7 ms·

Universal asks Google to take down 127.0.0.1 for piracy

268 points by davidgerard 11y ago

smanuel 11y ago
Google, you can take 127.0.0.1 down, but please leave localhost alone.
- tomphoolery 11y ago
  They may take away our 127.0.0.1, they may take away our lives, BUT THEY CAN NEVER TAKE AWAY...OUR FREEDOM!!!
- zeckalpha 11y ago
  They're just taking a progressive stance against IPv4.
yread 11y ago
Already submitted and discussed yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9931404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9931404 TLDR; there is a sharing program which installs web service on localhost:4001 that handles sort of magnet links
josteink 11y ago
Now if that doesn't start raising some questions, I don't know what will :)
- davidgerard 11y ago
  Nothing will until there's any sort of penalty for grossly incompetent and fraudulent DMCA notifications.
  - dspillett 11y ago
    In this case they have effectively asked Google to de-list themselves. I suggest Google (temporally at least) does exactly that for all their properties and sends then a message to the effect that "the entity hosting the pages you asked to be de-listed also listed these <list of millions of entries> and we de-listed those also, please let us know which, if any, of these assets should legitimately be included in our index".
tomkwok 11y ago
In another DMCA take down request [0], Universal included a URL to an entry on IMDB.com, which is obviously a legitimate site. Now that's not so funny. [0]: https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/10951315 https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/10951315
- tedunangst 11y ago
  The tech dirt article about hacking team is also a gem.
  - auscompgeek 11y ago
    And surely Reddit is a legitimate site as well.
- sp332 11y ago
  That IMDB page http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820852/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820852/ has several videos on it. It's possible that one of them was infringing. But even if it was, I doubt they would really want to delist the whole page from Google searches.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    Just as a likely scenario that there could be a comment with a download link in it, download links are very commonly shared on twitter and Reddit so who knows...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
x5n1 11y ago
i run 127.0.0.1 can i sue these geniuses? this has caused trillions of dollars of economic loss to my business.
rightnow 11y ago
Thanks Universal for links to Jurassic World!! I have been looking for that.
gnu8 11y ago
Where are the criminal charges for purgery? This kind of abuse has gone on long enough. We need to start sanctioning every DMCA claim that has the least error in it. Every copyright agent should be living in fear of having their company fined and being jailed personally whenever they send a DMCA claim.
- MagnumOpus 11y ago
  FYI: The term is "perjury". And to answer your question, it's only perjury if it is a deliberate misstatement - which WB will argue this isn't.
  - ObviousScience 11y ago
    WB failed to properly certify that they made a best effort at truth: their machines fundamentally are more error prone than they could be, and thus WB didn't spend a reasonable effort on ensuring veracity of their claims. More specifically, the lawyers whose name is attached claimed that under his best powers, the claims are known to be true. However, he knows the error rate of WB bots is above that human workers would produce parsing the same content. They fail to do an additional check on the machine parsed lists (or they'd remove many of these embarrassing links). But they did sign, under penalty of perjury, that they did.
    - yebyen 11y ago
      That's not how the certification of a DMCA request works. All they have to certify under penalty of perjury is that they own the copyright to the works they claim have been infringed. They do not have to certify that the works identified are the works they claim to own. Read that again if it doesn't make sense, the only part that they need to certify is that "I own XYZ", it's up to the parties responding to certify that "I'm not sharing XYZ, I'm sharing my Original Content PQR." Or whatever other affirmative defense they can muster. The law is built to recognize three parties: 1) accuser, or, party owning copyright to a work; 2) respondent, or, the person accused of violating that copyright; 3) safe-haven, or, let's say YouTube, who facilitates this transaction by responding to accuser's claim with an immediate takedown, to avoid any culpability for respondent's potential infringing action. Then respondent submits their defense after a period of time elapses, and finally YouTube seeing the defense can optionally restore the service for the accused person until a court order says they were infringing. The law is designed to make the job of respondent harder than the job of accuser, since they are the one accused they should obviously have to take steps to prove their innocence </s>. The only thing that accuser has to certify is that they own a copyrighted work. If YouTube has the desire to take on some extra liability, they can reject obviously incorrect take-down requests, and if they are ever wrong, they get the luxury of potentially losing their safe-haven status and being lumped in with accused party #2 when the lawsuit goes on to the inside of a court room. If the court decides the take-down request was reasonable and accurate, but YouTube did not take appropriate steps to honor it or respondent lied in the response, one or both of these parties can suffer the penalties (and potentially perjury charges for their bad-faith responses claiming non-infringement.)
yason 11y ago
This underlines the craziness of copyright and intellectual "property". If DMCA claims were expensive, companies would bother requesting takedown for the most profitable movies/albums/games only and they wouldn't go on autopilot, claiming whatever they think might infringe their copyrights. But then the garage bands and individual artists/musicians would be left out of the game completely, they couldn't use DMCA to take down their music. On the other hand, how do you prove you are the author unless you have lots of money for lawyers? If you say "I composed this song at home, and published it under CC licensing" and MAFIAA say they represent the copyright holder, is it not clear who owns what? If there was a digital notary service where you could digitally sign and timestamp a file, that might help a bit. But the downside is that people could take public domain works or someone's un-notarized works, claim ownership, have it stamped and they would begin to hold a stronger position pretending to be the author. I think this is somehow similar to how indigenous people wondered how the white man could possibly think of owning forests, rivers, and land. They considered Earth unownable, not belonging to anyone but rather people belonging to the Earth. Similarly, natives to the digital world wonder how somebody could possibly think of owning bits, numbers, and copyable files.
- jonathanpoulter 11y ago
  Could something not be notarized as a public work for free by this third party?
- eli 11y ago
  I've sent DMCA takedown notices. A garage band could too. You don't have to prove you're the author to send a takedown notice, you merely have to assert it.
  - emodendroket 11y ago
    I'm thinking the parent comment's point is more that if I upload an original composition on YouTube and someone else issues a takedown request claiming to own the copyright it'd be really hard for me to dispute that if the person making the request had deep enough pockets. Not sure whether that is true though.
ousta 11y ago
put in the wrong hands at google this could be the end of the web as we know it if some intern decide to take down 127.0.0.1
- bcruddy 11y ago
  127.0.0.1 is purely a virtual loopback within your own system. Google can't take it down.
  - davidgerard 11y ago
    shhhhhhhhh!! you'll give Universal ideas!
  - nadams 11y ago
    That won't stop lawyers from trying.
  - hamiltonkibbe 11y ago
    Which is presumably one of Universal's machines in this case... Better be safe and take down all universalpictures.com properties
shashwat986 11y ago
And Universal isn't alone: https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&sort_by=date_received+desc&term=127.0.0.1&term-require-all=true&term=127.0.0.1&term-require-all=true https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/search?utf8=%E2%9C%9... EDIT: Also, Universal's been doing it LOTS of times before too (via above link).
sudioStudio64 11y ago
I love this story. I believe that the Church of Scientology did the same thing a long time ago in the early days of the internet.
- zeckalpha 11y ago
  s/internet/world wide web/
- davidgerard 11y ago
  e.g., http://lists.ding.net/geeks/96/dec/msg00007.html http://lists.ding.net/geeks/96/dec/msg00007.html
PaulHoule 11y ago
It reminds me of the time that I unloaded the loopback driver...
venomsnake 11y ago
Can anyone index the chilling effects DB ... it seems like a great place to find content ...
- corobo 11y ago
  Plus you know they're legit, WB's robot says so. That's like what, at least a green skull and crossbones? Why aren't they submitting DMCAs to the places actually hosting the files?
codeshaman 11y ago
Do they still actively issue these takedown requests, even when faced with the fact that it has zero effect on weather the movie is pirateable ? I mean, I can download any movie in a couple of minutes from one of the torrent sites that I usually use anonymously. I do this because it's convenient and because I seldomly watch the movies till the end - many of them are not interesting enough to keep me awake. I stopped pirating music since Spotify came along - the price is right and the selection is good enough to keep me engaged for several lifetimes. There is no such thing for movies. Maybe iTunes, but I'm not willing to pay their price and the selection is far from complete. So instead of paying lawers and acting like clowns, these guys should invest in a startup which is the Spotify for movies without all the jurisdictional limitations that usually come with such services, because their lawyers are busy fishing pirates on 127.0.0.1...
- sombremesa 11y ago
  Netflix?
  - rglullis 11y ago
    Geofenced catalogs, two-year delays between bluray releases and getting to netflix, lack of blockbusters because they are too expensive to license...
  - codeshaman 11y ago
    Not available here in Spain. Besides, these services usually let you watch a movie months after it has been released, wereas you can usually see the movie on torrents the day they're out, often in HD quality. A service which does the same legally has my $20 every month.
sarciszewski 11y ago
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/23/movie_studio_finds_pirated_jurassic_world_on_localhost http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/23/movie_studio_finds_p... The lawyer sending these automated DMCA searches tagged their own computer, implying they were pirating the movie. That's hilarious if it's true.
- wang_li 11y ago
  Since these are requests that google take down links from it's index, it is much more probable that someone somewhere has a page where they have a link to localhost with the anchor text matching the title of a movie.

268 points by davidgerard 11y ago

smanuel 11y ago

Google, you can take 127.0.0.1 down, but please leave localhost alone.

tomphoolery 11y ago
They may take away our 127.0.0.1, they may take away our lives, BUT THEY CAN NEVER TAKE AWAY...OUR FREEDOM!!!
zeckalpha 11y ago
They're just taking a progressive stance against IPv4.

yread 11y ago

Already submitted and discussed yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9931404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9931404 TLDR; there is a sharing program which installs web service on localhost:4001 that handles sort of magnet links

josteink 11y ago

Now if that doesn't start raising some questions, I don't know what will :)

davidgerard 11y ago
Nothing will until there's any sort of penalty for grossly incompetent and fraudulent DMCA notifications.
- dspillett 11y ago
  In this case they have effectively asked Google to de-list themselves. I suggest Google (temporally at least) does exactly that for all their properties and sends then a message to the effect that "the entity hosting the pages you asked to be de-listed also listed these <list of millions of entries> and we de-listed those also, please let us know which, if any, of these assets should legitimately be included in our index".

tomkwok 11y ago

In another DMCA take down request [0], Universal included a URL to an entry on IMDB.com, which is obviously a legitimate site. Now that's not so funny. [0]: https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/10951315 https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/10951315

tedunangst 11y ago
The tech dirt article about hacking team is also a gem.
- auscompgeek 11y ago
  And surely Reddit is a legitimate site as well.
sp332 11y ago
That IMDB page http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820852/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820852/ has several videos on it. It's possible that one of them was infringing. But even if it was, I doubt they would really want to delist the whole page from Google searches.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  Just as a likely scenario that there could be a comment with a download link in it, download links are very commonly shared on twitter and Reddit so who knows...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

x5n1 11y ago

i run 127.0.0.1 can i sue these geniuses? this has caused trillions of dollars of economic loss to my business.

rightnow 11y ago

Thanks Universal for links to Jurassic World!! I have been looking for that.

gnu8 11y ago

Where are the criminal charges for purgery? This kind of abuse has gone on long enough. We need to start sanctioning every DMCA claim that has the least error in it. Every copyright agent should be living in fear of having their company fined and being jailed personally whenever they send a DMCA claim.

MagnumOpus 11y ago
FYI: The term is "perjury". And to answer your question, it's only perjury if it is a deliberate misstatement - which WB will argue this isn't.
- ObviousScience 11y ago
  WB failed to properly certify that they made a best effort at truth: their machines fundamentally are more error prone than they could be, and thus WB didn't spend a reasonable effort on ensuring veracity of their claims. More specifically, the lawyers whose name is attached claimed that under his best powers, the claims are known to be true. However, he knows the error rate of WB bots is above that human workers would produce parsing the same content. They fail to do an additional check on the machine parsed lists (or they'd remove many of these embarrassing links). But they did sign, under penalty of perjury, that they did.
  - yebyen 11y ago
    That's not how the certification of a DMCA request works. All they have to certify under penalty of perjury is that they own the copyright to the works they claim have been infringed. They do not have to certify that the works identified are the works they claim to own. Read that again if it doesn't make sense, the only part that they need to certify is that "I own XYZ", it's up to the parties responding to certify that "I'm not sharing XYZ, I'm sharing my Original Content PQR." Or whatever other affirmative defense they can muster. The law is built to recognize three parties: 1) accuser, or, party owning copyright to a work; 2) respondent, or, the person accused of violating that copyright; 3) safe-haven, or, let's say YouTube, who facilitates this transaction by responding to accuser's claim with an immediate takedown, to avoid any culpability for respondent's potential infringing action. Then respondent submits their defense after a period of time elapses, and finally YouTube seeing the defense can optionally restore the service for the accused person until a court order says they were infringing. The law is designed to make the job of respondent harder than the job of accuser, since they are the one accused they should obviously have to take steps to prove their innocence </s>. The only thing that accuser has to certify is that they own a copyrighted work. If YouTube has the desire to take on some extra liability, they can reject obviously incorrect take-down requests, and if they are ever wrong, they get the luxury of potentially losing their safe-haven status and being lumped in with accused party #2 when the lawsuit goes on to the inside of a court room. If the court decides the take-down request was reasonable and accurate, but YouTube did not take appropriate steps to honor it or respondent lied in the response, one or both of these parties can suffer the penalties (and potentially perjury charges for their bad-faith responses claiming non-infringement.)

yason 11y ago

This underlines the craziness of copyright and intellectual "property". If DMCA claims were expensive, companies would bother requesting takedown for the most profitable movies/albums/games only and they wouldn't go on autopilot, claiming whatever they think might infringe their copyrights. But then the garage bands and individual artists/musicians would be left out of the game completely, they couldn't use DMCA to take down their music. On the other hand, how do you prove you are the author unless you have lots of money for lawyers? If you say "I composed this song at home, and published it under CC licensing" and MAFIAA say they represent the copyright holder, is it not clear who owns what? If there was a digital notary service where you could digitally sign and timestamp a file, that might help a bit. But the downside is that people could take public domain works or someone's un-notarized works, claim ownership, have it stamped and they would begin to hold a stronger position pretending to be the author. I think this is somehow similar to how indigenous people wondered how the white man could possibly think of owning forests, rivers, and land. They considered Earth unownable, not belonging to anyone but rather people belonging to the Earth. Similarly, natives to the digital world wonder how somebody could possibly think of owning bits, numbers, and copyable files.

jonathanpoulter 11y ago
Could something not be notarized as a public work for free by this third party?
eli 11y ago
I've sent DMCA takedown notices. A garage band could too. You don't have to prove you're the author to send a takedown notice, you merely have to assert it.
- emodendroket 11y ago
  I'm thinking the parent comment's point is more that if I upload an original composition on YouTube and someone else issues a takedown request claiming to own the copyright it'd be really hard for me to dispute that if the person making the request had deep enough pockets. Not sure whether that is true though.

ousta 11y ago

put in the wrong hands at google this could be the end of the web as we know it if some intern decide to take down 127.0.0.1

bcruddy 11y ago
127.0.0.1 is purely a virtual loopback within your own system. Google can't take it down.
- davidgerard 11y ago
  shhhhhhhhh!! you'll give Universal ideas!
- nadams 11y ago
  That won't stop lawyers from trying.
- hamiltonkibbe 11y ago
  Which is presumably one of Universal's machines in this case... Better be safe and take down all universalpictures.com properties

shashwat986 11y ago

And Universal isn't alone: https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&sort_by=date_received+desc&term=127.0.0.1&term-require-all=true&term=127.0.0.1&term-require-all=true https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/search?utf8=%E2%9C%9... EDIT: Also, Universal's been doing it LOTS of times before too (via above link).

sudioStudio64 11y ago

I love this story. I believe that the Church of Scientology did the same thing a long time ago in the early days of the internet.

zeckalpha 11y ago
s/internet/world wide web/
davidgerard 11y ago
e.g., http://lists.ding.net/geeks/96/dec/msg00007.html http://lists.ding.net/geeks/96/dec/msg00007.html

PaulHoule 11y ago

It reminds me of the time that I unloaded the loopback driver...

venomsnake 11y ago

Can anyone index the chilling effects DB ... it seems like a great place to find content ...

corobo 11y ago
Plus you know they're legit, WB's robot says so. That's like what, at least a green skull and crossbones? Why aren't they submitting DMCAs to the places actually hosting the files?

codeshaman 11y ago

Do they still actively issue these takedown requests, even when faced with the fact that it has zero effect on weather the movie is pirateable ? I mean, I can download any movie in a couple of minutes from one of the torrent sites that I usually use anonymously. I do this because it's convenient and because I seldomly watch the movies till the end - many of them are not interesting enough to keep me awake. I stopped pirating music since Spotify came along - the price is right and the selection is good enough to keep me engaged for several lifetimes. There is no such thing for movies. Maybe iTunes, but I'm not willing to pay their price and the selection is far from complete. So instead of paying lawers and acting like clowns, these guys should invest in a startup which is the Spotify for movies without all the jurisdictional limitations that usually come with such services, because their lawyers are busy fishing pirates on 127.0.0.1...

sombremesa 11y ago
Netflix?
- rglullis 11y ago
  Geofenced catalogs, two-year delays between bluray releases and getting to netflix, lack of blockbusters because they are too expensive to license...
- codeshaman 11y ago
  Not available here in Spain. Besides, these services usually let you watch a movie months after it has been released, wereas you can usually see the movie on torrents the day they're out, often in HD quality. A service which does the same legally has my $20 every month.

sarciszewski 11y ago

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/23/movie_studio_finds_pirated_jurassic_world_on_localhost http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/23/movie_studio_finds_p... The lawyer sending these automated DMCA searches tagged their own computer, implying they were pirating the movie. That's hilarious if it's true.

wang_li 11y ago
Since these are requests that google take down links from it's index, it is much more probable that someone somewhere has a page where they have a link to localhost with the anchor text matching the title of a movie.