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How Copyright Law Is Being Misused To Remove Material From the Internet (theguardian.com) 102

London-based resident Annabelle Narey posted a negative review of a building firm on Mumsnet. She noted in her review that her ceiling fell down in an upstairs bedroom. The Guardian reports about what happened to her in the aftermath of posting that review. Building firm BuildTeam sent a letter to Mumsnet, which the site passed on to Narey. According to Narey, BuildTeam found Narey's comment defamatory and untrue, and asked for the removal of the comment from the website. The original comment saw several other users also post similar grievances, though many of these users pulled their comments in response to the legal threats from BuildTeam. Narey wanted to keep hers up. Then things got even weirder, reports the Guardian. Narey says BuiltTeam staff visited her apartment, and instead of offering any apology, asked her to remove the comment. Mumsnet received a warning from Google: a takedown request under DMCA, alleging copyright infringement. This led Google to de-list the entire thread. From the report: No copyright infringement had occurred at all. At some point after Narey posted her comments on Mumsnet, someone had copied the entire text of one of her posts and pasted it, verbatim, to a spammy blog titled "Home Improvement Tips and Tricks". The post, headlined "Buildteam interior designers" was backdated to September 14 2015, three months before Narey had written it. BuildTeam says it has no idea why Narey's review was reposted, but that it had nothing to do with it.The Guardian deep dives into what is wrong with the copyright system, the issues Google faces in dealing with them, and the consequences many users are facing because of this.
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How Copyright Law Is Being Misused To Remove Material From the Internet

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    It really is that simple. Where power exists, abuse exists. The more power, the more abuse. The only way to reduce the level of abuse is to reduce the level of power. This is the libertarian viewpoint in a nutshell, but I'm not bringing it up to promote libertarianism. I'm bringing it up to promote common sense.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Laws are not created to create fairness. They are created by those in power to wield and flaunt that power, claim moral superiority, and have the force of an entire nation state to bind those laws over all.

      Soviet Union had laws and judges, so did Mussolini's Italy, and the current regimes of China, North Korea, to name but a few.

    • And where does the power come from? It is granted by the government in the form of the stupid DMCA law.

      I predict that instead of simply repealing the law, additional regulations will be layered on, each with more unintended consequences. Eventually the whole system will collapse under its own complexity.

      The the end of Roman civilization, an ordinary citizen welcomed the invading barbarians because they were less hassle than dealing with the edicts and taxes of Rome, despite the notional stability and secur

  • Could you use the wayback machine to go back to that date to show the post was never there? This kind of stuff is very scarry. I hope the Streisand effect kicks in and burns them big time.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Here's what you do: Just like professional photographers, never publish or hand over your raw data. If there are pictures in the comment, reduce the size, make some minor tweaks (levels, saturation, sharpen), remove all metadata ("jhead -pure"), but keep the original data (and ideally the exact parameters that produced the smaller version). This enables you to prove that you are the original author. If somebody pulls a stunt like in the story, don't reveal your trump card. You don't have to prove to them th

      • That's a super inefficient way to live your entire life though. We shouldn't have to go through that process for every single picture, or text post to the internet on the off-chance some company decides to sue us.

  • What? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday May 23, 2016 @10:27AM (#52164819)

    A company using bogus copyright claims to silence dissent and complaint? Nooooo, that's unpossible. Unheard of. Cannot happen!

    Someone lying on the internet? And a company to boot? Stop being ridiculous.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday May 23, 2016 @10:31AM (#52164855)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Bwahahahha...... it sure is cute that people still think this will work well, efficiently and low cost today for most people who try what you suggest.

    • by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepples.gmail@com> on Monday May 23, 2016 @10:43AM (#52164925) Homepage Journal

      The problem here is that the attorney's fees and court costs associated with due process are often cost-prohibitive.

      • by Jason Levine ( 196982 ) on Monday May 23, 2016 @11:34AM (#52165305) Homepage

        The problem here is that the attorney's fees and court costs associated with due process are often cost-prohibitive.

        Not only the fees, but the time involved. Businesses (especially large ones) will often have attorneys on hand so for them the cost is little to none to handle legal proceedings against a customer who "dared" to post a negative review - even if the company's lawsuit is completely without merit. The customer, on the other hand, not only has to pay a lawyer (hoping to recoup this cost if they win the lawsuit) and various court costs, but they need to spend time dealing with the lawsuit. This might mean time off of work and possibly docked paychecks (if they ran out of vacation days). The companies know this and could just file meaningless motion after meaningless motion to drag out the court case until the customer gives in to the business' demands in order to make the lawsuit go away. (See: The RIAA/MPAA Strategy.)

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Well Anton Vickerman didn't even commit copyright infringement, he simply made a website that LINKED to torrents (and official sites and official URLs too) in the UK.

      How did legal process work with him? Well the Crown Prosecution Service refused to prosecute since it didn't appear to be illegal to build a links website (yep that makes sense). So FACT, did a private prosecution, together with the Trading Standards Body it raided his home, took him to court, and prosecuted him... for 'Fraud'. He got 4 years f

    • There is a reason why there is a legal process and this is exactly the reason.

      If there is a dispute between people (in this case the posting) and one party feels wronged, they should take it up with the legal system, not with a third party. The legal system wil then not only decide if something illegal went on, but also what the consequences will be.

      This sounds like a perfectly American answer to me. You might not know this, but in the UK they have this little thing called "loser pays" in their legal system. That's why it's not going to court. BuildTeam knows that they'll probably lose. On the other side, the lady in the article simply may not have the money to pay should things not go her way in court. I can't speak for UK courts, but here in the USA every case is a toss up depending on a variety of factors such as the judge (particularly in case

      • While a case like this could certainly end up in the US legal system if it happened here, eventually at some level a court would likely find it to be a freedom of speech issue, rule in favor of the lady who made the review, and it would be done.

        In addition, making this sort of false claim of authorship in the United States is likely a tort and/or crime. A rider to the DMCA (17 USC 1202 [cornell.edu]) made it illegal to conceal or falsify a copyrighted work's attribution. Such "copyright management information" definitely includes the author's name, and depending on the judge, "other information identifying the work" may include the date of publication.

  • by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Monday May 23, 2016 @10:35AM (#52164875)
    Legal assaults have always been done against those who are not able to [usually cannot afford to] mount a defense. What is different nowadays is that the Internet allows the news of such tactics to be broadcast widely to a larger audience.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Well first google only deleted the search-engine link to the post, not the post. The author can file a counter-claim with Google to have the link put back. Since the person alleged to have violated the copyright is a British Subject, living in England, the only company logically benefiting from the allegedly false claim of copyright violation is a British company, BuildTeam, located in England and any legal action under the American DMCA would have to take place in the US; most likely a counter-claim would

  • In the spirit of Murphy's Law and Godwin's Law, I present Dave's Law: If a law can be abused, someone will figure out how and do it.

    In this case I feel both the abusers and the legislators share blame since these consequences were easily foreseeable, and they listened to their financial supporters over the best interests of their constituents. The company which "had nothing to do with it", is a lying piece of merde, but if the perpetrator(s) has in IQ of at least 80, they probably covered their tracks maki

    • This law isn't being abused. It's working exactly as intended. What? You thought that the intent of the law wasn't to protect business' interests over the interests of the people?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Why is the DMCA effecting an issue that has nothing to do with the US?
    • Re:The big question? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Fire_Wraith ( 1460385 ) on Monday May 23, 2016 @10:51AM (#52164977)
      Because Google is a U.S. company. As I understand it, foreign entities can submit DMCA requests to Google for anything related to Google (USA).

      It does raise some interesting questions, though, as many companies such as Google really are transnational in scope and activity, yet are subject to specific operating laws in various countries which have ramifications even for people not living in those countries, whether it's a DMCA request in the USA taking down content from people in Europe, or a Right to be Forgotten request removing links to US news stories about someone in France, even for US residents making web searches in the USA. It's really kind of screwed up.
  • by mbone ( 558574 ) on Monday May 23, 2016 @10:44AM (#52164933)

    BuildTeam says it has no idea why Narey's review was reposted, but that it had nothing to do with it.

    Of course they had something to do with it. They caused it to be there, to facilitate a DMCA takedown. The only real question is, do they have plausible deniability, or are they directly guilty?

    • Re:The Lie Direct (Score:5, Informative)

      by Maritz ( 1829006 ) on Monday May 23, 2016 @10:58AM (#52165035)
      They're denying it now because the Guardian article has caused a shitstorm for them. Nice to see bullying tactics get highlighted. Now their ruthless approach to PR has resulted in everyone finding out what a bunch of cunts they are. Ha. ;)
  • ... to scrap the DMCA and copyright law and start from scratch, but this time let's foucs on the "for the public good" rather than corporate interests.

  • A sad pattern (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tolvor ( 579446 ) on Monday May 23, 2016 @10:56AM (#52165015)

    Checking Google reviews... Most telling is that Build Team is removing negative posts and people that say they did a bad job are routinely labeled as fakes or malcontents. Build Team states that they "hunt" people down on Google. Build Team seems surprised when projects take much longer than promised, when sub-contractors aren't working well, or when Build Team violates local ordinances. This is the worst kind of passive-aggressive PR management that I have seen. Now the real question is what other reviews and information is Google hiding from the public?

    Please Build Team, don't sic your legal team on me. The comments above are entirely my own, until you backdate it and post it elsewhere. Knowing your PR strategy, you will probably report me for terrorism...

    From Google reviews... (until they remove them)
    (All one star reviews)
    Martin Martin
    Martin Martin
    5 months ago-
    Previous review disappeared.

    Shoddy company - AVOID AVOID AVOID
    Response from the ownerin the last week
    This is a fake review by an individual purporting to have been a client of Build Team. We will report this to Google.

    James Mcmillan
    in the last week
    Warning: DO NOT USE BUILDTEAM. I had one of the worst experiences with them. Very awful standard of customer service and of building. The company has many shoddy practices, and they're trying very hard to hide this from reviews. Please use someone else!
    Response from the ownerin the last week
    This is a fake review by an individual purporting to have been a client of Build Team. We will report this to Google.

    David Murray-Thwaites
    David Murray-Thwaites
    a year ago
    AVOID! We had a very bad experience. Build Team are well marketed but frankly awful group to deal with. Extortion is not too strong a word
    Response from the ownera year ago
    Build Team have not worked for this client, and having undertaken a Google search we cannot trace the individual. We have contacted Google to report the review as spam.

    • Re:A sad pattern (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hattig ( 47930 ) on Monday May 23, 2016 @11:46AM (#52165409) Journal

      Britain has a problem with the building trade, in particular the self-employed small business building trade. It's why there are TV shows like Cowboy Builders, and bad building work is commonly on other programmes like Watchdog and so on.

      The biggest surprise is that this company hasn't made itself bust and reopened under a new name - a very common solution in the UK. I suspect maybe the law has been tweaked to make this less of a solution?

      Build Team have not worked for this client, and having undertaken a Google search we cannot trace the individual.

      So how do they know that they haven't worked for this client?!

      With building companies, word of mouth reputation from people you know seems to be the best solution in the UK. And always pay attention to the bad reviews first and foremost. Sadly, with marketing, people don't do due diligence on things they are about to spend tens of thousands on. Sure, you can't always avoid bad businesses this way, but clearly a line of poor reviews that have been hidden should set of alarm bells.

      • by Jahta ( 1141213 )

        Britain has a problem with the building trade, in particular the self-employed small business building trade. It's why there are TV shows like Cowboy Builders, and bad building work is commonly on other programmes like Watchdog and so on.

        There's a real problem in the British building trade. There was a TV documentary a few years ago about Brits working across the EU. A couple of the guys interviewed were a plasterer and an electrician.

        They were earning good money and had a good lifestyle, so the interviewer asked them what they would say to builders back home who might be thinking about doing the same thing. The guys said "If you don't have your City & Guilds certifications, don't bother coming. You can get hired on building sites in

  • by Atmchicago ( 555403 ) on Monday May 23, 2016 @11:02AM (#52165061)
    Great, now American law applies to foreign countries too.
  • I think that new lady Ghostbusters movie will bomb hard will they go as low as that to get rid of bad reviews? right now we have people saying not going to see it.

  • This is how it was designed. You need to remember that the sole purpose of copyright was to protect established interests from new technology that would destroy their existing business model, and to restrict public speech. It is a law by luddites, for luddites [wikipedia.org], nothing else. "Promoting the arts and sciences" is pure propaganda. Restricting the passage of knowledge does no such thing.

    • by mark-t ( 151149 )

      This is how [copyright] was designed. You need to remember that the sole purpose of copyright was to protect established interests from new technology that would destroy their existing business model

      I agree with this statement.... at its core, this is fundamentally true.

      It is a law by luddites, for luddites, nothing else. "Promoting the arts and sciences" is pure propaganda.

      However, I disagree with this notion. While ultimately I have to agree that the real purpose of inventing copyright was to protect t

  • Freedom of speech should trump* profits, but because of big-ass lobbying, it's the other way around. Gray areas default toward commercial and big-org interests in our current setup, and it should be reversed.

    Perhaps the penalties for misusing copyrights to crush opinion and dissent should be made large enough to scare the big-orgs. Larger penalties would then make it worth it for lawyers to take on small cases.

    As much as we dislike lawyers, they are often the only practical avenue for the little guy to figh

  • by eyenot ( 102141 ) <eyenot@hotmail.com> on Monday May 23, 2016 @12:48PM (#52165915) Homepage

    they're dragging their own name through the mud by this. more experienced unethical builders and housing authorities simply change their business name to escape their bad reviews online.

    there's an apartment complex nearby that is expensive (located across the street from a university) but looks kind of like crap. the siding is all dirty, and you can see horrible mold infestations growing in the wood under the walk-out patios on the 2nd and 3rd stories. this is in a town where every single place i've lived there has been mold infestations, even right next to campus. the town ... the entire state of michigan, really ... is just a drained swamp and wooden, dutch-style homes simply don't stand up to it very well.

    well this nearby apartment complex has changed its name every year. from "Campus Hills" (with an umlaut over the u for some reason) to "Varsity" to now "Soho 700". The sign out front of "Soho 700" promises fast internet and other things among "newly renovated".

    Well, I've lived here for two years and I walk by the place every night and day. There have been no trucks, no workers, no sign of any renovation occurring at all whatsoever.

    Sadly here in Michigan there's no legal recourse for the students who get sucked into moving into that place and spending oodles of money on it. The Consumer Protection Agency actually makes things worse on people who complain about unethical business practices, by sending a copy of the complaint along with the complete identity, address, and phone number of the complainer to the company they're complaining about -- and then proceeding to sit on their own hands and do nothing. I've had a pretty scary experience due to the Consumer Protection Agency doxing me to a shady store.

    You can't really rely on the Better Business Bureau, either. It turns out that the BBB is just a money-mill here in Michigan. You either apply to receive an endorsement from the BBB (which costs money) or you don't. There's no recourse for consumers who turn to the BBB to get things done. The BBB isn't actually in authority.

    At any rate, in many U.S. states any business owner can get away with just about anything if they're willing to pay the fees and legal costs of incorporation on top of the fees and costs of obtaining a tax code, DBA and so on (which even for an LLC is several thousand dollars). Once you're incorporated, you get to enjoy a different set of laws and many of them don't even mention anything about jail or anything scary like that, just various monetary fines all in the thousands of dollars and upwards. I wouldn't be surprised if the UK's system is even worse, considering that heinous acts are kind of part and parcel with the British Empire, and power has a way of ensuring its own legacy.

  • I find it interesting that a business doesn't like something said about it online can, with relative ease, get it taken down. But some kid who had a lapse of discretion needs an army of attorneys to get the content removed. That just doesn't seem right.

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