Warner Bros. Targets Kim Dotcom's Mega With Bogus DMCA Requests

[nsane.forums]

In a bogus DMCA request Warner Bros. has asked Google to remove several links to Kim Dotcom’s cloud hosting service Mega. Not only did the movie studio send in the wrong URLs, they also failed to note that Mega download links aren’t indexed by Google to begin with. Adding to the controversy, Warner Bros does not appear to have sent Mega a direct takedown request for the infringing content in question.

Copyright holders are increasingly trying to take down allegedly infringing links by sending millions of DMCA takedown notices to Google and elsewhere each month.

Unfortunately, not all of their requests are accurate.

Sometimes these mishaps are amusing, such as when copyright holders try to take down their own legitimate content. In other cases errors can lead to thousands of websites being censored by mistake.

Today we discovered another bogus takedown request, one that may bring a smile to Kim Dotcom’s face.

Last week Warner Bros. sent a DMCA notice to Google asking the search engine to remove 964 URLs that allegedly link to infringing copies of the movie “Gangster Squad.” The notice in question also lists 16 links to Mega.co.nz, Dotcom’s new cloud hosting service.

Nothing out of the ordinary, as all file-hosting services store some copyrighted content on their servers. However, Warner Bros’ request is inaccurate on several fronts.

First and foremost, Mega has decided that Google can’t index their site. This means that even if links to pirated content are posted publicly elsewhere on the Internet, Google will not add these URLs to their search engine.

In other words, the URLs that Warner Bros. asked Google to remove were never indexed to begin with.

The second problem with the takedown requests is that the URLs are inaccurate, and don’t point to any copyrighted material. Apparently the automated web scraper used by Warner Bros. can’t handle the format of Mega links, replacing “#!” with “?escaped_fragment=”.

The same errors were later repeated in DMCA notices Warner Bros. sent for other movies, including Argo.

Mega fail



The files that Warner Bros. meant to take down are currently still available on Mega, suggesting that the movie studio didn’t issue a separate DMCA notice to the file-hosting service itself.

Interestingly, Warner Bros. is not the only rightsholder to make the same mistake. Several others have also sent takedown notices to Google for allegedly infringing content on Mega that was never indexed.

The above once again shows the dangers of automated DMCA notices that are sent without any type of verification. Right now rightsholders and the anti-piracy outfits they employ have absolutely no incentive to improve the accuracy of their takedown systems.

Even the most fundamental checks, such as whether Google actually indexes the links, are ignored. Perhaps it’s time for these continual erros to have some kind of penalty attached?

View: Original Article

[Ambrocious]

These takedown notices are automated and sent out after gathering what "it thinks" to be infringing content. A database was built which many corporations have their own versions, which sends spiders out to find its own content online in places that it should not be. Once it finds them, since the system is in "rape and pillage" mode, it seeks to angrily attack the website associated with link. Since this is automated by imperfect mechanisms which fail to remove the correct content via notice about 45 percent of the time. We are expected to follow the order but what if the order is wrong? What if the order is wrong many times over? This is how you can notice that the system of sending out takedowns is fully automated so that we can be determined guilty about 47 percent of the time.

This is being done for multiple reasons:

1) To overload the staff that have to work through these requests (now that they know that many notices are false, they have a team set to respond to each one incident (most likely).

2) To demonize the website in the mindless war that turns ordinary file sharing individuals into thought criminals; we believe that file sharing is a rooted humanistic response and 100% natural. This plays a HEAVEY role on the minds of the younger individuals who are born into an ever growing tyrannical system of power and dominance and they learn to be hopeless, never resist or question authority. Authority to many youth today is Godlike and something to fear. That
is NOT the natural order of things.

3) WAR! This is the time period where heroes and villains will be spoken of in the future! We are living in those times! This isn't a game and people will be remembered for being either a hero or vile scum. If you examine history, the time in which we live now is actually very similar to how WWI and how WWII first began. Do your part to resist in lawful ways such as the simple power of telling the truth and being unafraid to do what’s right! Human beings right now are like cells of a body; we can be weak or we can be strong. Planet Earth is the body in which we live on and tyranny is a massive cancerous invasion. If cancer truly did have a conscious, even as it was killing the body, it would believe truly that it was winning even though it too would die after it killed the body.

I don't need to post too much more than that. Truth speaks for itself. Next time you wonder why I say weird things; consider that the truth is much larger than you or me. I seek the truth about what is happening and if I am incorrect, I’m the type that will look to see if I was wrong and all but thank anyone who can show me I’m wrong. We all need to be like that! Be mad at yourself for NOT being right. I’m not saying be a smart ass, I’m saying simply, align with truth no matter what it is. Don't kick it out just because you don't understand it. BE CURIOUS! Curiosity may have killed the cat eventually, but that was only years down the road of being curious ever day of its Feline life. Curiosity isn't bad, but that’s not what we have all been taught and so we don't believe that. You can decide what you want to believe. That is true. But we can't simply believe in something that doesn't exist right? True. So what the heck am I saying???

Investigate life. It's out there.

[Ambrocious]

I got a little bit off track...