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A link provided by an Anonymous Coward has provided a story that we have heard several times recently - hyperlinks being removed after being claimed as a DMCA violation when it is patently clear to everyone that the claim is simply not true.
The takedown request seeks to remove links to a number of torrent URLS that are alleged to infringe on Paramount movie 'Transformers: Age of Extinction'. The link is actually to an Ubuntu 12.04 iso disk image. I am amazed that anyone with even a modicum of reading skills can imagine a link between the Ubuntu software and the film in question.
Cited in a DMCA takedown request filed against Google on behalf of Paramount Pictures, and spotted by TorrentFreak (and tipped to us by reader ~nonanonymous) is an innocuous link to a 32-bit alternate install image Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS.
The takedown request seeks to remove links to a number of torrent URLS that are alleged to infringe on Paramount movie 'Transformers: Age of Extinction'.
Ubuntu clearly doesn't. All it takes is a quick glance at the URL in question to see that. It's very much a stock iso of an old Ubuntu release.
And yet Google has complied with the request and scrubbed the link to the page in question from its search index.
But don't hate on Google for this. The sheer volume of DMCA requests Google is made to process by copyright holders is gargantuan: over three million 'pirate' URLs per day, say TorrentFreak.
Being a European, I am also amazed that there is little or no penalty for making incorrect claims, which probably explains why Google are receiving over 300 million claims a day. Why should anyone stop? There is simply no cost to those who make the claims regardless as to whether they are accurate or not. Why aren't US businesses, indeed any business worldwide, up in arms about this practice which could adversely affect their own ability to trade and ultimately, reduce their profits? I realise that this doesn't necessarily apply to Ubuntu, but with such a large number of DMCA claims I imagine that there must have been many false claims that have affected legitimate businesses.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @03:11PM
This is part of why DMCA takedown notices shouldn't exist (though websites still should have safe harbor) and the copyright thugs should have to go through the court system from the beginning. Censor-first-ask-questions-later policies are unjust; the trial doesn't happen from the beginning, and the concept of innocent unless proven guilty goes out the window. It's not enough to simply create higher penalties for filing frivolous notices, as the ethical problems with a censor-first policy would not disappear.
It's not our job to make it easier for copyright thugs to enforce their monopolies, so no amount of whining about the difficulty of doing so makes the idea of DMCA notices valid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @03:22PM
Cue this troll: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=15484&cid=401125#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @03:35PM
Did you have a constructive rebuttal you wanted to make?