Skip to main content

Home/ Indie Nation/ Group items tagged DMCA

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
John Lemke

Rep. Goodlatte Slips Secret Change Into Phone Unlocking Bill That Opens The DMCA Up For... - 0 views

www.techdirt.com/...t-new-copyright-problems.shtml

2014 unlocking cell phone DMCA copyright Section 1201 technology law legal yourrights writeabout wroteatindienation indienationnews IN-Pub

shared by John Lemke on 25 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Because of section 1201 of the DMCA, the "anti-circumvention" provision, companies have been abusing copyright law to block all sorts of actions that are totally unrelated to copyright. That's because 1201 makes it illegal to circumvent basically any "technological protection measures." The intent of the copyright maximalists was to use this section to stop people from breaking DRM. However, other companies soon distorted the language to argue that it could be used to block certain actions totally unrelated to copyright law -- such as unlocking garage doors, ink jet cartridges, gaming accessories... and phones
  • Separately, every three years, the Librarian of Congress gets to announce "exemptions" to section 1201 where it feels that things are being locked up that shouldn't be. Back in 2006, one of these exemptions involved mobile phone unlocking.
  • Every three years this exemption was modified a bit, but in 2012, for unexplained reasons, the Librarian of Congress dropped that exemption entirely, meaning that starting in late January of 2013, it was possible to interpret the DMCA to mean that phone unlocking was illegal. In response to this there was a major White House petition -- which got over 100,000 signatures, leading the White House to announce (just weeks later) that it thought unlocking should be legal -- though, oddly, it seemed to place the issue with the FCC to fix, rather than recognizing the problem was with current copyright law.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • While this gives Goodlatte and other maximalists some sort of plausible deniability that this bill is making no statement one way or the other on bulk unlocking, it certainly very strongly implies that Congress believes bulk unlocking is, in fact, still illegal. And that's massively problematic on any number of levels, in part suggesting that the unlocker's motives in unlocking has an impact on the determination under Section 1201 as to whether or not it's legal. And that's an entirely subjective distinction when a bill seems to assume motives, which makes an already problematic Section 1201 much more problematic. Without that clause, this seemed like a bill that was making it clear that you can't use the DMCA to interfere with an issue that is clearly unrelated to copyright, such as phone unlocking. But with this clause, it suggests that perhaps the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause can be used for entirely non-copyright issues if someone doesn't like the "motive" behind the unlocker.
  • Unfortunately, the bill was deemed so uncontroversial that it's been listed on the suspension calendar of the House, which is where non-controversial bills are put to ensure quick passage. That means that, not only did Goodlatte slip in a significant change to this bill that impacts the entire meaning and intent of the bill long after it went through the committee process (and without informing anyone about it), but he also got it put on the list of non-controversial bills to try to have it slip through without anyone even noticing.
John Lemke

RapidGator Wiped From Google by False DMCA Notices | TorrentFreak - 0 views

torrentfreak.com/e-by-false-dmca-notices-131223

2013 dmca google indienationnews legal law intellectualproperty take-down yourrights

shared by John Lemke on 24 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • File-hosting service RapidGator has had nearly all of its search results wiped from Google, including many clearly non-infringing pages. The URLs in question were removed by the search engine after a DMCA notice from several copyright holders. RapidGator is outraged and says the overbroad censorship is hurting its business, warning that the same could happen to others. “If it happens to us, it can happen to MediaFire or Dropbox tomorrow,” they state.
  • Thus far this has resulted in more than 200 million URLs being removed from Google’s search engine. While many of these takedown claims are legit, some are clearly false, censoring perfectly legitimate webpages from search results. File-hosting service RapidGator.net is one site that has fallen victim to such overbroad takedown requests. The file-hosting service has had nearly all its URLs de-listed, including its homepage, making the site hard to find through Google. Several other clearly non-infringing pages, including the FAQ, the news section, and even the copyright infringement policy, have also been wiped from Google by various takedown requests.
  • “Our robots.txt forbids search engines bots to index any file/* folder/ URLs. We only allow them to crawl our main page and the pages we have in a footer of the website. So most of the URLs for which Google gets DMCA notices are not listed in index by default,” RapidGator’s Dennis explains.
  • John Lemke on 24 Dec 13
     
    Quoting the article: "File-hosting service RapidGator has had nearly all of its search results wiped from Google, including many clearly non-infringing pages. The URLs in question were removed by the search engine after a DMCA notice from several copyright holders. RapidGator is outraged and says the overbroad censorship is hurting its business, warning that the same could happen to others. "If it happens to us, it can happen to MediaFire or Dropbox tomorrow," they state." This is, sooner or later, going to have to be addressed... It totally works against the concept of the cloud. I can not believe that more people are using the cloud for illegal uses than legit.
John Lemke

Copyright and the DMCA | WFUV Radio - 0 views

www.wfuv.org/copyright

WFUV copyright radio dmca

shared by John Lemke on 04 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Some of these DMCA rules outline restrictions on the frequency some songs can be played. In any 3-hour period, we can webcast: No more than 3 songs from one album;no more than 2 played consecutively No more than 4 songs from a set/compilation;no more than 3 played consecutively No more than 4 recorded songs by the same artist(live studio appearances are okay)
  • John Lemke on 04 Sep 11
     
    List streaming radio restrictions.
John Lemke

YouTube goes nuts flagging game-related content as violating copyright | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...content-as-violating-copyright

2013 youtube copyright yourrights law legal takedown DMCA

shared by John Lemke on 13 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • According to TubeFilter, YouTube told these MCNs last week that it would begin pre-screening a sample of their affiliates' videos for copyright violation before the video posts to YouTube, in a process that could take as little as a few hours or up to a few days. The pre-screening system is also be based on good behavior, so to speak, and affiliates who are never caught uploading copyrighted material will be checked less frequently.
1 - 5 of 5
Showing 20▼ items per page