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.
Re:Here's a simple fix... (Score:5, Insightful)
She wrote all her own stuff; the company she reviewed bitched about the bad review; someone in Pakistan copied it to his blog and backdated it several months; and then Google got a DMCA take-down.
In other words: the copyright claim is fraudulent.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
And Building firm BuildTeam are fucking assholes.
And now watch this entire thread get deleted.
But under British law, it's illegal to say that, even if it's true. That's why Goigle deleted the thread. Normally, a DMCA takedown can be easily removed if you can show it to be false.
Re: (Score:2)
(Yes, that's right, most of the people in the US outside of the media yahoos that pay any attention to copyright find the DMCA extremely F'd up.)
Re: (Score:2)
It's typical for afraid-to-offend-anyone international corporations to address conflicts between the laws of two countries with policy that expresses a horrible lowest common denominator. This one, which is Google's hamfisted tack between really bad British and American laws, is a prize example.
Re: (Score:2)
Where do you get the idea that it works this way?
Google took down the content due to a DMCA claim of copyright infringement. Where would you get the idea that it took the information down due to British defamation laws?
It appears that Mumsnet:
Mumsnet, following UK law on libel accusations, passed the letter on to Narey and offered her the chance to delete the post or get in touch with BuildTeam to sort out the matter.
Which is not anything to do with Google.
Later, Google received a DMCA notice for copyright infringement, which they performed the REQUIRED actions of the DMCA, and took the item down and notified the poster of the action. The proper response to a false report like th
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Here's a simple fix... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here's a simple fix... (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny thing is, the Streisand Effect will most likely kick-in hard for them, especially once it made the papers there.
Seriously - a multinational corporation can put up with bad press and survive, but most smaller businesses cannot.
Given that this is a UK company, I'm rather surprised that they didn't reach for the libel laws - even if the lady was absolutely correct and true, the legal costs would have likely ruined her faster than a DMCA takedown would have.
Re:Here's a simple fix... (Score:5, Informative)
Loser pays laws. You do not take on a civil suit unless you can win or at least your lawyers can convince you, you can win or you access the financial information of the opposition and figure out you can bankrupt them with legal costs before the case can conclude. In the interim, details of the case are published and what you are trying to hide is exposed any how. So as typical for this kind of incident all bluff and lies, they can not target the individual so they move their attack onto the forum. The best response for the individual produce their own documented web site, email a link to the company and let them fret over how many people will see it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
If you ceiling is on the floor in a wet soggy mess, proof is going to be really easy to provide. Which is why they never went straight for the civil suit but instead chose to scam their way around shutting down that forum.
Re: (Score:1)
In this case, it might be a good idea to sue the building company for damages too, if you are reasonably sure you can win. The verdict of the court should count as proof.
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, suing someone takes time, years in fact, so suing them, especially building companies which are notorious for being shell company. You sue them and win only for them to go purposefully bankrupt, well, at least the debt ridden separate and tiny portion, in capital terms, that you actually signed the contract, and not the rest of the company or technically separate companies with the capital, never wonder why so many rich people, declare bankrupt, yet remain rich, yep, you guessed multiple ind
Re:Here's a simple fix... (Score:5, Informative)
"I'm rather surprised that they didn't reach for the libel laws"
They did. Mumsnet told them not to be so silly and kept the post up. Then BuildTeam sent the boys round to her place to demand she delete the post. At that point she should have told them to go fuck themselves and called the police on them for doorstepping harassment.
Re:Here's a simple fix... (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny thing is, the Streisand Effect will most likely kick-in hard for them, especially once it made the papers there.
Seriously - a multinational corporation can put up with bad press and survive, but most smaller businesses cannot.
Given that this is a UK company, I'm rather surprised that they didn't reach for the libel laws - even if the lady was absolutely correct and true, the legal costs would have likely ruined her faster than a DMCA takedown would have.
Or instead they could do the decent thing and say sorry to hear your ceiling collapsed, hope everyone is ok, we'll come around have a look and fix it.
That way they get to be a decent company with good service, and this woman tells people about it. Sure it's not going to spread as far or fast as bad news, it never does. But when you're a dick about something everyone wants to know about it and it ends up on slashdot or some other website where way more people than ever would see it sees it.
Re: (Score:1)
Obviously you don't understand business. See, providing excellent customer service is very expensive. That eats into profits and other vital business expenses like executive pay raises. However, businesses usually have lawyers on hand no matter what so the cost to fire off a threatening legal letter - or to sue the person into silence - is rather cheap. It's just basic Business 101.
(I'd say "this post was all sarcasm" but too many business owners would say this and be completely sincere about it.)
Re: (Score:2)
That's great for this instance, but the vast majority of this sort of bullying doesn't make the news. The Streisand Effect doesn't solve the underlying problem.
Re: (Score:2)
PS: why did she not simply respond, affirming her claim of original material? It would have put her post back up, and it would have required BuildTeam to take legal action to remove it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
One of my forums this is still remembered - the toucan incident. Some user hotlinked a picture of a toucan in a thread. Next thing we know, the entire site is down due to a DMCA complaint.
Watch out!
http://i.imgur.com/NrY9DqB.jpg... [imgur.com]
I still think that there needs to be negative consequences for filing a false/bad DMCA request. If every bad request is met with a counter-suit, I'd imagine that they'd stop. If only because a $10 letter just became a $1000 hassle.
Re: (Score:1)
It shouldn't even require a counter-suit. It should be automatic that, upon demonstrating the DMCA demand was wrong, bad, or deliberately fraudulent, the DMCA claimant is charged, say 10 times the claimant's own estimate of the damages they did, or could have, incurred due to the the so-called copyright infringement. (And DMCA claims should all require an estimate of damages if the claim is not resolved.)
I think you'd see false claims (by movie studios, in particular) dry up pretty damn fast.
Mumsnet, the site, should have filed counter-notic (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah Mumsnet, the site she posted on, should have simply sent back a counter-notice. I sure wish more people knew about DMCA counter-notice. Basically you just send back a signed note saying "I don't believe there is any copyright infringement in this case". Forms are available online.
Rtfa. US DMCA to Google (usa) after UK refused (Score:5, Informative)
The fine article explains that mumsnet refused to take the material down under the UK law. The builder then notified Google (a US company) per US law, law. Quoting the article for you:
----
Mumsnet received a warning from Google: a takedown request had been made under the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), alleging that copyrighted material was posted without a licence on the thread.
As soon as the DMCA takedown request had been filed, Google de-listed the entire thread. All 126 posts are now not discoverable when a user searches Google for BuildTeam â" or any other terms. The search company told Mumsnet it could make a counterclaim, if it was certain no infringement had taken place
---
Re: (Score:1)
Yes but the counter claim of DMCA needs to be issued otherwise google will not repost, even if DMCA doesn't apply.
Re: (Score:3)
(Let's pretend this happened in US, where there's DMCA.) User knowing about counter-notice isn't enough.
Do you run any websites where the public adds content? Imagine what's involved.
You need think of every incoming DMCA notice as an ongoing project, rather than a thing that can Get Done by deleting a record. That means you are opting into something more pain-in-the-assy and expensive (both in terms of your time and technical complexity) than doing the cheapest and easiest thing.
First, you need to have c
You can read the law, it's just a few paragraphs (Score:2)
You can read the DMCA notice requirements rather than guessing at what they say. I'll clear up a few misconceptions for you. First, though, since you didn't read the article or apparently even the summary, I'll quote it for you:
> (Let's pretend this happened in US, where there's DMCA.)
----
Mumsnet received a warning from Google: a takedown request had been made under the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), alleging that copyrighted material was posted without a licence on the thread.
As soon
Re: (Score:3)
Backdating a copy of a work to make it appear as a original could theoretically be prevented in DMCA claims by requiring that any work for which a DMCA claim is made there must already exist an official record that the work actually existed previous to the work that allegedly copied from it. If the only proof that you have of the date is evidence that you offer yourself, then you don't get to make a DMCA claim at all. Typically, this would require going through more "official" channels of copyright regi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Reading is hard.
This is Slashdot. You must be new around here.
Power WILL be abused (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:1)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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
Re: (Score:3)
And it is not libertarian per se. It was not one of, but the core principle of the founding fathers as they wrote the Constitution -- that the problem with governments has always been the unrestricted power they wield, so here's a government, and here is a list of its powers, and it has no other powers, end of story.
If it wants more, it can go through the deliberately laborious and ponderous supermajority amendment process, precisely to stop the blowing winds of political passion so successfullly wielded b
wayback machine? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
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
Re: (Score:1)
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.
Re: wayback machine? (Score:1)
This isn't images, it's fucking text. Big difference.
What? (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Re: (Score:1)
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.
Due process is often cost-prohibitive (Score:5, Informative)
The problem here is that the attorney's fees and court costs associated with due process are often cost-prohibitive.
Re:Due process is often cost-prohibitive (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
Anton Vickerman (Score:1)
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
Re:Anton Vickerman (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, that's some major bullshit going on there with "FACT".
* http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
I guess the take-away is that it doesn't matter if you know you are right; if the government (or business), thinks you are wrong, then they will try everything in their power (and money) to convict you.
Let me guess - you're American (Score:2)
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
Preservation of attribution under US copyright law (Score:2)
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.
Nothing really new... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
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
Dave's Law (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:3)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
The big question? (Score:2)
Re:The big question? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
The Lie Direct (Score:3)
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)
Yet ANOTHER reason... (Score:2)
... 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)
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)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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
DMCA in London? (Score:3)
use the DMCA to take down bad movie reviews (Score:2)
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.
Copyright is not being abused (Score:1)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with this statement.... at its core, this is fundamentally true.
However, I disagree with this notion. While ultimately I have to agree that the real purpose of inventing copyright was to protect t
Greed At Work (Score:2)
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
build team must be new at this (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:2)
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.