7 ms·

Movie Studios Ask Google To Censor Their Own Films, Facebook and Wikipedia

100 points by derpenxyne 14y ago

bradleyjg 14y ago
Google should comply. If the rightsholders want to give their titles the internet death penalty who are we to argue?
- sjbach 14y ago
  That punishes users of Google search who want to find these titles.
  - mtgx 14y ago
    That's okay. Google can just show them the torrent links instead, which "normally" should appear in search results, but Google has been trying to downrank them more and more lately.
aroberge 14y ago
I wish Google would use a strategy that a former colleague used in an upper year Physics course. While encouraging students to discuss problems, he informed them that plagiarizing assignments was not allowed. When he got the first assignment, he noticed that the solution handed in by one of the top students in the department was identical to the one handed in by a much weaker student. So, he gave zero to the top student and full marks to the weaker student. (It should be noted that the contribution of each assignment towards the final grade was likely less than 2%). As he expected, the student who got zero went to see him. My colleague told him that he had no foolproof way to show that it was the other student that plagiarized the assignment and that the best method to prevent another zero being given was to not allow other students to plagiarize his assignment - if indeed this is what had happened. This solved the problem for that year ... and for many years after as word got around. So... I wish Google would selectively remove links that are clearly submitted erroneously (claiming that, since the studios own these sites, no third party is claiming fair use) whereas preventing links where fair use appear clearly reasonable (such as wikipedia and reviews from news outlets) from being removed.
- pestaa 14y ago
  Maybe Google indeed should make these companies stand in the corner for a while, but wouldn't that conflict with its interests? It's a quick way to make enemies with lots of money to spend in court.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  I very much doubt that that actually happened. It seems more likely to be a story created to scare people. But it seems that the problem here is that google accepts DMCA requests that are not signed by an individiual but mass produced by a computer. That really shouldn't be allowed and I don't know why it is (what other legal documents are mass produced by a computer with no human oversight? Deeds? wills? power of atterny? Didn't think so).
  - aroberge 14y ago
    It did happen. I was there (Laurentian University in Sudbury Ontario), teaching in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and my former colleague, N.I. Robb now retired - and an extremely well liked prof btw-, did just what I described.
    - scoot 14y ago
      How would giving a zero to both students have been any less of a dicincentive to the act in general? In this example he plagarist has no dicincentive to plagarise again from some other source.
      - JagMicker 14y ago
        It wouldn't be the first time that someone devised and implemented poor policy, meanwhile touting it as an infallible act of genius...
      - benbeltran 14y ago
        But, the students that do care about the course are dissuaded from plagiarizing their work. If my experience in uni is any telling, people who get caught copying/plagiarizing will do it again. If you cut the easy access of the more hard-working students, at the very least they'll have to do some research for those answers. The nice thing about the zero to the stronger student without consequence to the weak student is that they didn't go down together, which tends to make the affected more likely to go confront the issue. Sure, what I'm saying is not based on any hard data except my years at uni and the fact that a physics professor in my campus did the exact same thing.
rasur 14y ago
I sometimes get the feeling that the movie studios could be outsmarted by a box of rocks. This example doesn't really do much to change my mind.
drivebyacct2 14y ago
This is just a whole other level of stupid that I would have never even thought possible.
DanBC 14y ago
Strictly obeying someone's instructions is a well known technique for sabotage. Google really should just comply with any validly formed DMCA request they're given, but put information links about that fact. (Which they do, to "chilling effects".) And someone really needs to start tackling blatantly false requests too. Google has already taken big steps to please copyright holders. Their detection stuff is remarkable.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  Strictly obeying someone's instructions is a well known technique for sabotage. Indeed. Rumor has it that American Airlines pilots have recently been engaging in a similar strategy in order to put pressure on AMR management. Apparently they simply follow the rulebook to the "t", phoning in maintenance requests for the most minor nit-picky problems, following every procedure in excruciating detail, etc., with a net result of causing American's "on time percentage" to drop precipitously as flights are routinely delayed.
  - _delirium 14y ago
    This is partly a symptom of poor rules imo. American wants to have two things at once: 1) a bunch of very detailed CYA safety rules; but 2) not to take the financial hit that would be needed to actually implement those rules faithfully as written. This works so long as employees are willing to turn a blind eye to the rules, treating them as the not-really-intended-to-be-enforced CYA rules that they are, but runs into trouble once someone takes them seriously. The solution, not that likely to happen, would not be to write rules that you don't intend to budget the staff/time to actually follow as written.
- bitcrusher 14y ago
  I'm sure you know, but for others, this is called a "White Mutiny"
pemulis 14y ago
> The company appears to present itself as a DMCA remover on the website yesitis.org but lists no address. Considering the many mistakes made by the firm, one has to wonder whether their “under penalty of perjury” statement that they represent the copyright holders above is accurate. I think this has to be a prank. The website was generated with a GoDaddy website builder, filled with laughable plagiarized boilerplate, and doesn't include any information that would identify a particular company. All of the photos are stock photos. They include 'Adoption' and 'Personal Injury' under their list of services. I think someone is seeing if they can get Google to take down obviously legitimate websites when an obviously illegitimate source asks them to.
- JagMicker 14y ago
  I just checked YesItIs.org, and it now appears that the domain is parked and the website inaccessible. Can anyone say, "hit & run"?
w1ntermute 14y ago
Google should just completely censor all MAFIAA content. Let's see how long it takes for these fuckers to back down. One week? Two weeks? I bet they'll never submit another DMCA complaint agian, legit or not.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  As nice as the message would be (We don't need your content; get bent; kthxbai), Google is never going to do it. Part of their business is predicated on MafiAA content (movie and music store) and it would be suicidal for them to toss that.
anigbrowl 14y ago
Interestingly enough, they above examples were all sent by an outfit called “Yes It Is – No Piracy!” which we’ve never heard of before. Didn't stop you attributing the behavior to the rightsholders in the headline and most of the article, though, even though there's no way of knowing whether they were actually involved.
- shinratdr 14y ago
  You expected more due diligence from TorrentFreak? If so, that's a game you just can't win.
belorn 14y ago
The solution should be pretty simple. Apply same damages rules currently used in IP infringement for any false claim that tries to apply ownership over someone else work. So if a false DMCA is made over a news article or review, then who ever did it will have to pay damages as if he took exclusive ownership over the news article, and thus pay what ever the sell price is for complete transfer of copyright. If buying complete exclusive rights to a news article cost say, $1 mil, than that's the damages to be payed. After all, that would just follow the same concept being pursued in court cases by the same companies filing those false DMCA's.

100 points by derpenxyne 14y ago

bradleyjg 14y ago

Google should comply. If the rightsholders want to give their titles the internet death penalty who are we to argue?

sjbach 14y ago
That punishes users of Google search who want to find these titles.
- mtgx 14y ago
  That's okay. Google can just show them the torrent links instead, which "normally" should appear in search results, but Google has been trying to downrank them more and more lately.

aroberge 14y ago

I wish Google would use a strategy that a former colleague used in an upper year Physics course. While encouraging students to discuss problems, he informed them that plagiarizing assignments was not allowed. When he got the first assignment, he noticed that the solution handed in by one of the top students in the department was identical to the one handed in by a much weaker student. So, he gave zero to the top student and full marks to the weaker student. (It should be noted that the contribution of each assignment towards the final grade was likely less than 2%). As he expected, the student who got zero went to see him. My colleague told him that he had no foolproof way to show that it was the other student that plagiarized the assignment and that the best method to prevent another zero being given was to not allow other students to plagiarize his assignment - if indeed this is what had happened. This solved the problem for that year ... and for many years after as word got around. So... I wish Google would selectively remove links that are clearly submitted erroneously (claiming that, since the studios own these sites, no third party is claiming fair use) whereas preventing links where fair use appear clearly reasonable (such as wikipedia and reviews from news outlets) from being removed.

pestaa 14y ago
Maybe Google indeed should make these companies stand in the corner for a while, but wouldn't that conflict with its interests? It's a quick way to make enemies with lots of money to spend in court.
tomjen3 14y ago
I very much doubt that that actually happened. It seems more likely to be a story created to scare people. But it seems that the problem here is that google accepts DMCA requests that are not signed by an individiual but mass produced by a computer. That really shouldn't be allowed and I don't know why it is (what other legal documents are mass produced by a computer with no human oversight? Deeds? wills? power of atterny? Didn't think so).
- aroberge 14y ago
  It did happen. I was there (Laurentian University in Sudbury Ontario), teaching in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and my former colleague, N.I. Robb now retired - and an extremely well liked prof btw-, did just what I described.
  - scoot 14y ago
    How would giving a zero to both students have been any less of a dicincentive to the act in general? In this example he plagarist has no dicincentive to plagarise again from some other source.
    - JagMicker 14y ago
      It wouldn't be the first time that someone devised and implemented poor policy, meanwhile touting it as an infallible act of genius...
    - benbeltran 14y ago
      But, the students that do care about the course are dissuaded from plagiarizing their work. If my experience in uni is any telling, people who get caught copying/plagiarizing will do it again. If you cut the easy access of the more hard-working students, at the very least they'll have to do some research for those answers. The nice thing about the zero to the stronger student without consequence to the weak student is that they didn't go down together, which tends to make the affected more likely to go confront the issue. Sure, what I'm saying is not based on any hard data except my years at uni and the fact that a physics professor in my campus did the exact same thing.

rasur 14y ago

I sometimes get the feeling that the movie studios could be outsmarted by a box of rocks. This example doesn't really do much to change my mind.

drivebyacct2 14y ago

This is just a whole other level of stupid that I would have never even thought possible.

DanBC 14y ago

Strictly obeying someone's instructions is a well known technique for sabotage. Google really should just comply with any validly formed DMCA request they're given, but put information links about that fact. (Which they do, to "chilling effects".) And someone really needs to start tackling blatantly false requests too. Google has already taken big steps to please copyright holders. Their detection stuff is remarkable.

mindcrime 14y ago
Strictly obeying someone's instructions is a well known technique for sabotage. Indeed. Rumor has it that American Airlines pilots have recently been engaging in a similar strategy in order to put pressure on AMR management. Apparently they simply follow the rulebook to the "t", phoning in maintenance requests for the most minor nit-picky problems, following every procedure in excruciating detail, etc., with a net result of causing American's "on time percentage" to drop precipitously as flights are routinely delayed.
- _delirium 14y ago
  This is partly a symptom of poor rules imo. American wants to have two things at once: 1) a bunch of very detailed CYA safety rules; but 2) not to take the financial hit that would be needed to actually implement those rules faithfully as written. This works so long as employees are willing to turn a blind eye to the rules, treating them as the not-really-intended-to-be-enforced CYA rules that they are, but runs into trouble once someone takes them seriously. The solution, not that likely to happen, would not be to write rules that you don't intend to budget the staff/time to actually follow as written.
bitcrusher 14y ago
I'm sure you know, but for others, this is called a "White Mutiny"

pemulis 14y ago

> The company appears to present itself as a DMCA remover on the website yesitis.org but lists no address. Considering the many mistakes made by the firm, one has to wonder whether their “under penalty of perjury” statement that they represent the copyright holders above is accurate. I think this has to be a prank. The website was generated with a GoDaddy website builder, filled with laughable plagiarized boilerplate, and doesn't include any information that would identify a particular company. All of the photos are stock photos. They include 'Adoption' and 'Personal Injury' under their list of services. I think someone is seeing if they can get Google to take down obviously legitimate websites when an obviously illegitimate source asks them to.

JagMicker 14y ago
I just checked YesItIs.org, and it now appears that the domain is parked and the website inaccessible. Can anyone say, "hit & run"?

w1ntermute 14y ago

Google should just completely censor all MAFIAA content. Let's see how long it takes for these fuckers to back down. One week? Two weeks? I bet they'll never submit another DMCA complaint agian, legit or not.

Karunamon 14y ago
As nice as the message would be (We don't need your content; get bent; kthxbai), Google is never going to do it. Part of their business is predicated on MafiAA content (movie and music store) and it would be suicidal for them to toss that.

anigbrowl 14y ago

Interestingly enough, they above examples were all sent by an outfit called “Yes It Is – No Piracy!” which we’ve never heard of before. Didn't stop you attributing the behavior to the rightsholders in the headline and most of the article, though, even though there's no way of knowing whether they were actually involved.

shinratdr 14y ago
You expected more due diligence from TorrentFreak? If so, that's a game you just can't win.

belorn 14y ago

The solution should be pretty simple. Apply same damages rules currently used in IP infringement for any false claim that tries to apply ownership over someone else work. So if a false DMCA is made over a news article or review, then who ever did it will have to pay damages as if he took exclusive ownership over the news article, and thus pay what ever the sell price is for complete transfer of copyright. If buying complete exclusive rights to a news article cost say, $1 mil, than that's the damages to be payed. After all, that would just follow the same concept being pursued in court cases by the same companies filing those false DMCA's.