot be found directly via Google any more. “
armovore
Someone who eats arms exclusively, obviously.
Sic 'Em
I feel the same way.
Can Techdirt sue? They bogus take down notice was clearly infringing on free speech.
so you know
chillingeffects.com link isn’t loading at all.
so you know
That’s because it’s chillingeffects.org.
Apology
Hello Mr. Masnick,
On behalf of Armovore, I would like to sincerely apologize for the error. It was not our intention to remove your url in addition to other false positives in the notice dated Jan 20, 2012. (Most if not all should be readded in Google’s index as of now)
Simply put, we made a mistake which was corrected when it came to our attention during an audit this weekend. In reality we are all human, and humans make mistakes. In fact circumstances such as this help us learn from our mistakes. For instance, http://torrentfreak.com/google-removes-pirate-bay-frontpage-from-search-results-091002/ is another example of such error.
We have no intention of censoring Free Speech actually, we are all for it. We’ve donated Tor Exit Nodes to the Tor Project in addition to other items such as SSL’s to other similar organizations who wish to protect just that.
Once again I apologize for the error, rather than a lengthy explanation I stick to my own principles of “NO BS”.
Thank you
IP is a joke
Movie theaters create their own ticket booths to exclude non-payers so they can have value in their product. Why should the Government build ticket booths for industries that utilize the internet? If the free market can’t provide adequate fences/ticket booths to exclude non-payers we SHOULD NOT ask the Government to do it- they always screw everything up. Senator Hatch says the Government should DESTROY computers without due process. http://www.dethronehatch.com/orrin-hatch-is-no-friend-of-the-internet/
Interesting, but not complete
But don’t you know that Google is the big bad guy of the internet who has caused all these serious losses for the RIAA and MPAA ever since the Internet was invented and even before Google existed?
It’s hard enough to sell shiny plastic disks these days as it is so why do they need BOTH Google and Techdirt around? 😉
Re:
“””TechDirt would have to prove damages. The cost of calculating and proving those damages is probably well in excess of the actual damages.”””
Now let’s use some record label accounting: go ahead and tack on the cost of calculating those damages into the actual suit itself! Genius!
Chilling, indeed.
Hey, that list is a veritable guide for any budding pirate, freetard or fatty out there to clean up on the downloads they want.
Well, except for Techdirt and The Independent.
Just who needs SOPA/PIPA/ACTA when you’ve got THIS?
Re:
Hi CC:
Hopefully my comment will get approved soon addressing the error. In regards to your statement, Google never disabled the URL you specified above.
Re:
Why would it be difficult?
Hell by applying RIAA/MPAA mathematics, you even get to apply a multiplier effect to the basic “unit cost”.
Hell, by their own warped arguments, this could be a clear case of “reverse piracy”. Every lost eyeball while the post was blocked, was clearly a lost advertising sale. If we take the average number of article views per days, multiple them by the number of days the article was blocked, and multiplying that by $150,000 per views we could be talking tens of millions of dollars here.
(Yes, it’s a completely stupid argument, but if that’s the kind of rules the content industry wants, then I am not the least bit shy about using their own methods right back at them).
Other interesting hits...
Hi Duke:
In regards to your statement, Google never disabled the URL you specified above.
Our intention is not to “BS” or deny any facts. The initial tool was keyword based. However, we’ve made substantial improvements to only do site: in addition to numerous automated/humans checks to remove only torrent links with actual infringing content rather than a mention of a result to xyz content.
Once again we apologize
Re:
…*knowingly materially*… no, I can’t imagine how anyone could weasel themselves out of that one
Re:
“Government bends over backwards to try to cater to hollywood”
I don’t think they’re bending over backwards somehow.
Probably the exact opposite…
Apology
Wow, thanks for coming to apologize. It’s certainly more than I was expecting to have happened.
Apology
Jeff,
While this apology is wonderful, I would hope that Armovore is taking steps to prevent this happening EVER AGAIN.
We don’t want to hear excuses about “the tech not being accurate enough” to be 100% accurate. We want to hear that this practice will STOP until the tech IS 100% accurate.
Anything else is false accusation and should not be part of modern society, online or offline.
Regards,
Mike.
Apology
Hi,
Thanks for the kind comments. To address a point made in the article, we have never charged anyone for our service since its inception in November.
Personally, I don’t feel the need to charge anyone for an unfinished service that is constantly being improved and tweaked every few days. Obviously we had a big bug in our system that we somehow missed during clean ups. We’ve had Google reinstate numerous URLs in the past due to similar circumstances, I’m quite ashamed I’ve never heard of TechDirt before today. We started auditing all DMCAs to Google as of today and hope to correct any other errors we’ve made.
In conclusion, our intention was not to restrict free speech. Personally, I am an avid defender of free speech having donated tor exit nodes and ssl certificates to organizations that defend just that.
Apology
Michael,
Understandable. We are actually auditing all of our previous DMCA’s to Google today to ensure no one else is being DMCAed by mistake. This was never our intention.
As far as your question, we are taking steps to prevent such event from occurring again by incorporating steps we take in traditional takedowns (cyberlockers / site DMCA’s) which is to manually anything that circumvents from our system. Beside this fact, we are only targeting known pirating locations rather than doing a SEO based search term.. Meaning anything from this point forward cannot be blamed on bad tech.
If anyone has any other questions I am more than happy to address them.
Apology
Meaning anything from this point forward cannot be blamed on bad tech.
Now that is stepping up! I’m sure the internet will be watching, so I hope everything cleans up from here on. Thanks for commenting.
Apology
You are just shameless
Apology
But it is ok for you to play around with taking down content with false accusations while you tweak your system, just because you aren’t charging anyone for it?
But on the other hand....
I figured that out a few weeks ago and have been very happy with what I’ve been digging up. Now all we need is a better way to search them. Hmmm… maybe I have an idea for a weekend project 😉
Re:
I agree. It’d be fabulous if Mike could set up an interview with someone at Armovore.
Other interesting hits...
So in other words you’re saying you didn’t give a damn about any innocent sites being targeted by your bot and through gross negligence censored sites.
Sue Armovore & Paper Street Cash
And use the logic of the RIAA in doing so. For the time that your post was affected by the take down, assume that Google would have sent a user to your page if any word or words on the page was a match for any Google query (Bing too, if that was also affected).
Then assume that any visitor to your page would have clicked on every ad and would be following you on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Also assume the good will of every visitor.
Then sue for loss of revenue, growth and good will.
but godaddy
says you have legal action after.
Sue them.
Re:
You could always see what help the EFF might be willing to give.
New Points
@Simple Mind – That its self is a false accusation. Our intention is not to falsely DMCA anyone. If it was our intention, why would we ask Google to reinstate TorrentFreak and numerous other links on Sunday well before this article was published? We are all human and make mistakes.
@Pseudonym – We are more than happy to answer any questions. As we mentioned before, it was due to a keyword match with the query “teamskeet torrent”. As an avid supporter of Tor, the EFF, and numerous other projects that project Free Speech that would be against our principles to DMCA a news article that is relevant to the issue its self.
@Anonymous Coward – If our goal was to censor sites who have the right to Free Speech why are there only 2 false positives considering the rest are torrents. Clearly a mistake.
Once again, we apologize.
New Points
If our goal was to censor sites who have the right to Free Speech why are there only 2 false positives considering the rest are torrents.
I’d like to interject here for a moment to point something out.
It doesn’t matter if “the rest are torrents.” They absolutely must be torrents of material over which you hold the copyright. If you are sending takedown notices over torrent files (even infringing ones) and you do not hold the copyright to those files, then you are breaking the law.
For example: if one of those searches resulted in a link to “Innocent High,” the song by Blood On The Dance Floor, and you issue a takedown notice on that search, then you are breaking the law.
Keeping this in mind, there are far, far more than just two false positives on there.
Personally, I do appreciate your coming on here and explaining the situation. That is good of you to do. I sincerely hope that your new system will handle things better.
The competency of a DMCA bot maker
I could make a fortune making software for “anti-piracy” companies like you. The standard of quality is so damn low, that any semi-competent software engineer could improve on your process without even trying too hard.
Where do I sign up?
It is convenient, isn’t it, to blame your software for your failings. I blame you, though. You have no business running your crap on the Internet when it can’t do the one thing it’s supposed to do properly.
F***ing ridiculous.
Apology
Why should this “apology” be greeted with gratitude? Such copyright holders will still gladly use the censorship power of the state against others.
Apology
This is nonsense. Why not commit to stop using DMCA and the copyright system to censor your competition? So you will only use copyright and state censorship sometimes? How generous and noble of you.
New Points
@Anonymous Coward – If our goal was to censor sites who have the right to Free Speech why are there only 2 false positives considering the rest are torrents. Clearly a mistake.
For what it’s worth, it appears there were significantly more than “2 false positives.” I named a few, but others have pointed out more.
Also, it’s worth pointing out that saying this was a “bug” doesn’t really cut it. The document you sent swore *under penalty of perjury* that these were accurate and that you had the copyright.
New Points
The bigger issue here is that the removal was ABLE to occur AT ALL without any verification whatsoever that there was ANY content that COULD be infringement much less WAS infringement by simply sending the takedown request regardless of who or why the request was sent in the first place. This is the BIGGEST problem with PIPA/SOPA/DMCA like laws. There is no burden to prove allegations prior to execution and no consequence for damages caused by false allegations.
New Points
this may be due to being conservative xD but why not contact the company directly rather than creating a fiasco out of no one?? im quite certain you can find numerous erroneous letters in chilling effects
Would be nice to see if google employed some form of verification could be comments as someone mentioned
purpose and intent evident in design and action
Calling this crap abuse is like watching an angry man beating people with a baseball bat and exclaiming “That’s not how you play baseball!”
The competency of a DMCA bot maker
Completely agree. We should start selling bridges to those people.
and no one noticed !! or cares..
what is SO FUNNY is this page being blocked, and no one noticing it!!!
says a great deal more than any words said here !
Masnick, are you telling us your method of ‘research’ is googling “techdirt” to see your past articles ? is that how you ‘manage’ this site ?
So if you need to reference anything you have posted here, you need to Google it ?
Seems like the only people or person who is interested in what you have written in the past Masnick, is yourself.
The competency of a DMCA bot maker
come on !!! we all know that Masnick does not have a clue about running an effective or efficient web site. He’s been told many times about the poor quality and presentation of this site. But Masnick will have none of it, TD is perfect, just ask him HAHAHAHAHA..
But masnick ‘understands’ ‘tech’ and the internet, but no one else does. for proof of this FACT just look at the quality and presentation of TD !
The competency of a DMCA bot maker
any semi-competent software engineer could…..
or any 10 year old !!
Re:
or ask google how many different people searched for the ‘blocked’ web page ?
it appears the number of seaches would be 1 (ONE) search, being the only one that Masnick performed..
That is how many people are interested in Masnicks past writings, ONE, including Masnick.
The competency of a DMCA bot maker
Actually, the only thing bugging me about this site is that you cannot have small layout on the articles and wide on comments only.
Reinstated
ahh, so the ‘system’ works !!!!!! what are you going to complain about now ?
Other interesting hits...
Yeah, you’ve almost nailed it. They apparently do a series called Innocent High and the strange pages have this in common: including the article and visible comments, they all have the words “torrent”, “innocent”, and “high” in them. Come on, guys, at least put quotes around “innocent high” in your Google search.
Re:
If this is trolling – try better. If you need practice – go back to 4chan.
Reinstated
…because he always complains.
…because ACs always have a constructive debate.
…because you never used logical fallacies.
See what I didn’t do there? 🙂
Interesting, but not complete
“You left out that this was just an index removal on Google only.”
Erm, the entire article is about not finding the site on Google. He says “Well, as I just discovered, that post cannot be found directly via Google any more.”, and then prceeds to talk about Google and only Google.
Does he really need to be more specific than that?
Re:
if you’d be surprised by that, you’ve clearly not been paying attention.
Sic 'Em
pretty sure there’s something about perjury in the way the law is worded, from memory.
that’s a criminal charge, is it not? or at least very serious?
can be brought by a regular citizen, no? not just the state?
much more effective than just sueing them (if it works)
or, heck, do both, if possible.
Apology
because it’s a step up from the usual response of blaming everyone else and hurling abuse at the person who dared point out they got it wrong?
i mean, it doesn’t make up for anything, but it is a pleasant change.
What's In A Name
Tech Dirt commenter’s names match in whole or partial to names on the front page of the other site. I think this is how they do it. These types of take-downs are more common now that more and more people are using real. or fictionally real names.
Ashley
Jamie
Charlotte
Allen
Ryan
Russell
Mimi
Asia
Allen
King
Casey
Chris
Olivia
Smith
Olson
Jordan (5)
Ryder (3)
James (8)
Unique partials or common with multiple hits
Jay (+11)
Blaze
Roxx (x)
Rox (7)
Chris (3)
Jen (+12)
Hristo (5)
Michael (5)
Lee (12)
and no one noticed !! or cares..
OOOhhh,, I hit a nerve !!! Good..
Re:
sure, but that would require Masnick to have some balls!!!
Maybe it's a new marketing method
Here’s a thought … maybe some bright spark decided doing this would generate a lot of interest and traffic for the allegedly infringed material. I’d never heard of Paper Street Cash or Armovore prior to this fiasco – I’m pretty sure that now applies to a heck of a lot of other people too.
Reinstated
yes, Ive seen everything you did not do !
The competency of a DMCA bot maker
thats right, and there ALLWAYS is something !!! for everyone.
Bogus DMCA Notices by "Representatives"
I wonder how a “representative” can submit a correct DMCA notice anyway. Hard to imagine how they could certify anything since they were only hired to write the notice.
Re:
How much does a CD cost? How much is that per track?
Now how much do the record companies actually ask as reimbursement for every infraction of copyright law, when they are charging people in court. That’s what the joke is here.
Or in other words *Whoosh*
Re:
The downside to that argument is that it validates their reasoning.
Re:
No, ‘our’ governments are just bending *us* over, to accept the long arm of the copyright police deep into our rectum.
Revolution please.
This is censorship. It’s now.
This is just like the prohibition. Maybe worse.
The word copyright is being abused by these trolls.
THE REVOLUTION SHOULD BE NOW.
BOYCOTT GOOGLE: they are corrupted now. Boycott WHOEVER supports these horrors.
STOP CENSORSHIP. STOP GOOGLE.
This is censorship. It’s now.
This is just like the prohibition. Maybe worse.
The word copyright is being abused by these trolls.
THE REVOLUTION SHOULD BE NOW.
BOYCOTT GOOGLE: they are corrupted now. Google is NOT your entry point to neutral information.
Boycott WHOEVER supports these horrors.
Re:
And no wonder, one of the links is an article about the Costa Concordia disaster:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-plot-thickens-was-woman-drinking-with-captain–or-an-innocent-aboard-6292246.html
(Line 250)
Other interesting hits...
– “The initial tool was keyword based.”
This was a Very Bad Idea(tm). Even I could have told you that.
You should be banned from the internet for thinking it was actually a good idea to begin with.
Apology
– “We are actually auditing all of our previous DMCA’s to Google today to ensure no one else is being DMCAed by mistake.”
It’s cool that you’re on here apologising and all, but wow…
You’re auditing all the DMCA’s now? When were you planning on doing that anyway? Never? It’s been over a month, and you’re only doing it now because you ended up in a shitstorm over one item on the list.
How about if you had done an audit of that list before you sent it off to Google?
And using a keyword based search to determine what pages to add to the list? Shame on you, that’s borderline retarded, honestly.
I’m sorry for sounding hostile, but I really don’t think you grasp the gravitas of your mistakes.
Apology
It looks as if they caught TorrentFreak maybe had not gotten to the rest of the list =/
http://torrentfreak.com/torrentfreaks-us-censorship-mistake-article-censored-by-mistake-120227/
Re:
And 253: Techdirt’s SOPA article- FUCKING AGAIN!
#255: An anime discussion forum (at least, I don’t see it as being very useful).
The last two lines are gold:
“I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described in all notifications submitted through the Program as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.”
“The information in all notifications submitted through the Program will be accurate, and I swear, under penalty of perjury, that with respect to those notifications, I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”
Accurate my arse.
http://www.4shared.com/audio/NcIMWtd3/Mix_Getting_over_you_-_Oye_bab.html
http://www.musicacristiana7.com/CcrPWjJB/diego-vargas.html
http://tenthgalaxy.com/movies/hollywood-movies/amelie-2001-eng-subs-brrip-480p-torrent-tpb-with-mediafire-links
http://www.gamebanker.com/xd2/download+disney+cars+2+save+game/
http://thepostpunk80sunderground.blogspot.com/2012/02/crawl-away-machine-map-of-asia-12-ep.html
These guys need to be sued. Someone please send this article to Public Citizens and the EFF
New Points
That its self is a false accusation. Our intention is not to falsely DMCA anyone.
I love that. I am falsely accusing him of something he just said that he did!
It doesn’t matter what your intention is, it is your actions that count!
post
http://armovore.blogspot.com
Re:
and it would be nice if making a false DMCA takedown had the same penalty as infringing on a copyright, however copyright infringement has a statutory damages component and bogus DMCA do not.
That being said, maximizing/properly allocating the actual damages is the best you can do legally.
Tech dirt just happens to have accidentally created some liability for this bogus take down which they should exploit to establish the precedent. Considering court cost are one of the things that is explicitly covered it a freebie.
Add the fact that it a dirty porn company who is making the bogus complaint, the anti porn sentiment would actually make it the easiest fight.
Other interesting hits...
That’s what you get when you outsource and do not check. Btw.. your actions are suspiciously close to another reckless company called DEGBAN. You two appear to be related.
Perjury
Have the swearing under penalty of perjury requirement of a DMCA takedown notice ever been enforced? Civil? Criminal? Putting a couple of these wretches in jail would go a long way to ending frivolous notices.
John @armovore
I hope your mistakes cause a tidal wave of regulatory review and scrutiny. I love how you have no qams about how your unfinished product deprived people of this country their constitutional rights. You should be ashamed and shutter your business immediatly since it’s obvious your ehtics are extremely misplaced.
We’ll be watching you…………………….
armovore
A perve-merchant’s attack dog.
and no one noticed !! or cares..
And again you care enough to take notice.
Reinstated
So the “system” works, right? Pirates are caught; why do we need SOPA again? Stop complaining, darryl.
Re:
Really, darryl? And you wonder why no one takes you seriously. Mike posts something? You accuse him of not citing anything, while you never cite any sources claiming that you don’t claim to be an intellectual. You get responded to? You insult everyone for reading your posts. Mike points out how the system is wrong? You blame him for being a pirate. Mike forgives the system? You insult him for being cowardly. People pay for Murdoch’s content? You call them idiots. People refuse to pay for Murdoch’s content? You call them criminals.
For fuck’s sake, we can work out compromises with the industry, but it’s clear that there’s no pleasing you. Go crawl back under your rock.
Perjury
Yep. Diebold Coughs Up Cash in Copyright Case: https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2004/10/15
Armovore
Mopre bogus notices – getting entire sites kicked out with no acutal linked content on the main page.
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512c/notice.cgi?NoticeID=213481
Sends notice on porn site, claims rights to the following:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512c/notice.cgi?NoticeID=206559
87. http://www.realtorrentz.eu/search.php?term=rec+genesis
88. http://extratorrent.com/torrent/2599467/Love+Wallpapers+V1.html
89. http://darearedirect8.net/nero+8+ultra+edition+8.0.3.0+-+silent+install+x86/x64.html
90. http://go-torrent.com/application-torrents/Adobe-Acrobat-Reader-Pro-X-10-Keygen-.rar_370757281.html
91. http://go-torrent.com/game-torrents/Sanctum.v-1.4.11024-8-DLC.-Coffee-Stain-Studios-._370734177.html
92. http://go-torrent.com/application-torrents/Any-Video-Converter-Free-3.3.3.By.FOUADY_370777537.html
93. http://latestmoviez.com/torrent/Un-Tranquillo-week-end-di-lussuria-Italian_370687725.torrent
94. http://www.filesocean.net/a10/2/240×320+touch+screen+java+games+torrent
95. http://filedic.com/clubbox/Floralia
This guy is completely out of control.
Huh...
Sounds like a shell company acting on behalf of the bigger interests. Why the find you a threat is beyond me.
Perjury
There’s nothing in that eff article about perjury; the eff won legal fees and damages.
Perjury
PLEASE try to get them by their balls for perjury. Seeing one of those ███████ put behind bars would be really gratifying and might make the others think twice about DMCA abuse and firing off autogenerated unverified complaints.