10 ms·

IANAL. I'm also assuming this was an HTTP client library. How could this possibly be a violation of copyright, if it's just a client that accesses their API? T

IANAL. I'm also assuming this was an HTTP client library. How could this possibly be a violation of copyright, if it's just a client that accesses their API? Their API is not truly "private," just undocumented. If you distribute a free app that calls a remote API over users' networks, you can't make the case that it's private, because it's clearly accessible from every network/connection/device. Something exposed to the public cannot simultaneously be private. At least, maybe the author's lawyer could argue the above in court. Among many things I hate about the DMCA, it's that hosts have basically no option other than to respond to takedown requests by actually taking down the content in question, for fear of litigation. It just rubs me the wrong way.

mkagenius 7y ago
What if such an open APIs cause a loss to the business, is it still legal? Coz then intent can be thought of as a bad one? Edit: people are assuming too much about my intent of this question and downvoting, I was just curious, moreover a good answer to this will make the case stronger against Instagram/Fb.
ikeboy 7y ago
>Among many things I hate about the DMCA, it's that hosts have basically no option other than to respond to takedown requests by actually taking down the content in question, for fear of litigation. That's the entire point. A DMCA takedown request is supposed to lead to the content being taken down. The person who uploaded it can send a counternotice, which will lead to the content being put back up if no lawsuit is filed. What would you change about the system? Should rights owners have no recourse short of litigation to get their content taken down?
- Semaphor 7y ago
  > What would you change about the system? 3 strikes and you are out. Take down 3 obviously (probably decided by a judge) non-infringing things and you lose the ability to send takedowns.
  - dmitriid 7y ago
    Or, same, but with increasing penalties. 3 strikes, can't send notices for a week. 3 more strikes, a month. 3 more strikes, a year
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      Keep in mind that if a judge has to get involved, it would take a long time for the penalties to actually take effect. The idea of increasing penalties is a good one, but the lowest level needs to be an order of magnitude more significant, and ditto for the subsequent steps.
  - ikeboy 7y ago
    >Take down 3 obviously (probably decided by a judge) non-infringing things and you lose the ability to send takedowns. Once it reaches this point, the service provider would likely stop accepting the notices anyway. See e.g. the recent lawsuit by Youtube against Brady, who sent a bunch of bogus notices. Once they realized that, they stopped accepting the notices. There's hardly a critical mass of takedowns by people who've been found 3 times by a judge to have sent fraudulent takedowns.
    - Semaphor 7y ago
      > There's hardly a critical mass of takedowns by people who've been found 3 times by a judge to have sent fraudulent takedowns. Because those rarely go in front of a judge. Torrentfreak [0] gets many takedown notices where for example their reporting on a leak gets targeted with a DMCA request. If those companies had to fear someone challenging these (in this example an easy win) and making them lose their ability to send them out at all, that would change a lot. [0]: https://torrentfreak.com/all-dmca-notices-filed-against-torrentfreak-in-2019-were-bogus-191231/ https://torrentfreak.com/all-dmca-notices-filed-against-torr... > In previous years we’ve received erroneous complaints from the likes of Amazon, Electronic Arts, Disney, Entertainment One, Vertigo Films, Magnolia Pictures, NBCUniversal, Paramount, and even BBC Worldwide. This year we can add more. > According to Google’s Transparency Report, in 2019 Google received a further 11 DMCA takedown notices targeting our domain, sent on behalf of Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures, and sundry others. All of them were completely bogus.
- stingraycharles 7y ago
  There currently is no penalty for sending bogus DMCA requests, and as such it encourages content owners of just sending gazillions of (unjustified) takedown requests. This is a major hole in the current law.
  - ikeboy 7y ago
    >(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 liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it. USC 512 (f)
    - clarry 7y ago
      That is toothless in preventing corps (with money) from abusing individuals (who don't have the money to start litigation). Also, from what I hear, many implementations of DMCA do not give the individual enough information to take action against false claims. EDIT: see for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211087
      - ikeboy 7y ago
        >That is toothless in preventing corps (with money) from abusing individuals (who don't have the money to start litigation). This is a problem with unequal access to the legal system, not with the law. >Also, from what I hear, many implementations of DMCA do not give the individual enough information to take action against false claims. It's pretty simple to get the actual information in a lawsuit. Subpoena the service provider for the complete notice sent. In most cases a lawsuit isn't needed. If you receive a false complaint and file a counternotice, the content gets restored 10-14 days later if there's no lawsuit filed.
- kgwxd 7y ago
  "Should rights owners have no recourse short of litigation to get their content taken down?" Yes
- mr_toad 7y ago
  > which will lead to the content being put back up if no lawsuit is filed. Maybe, if you’re lucky. More often it will be ignored.
  - ikeboy 7y ago
    Got a citation on that? Counternotices being ignored are rare from what I've heard.
    - judge2020 7y ago
      Ya, especially on GitHub, GitHub always puts the repository back up once they review the counter-notice. The people that sent the original DMCA must show proof they are pursuing a lawsuit to get it taken back down. See #8: https://help.github.com/en/github/site-policy/dmca-takedown-policy#a-how-does-this-actually-work https://help.github.com/en/github/site-policy/dmca-takedown-...
andyjpb 7y ago
The DCMA has an "anti-circumvention" provision. This means that tools that can be used to "steal" copyright works can be subject to a DCMA takedown notice. Instagram is asserting that this software is such a tool. "The complaint claims that the tool 'Instagram-API' allows unauthorized access to Instagram users' posts, which the company says are copyrighted works to which it grants protected access." More info here: https://torrentfreak.com/instagram-uses-dmca-complaint-to-protect-users-copyrighted-works-200130/ https://torrentfreak.com/instagram-uses-dmca-complaint-to-pr...
- necovek 7y ago
  I really wonder why is a web browser and "save image" or "save web page" or even OS screenshotting function not the the tool to "steal copyrighted work"? How is a programming interface that is harder to use any worse? If it's about "speed of gathering" large amount of data, how are tools like selenium any different? The only difference is in the tool intent, but all of them can be used for exactly the same purpose, some of them more easily than the others.
  - jacurtis 7y ago
    I suspect that you can thank the 1984 Landmark Case of Universal Studios vs. Sony Corporation of America for your freedom to screenshot and save images through the web browser. Back in the 80s, Sony made a video player that ran Betamax tapes. You might remember the HDVD vs BluRay wars of a decade ago when both formats were battling for dominance to become the new standard for playing HD movies on disc. Well, before that was the VHS vs Betamax wars. During these battles, Sony was trying to make Betamax the new standard for home movies. They wanted to distinguish themselves from VHS in some way and they ended up distinguishing themselves with an amazing and unheard of feature (for the time), you could not only watch movies with Betamax tapes, but you could RECORD movies to watch later. You could record anything on TV, in order to watch it later. This is 20+ years before DVRs, 30 years before streaming services. It was a crazy idea. But Universal Studios didn't like the idea that someone could record a show on TV and watch it later, or watch it however many times they wanted. Someone could theoretically even sell that Betamax tape to someone else. So Universal Studios sued Sony over this invention. Universal Studios claimed it violated copyright. Sony claimed it was protected under the "fair use" clause for copyright. The lawsuit ended up tipping in Sony's favor, but only barely. One of the most popular kids shows at the time was "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood". The supreme court heard from Mr. Roger's himself who testified that he was ok with people recording his show because it allowed them to be with their family and not controlled by the schedules dictated by the television studios. He said he was against the studios controlling people's schedule. The supreme court ultimately mentioned that this testimony is what tipped the case into Sony's favor. But it didn't just tip in Sony's favor. This landmark case is what opened the door for all recording media in the future. The Betamax eventually died, but the VHS later made the same features available. Radios and boomboxes in the 90s had a recording feature added. DVRs came about in the early 2000's to record TV to harddrives. Then computers had screenshotting, and web browsers likely got "save image as" because of the precedent set by this landmark case. Where the DCMA differs is that it protects tools built with direct intent to circumvent a specific copyrighted content. So the linked tool for example is a script built specifically to circumvent Instragram's access control. It doesn't circumvent anyone else's access control, and its primary purpose for existing was to gain access into Instagram. So I think Instagram can make a reasonable case to go after this tool. However, going after a general tool like screenshotting would go nowhere, because it is considered a general good. It provides value that far surpasses the damage Instagram can claim from it. Again, we can probably thank Mr. Rogers. Without him, recording might not be something we could take for granted today. Sources: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive.... - https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/the-court-case-that-almost-made-it-illegal-to-tape-tv-shows/251107/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/the-c...

mkagenius 7y ago

What if such an open APIs cause a loss to the business, is it still legal? Coz then intent can be thought of as a bad one? Edit: people are assuming too much about my intent of this question and downvoting, I was just curious, moreover a good answer to this will make the case stronger against Instagram/Fb.

ikeboy 7y ago

>Among many things I hate about the DMCA, it's that hosts have basically no option other than to respond to takedown requests by actually taking down the content in question, for fear of litigation. That's the entire point. A DMCA takedown request is supposed to lead to the content being taken down. The person who uploaded it can send a counternotice, which will lead to the content being put back up if no lawsuit is filed. What would you change about the system? Should rights owners have no recourse short of litigation to get their content taken down?

Semaphor 7y ago
> What would you change about the system? 3 strikes and you are out. Take down 3 obviously (probably decided by a judge) non-infringing things and you lose the ability to send takedowns.
- dmitriid 7y ago
  Or, same, but with increasing penalties. 3 strikes, can't send notices for a week. 3 more strikes, a month. 3 more strikes, a year
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    Keep in mind that if a judge has to get involved, it would take a long time for the penalties to actually take effect. The idea of increasing penalties is a good one, but the lowest level needs to be an order of magnitude more significant, and ditto for the subsequent steps.
- ikeboy 7y ago
  >Take down 3 obviously (probably decided by a judge) non-infringing things and you lose the ability to send takedowns. Once it reaches this point, the service provider would likely stop accepting the notices anyway. See e.g. the recent lawsuit by Youtube against Brady, who sent a bunch of bogus notices. Once they realized that, they stopped accepting the notices. There's hardly a critical mass of takedowns by people who've been found 3 times by a judge to have sent fraudulent takedowns.
  - Semaphor 7y ago
    > There's hardly a critical mass of takedowns by people who've been found 3 times by a judge to have sent fraudulent takedowns. Because those rarely go in front of a judge. Torrentfreak [0] gets many takedown notices where for example their reporting on a leak gets targeted with a DMCA request. If those companies had to fear someone challenging these (in this example an easy win) and making them lose their ability to send them out at all, that would change a lot. [0]: https://torrentfreak.com/all-dmca-notices-filed-against-torrentfreak-in-2019-were-bogus-191231/ https://torrentfreak.com/all-dmca-notices-filed-against-torr... > In previous years we’ve received erroneous complaints from the likes of Amazon, Electronic Arts, Disney, Entertainment One, Vertigo Films, Magnolia Pictures, NBCUniversal, Paramount, and even BBC Worldwide. This year we can add more. > According to Google’s Transparency Report, in 2019 Google received a further 11 DMCA takedown notices targeting our domain, sent on behalf of Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures, and sundry others. All of them were completely bogus.
stingraycharles 7y ago
There currently is no penalty for sending bogus DMCA requests, and as such it encourages content owners of just sending gazillions of (unjustified) takedown requests. This is a major hole in the current law.
- ikeboy 7y ago
  >(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 liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it. USC 512 (f)
  - clarry 7y ago
    That is toothless in preventing corps (with money) from abusing individuals (who don't have the money to start litigation). Also, from what I hear, many implementations of DMCA do not give the individual enough information to take action against false claims. EDIT: see for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211087
    - ikeboy 7y ago
      >That is toothless in preventing corps (with money) from abusing individuals (who don't have the money to start litigation). This is a problem with unequal access to the legal system, not with the law. >Also, from what I hear, many implementations of DMCA do not give the individual enough information to take action against false claims. It's pretty simple to get the actual information in a lawsuit. Subpoena the service provider for the complete notice sent. In most cases a lawsuit isn't needed. If you receive a false complaint and file a counternotice, the content gets restored 10-14 days later if there's no lawsuit filed.
kgwxd 7y ago
"Should rights owners have no recourse short of litigation to get their content taken down?" Yes
mr_toad 7y ago
> which will lead to the content being put back up if no lawsuit is filed. Maybe, if you’re lucky. More often it will be ignored.
- ikeboy 7y ago
  Got a citation on that? Counternotices being ignored are rare from what I've heard.
  - judge2020 7y ago
    Ya, especially on GitHub, GitHub always puts the repository back up once they review the counter-notice. The people that sent the original DMCA must show proof they are pursuing a lawsuit to get it taken back down. See #8: https://help.github.com/en/github/site-policy/dmca-takedown-policy#a-how-does-this-actually-work https://help.github.com/en/github/site-policy/dmca-takedown-...

andyjpb 7y ago

The DCMA has an "anti-circumvention" provision. This means that tools that can be used to "steal" copyright works can be subject to a DCMA takedown notice. Instagram is asserting that this software is such a tool. "The complaint claims that the tool 'Instagram-API' allows unauthorized access to Instagram users' posts, which the company says are copyrighted works to which it grants protected access." More info here: https://torrentfreak.com/instagram-uses-dmca-complaint-to-protect-users-copyrighted-works-200130/ https://torrentfreak.com/instagram-uses-dmca-complaint-to-pr...

necovek 7y ago
I really wonder why is a web browser and "save image" or "save web page" or even OS screenshotting function not the the tool to "steal copyrighted work"? How is a programming interface that is harder to use any worse? If it's about "speed of gathering" large amount of data, how are tools like selenium any different? The only difference is in the tool intent, but all of them can be used for exactly the same purpose, some of them more easily than the others.
- jacurtis 7y ago
  I suspect that you can thank the 1984 Landmark Case of Universal Studios vs. Sony Corporation of America for your freedom to screenshot and save images through the web browser. Back in the 80s, Sony made a video player that ran Betamax tapes. You might remember the HDVD vs BluRay wars of a decade ago when both formats were battling for dominance to become the new standard for playing HD movies on disc. Well, before that was the VHS vs Betamax wars. During these battles, Sony was trying to make Betamax the new standard for home movies. They wanted to distinguish themselves from VHS in some way and they ended up distinguishing themselves with an amazing and unheard of feature (for the time), you could not only watch movies with Betamax tapes, but you could RECORD movies to watch later. You could record anything on TV, in order to watch it later. This is 20+ years before DVRs, 30 years before streaming services. It was a crazy idea. But Universal Studios didn't like the idea that someone could record a show on TV and watch it later, or watch it however many times they wanted. Someone could theoretically even sell that Betamax tape to someone else. So Universal Studios sued Sony over this invention. Universal Studios claimed it violated copyright. Sony claimed it was protected under the "fair use" clause for copyright. The lawsuit ended up tipping in Sony's favor, but only barely. One of the most popular kids shows at the time was "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood". The supreme court heard from Mr. Roger's himself who testified that he was ok with people recording his show because it allowed them to be with their family and not controlled by the schedules dictated by the television studios. He said he was against the studios controlling people's schedule. The supreme court ultimately mentioned that this testimony is what tipped the case into Sony's favor. But it didn't just tip in Sony's favor. This landmark case is what opened the door for all recording media in the future. The Betamax eventually died, but the VHS later made the same features available. Radios and boomboxes in the 90s had a recording feature added. DVRs came about in the early 2000's to record TV to harddrives. Then computers had screenshotting, and web browsers likely got "save image as" because of the precedent set by this landmark case. Where the DCMA differs is that it protects tools built with direct intent to circumvent a specific copyrighted content. So the linked tool for example is a script built specifically to circumvent Instragram's access control. It doesn't circumvent anyone else's access control, and its primary purpose for existing was to gain access into Instagram. So I think Instagram can make a reasonable case to go after this tool. However, going after a general tool like screenshotting would go nowhere, because it is considered a general good. It provides value that far surpasses the damage Instagram can claim from it. Again, we can probably thank Mr. Rogers. Without him, recording might not be something we could take for granted today. Sources: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive.... - https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/the-court-case-that-almost-made-it-illegal-to-tape-tv-shows/251107/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/the-c...