8 ms·

Fox Censors Cory Doctorow’s “Homeland” Novel From Google

127 points by fraqed 14y ago

venomsnake 14y ago
I hope that soon it will sink with the masses that DMCA takedowns are mostly censorship. Currently the system allows taking down everything you don't like. Just amend the law to have a fine of 0.01% of yearly corporate revenue for each bogus notice sent and enjoy the show.
- incision 14y ago
  >I hope that soon it will sink with the masses that DMCA takedowns are mostly censorship. I'd wager "the masses" don't understand the concept of censorship and certainly don't care about universal protections against it.
  - freshhawk 14y ago
    Who would accept that wager? The results are already in and you are correct. :)
enjo 14y ago
This is my biggest issue with the DMCA. Issuing a take-down notice for content you do not own should result in large fines. Maybe you get a couple of false positives, but at some point you have to be accountable for this stuff. If you want to rigorously enforce your copyright, good on ya... but be prepared to pay out the nose when you hurt someone else in the process.
- bickfordb 14y ago
  Why isn't this the case in practice?
- dangrossman 14y ago
  > Issuing a take-down notice for content you do not own should result in large fines It effectively does. The DMCA makes damages, costs and attorneys fees mandatory for material misrepresentations. Doctorow can sue at no cost to himself, while Fox would be out a significant amount of money in two sets of attorneys fees plus whatever damages Doctorow can show this caused to his sales.
  - haspoken 14y ago
    It's not at no cost. Cory would need to invest the time and money up front for cost of the lawsuit and then make recovery after he won. He may, given his connections, be able to get assistance from organizations to assist with the financial side, but he would still need to invest the time. Fox likely just has lawyers on staff and would not really be paying attorney fees, just their usual wages. This is the downfall of the legal system, you need hefty resources to pursue justice. This seem to be a major reason that there is no practical penalty for false notices the majority of the time.
  - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
    Proving material misrepresentation is an exceedingly costly affair. So most people will ask, which hurts worse, the takedown or the courtroom.
  - kumarm 14y ago
    Once our content was taken down because of DMCA from Poland (With just a gmail address). We got our content back online with counter following procedures with google after 15 days. (That is the time required after counter for the DMCA complainer to respond back). How can we expect to sue some on in Poland with just a email address and no idea who the real person is and what they are worth? DMCA is an American law that only hurts people who live in US. It is very easy to abuse DMCA and trouble people in US if you live outside the country.
    - manys 14y ago
      They're supposed to put your content back up once they receive the counter notice. Your provider screwed you.
- jellicle 14y ago
  Why should even one false positive be tolerated?
  - Lexarius 14y ago
    Because companies are largely still operated by humans, who make mistakes. There's a difference between "oops" and "let's systematically abuse this system for our benefit". Granted, I think there should still be a penalty for "oops" moments, just not as bad. The penalty should exponentially increase with the frequency of false positives.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - alexqgb 14y ago
      In other words, it comes down to intent (i.e. the difference between manslaughter and murder).
      - e12e 14y ago
        As digital "piracy" does not, in fact, kill music executives, I think we should stay with analogies a little closer to civil law. There's honest mistakes, then there's neglect, and then there is fraud. Then there's conspiracy to commit fraud (I guess that is what happens when your lobbyists can't get your scam passed as law, but you try to get your way anyway? ;-)
    - enjo 14y ago
      Exactly this. The first draft of that sentence included something about big fines on the very first offense. Then I realized it would be rather impractical and unfair. Sometimes you screw up. This is about "screwing up" alot, to the point that it becomes malicious.
- onemorepassword 14y ago
  Fines would make the DMCA the exclusive weapon of major corporations with big piles of money for legal stuff. Oh, wait... The biggest issue with the DMCA is that it exists. There's no way of mitigating the basic concept of putting exercising the law into the hands of those who profit from it.
- TeMPOraL 14y ago
  Yeah, my friend's startup recently got its mobile app blown out of Play Store for almost a month because of a bogus DMCA.
- pasbesoin 14y ago
  I say, misuse it deliberately (and perhaps repeatedly), and you lose the ability, as an and for the entire entity, to use it in future. Oops, material you think is infringing is online? Tough shit. That's my simple solution: Abuse it, and you lose it -- for everything. P.S. And your little dog, too. I.e. any subsidiaries or shell companies you create, and any subsequent purchaser of copyright for the specific material in question. (In this instance, Fox's copyright surrounding their "Homeland" product.) And any material passed to another agent under the terms of your sale to said agent remains excluded from DMCA action. Copyright is a monopoly granted by the government -- in our democracy, by the people -- to serve the common good. I'm perfectly happy with the people changing the terms of such grants when they find that they are not serving the common good. If we can "Mickey Mouse" ever longer copyright term extensions, by goodness, we can curtail them, as well.
k-mcgrady 14y ago
Torrent freak sensationalising as usual. Fox was sending takedown notices to Google of links to the Homeland TV show. Included in these notices were some links to a novel with the same name that was available on torrent sites. Seems like a simple mistake. As much as I dislike Fox the title here is completely misleading. Edit: I agree with the other commenters there should be some sort of financial penalty for this. It's a simple mistake but as it will impact the author of the novel negatively Fox should have to reimburse him in someway. I'm not exactly sure how that would work but it's something that needs to be looked at with the DMCA.
- icebraining 14y ago
  It's not a simple mistake, it's the result of using dumb automated systems without caring in the least if it affects anyone else. In the past they've already sent DMCA notices about news articles[1] and to takedown notices themselves[2]. [1]: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120525/01520819073/fox-issues-dmca-takedown-to-google-over-sf-chronicle-article-claiming-it-was-movie-chronicle.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120525/01520819073/fox-i... [2]: http://www.myce.com/news/dmca-takedown-notices-run-amok-thanks-to-fox-41103/ http://www.myce.com/news/dmca-takedown-notices-run-amok-than...
- biff 14y ago
  I wonder if it'll trigger the Copyright Alert System as well, giving innocent downloaders grief with their ISPs.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
kordless 14y ago
I stopped reading it when Cory demanded Rupert's head. That's just silly.
- venomsnake 14y ago
  Yeah it is old and shrunken. Won't look good on the wall. Will still buy it though for a dollar or two.
flatline 14y ago
Not the first time this has happened. "Down and out..." had similar issues, e.g. http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/08/improper-dmca-takedowns-come-to-the-final-frontier/ http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/08/improper-dmca-t...
lifeguard 14y ago
"links to downloadable editions of the text of Homeland. These downloads are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs license, which lets you share it, provided that you do so on a noncommercial basis. If you'd like to make a remix, please get in touch with us. " http://craphound.com/homeland/download/ http://craphound.com/homeland/download/ Most of his ebooks for free here: http://manybooks.net/authors/doctorow.html http://manybooks.net/authors/doctorow.html
stfu 14y ago
I'm not really sure why it is big news that content copyright holders have automated DMCA scripts running. Sure, there should be some compensation for false DMCA take downs, but this story is just surfing on some artificial wave of rage against Fox & Murdoch.
- kailuowang 14y ago
  Agreed. I think the article could be written in a different way, I mean it kind of reminds me of those cheap government conspiracy speculation articles.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Automated takedown scripts are illegal. Takedown claims must be signed under penalty of purjery.
  - e12e 14y ago
    Yes, but is it news that they are used, and that the abusers are not punished? I'm afraid not. Now, if one of these big companies weren't just caught at this, but actually suffered some legal consequences -- that would be news.
tpainton 14y ago
This isnt censorship. Studio is just trying to prevent copyright violation on its property. Given the book shares the name and the author it was affected as well which is unfortunate but not malicious.
- rubbingalcohol 14y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, an infringing title would be a trademark violation, not a copyright violation. The DMCA applies only to copyright violations.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Parent was saying that Doctorow's book was affected by accident, incidental to a legitimate claim against another book with the same title.
    - endianswap 14y ago
      The TV show "Homeland", right? Not another book?
- icebraining 14y ago
  If this was the first time, it'd be an unfortunate incident. But with its history of abusive DMCA takedowns, this is at least gross negligence.
mtgx 14y ago
It's time there's a penalty for false takedowns. You shouldn't be allowed to just get Google or others to take down thousands of urls at a time, just by identify a keyword. And we're only in the early days of this. The DMCA requests to Google are skyrocketing every year.
PeterisP 14y ago
I'm a bit confused about the text of the original article's first DMCA takedown, namely "Allegedly infringing URLs". Why isn't this "URLs that are definitely infringing, under penalty of perjury" as it IMHO was supposed to be in the original law ? And why aren't lists of "possibly, maybe, infringing URLs" automatically forwarded to trash until the requester bothers to sort out infringing and non-infringing URLs, as (s)he's supposed to?
- dangrossman 14y ago
  Read said law. That's not what it requires. The only part of the notice that is under penalty of perjury is "that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed" (H.R. 2281, Title II, Sec. 512 (3) (vi)), not the other 5 required elements of the notice, including the list of allegedly infringing activity. All of the claims in a DMCA notice are about alleged infringement, because copyright holders are not judges and cannot proclaim infringement to have occurred. The most they can have is a good-faith belief that the use was not authorized, and even if that belief turns out to be true, that doesn't necessarily mean the unauthorized use is infringing. There's nothing wrong with using that language in the notice.
- drdaeman 14y ago
  Technically... URL is an identifier (locator), not the content. Even more, URL alone does not always denote the content as IP and HTTP headers may affect the result. So, technically a requester can't be sure that re-requesting the resource under a given locator will produce the same content. But if lawmakers get it, they must also know that URL can't infringe by themselves.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
tsotha 14y ago
I think Doctorow should busy himself filing takedown notices everywhere Fox's "Homeland" appears legitimately.

127 points by fraqed 14y ago

I hope that soon it will sink with the masses that DMCA takedowns are mostly censorship. Currently the system allows taking down everything you don't like. Just amend the law to have a fine of 0.01% of yearly corporate revenue for each bogus notice sent and enjoy the show.

incision 14y ago
>I hope that soon it will sink with the masses that DMCA takedowns are mostly censorship. I'd wager "the masses" don't understand the concept of censorship and certainly don't care about universal protections against it.
- freshhawk 14y ago
  Who would accept that wager? The results are already in and you are correct. :)

enjo 14y ago

This is my biggest issue with the DMCA. Issuing a take-down notice for content you do not own should result in large fines. Maybe you get a couple of false positives, but at some point you have to be accountable for this stuff. If you want to rigorously enforce your copyright, good on ya... but be prepared to pay out the nose when you hurt someone else in the process.

bickfordb 14y ago
Why isn't this the case in practice?
dangrossman 14y ago
> Issuing a take-down notice for content you do not own should result in large fines It effectively does. The DMCA makes damages, costs and attorneys fees mandatory for material misrepresentations. Doctorow can sue at no cost to himself, while Fox would be out a significant amount of money in two sets of attorneys fees plus whatever damages Doctorow can show this caused to his sales.
- haspoken 14y ago
  It's not at no cost. Cory would need to invest the time and money up front for cost of the lawsuit and then make recovery after he won. He may, given his connections, be able to get assistance from organizations to assist with the financial side, but he would still need to invest the time. Fox likely just has lawyers on staff and would not really be paying attorney fees, just their usual wages. This is the downfall of the legal system, you need hefty resources to pursue justice. This seem to be a major reason that there is no practical penalty for false notices the majority of the time.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  Proving material misrepresentation is an exceedingly costly affair. So most people will ask, which hurts worse, the takedown or the courtroom.
- kumarm 14y ago
  Once our content was taken down because of DMCA from Poland (With just a gmail address). We got our content back online with counter following procedures with google after 15 days. (That is the time required after counter for the DMCA complainer to respond back). How can we expect to sue some on in Poland with just a email address and no idea who the real person is and what they are worth? DMCA is an American law that only hurts people who live in US. It is very easy to abuse DMCA and trouble people in US if you live outside the country.
  - manys 14y ago
    They're supposed to put your content back up once they receive the counter notice. Your provider screwed you.
jellicle 14y ago
Why should even one false positive be tolerated?
- Lexarius 14y ago
  Because companies are largely still operated by humans, who make mistakes. There's a difference between "oops" and "let's systematically abuse this system for our benefit". Granted, I think there should still be a penalty for "oops" moments, just not as bad. The penalty should exponentially increase with the frequency of false positives.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - alexqgb 14y ago
    In other words, it comes down to intent (i.e. the difference between manslaughter and murder).
    - e12e 14y ago
      As digital "piracy" does not, in fact, kill music executives, I think we should stay with analogies a little closer to civil law. There's honest mistakes, then there's neglect, and then there is fraud. Then there's conspiracy to commit fraud (I guess that is what happens when your lobbyists can't get your scam passed as law, but you try to get your way anyway? ;-)
  - enjo 14y ago
    Exactly this. The first draft of that sentence included something about big fines on the very first offense. Then I realized it would be rather impractical and unfair. Sometimes you screw up. This is about "screwing up" alot, to the point that it becomes malicious.
onemorepassword 14y ago
Fines would make the DMCA the exclusive weapon of major corporations with big piles of money for legal stuff. Oh, wait... The biggest issue with the DMCA is that it exists. There's no way of mitigating the basic concept of putting exercising the law into the hands of those who profit from it.
TeMPOraL 14y ago
Yeah, my friend's startup recently got its mobile app blown out of Play Store for almost a month because of a bogus DMCA.
pasbesoin 14y ago
I say, misuse it deliberately (and perhaps repeatedly), and you lose the ability, as an and for the entire entity, to use it in future. Oops, material you think is infringing is online? Tough shit. That's my simple solution: Abuse it, and you lose it -- for everything. P.S. And your little dog, too. I.e. any subsidiaries or shell companies you create, and any subsequent purchaser of copyright for the specific material in question. (In this instance, Fox's copyright surrounding their "Homeland" product.) And any material passed to another agent under the terms of your sale to said agent remains excluded from DMCA action. Copyright is a monopoly granted by the government -- in our democracy, by the people -- to serve the common good. I'm perfectly happy with the people changing the terms of such grants when they find that they are not serving the common good. If we can "Mickey Mouse" ever longer copyright term extensions, by goodness, we can curtail them, as well.

k-mcgrady 14y ago

Torrent freak sensationalising as usual. Fox was sending takedown notices to Google of links to the Homeland TV show. Included in these notices were some links to a novel with the same name that was available on torrent sites. Seems like a simple mistake. As much as I dislike Fox the title here is completely misleading. Edit: I agree with the other commenters there should be some sort of financial penalty for this. It's a simple mistake but as it will impact the author of the novel negatively Fox should have to reimburse him in someway. I'm not exactly sure how that would work but it's something that needs to be looked at with the DMCA.

icebraining 14y ago
It's not a simple mistake, it's the result of using dumb automated systems without caring in the least if it affects anyone else. In the past they've already sent DMCA notices about news articles[1] and to takedown notices themselves[2]. [1]: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120525/01520819073/fox-issues-dmca-takedown-to-google-over-sf-chronicle-article-claiming-it-was-movie-chronicle.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120525/01520819073/fox-i... [2]: http://www.myce.com/news/dmca-takedown-notices-run-amok-thanks-to-fox-41103/ http://www.myce.com/news/dmca-takedown-notices-run-amok-than...
biff 14y ago
I wonder if it'll trigger the Copyright Alert System as well, giving innocent downloaders grief with their ISPs.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

kordless 14y ago

I stopped reading it when Cory demanded Rupert's head. That's just silly.

venomsnake 14y ago
Yeah it is old and shrunken. Won't look good on the wall. Will still buy it though for a dollar or two.

flatline 14y ago

Not the first time this has happened. "Down and out..." had similar issues, e.g. http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/08/improper-dmca-takedowns-come-to-the-final-frontier/ http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/08/improper-dmca-t...

lifeguard 14y ago

"links to downloadable editions of the text of Homeland. These downloads are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs license, which lets you share it, provided that you do so on a noncommercial basis. If you'd like to make a remix, please get in touch with us. " http://craphound.com/homeland/download/ http://craphound.com/homeland/download/ Most of his ebooks for free here: http://manybooks.net/authors/doctorow.html http://manybooks.net/authors/doctorow.html

stfu 14y ago

I'm not really sure why it is big news that content copyright holders have automated DMCA scripts running. Sure, there should be some compensation for false DMCA take downs, but this story is just surfing on some artificial wave of rage against Fox & Murdoch.

kailuowang 14y ago
Agreed. I think the article could be written in a different way, I mean it kind of reminds me of those cheap government conspiracy speculation articles.
Evbn 14y ago
Automated takedown scripts are illegal. Takedown claims must be signed under penalty of purjery.
- e12e 14y ago
  Yes, but is it news that they are used, and that the abusers are not punished? I'm afraid not. Now, if one of these big companies weren't just caught at this, but actually suffered some legal consequences -- that would be news.

tpainton 14y ago

This isnt censorship. Studio is just trying to prevent copyright violation on its property. Given the book shares the name and the author it was affected as well which is unfortunate but not malicious.

rubbingalcohol 14y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, an infringing title would be a trademark violation, not a copyright violation. The DMCA applies only to copyright violations.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Parent was saying that Doctorow's book was affected by accident, incidental to a legitimate claim against another book with the same title.
  - endianswap 14y ago
    The TV show "Homeland", right? Not another book?
icebraining 14y ago
If this was the first time, it'd be an unfortunate incident. But with its history of abusive DMCA takedowns, this is at least gross negligence.

mtgx 14y ago

It's time there's a penalty for false takedowns. You shouldn't be allowed to just get Google or others to take down thousands of urls at a time, just by identify a keyword. And we're only in the early days of this. The DMCA requests to Google are skyrocketing every year.

PeterisP 14y ago

I'm a bit confused about the text of the original article's first DMCA takedown, namely "Allegedly infringing URLs". Why isn't this "URLs that are definitely infringing, under penalty of perjury" as it IMHO was supposed to be in the original law ? And why aren't lists of "possibly, maybe, infringing URLs" automatically forwarded to trash until the requester bothers to sort out infringing and non-infringing URLs, as (s)he's supposed to?

dangrossman 14y ago
Read said law. That's not what it requires. The only part of the notice that is under penalty of perjury is "that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed" (H.R. 2281, Title II, Sec. 512 (3) (vi)), not the other 5 required elements of the notice, including the list of allegedly infringing activity. All of the claims in a DMCA notice are about alleged infringement, because copyright holders are not judges and cannot proclaim infringement to have occurred. The most they can have is a good-faith belief that the use was not authorized, and even if that belief turns out to be true, that doesn't necessarily mean the unauthorized use is infringing. There's nothing wrong with using that language in the notice.
drdaeman 14y ago
Technically... URL is an identifier (locator), not the content. Even more, URL alone does not always denote the content as IP and HTTP headers may affect the result. So, technically a requester can't be sure that re-requesting the resource under a given locator will produce the same content. But if lawmakers get it, they must also know that URL can't infringe by themselves.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

tsotha 14y ago

I think Doctorow should busy himself filing takedown notices everywhere Fox's "Homeland" appears legitimately.