Movie Studios Ask Google To Censor Links To Legal Copies of Their Own Films 196
An anonymous reader writes "Several large movie studios have asked Google to take down legitimate pages related to their own films, including sites legally hosting, promoting, or discussing them. Victims of the takedown requests include sites where the content is hosted legally (Amazon, CBS, iTunes, Blockbuster, Verizon on demand, and Xfinity), newspapers discussing the content in question (the BBC, CNET, Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, The Independent, The Mirror, The Daily Mail, and Wired) as well as official Facebook Pages for the movies and TV shows and even their Wikipedia entries. There are also a number of legitimate links that appear to be completely unrelated to the content that is supposedly being protected. The good news is that Google has so far left many of the links up."
Re:Why?? (Score:5, Informative)
First paragraph of TFA says "We’ve written about the ridiculousness of automated Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) requests before, including Microsoft asking Google to censor BBC, CBS, CNN, Wikipedia, the US government, and even its own Bing links, but this latest episode takes the cake." That would seem to imply it's an automated process in play, although there really isn't much information in the article, and it could conceivably be read another way.
Re:Hm... (Score:0, Informative)
Concidering it's been proven time and time again that Bing results are just copies of Google results, none of those searches will return anything from Bing either.
You'd need to go to a completely independent search engine, likely one that has not been threatened by the RIAA/MPAA before as well (of which none exist)
FALSE ALARM (Score:4, Informative)
It may have been some randoms doing DMCA illegally:
FTFA:
Update: Yesitis.org now points to a parked page. Yet another sign that these notices may be fraudulent, and not authorized by the copyright holders at all. If that’s indeed the case it remains unclear what the purpose of these notices is. It would show how easily these DMCA notices can be abused.
Perjury? (Score:5, Informative)
So what does the "under penalty of perjury" part of a DMCA takedown notice mean?
AFAIK, a takedown notice has to include something like this:
Under penalty of perjury I certify that the information contained in the notification is both true and accurate, and I have the authority to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright(s) involved.
Doesn't that mean that someone can be held legally liable for fraudulent takedown notices? Who would have to sue to enforce it? Google? The legitimate site that was taken down because of the notice? The Department of Homeland Security since they are supposed to be keeping us safe?
Re:Hm... (Score:4, Informative)
Goatse.cx is now a safe-for-work webmail provider