CoreCodec Apologizes For CoreAVC Takedown 185
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "In a follow-up to the previous story, CoreCodec has apologized for the incorrect DMCA Takedown notice that took the CoreAVC project offline. There's also a public statement by co-founder Dan Marlin saying in part, 'I'd like to publicly apologize to Alan [CoreAVC project lead] for the disconnect between him and us as well as the disruption to the project as there was no ill will intended and we were already working on a resolution with him before this went public.' They've also created a new policy for sending out DMCA Takedown notices, so that they won't misuse them in the future."
Will the Google project resume now? (Score:3, Insightful)
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If you don't feel like doing all of that, you could always pick a host not in the US or a small host that will ask you to act on/respond to tak
Re:Will the Google project resume now? (Score:5, Insightful)
IIRC, it's down to the project owner to then turn around and say "There's nothing the matter with it, you shouldn't have been served the takedown notice". Google is only a middleman here.
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Site owners can sue too. That is, unless when you sign up for hosting you agree that your site can be taken down for any reason.
Re:Will the Google project resume now? (Score:5, Insightful)
This whole drama seems manufactured to get attention for another *yawn* codec.
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Yes. If your restaraunt is in the newspaper because someone died from salmonella poisoning and six more people are in the hospital, expect people to stay away in droves.
When someone in the press catches wind of your tryst with your secretary, expect to lose the next election. (Oops, this is slashdot; "loose" the next election - on an unsuspecting public)
Or you could just ask OJ Simpson [uncyclopedia.org] how that film career is going.
BTW, as everyone with a grandma knows there IS such
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Yeah, right. There's a restaurant in Stone Mountain, GA imaginatively called "Asian Buffet" that recently got shut down for scoring about a 20 on its health inspection. This was reported in the local newspaper (Atlanta Journal-Constitution). It subsequently reopened, and guess what? People are flocking to it again in droves! Obviously, nobo
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This whole drama seems manufactured to get attention for another *yawn* codec.
Yeah, I tend to agree - CoreAVC is becoming less important by the day. A system running a modern CPU doesn't really need CoreAVC - on the windows front FFDShow works fine and its counterpart on linux should be just as good.
I've played a lot of HD-DVD and BLU-RAY h264 movies on my PC and the only time FFDShow on a 3GHz cpu was not sufficient was some whacked out DTS demo disk - don't ask me why an audio demo disc had intense video (just logos flying around) but its been the only disk out of hundreds that F
Re:Will the Google project resume now? (Score:5, Informative)
After that, it's up to the courts, if either party wants to take it that far.
Re:Will the Google project resume now? (Score:5, Informative)
One such is: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Terrorism/form-letter.html [cmu.edu] or here: http://www.ucmo.edu/dmca/counter.html [ucmo.edu]
People unfortunately probably go to lawyers first, a little bit of knowledge goes a long way.
However, DMCA misuse is something that can be sued for and withdrawing the already DMCA'd request doesn't lift that vulnerability in court...there is a provision for DMCA misuse.
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Wasn't there some part of DMCA that said like you can sue for DMCA misuse or abuse or something though?
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I'm not sure but I would hope so. I was merely pointing out that you could also go after someone for perjury if they send a false DMCA take down notice. I imagine it doesn't matter if they withdraw the DMCA notice or not - damage has already been done.
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It's my understanding that a DMCA take down notice has to be signed "under penalty of perjury" in order be valid. So, being thrown in jail for perjury sounds like it would be one consequence for sending a false DMCA take down notice.
No. You are sharing a work A. I think it to be identical to my work B. I state, under penalty of perjury, that I'm the copyright holder of B. Nothing more, nothing less as not even the "good faith" part is covered by the perjury clause.
What you're looking for is section f):
(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 lia
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And that's different from what I said how? Isn't it true that the DMCA take down notice itself is not valid unless signed "under penalty of perjury?" Thank you for clarifying exactly what parts of the DMCA take down notice the perjury statement refers to, that is informative. It doesn't change my point that if you send a DMCA no
Re:Will the Google project resume now? (Score:4, Informative)
Site owners can sue too. That is, unless when you sign up for hosting you agree that your site can be taken down for any reason.
Brilliantly worded bit of kit there. It's like an anti-terrorism law that states "If you don't make a citizen's arrest, and it turns out that random Arabic/Mexican/Just-Not-White-Enough chap really is evil, you're liable for anything he does cause you COULD have stopped him."
Absolutely stupid idea, but hey, it's ""Intellectual Property" Law", leave your brain at the door.
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The process is a good one, and it removes the need to make a judgment about
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Umm, I'm pretty sure it's because that's how the DMCA is written. I believe they are obligated under the law to respect a DMCA take down notice. This is a good example of how flawed the DMCA is - it puts the burden of proof on the accused. Of course, in order for a DMCA take down notice to be valid it has to be signed "under penalty of perjury" so if you do file a
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Why does a takedown notice get more respect than the site owner? Because a person sending such a notice seems more sue-happy than the site owner?
Because that's the law. Yes, it's stupid. It's a stupid law.
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Uhrrr.. (Score:5, Informative)
Ah, CoreAVC (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually, it's tied to the windows product ID. Re-install windows, and the old serial number still works just fine.
This is designed to be "unique enough" that users can't copy all over the place, and was a direct response to the codec being used in large numbers of "Codec Packs".
Re:Ah, CoreAVC (Score:5, Informative)
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CoreCodec really does treat their customers like shit. It's rather obvious at times that they want to license out their technology rather than sell it directly to consumers, meanwhile no one of note has been licensing their stuff. They're competent coders, don't get me wrong, CoreAVC has amazingly low CPU usage, but they're completely unable to run a business that deals with consumers. I have little doubt that that this is both a "sorry we got caught" and "we're genuinely sorry" situation; the former becaus
Damage Control (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm impressed.
Granted, after reading the comments and hearing about crappy activation for a codec, I'm not sure, but other companies should take note -- when you make a dick move, do the following steps, in order:
1: STOP what you're doing.
2: Apologize.
Most companies never manage step 1. But if you're going to stop anyway, admitting that you were wrong will buy you a lot of goodwill.
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Re:Damage Control (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up (Score:3, Informative)
But in case you are wondering, click on the link about Dan Marlin's response and read part of the thread where he (BetaBoy) responds to his customers.
Judge for yourself what kind of person he is...
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http://www.corecodec.com/forums/index.php?topic=981.0
I'm not sure exactly who is being arrogant, but I'd hope we'd all stand down now that this issue has been apparently resolved.
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Whether they, as a company, are worth a damn does not really bother me but I do have respect for anyone that on making a mistake, does the right thing. Whether it's for saving face or not, it still is good to see them shout mea culpa and apologize.
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1. The DMCA take down notice only referenced a single law in the United States Code - Specifically Title 17 Section 512; the safe harbor take down clause.
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No, this wasn't just "damage control". We really [slashdot.org] do [slashdot.org] care about user's rights.
The CoreAVC on Linux project did break the copy protection in CoreAVC; a DMCA takedown was sent because of this, despite our internal policy of going after pirates, not customers. I _personally_ called up the person responsable at 4AM, and reamed him a new one. As long as I am a director in the company, I will not al
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It's only stupid if CoreCodec continues to use that lawyer (possibly the same legal firm).
The lawyer sends out the takedown notice under the pain of perjury - so b admitting that the notice was a lie, the lawyer can now be tried in court.
Has that ever actually happened?
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That's kind of what most people do when their lawyer explains something to them and advises them on a course of action.
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The CEO signed and sent the DMCA notice.
The lawyer sends out the takedown notice under the pain of perjury - so b admitting that the notice was a lie, the lawyer can now be tried in court.
One reason so many people doubt a real lawyer was consulted in this matter is this. The CEO sent the takedown notice under penalty of perjury. Who in their right mind would not have their paid counsel do it?
Re:Damage Control (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't know if it does or not, you're taking a 50-50 chance on it being perjury or not.
In and of itself, that's something that'd get you in trouble in a Court if it was anything other than this stupid crap, which shouldn't be around in the first place.
Before the DMCA, you had to file an infringement case, go before a Judge in a hearing on the matter, and get an injunction to get the same effect. With the DMCA, they don't have to bother with that. With the DMCA, they only have to send takedown letters to the appropriate parties to get a result. There's no Judge in the middle, determining whether they, in fact, have a case or not- they don't even have to face any music for being wrong and doing it frivolously unless the person they do it to is flush with cash and pursues the counter hard. With the old way, you had to go to the trouble of filing a suit- and if you got it wrong, there was decent chances of the lawyer and the plaintiff being sanctioned for the sillybuggers we see these days.
There's a reason the stuff was the way it was before the DMCA. Congress was foolishly led to believe that the rights holders with standing needed a "quicker" way of fixing things and to treat ways of circumventing "protections" as criminal acts.
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For what it's worth, CoreAVC for Linux does, in fact break the copy protection [google.com] in CoreAVC. This potentially makes it a "circumvention device".
That being said, it is our policy to go after pirates, not customers. As such, this DMCA takedown was legally valid, but
Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop? (Score:5, Insightful)
For decoding, ffmpeg (Which has a code base used throughout a tonne of the Free Software world) already has a decent decoder, and for encoding we have x264 (Developed by the folks behind VLC)...
I know that CoreAVC claims to be super optimised, but is it really that much better? I have always assumed that they were just milking those Windows users that didn't know of ffdshow [sourceforge.net].
Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop? (Score:5, Informative)
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Would Freax have worked better? (Score:2)
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hardware I don't see the point. You can already do HD h264 with Linux using the
current state of the relevant codecs. Bluray might not work quite so well but
Bluray has other problems (like just accessing the disk).
CPUs have overtaken the problem.
Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop? (Score:5, Informative)
The ffmpeg decoder is awesome, it is a reference quality codec, it renders EVERY frame as good as it possibly can... which is not really how you want video, you want a usable frame rate FIRST.
As a customer of CoreCodec (both the windows h.264 multi threaded codec AND the symbian media player) I am glad its all sorted.
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Re:Why would you want CoreAVC on the Free Desktop? (Score:4, Informative)
sometimes decent is not good enough (Score:3, Informative)
When i play HD movies, VLC works perfectly on my Windows, Mplayer playback is jerky.
I prefer not to boot into Windows, but sometimes i have to.
One word: Speed (Score:3, Informative)
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- it is slower
- it doesn't support multithreading very well, so a slower dual-core cpu might still be not fast enough because it can only load one core fully
- it doesn't support some of the more strange features of h.264, which are often used with HDTV (such as PAFF deinterlacing - print an error and segfault)
So yes, I can definitely see why some people would want to use C
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I was consistently unable to play 720p encodes on my P4 running Fedora with either mplayer or xine as the engine. My newer Pentium D doesn't have the same problems, though it chokes on 1080p encode
DMCA working as intended (Score:5, Informative)
1. If you post material online, someone can send a DMCA notice and have it instantly taken down. They must though state that legally and in good faith they have strong reason to believe they are copyright owners.
2. If you challenge it, you send a DMCA counternotice and the material is put back up. You must though state that legally and in good faith you either are the copyrightholder or its in public domain. By doing this you also have to reveal your name. Obviously if you are not willing to reveal your name, you can't counternotice.
(the only potential misuse I could see is if people have a good reason to post anonymously, like whistleblowers - anyone know of any use like that? Obviously this would however confirm that any material taken down is not falsified or the company could not claim copyright)
3. If both parties are in good faith, then obviously let the lawsuits commence. If one of the party was not in good faith - well, they can be smacked down very hard quite easily. It looks like CoreCodec just discovered they were not actually in good faith and are doing damage control.
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The only thing I'm not sure about is this quote from Martin:
I don't really believe that is the case. It was my understanding that DMCA prohibited any reverse engineering, but IANAL.
Lucid, but incorrect. (Score:3, Funny)
-1 Astroturfing?
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Wow, a lucid post from an AC. I hope it's modded accordingly. The only thing I'm not sure about is this quote from Martin:
I don't really believe that is the case. It was my understanding that DMCA prohibited any reverse engineering, but IANAL.
Yes, the DMCA allows reverse engineering as a very narrow exception to the anti-circumvention provisions (see http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/1201.html#f [harvard.edu]).
However, I think it only applies to reverse engineering of a "technological measure" used to enforce copy protection. The DMCA doesn't single-handedly outlaw reverse engineering.
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Credit where credit is due. (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientology critics?
If one of the party was not in good faith - well, they can be smacked down very hard quite easily.
Inconceivable!
It looks like CoreCodec just discovered they were not actually in good faith and are doing damage control.
I think that's what they said, yes. Their message is basically "we fucked up, sorry, we're making sure we can't fuck up that way again".
Voluntarily admitting they fucked up when they fuck up, let alone bothering to figure out how they can avoid fucking up again, is unfortunately rare enough for organizations that it's actually impressive to see one do it without having to be dragged through a lawsuit first. I don't think you're giving them enough credit.
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Unfortunately for CoreCodec, they reached for the DMCA before actually finding out what was going on and whether or not what they claimed in the filing was even TRUE or not. They used the DMCA in an inappropriate way that smacked of quelling competition, even though they claim it wasn't that.
It's
Re:DMCA working as intended (Score:4, Insightful)
The DMCA wasn't intended to be used for this situation. It just gets used that way.
There was no copyright being broken.
There was no circumvention of protection measures.
However, it was used to pull down a site and a project for a time- for no other reason than a company stating that either were going on.
Sure, it's working as it's intended- but it's not what should be allowed. You shouldn't have the ability to willy-nilly do things like this and then maybe, just maybe, face the music of your actions after the fact after you've screwed up like this. Other things in the civil space typically require an injunction which takes time and usually requires more actual effort on the part of the party asking for it to get things to stop. With the DMCA, you don't need any of that crap- not even a Judge to determine if you're even full of crap or not. With the DMCA, you get to send a legal looking, nasty letter filed with a court and sent to the people in question, stating under of penalty of perjury that this is so and that they have to remove it or face possibly being held actionable along with the "infringing party". If you're wrong with the old way, you could face sanctions amongst other things- with the DMCA, it's really cheap in comparison.
Sure, it's working as "intended"- but the problem is, that "as intended" is the very problem everyone's up in arms about. There's less legal consequences for a screwup of this nature. There's less consequences for someone going around and doing it for things like printer cartridges where the company's trying to use it to keep people from refilling the expensive ink on them- and to keep buying the wasteful expensive ink cartridges. The DMCA's busted.
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No, not "strong reason to believe". By sending the takedown they are stating under penalty of perjury that they are the copyright holders. Read the letter [chillingeffects.org], he says he personally downloaded the file(s) in question and verified that his copyright was being infringed. This is, however, impossible as he ha
Which is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Perjury (Score:4, Interesting)
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You swear that 'on belief and in good faith' the material violates your copyright. Essentially, 'we think that it's a violation and we want it to stop'. Now, if you have a history of sending DMCA notices for things you don't own, well then you expose yourself to loosing on the go
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Right, and that line of reasoning works with closed-source products. For open-source, there is *no* excuse, and their lawyer(s) should face sanctions.
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The perjury section is to stop people sending out fake notices pretending they own Disney's material, and thus getting websites taken down in Disney's name. Disney can send out notices all day long about their own material, regardless of whether the DMCA target is a valid one or not.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
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But the huge majority of DMCA requests are probably from corporations against much smaller companies or individuals. In that situation then the corporation bribes...sorry, pays for....sorry, 'supports', more than the target, so surely it's obvious they were guilty? Such seems to be the way of capitalism and commercialism getting involved in democracy.
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I'm pretty averse to involving the legal system unnecessarily. In this example, two private parties worked it out and moved on. Imagine the same scenario, except now the plaintiff faces penalties from a pissed-off judge if they admit they're wrong and want to drop their case. No, I think this worked exactly like it should.
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I'm failing to see the problem with that scenario. Maybe next time the person won't be sending out fradulent DMCA requests anymore.
The problem is that it gives the plaintiffs a strong reason not to back down, even if they want to. Their choices become: 1) say "I'm sorry" and get fined by the judge, or 2) say "oh, crud" and throw in every legal resource at their disposal in the hope that you'll get scared (or go bankrupt) and give in.
I've read that when kidnapping became a capital crime, that the percentage of victims killed skyrocketed because the kidnappers perceived that their odds of escaping justice were better with a dead wit
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The problem is that it gives the plaintiffs a strong reason not to back down, even if they want to. Their choices become: 1) say "I'm sorry" and get fined by the judge, or 2) say "oh, crud" and throw in every legal resource at their disposal in the hope that you'll get scared (or go bankrupt) and give in.
I'm sorry but this doesn't make any sense. If the judge has already ruled their claim to be fraudulent and is going to fine them, exactly through what mechanism is this supposed plaintiff going to have to go after you?
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If the judge has already ruled their claim to be fraudulent and is going to fine them, exactly through what mechanism is this supposed plaintiff going to have to go after you?
I'm talking about before the judge rules. Suppose that the plaintiffs realizes their mistake after the courts are involved but before the final judgment. In that event, unscrupulous plaintiffs may decide they're better off fighting tooth and nail to prevent being proven wrong rather than trying to back down and facing penalties.
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Yeah, you're right. Saying that it's dangerous to take away someone's option not to penalize you is exactly like saying you should never be penalized. I concede. Whatever.
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Saying that it's dangerous to take away someone's option not to penalize you
Whoever made this claim that you are saying is dangerous? Care to give an actual quotation? No one said the judge should be forced to penalize in every case and as with anything it's up to their discretion. If this was the actual thrust of your claim you were attacking a strawman.
is exactly like saying you should never be penalized.
You've been spending the last 3 posts bemoaning how if a plaintiff *gasp* might get punished for abusing the legal system that they will somehow go full steamroller ahead. We've all seen how the lack of accountability that th
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Oh, I totally agree with that. It just seems to me that the alternative is the same situation with judges and lawyers thrown in for good measure. That's about the only way I can think of to make it even worse.
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The reason this should go through court first is so there is an investigation as to whether or not the person is guilty of what is being said. Only then should you be able to be forced to take it down. Sending a request to do so is another matter, but forced removal should be handled by court. Otherwise you are guilty until proven innocent.
I disagree. The DMCA takedown and "Safe Harbor" process is the one thing about the DMCA that's good. You have to fully understand it, though.
The way it works is that if a service provider immediately complies with the takedown request, they are granted "Safe Harbor" status, meaning they cannot be held accountable for the infringement. The party that put the content up, however, can respond with a counter-notice, and the service provider can then put the material back up but does not lose Safe Harbor
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I disagree. The DMCA takedown and "Safe Harbor" process is the one thing about the DMCA that's good. You have to fully understand it, though.
I disagree with your disagreement.
The way it works is that if a service provider immediately complies with the takedown request, they are granted "Safe Harbor" status, meaning they cannot be held accountable for the infringement.
Service providers act as and have most of the powers of common carriers. Why should they be held accountable for one of their customer's infringements anyway? They should be just as immune to legal issues for hosting copyrighted materials as the phone company is when I sing "happy birthday" over the phone.
The party that put the content up, however, can respond with a counter-notice, and the service provider can then put the material back up but does not lose Safe Harbor status.
So, as in this case, perfectly legal content can be removed at the whim of, well anyone, temporarily disrupting its availability. It's like if I thought your art g
This doesn't make any sense (Score:5, Informative)
So according to this, the CEO has legally stated that his company downloaded the software and confirmed the violation. But today, he says it was just an overzealous legal department, and no such download happened. In that case, he signed a letter making legal statements that he knew were false.
If I ran this project, I would not be satisfied by an apology posted in a forum. They sent a legal statement and that requires a legal reply. I would continue as the DMCA stipulates, stating that the project does not infringe. I think I'd also be looking for a few lawyers to get fired. And the CEO needs to be quaking in his boots with the fact that his signature is on a legal notice that is a complete lie.
Why so harsh? They apologized, right? Because these stories happen all the time and I'm sick of companies getting away with it. If you send a legally binding letter with your signature on it, forcing someone to take down their web site, invoking a legal process - then you damn well better be sure that you were in the right. If we let this go, then the procedure becomes:
1. Company sends take down notice
2. Alleged infringer has to prove that they aren't infringing
3. Company allows them to put the project back up
That's not fair. That means any corporation can take down any site, any time, anywhere, with no fear of legal reprisal. That's not how the DMCA works and we need to stop them from using it that way. The DMCA is not carte-blanche to shut down web sites.
Re:This doesn't make any sense (Score:4, Insightful)
I say attack the DMCA (Score:3, Insightful)
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Aside from that, I see your point, but you have to admit the other way things would have gone, ie: Google, itself, would have been libel in case of an infringement would make just about every single hosting company close up shop over night, or at least increase their monthly fee by an order of magnitude or two just so they could afford the staff and legal counsel to constantly
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Absolutely there is - making an example of CoreCodec will likely discourage future abuse of an already-bad law, which will benefit a much larger group of people than a small bunch of open-source fans. Whether the company is sorry or not doesn't matter in the least. Neither does their stated desire to work with
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The law is not entirely one sided. If a claim is invalid, the claimant has committed perjury. They can and should be prosecuted for this.
What they are really saying.... (Score:2)
I am loosing trust in all lawyers. They're dirty. Unclean. And unfortunately in many elected positions in government. No wonder my constitution has become so polluted...
Zero Tolerance for Companies Like This (Score:2)
The DMCA takedown notice [chillingeffects.org] that they sent says:
...
We have directly verified by downloading the file from the Site provided by Google Inc. that the file does include CoreCodec's copyrighted Software.
Respectfully,
[private], CEO CoreCodec, Inc.
So according to this, the CEO has legally stated that his company downloaded the software and confirmed the violation. But today, he says it was just an overzealous legal department, and no such download happened. In that case, he signed a letter making legal statements that he knew were false.
A minor correction from: " So according to this, the CEO has legally stated that..." to: illegally stated that...
My experience with companies like this is if they do it once they'll do it again. Maybe not another fake DMCA (too much damage control when caught) but they will do something else like change the licensing terms, abandon the work, leave paid customers high and dry, start suing customers... Something.
The CEO gets a site taken down by lying but says there was no ill intent. Defends the DMC
Thanks CoreCodec (Score:2)