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Charter Countersues Music Companies for Sending Inaccurate DMCA Notices
Internet provider Charter Communications has submitted its answer to the piracy liability lawsuit filed by major record labels. The ISP denies many of the allegations and also strikes back. In a recent filing, it accuses the music companies of violating copyright law by sending DMCA notices for content they don't own.
Last year, several major music companies sued Charter Communications, one of the largest Internet providers in the US with 22 million subscribers. Helped by the RIAA, Capitol Records, Warner Bros, Sony Music, and others accused Charter of deliberately turning a blind eye to its pirating subscribers.
[...] This week Charter replied to the complaint, which was amended in February, denying most of these allegations. In addition, the ISP is countersuing the music companies on two issues. Firstly, Charter requests a declaratory judgment from the court, ruling that it's not contributorily liable for the alleged infringements of its customers. Among other things, it points out that it doesn't host or promote any infringing activity, nor can it detect piracy on its network. Other ISPs have issued similar counterclaims in the past. However, Charter goes a step further by also countersuing the music companies for violating copyright law themselves.
Charter's partial answer to amended complaint.
Mixtape Service Sues RIAA for Sending False Takedown Notices
Popular hip-hop mixtape site and app Spinrilla has sued the RIAA for sending false takedown notices. The company believes that the music group relies on text searches, without properly checking if the content is infringing. The mixtape site informs the court that these faulty notices harm its goodwill and reputation, so is requesting damages in return.
[...] Spinrilla believes that the RIAA is sending takedown requests based on text searches, which results in inaccurate takedown notices. To stop this from happening, the site has filed a lawsuit at a federal court in Georgia, accusing the RIAA of sending false DMCA takedowns.
"Defendant is sending DMCA takedown notices some of which materially misrepresent that audio files uploaded by certain Spinrilla's users infringe sound recordings owned by RIAA's members," Spinrilla writes.
These inaccurate takedown requests harm the goodwill and reputation of the mixtape site, Spinrilla notes. It's a waste of resources and can also result in user accounts being terminated without good cause.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday March 23 2020, @04:33PM (1 child)
It's long over dew for someone to push back on that "under penalty of perjury" thing. Someone, is "signing on the dotted line" when a DMCA notice is filed. It is expressly under penalty of perjury.
If you don't want to clog the courts so much, then a better solution would be to also have a statutory penalty for filing a false DMCA claim. And it should be in line with the $150,000 per instance statutory penalty for copyright infringement. That is, each false DMCA notice should have a statutory required penalty of $150,000 each. That would clog up the courts less, because once the notice is shown to be factually false, the penalty can be very simple for the court.
The DMCA is a travesty of justice.
If we're going to hand an industry group a super duper power that circumvents the courts and instantly gets content taken down, then there better be some safeguards (that actually work) in place to prevent the vast abuses we've seen.
The nature sounds recording that you mention, is the worst example. If someone is going to file a DMCA, they should at the very least be absolutely sure they own the copyright on it, and then ideally have some true belief that the "infringement" is really that -- something that damages the market value of their creative work. A baby dancing to an unintelligible background song is not going to damage the market value of that song.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday March 23 2020, @06:43PM
The DMCA is a travesty of justice.
Yes it is...
Now what?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..