Don’t use the word ‘did’ or dumb anti-piracy company will delete you from Google(torrentfreak.com)
torrentfreak.com
Don’t use the word ‘did’ or dumb anti-piracy company will delete you from Google
https://torrentfreak.com/dont-use-the-word-did-or-a-dumb-anti-piracy-company-will-delete-you-from-google-200216/
120 comments
The fact it removed 4 dictionary entries for the word "did" including Merriam Webster is really the worst part.
DMCA is completely broken and the accounts abuses are endless. We had an entire subreddit with 25k subscribers taken down by a person using fake DMCA requests. For months we had random completely innocuous posts with zero copyrightable content taken down do to "copyright infringement" by an off-kilter person who people on the subreddit pissed off at some point. Then eventually the entire subreddit went down due to "repeat copyright infringement".
Remember kids, if you see something you don't like on the internet (or even more relevant to this era of intolerance towards free speech: anything that "offends" you) just spam DMCA requests. Almost all sites like Reddit, Youtube, and Google don't actually care if it's legitimate or not, and they always automatically take the side of the person who filed it. And if they do push back there will be 10 more waiting by the time the system figures one out.
DMCA is completely broken and the accounts abuses are endless. We had an entire subreddit with 25k subscribers taken down by a person using fake DMCA requests. For months we had random completely innocuous posts with zero copyrightable content taken down do to "copyright infringement" by an off-kilter person who people on the subreddit pissed off at some point. Then eventually the entire subreddit went down due to "repeat copyright infringement".
Remember kids, if you see something you don't like on the internet (or even more relevant to this era of intolerance towards free speech: anything that "offends" you) just spam DMCA requests. Almost all sites like Reddit, Youtube, and Google don't actually care if it's legitimate or not, and they always automatically take the side of the person who filed it. And if they do push back there will be 10 more waiting by the time the system figures one out.
Copyright itself is broken. It's the 21st century. Copying data is not only trivial, it's a fundamental computer operation. We should not be imposing any limits on this activity. If these rich 20th century industries can't adapt and end up bankrupt, so be it. We should not be protecting them from irrelevance by sacrificing free computing and the free internet for the sake of their decaying business model.
People are working weeks, months, years, often under extreme conditions to create a work of art, like, say an episode of Game of Thrones. Not just one person, but hundreds of them. Getting such large teams to work on a project would not be possible if people could just donate for that work or something, because you'd get much much less money from it. Sure there are issues with copyright, for one terms are decades too long, but your extreme view of it is as wrong as the extreme view of Sonny Bono.
So what? Maybe it just wasn't meant to be. I'd happily sacrifice all of Hollywood so that computers and the internet can remain free.
What do you value more? Hollywood's shows or computing and internet freedom? That's what it comes down to. Because in order for copyright to be enforceable in the 21st century, we'd have to give up control of our computers to a higher authority. The ability to run any program we want is precisely what enables us to copy stuff without any restrictions. That's why they want to take it away. That's why they put DRM even in the hardware itself.
Copyright enforcement is actually just the beginning of the end for computer freedom. Governments would also enjoy having more control over the software their citizens run. Encryption can defeat courts, militaries... Like guns, many government officials think mere citizens shouldn't have access to these things.
These people don't care about computers the way we do. To them, it's just a tool to achieve their ends. When the power of the computer threatens them, they cripple the computer in order to protect themselves. I would rather see the computer's full potential realized even if it comes at the cost of these old businesses.
What do you value more? Hollywood's shows or computing and internet freedom? That's what it comes down to. Because in order for copyright to be enforceable in the 21st century, we'd have to give up control of our computers to a higher authority. The ability to run any program we want is precisely what enables us to copy stuff without any restrictions. That's why they want to take it away. That's why they put DRM even in the hardware itself.
Copyright enforcement is actually just the beginning of the end for computer freedom. Governments would also enjoy having more control over the software their citizens run. Encryption can defeat courts, militaries... Like guns, many government officials think mere citizens shouldn't have access to these things.
These people don't care about computers the way we do. To them, it's just a tool to achieve their ends. When the power of the computer threatens them, they cripple the computer in order to protect themselves. I would rather see the computer's full potential realized even if it comes at the cost of these old businesses.
I'd happily sacrifice all of Hollywood so that computers and the internet can remain free.
It wouldn't just be all of Hollywood, but even if it were, who are you to make that decision for the millions of people who enjoy the creative work Hollywood produces?
The rest of your argument is a straw man. It is illegal for me to drive my car at 100mph past a school, but my car doesn't have any physical means of stopping me. As a society we have agreed that this is a reasonable rule and codified it in law so everyone knows the consensus, and almost everyone complied voluntarily, and those who break the rule are penalised for it.
The strange thing about copyright is that it remains mostly a civil matter, which leaves the burden of enforcement on the victim of copyright infringement and so makes enforcement of small infringements prohibitively expensive. Meanwhile, a police officer can and will arrest a 15-year-old who walks into a corner shop and gets caught stealing a chocolate bar. That anomaly in turn then leads to attempts to make enforcement of small infringements on a wide scale more viable, which gets you far from ideal solutions like the DMCA and its counterparts around the world.
It wouldn't just be all of Hollywood, but even if it were, who are you to make that decision for the millions of people who enjoy the creative work Hollywood produces?
The rest of your argument is a straw man. It is illegal for me to drive my car at 100mph past a school, but my car doesn't have any physical means of stopping me. As a society we have agreed that this is a reasonable rule and codified it in law so everyone knows the consensus, and almost everyone complied voluntarily, and those who break the rule are penalised for it.
The strange thing about copyright is that it remains mostly a civil matter, which leaves the burden of enforcement on the victim of copyright infringement and so makes enforcement of small infringements prohibitively expensive. Meanwhile, a police officer can and will arrest a 15-year-old who walks into a corner shop and gets caught stealing a chocolate bar. That anomaly in turn then leads to attempts to make enforcement of small infringements on a wide scale more viable, which gets you far from ideal solutions like the DMCA and its counterparts around the world.
I’m no longer in the field since this was written, but there was certainly a huge move towards criminal treatment of what should be wholly civil copyright law:
https://williampatry.blogspot.com/2007/06/over-criminalizing...
https://williampatry.blogspot.com/2007/06/over-criminalizing...
It's not just hollywood, it's all creators. Technical Publishers, software companies, etc.
While I agree that software freedom is important, I would argue that freedom itself is important -- and that means being able to choose the license for a creative work.
That is unless you believe that everything should be locked in walled garden hell....
While I agree that software freedom is important, I would argue that freedom itself is important -- and that means being able to choose the license for a creative work.
That is unless you believe that everything should be locked in walled garden hell....
You are redefining freedom to mean the freedom to take away others freedom.
If you have laid claim to the number 010101 and on my device a chunk of memory is initialized to 000000 you are defining your freedom as the power to keep me from changing that memory to 010101 this only sounds sane when you use language that presupposed we accept this insanity.
If you have laid claim to the number 010101 and on my device a chunk of memory is initialized to 000000 you are defining your freedom as the power to keep me from changing that memory to 010101 this only sounds sane when you use language that presupposed we accept this insanity.
> It wouldn't just be all of Hollywood, but even if it were, who are you to make that decision for the millions of people who enjoy the creative work Hollywood produces?
Decisions such as that are made either by a substantial portion of the citizens by vote or by voting for elected reps who directly enact them. You knew that of course. We are speaking of what we respectively think OUGHT to be with no power to implement ourselves.
> The rest of your argument is a straw man. It is illegal for me to drive my car at 100mph past a school, but my car doesn't have any physical means of stopping me. As a society we have agreed that this is a reasonable rule and codified it in law so everyone knows the consensus, and almost everyone complied voluntarily, and those who break the rule are penalised for it.
Piracy is incredibly trivial by virtue of happening directly between distributing computer and receiving computer with indirection and encryption of communications trivially implementable. The present status quo is so lazy just because so little work is required to get around current levels of restrictions. Pay for a vpn which comes with a cute GUI app with a button that says "secure your connection" use a search engine to find things you would like to watch or read. The current balance of value and convenience is in fact directly related to the knowledge that if you make it too inconvenient or expensive people will literally just turn around and download it.
You propose enforcement to remedy this.
> Meanwhile, a police officer can and will arrest a 15-year-old who walks into a corner shop and gets caught stealing a chocolate bar.
Actually you could probably meet your caloric needs for the next month off stolen chocolate bars and have very little chance of being apprehended and literally zero chance of being prosecuted. In theory if a cop happened by during a theft they might arrest someone stealing hundreds to thousands of dollars in goods after which the courts would be extremely apt to drop the ball. In most cases people stealing goods in a non violent fashion is too low a priority to allocate resources to even when the thieves are stealing thousands in public and prosecution and incarceration would be straightforward if not cheap.
Compare the ease of catching a shoplifter acting illicitly in a controlled space to catching people downloading movies and books on their computers! With half a whit of effort inspired by actual enforcement it would be incredibly trivial to make catching downloading as hard as catching terrorists except for the minor matter than 230 billion acts of terrorism aren't happening annually. Worse great sophistication isn't required by all users just the tiny number that produce tools to allow others to benefit. This can be bundled into an easy to install piece of software to run on your own machine or on a cheap 25 dollar single board computer.
What other poster gets that you do not is that without access to people's computers that supersedes their own you can't with any reasonable or affordable degree of effort keep them from downloading numbers you think you own. It's an arms race you literally can't possibly win. Even communist China can't 100% control the media their people view and they can disappear citizens in the night. This is the end game of drm and trusted computing to develop a controllable platform which can be made to serve the interests of government and industry. This is now many devices in fact already work now. The cure is most assuredly worse than the disease.
> That anomaly in turn then leads to attempts to make enforcement of small infringements on a wide scale more viable, which gets you far from ideal solutions like the DMCA and its counterparts around the world.
It's not anomalous that something that has never been a criminal act isn't treated as such. It's not shocking that the state wont take up an impossible burden in behalf of a small number of private benefactors to the detriment of society. Making it slightly harder to pirate and very easy to stream is a smart compromise that has been mostly working to generate billions of dollars.
It's politically impossible to implement 1984 to maximize the revenue of game of thrones and lesser measures are doomed to failure. In fact if you start pulling that thread and throwing Suzy homemaker in jail because little Tommy downloaded movies or stealing her grocery money to pay fines as you become increasingly effective you are apt to become increasingly likely to push for copyright reform that is likely to harm future revenue in a way that little Tommy can't possibly do.
If I was the copyright industry I would enjoy what I have.
Decisions such as that are made either by a substantial portion of the citizens by vote or by voting for elected reps who directly enact them. You knew that of course. We are speaking of what we respectively think OUGHT to be with no power to implement ourselves.
> The rest of your argument is a straw man. It is illegal for me to drive my car at 100mph past a school, but my car doesn't have any physical means of stopping me. As a society we have agreed that this is a reasonable rule and codified it in law so everyone knows the consensus, and almost everyone complied voluntarily, and those who break the rule are penalised for it.
Piracy is incredibly trivial by virtue of happening directly between distributing computer and receiving computer with indirection and encryption of communications trivially implementable. The present status quo is so lazy just because so little work is required to get around current levels of restrictions. Pay for a vpn which comes with a cute GUI app with a button that says "secure your connection" use a search engine to find things you would like to watch or read. The current balance of value and convenience is in fact directly related to the knowledge that if you make it too inconvenient or expensive people will literally just turn around and download it.
You propose enforcement to remedy this.
> Meanwhile, a police officer can and will arrest a 15-year-old who walks into a corner shop and gets caught stealing a chocolate bar.
Actually you could probably meet your caloric needs for the next month off stolen chocolate bars and have very little chance of being apprehended and literally zero chance of being prosecuted. In theory if a cop happened by during a theft they might arrest someone stealing hundreds to thousands of dollars in goods after which the courts would be extremely apt to drop the ball. In most cases people stealing goods in a non violent fashion is too low a priority to allocate resources to even when the thieves are stealing thousands in public and prosecution and incarceration would be straightforward if not cheap.
Compare the ease of catching a shoplifter acting illicitly in a controlled space to catching people downloading movies and books on their computers! With half a whit of effort inspired by actual enforcement it would be incredibly trivial to make catching downloading as hard as catching terrorists except for the minor matter than 230 billion acts of terrorism aren't happening annually. Worse great sophistication isn't required by all users just the tiny number that produce tools to allow others to benefit. This can be bundled into an easy to install piece of software to run on your own machine or on a cheap 25 dollar single board computer.
What other poster gets that you do not is that without access to people's computers that supersedes their own you can't with any reasonable or affordable degree of effort keep them from downloading numbers you think you own. It's an arms race you literally can't possibly win. Even communist China can't 100% control the media their people view and they can disappear citizens in the night. This is the end game of drm and trusted computing to develop a controllable platform which can be made to serve the interests of government and industry. This is now many devices in fact already work now. The cure is most assuredly worse than the disease.
> That anomaly in turn then leads to attempts to make enforcement of small infringements on a wide scale more viable, which gets you far from ideal solutions like the DMCA and its counterparts around the world.
It's not anomalous that something that has never been a criminal act isn't treated as such. It's not shocking that the state wont take up an impossible burden in behalf of a small number of private benefactors to the detriment of society. Making it slightly harder to pirate and very easy to stream is a smart compromise that has been mostly working to generate billions of dollars.
It's politically impossible to implement 1984 to maximize the revenue of game of thrones and lesser measures are doomed to failure. In fact if you start pulling that thread and throwing Suzy homemaker in jail because little Tommy downloaded movies or stealing her grocery money to pay fines as you become increasingly effective you are apt to become increasingly likely to push for copyright reform that is likely to harm future revenue in a way that little Tommy can't possibly do.
If I was the copyright industry I would enjoy what I have.
You're still assuming that everyone wants to rip off content for free, but we know that isn't really the case at all. Many people do understand and accept the idea that you don't just take something that someone else worked to create without paying a fair price for it. Given reasonable copyright reforms that eliminate most of the dubious biases of our current systems, it's not implausible that most people would continue to cooperate and thus support the creation of works that they then get to enjoy. But making it explicitly legal to rip things sends a very different message to normal people about what society considers ethical behaviour.
A relevant analogy might be using mobile phones while driving. Here in the UK, using a handheld phone while driving became illegal quite some time ago. And so it should; the evidence that driving while distracted by a phone makes you much more dangerous is beyond dispute. Most people accepted this, perhaps because there was also a decent public information campaign about the risks, and many did stop using their phones on the move even if they used to before. A few persist, and you can usually spot them from the way they're swerving at random intervals, unable to maintain a consistent speed, running lights, and otherwise making the same sorts of basic mistakes that a drunk driver would, and although we have a problem with a lack of policing resources to catch them, those who do get caught are punished.
Now, here's the catch. The evidence used to support the ban on using a handheld phone while driving also shows very clearly that the main problem isn't the physical part of holding the device, it's the distraction from using it. That means hands-free calling is almost as dangerous as using a handheld phone while driving. However, our government did not see fit to make using a hands-free call illegal at the same time, arguing that enforcement would be impractical.
The day after the ban came in, there were huge displays of hands-free kits in the front of every supermarket and phone shop in the land, with banners saying things like "Stay safe -- use a hands-free kit". Not stay legal. Stay safe. And to this day, people are dying unnecessarily on our roads, because the government gave a free endorsement to an incredibly dangerous practice by implicitly condoning it.
A relevant analogy might be using mobile phones while driving. Here in the UK, using a handheld phone while driving became illegal quite some time ago. And so it should; the evidence that driving while distracted by a phone makes you much more dangerous is beyond dispute. Most people accepted this, perhaps because there was also a decent public information campaign about the risks, and many did stop using their phones on the move even if they used to before. A few persist, and you can usually spot them from the way they're swerving at random intervals, unable to maintain a consistent speed, running lights, and otherwise making the same sorts of basic mistakes that a drunk driver would, and although we have a problem with a lack of policing resources to catch them, those who do get caught are punished.
Now, here's the catch. The evidence used to support the ban on using a handheld phone while driving also shows very clearly that the main problem isn't the physical part of holding the device, it's the distraction from using it. That means hands-free calling is almost as dangerous as using a handheld phone while driving. However, our government did not see fit to make using a hands-free call illegal at the same time, arguing that enforcement would be impractical.
The day after the ban came in, there were huge displays of hands-free kits in the front of every supermarket and phone shop in the land, with banners saying things like "Stay safe -- use a hands-free kit". Not stay legal. Stay safe. And to this day, people are dying unnecessarily on our roads, because the government gave a free endorsement to an incredibly dangerous practice by implicitly condoning it.
> Given reasonable copyright reforms that eliminate most of the dubious biases of our current systems, it's not implausible that most people would continue to cooperate and thus support the creation of works that they then get to enjoy.
This is very nearly impossible
> But making it explicitly legal to rip things sends a very different message to normal people about what society considers ethical behaviour.
Virtually no normal people feel bad about downloading things. If that was the battle its long ago been lost. The people that think there still is a battle to be won are a tiny minority of the richest in the world.
Good luck convincing people who make a fraction of what people in the US make that they ought to pay as much for entertainment as they do for food.
This is very nearly impossible
> But making it explicitly legal to rip things sends a very different message to normal people about what society considers ethical behaviour.
Virtually no normal people feel bad about downloading things. If that was the battle its long ago been lost. The people that think there still is a battle to be won are a tiny minority of the richest in the world.
Good luck convincing people who make a fraction of what people in the US make that they ought to pay as much for entertainment as they do for food.
"Getting such large teams to work on a project would not be possible if people could just donate for that work or something, because you'd get much much less money from it. "
Currently yes. Because the normal person is conditioned to only pay if he or she has to.
But imagine if there is sudddenly no more copyright and ... oh my god, no more episode of series xyz because of no money ... you really believe all those hardcore fans would not quickly adopt to pay freely if the result is more of the content they want, if the alternative is no more content?
Currently yes. Because the normal person is conditioned to only pay if he or she has to.
But imagine if there is sudddenly no more copyright and ... oh my god, no more episode of series xyz because of no money ... you really believe all those hardcore fans would not quickly adopt to pay freely if the result is more of the content they want, if the alternative is no more content?
I'm not sure I agree with you. But I'll give you this -- that I've thought the same thing before and I'd be interested in seeing more people experiment with systems around that idea.
To expand on that, Kickstarter is a platform where you get people to give you money so you can make something in the future, which is... fine. But it's more of a bootstrapping platform than anything else, and it suffers from that. Kickstarter exploits people FOMO, but it's hampered by the inherent risk that the thing you're funding might never exist.
I'm working on independent games right now. I haven't chosen to Kickstart them, for a lot of reasons. What I would be curious to do is to pick maybe a smaller title, completely finish it, and then put it on Kickstarter for the full amount of money I wanted to get out of it -- not just to fund it, but including my target returns. The game would be done, it would be reviewable by press, once it got funded I would just immediately put it as a free download. But I wouldn't release it until people pledged enough money to make it worth my while -- meaning not just cost of production, but revenue. In theory, exploiting FOMO but with none of the risks that the game won't be finished or that it'll turn out terrible.
I've gone back and forth about the negatives there. It would be way more expensive than an average Kickstarter goal. You have to decide up-front how much money your game is going to make. And you're still fighting against the fact that fans can just say, "well, someone else should fund it." I'm not sure it's actually a feasible model in practice. But I'm really curious to see how the patron model could evolve; just not curious enough to experiment with bigger games where I need them to do well financially.
I am not a copyright abolitionist. I am really interested in seeing alternative models develop, even interested enough that I might experiment in those areas in the future, but I think that there needs to be more working examples of those models before I'm willing to jump ship on copyright.
To expand on that, Kickstarter is a platform where you get people to give you money so you can make something in the future, which is... fine. But it's more of a bootstrapping platform than anything else, and it suffers from that. Kickstarter exploits people FOMO, but it's hampered by the inherent risk that the thing you're funding might never exist.
I'm working on independent games right now. I haven't chosen to Kickstart them, for a lot of reasons. What I would be curious to do is to pick maybe a smaller title, completely finish it, and then put it on Kickstarter for the full amount of money I wanted to get out of it -- not just to fund it, but including my target returns. The game would be done, it would be reviewable by press, once it got funded I would just immediately put it as a free download. But I wouldn't release it until people pledged enough money to make it worth my while -- meaning not just cost of production, but revenue. In theory, exploiting FOMO but with none of the risks that the game won't be finished or that it'll turn out terrible.
I've gone back and forth about the negatives there. It would be way more expensive than an average Kickstarter goal. You have to decide up-front how much money your game is going to make. And you're still fighting against the fact that fans can just say, "well, someone else should fund it." I'm not sure it's actually a feasible model in practice. But I'm really curious to see how the patron model could evolve; just not curious enough to experiment with bigger games where I need them to do well financially.
I am not a copyright abolitionist. I am really interested in seeing alternative models develop, even interested enough that I might experiment in those areas in the future, but I think that there needs to be more working examples of those models before I'm willing to jump ship on copyright.
Another game developer here, in the same situation. I also did not Kickstarter or patreon anything as I develop my game, but when it's finished their are dozens of outlets to sell the finished version on. From the play store to steam and everything in between.
Copyright should be looked at as a taxpayer funded limited time monopoly. Unfortunately that monopoly time limit has gone way past the 14 years originally intended. You could double that to 28 years with an extension. But now it's ridiculously long. Meaning the taxpayer never see a return on their monopoly investment in the form of public domain.
>The Congress first exercised its copyright powers with the Copyright Act of 1790. This act granted authors the exclusive right to publish and vend "maps, charts and books" for a term of 14 years. This 14-year term was renewable for one additional 14-year term, if the author was alive at the end of the first time. With exception of the provision on maps and charts the Copyright Act of 1790 is copied almost verbatim from the Statute of Anne.[3]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law_of_...
Copyright should be looked at as a taxpayer funded limited time monopoly. Unfortunately that monopoly time limit has gone way past the 14 years originally intended. You could double that to 28 years with an extension. But now it's ridiculously long. Meaning the taxpayer never see a return on their monopoly investment in the form of public domain.
>The Congress first exercised its copyright powers with the Copyright Act of 1790. This act granted authors the exclusive right to publish and vend "maps, charts and books" for a term of 14 years. This 14-year term was renewable for one additional 14-year term, if the author was alive at the end of the first time. With exception of the provision on maps and charts the Copyright Act of 1790 is copied almost verbatim from the Statute of Anne.[3]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law_of_...
"but I think that there needs to be more working examples of those models before I'm willing to jump ship on copyright"
I understand that. I am also not a fanatic in the sense, that I would fight towards a political change to abolish copyright (would be hopeless anyway with the current state of things). I just want to work and fight for more models of working alternatives.
The linux and blender foundations and wikipedia are the best examples I know of. And I want to add another working example soon.
I understand that. I am also not a fanatic in the sense, that I would fight towards a political change to abolish copyright (would be hopeless anyway with the current state of things). I just want to work and fight for more models of working alternatives.
The linux and blender foundations and wikipedia are the best examples I know of. And I want to add another working example soon.
I'm not saying this is ideal or practical, but I thought about this when I started playing on a community-run City of Heroes server.
It's an MMO which was shuttered in 2012 despite a very devoted fanbase. People had been clamoring for any chance to play the thing again for years. As an example of this devotion people were calling it a big deal when a program became available that does nothing but allow players to walk around the first hub world and chat together. It was all they could do.
Then word breaks that there had been a private server running in secret the whole time based on source code that had secretly traded hands a long time ago.
Then, regardless of the moral implications, someone went ahead and leaked the source code. Because of that the general public finally got to play the game for the first time in over six years. Apparently it has 100,000 registrants on the most popular server alone, which I find ridiculous for a game which has resurfaced out of nowhere with no real advertising and whose publisher never intended it to return. Imagine all the revenue they're missing out on.
(Of course, it's only popular today because it was popular in 2012 when it was subscription-based.)
From my limited understanding there doesn't seem to be massive feature updates like new maps or raids when Paragon was developing it. Instead there are minor quality of life perks like making the paid upgrades purchasable with in-game currency or tweaking formulas to align with the playerbase's wants. You don't even have pay for anything to keep playing individually; the server is funded by volunteers with donations. The monthly target seems to be about $5,000, most of which goes to hosting fees. Since enough interested people keep paying, the server stays up. And since the source code is now available there's nothing precluding another party from starting a different server if things go under. All to be able to keep playing the game.
It goes to show that people are happy just being able to play the thing at all. There's no need for large salaries to keep developing content and justify monitization. The code is worked on by a devoted team of people with a very big passion for the former-product, and the devs and users are part of the same community.
In a perfect world this is probably how an MMO could be sustained for years to come. And it's possible primarily because the source is available.
Of course, the only reason any of this is possible is because the parties involved blatantly violated copyright by posting the source code and using proprietary assets like textures and music - but this doesn't matter because, for some reason, nobody cares. Yet. Maybe it's because NCSoft figures they're not competing with anyone since they were the ones to shut it down years ago so there's no harm in letting it stay open. Maybe they just got lucky NCSoft wasn't disingenuous and that they weren't slapped with a draconian takedown demand for a very popular game that would otherwise never be playable by anyone until the end of time. But for some reason, the people with the most interest in where all the development capital went just let it slide - for now.
Also this differs from a lot of open source projects since it's technically illegitimate, none of the code is under an open source license, and the work being done is fairly minor. Basically everyone got a head-start by being able to reuse Paragon's code back when the people writing it were salaried and experts in this kind of thing so the complicated parts of the MMO architecture are already finished and everyone can focus on the small quality of life things.
It's an MMO which was shuttered in 2012 despite a very devoted fanbase. People had been clamoring for any chance to play the thing again for years. As an example of this devotion people were calling it a big deal when a program became available that does nothing but allow players to walk around the first hub world and chat together. It was all they could do.
Then word breaks that there had been a private server running in secret the whole time based on source code that had secretly traded hands a long time ago.
Then, regardless of the moral implications, someone went ahead and leaked the source code. Because of that the general public finally got to play the game for the first time in over six years. Apparently it has 100,000 registrants on the most popular server alone, which I find ridiculous for a game which has resurfaced out of nowhere with no real advertising and whose publisher never intended it to return. Imagine all the revenue they're missing out on.
(Of course, it's only popular today because it was popular in 2012 when it was subscription-based.)
From my limited understanding there doesn't seem to be massive feature updates like new maps or raids when Paragon was developing it. Instead there are minor quality of life perks like making the paid upgrades purchasable with in-game currency or tweaking formulas to align with the playerbase's wants. You don't even have pay for anything to keep playing individually; the server is funded by volunteers with donations. The monthly target seems to be about $5,000, most of which goes to hosting fees. Since enough interested people keep paying, the server stays up. And since the source code is now available there's nothing precluding another party from starting a different server if things go under. All to be able to keep playing the game.
It goes to show that people are happy just being able to play the thing at all. There's no need for large salaries to keep developing content and justify monitization. The code is worked on by a devoted team of people with a very big passion for the former-product, and the devs and users are part of the same community.
In a perfect world this is probably how an MMO could be sustained for years to come. And it's possible primarily because the source is available.
Of course, the only reason any of this is possible is because the parties involved blatantly violated copyright by posting the source code and using proprietary assets like textures and music - but this doesn't matter because, for some reason, nobody cares. Yet. Maybe it's because NCSoft figures they're not competing with anyone since they were the ones to shut it down years ago so there's no harm in letting it stay open. Maybe they just got lucky NCSoft wasn't disingenuous and that they weren't slapped with a draconian takedown demand for a very popular game that would otherwise never be playable by anyone until the end of time. But for some reason, the people with the most interest in where all the development capital went just let it slide - for now.
Also this differs from a lot of open source projects since it's technically illegitimate, none of the code is under an open source license, and the work being done is fairly minor. Basically everyone got a head-start by being able to reuse Paragon's code back when the people writing it were salaried and experts in this kind of thing so the complicated parts of the MMO architecture are already finished and everyone can focus on the small quality of life things.
Interesting story, thanks for sharing.
And yes, this is what I mean. When there are enough people who want something to work, they make it work. And in your story despite copyright. So I believe in an ideal world, allmost everything could be organized that way.
And yes, this is what I mean. When there are enough people who want something to work, they make it work. And in your story despite copyright. So I believe in an ideal world, allmost everything could be organized that way.
Maybe once there's no more content for them to mainline, the audience will finally go outside and have an original thought for once in their lives.
Yes, I do believe that.
However I actually would love to switch to a more kickstarter/etc like system where fans fund the creation of works they enjoy and then those works are just in the public domain / culture as a result. The creators and everyone else involved would be paid before, not after, making something.
However I actually would love to switch to a more kickstarter/etc like system where fans fund the creation of works they enjoy and then those works are just in the public domain / culture as a result. The creators and everyone else involved would be paid before, not after, making something.
They will pay, and for big famous pieces of art like GoT they'll pay lots of money, but even then it will be off by an order of magnitude of the production budget, not even calculating the marketing budgets needed to keep that fanbase.
Well then GoT would go away, if not enough people are willing to pay for it. The world will move on.
More critical would be medical research, but I believe there is actually already lots of freely donated money for example in cancer research involved.
But surely much more is needed, so the change would be with friction ... but if suddenly all the medicine can be made freely, the benefit for the current world population which mostly cannot afford expensive medicine would outweight it, I believe. (anyway all hypothetically anyway)
More critical would be medical research, but I believe there is actually already lots of freely donated money for example in cancer research involved.
But surely much more is needed, so the change would be with friction ... but if suddenly all the medicine can be made freely, the benefit for the current world population which mostly cannot afford expensive medicine would outweight it, I believe. (anyway all hypothetically anyway)
Medical research is protected by patents, which are different from copyright. Their term is shorter (that's good) and they have exhaustion (even better). Patents protect not just medical research but also engineering research, etc. It's a good idea to have them in general, as people otherwise employ secrecy over their methods and might not invest into research at all as it's not lucrative. Software patents are a very bad idea and quite counter productive though.
Sure, sure, but obviously in the hypothetical scenario of a world without copyright I meant also without patents. In general I believe the idea of intellectual property is wrong and innovation blocking.
But since we live in a world with it by default, it is hard to prove it right or wrong. And it is very hard to prove it small scale, since the big industry woukd just use the work of a small inventor without any compensation if they don't have to, just like with open source.
And to the point of the example of patents and secrecy I would add, that for example Elon Musk decided insome cases to not make a patent, because it is a blueprint for others. (don't have the link right now)
But since we live in a world with it by default, it is hard to prove it right or wrong. And it is very hard to prove it small scale, since the big industry woukd just use the work of a small inventor without any compensation if they don't have to, just like with open source.
And to the point of the example of patents and secrecy I would add, that for example Elon Musk decided insome cases to not make a patent, because it is a blueprint for others. (don't have the link right now)
Why do you keep on calling GoT art? It is just another commercial cash cow.
> People are working weeks, months, years, often under extreme conditions to create a work of art, like, say an episode of Game of Thrones. Not just one person, but hundreds of them. Getting such large teams to work on a project would not be possible if people could just donate for that work or something,
Many people work on projects like the Linux kernel and git without any compensation.
Many people work on projects like the Linux kernel and git without any compensation.
There are other modes of production, for instance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sky
Maybe not to everyones taste, but it shows what is possible. Technically it is better than much of the trash Hollywood is regurgitating, though no real 'blockbuster' either.
Anyways, can't wait for 'Blaxxund Nazombitchez from Vriler Haze!'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sky
Maybe not to everyones taste, but it shows what is possible. Technically it is better than much of the trash Hollywood is regurgitating, though no real 'blockbuster' either.
Anyways, can't wait for 'Blaxxund Nazombitchez from Vriler Haze!'
I work in this field. It's fine, honestly. We really don't need copyright to sustain the arts.
The most valuable creative works require all of one person and little technology. If all of TV and movies were lost not much would be lost. I cannot imagine configuring our society and culture to this end.
If these rich 20th century industries can't adapt and end up bankrupt, so be it.
How should the many millions of people around the world who contribute to creative content enjoyed by many millions more every day then put food on their tables, in your version of the future?
Arguments about the ease of copying information in the Internet age are easy to make, but that's just the marginal cost of distribution. These arguments almost invariably ignore the issue of creating that content in the first place, and that the main economic role of copyright is to amortise that cost over many people who ultimately benefit from the work rather than just relying on some extremely wealthy patron or the equivalent to fund it philanthropically.
So far, other business models that have been tried have rarely come even close to supporting the same quantity and quality of creative work that our current copyright-based regime does. Until someone proposing to revoke copyright and allow everything to be copied freely comes up with a viable alternative model, most people are going to continue not to take them seriously.
How should the many millions of people around the world who contribute to creative content enjoyed by many millions more every day then put food on their tables, in your version of the future?
Arguments about the ease of copying information in the Internet age are easy to make, but that's just the marginal cost of distribution. These arguments almost invariably ignore the issue of creating that content in the first place, and that the main economic role of copyright is to amortise that cost over many people who ultimately benefit from the work rather than just relying on some extremely wealthy patron or the equivalent to fund it philanthropically.
So far, other business models that have been tried have rarely come even close to supporting the same quantity and quality of creative work that our current copyright-based regime does. Until someone proposing to revoke copyright and allow everything to be copied freely comes up with a viable alternative model, most people are going to continue not to take them seriously.
I’ll play devils advocate for you:
Imagine I write something entertaining on my personal blog.
Is it okay for somebody or some company to copy that content to their own website without my permission?
If it is, is isn’t, why or why not?
Imagine I write something entertaining on my personal blog.
Is it okay for somebody or some company to copy that content to their own website without my permission?
If it is, is isn’t, why or why not?
Imagine instead of writing it in your blog, telling it someone.
Does he/she have right to tell it to others?
This is how we, humans, functioned for ages, you are basing your opinion on already artificial constructs.
We as humanity, achieved most thanks to copying information and constantly improving and building on top of it.
Copyright was meant to provide short time for the authors to make money, before releasing it to pubic domain.
Initially copyright, protected the work only for 14 years, now it is 100 years after the death of the author and it is extended perpetually, because our constitution says that copyright needs to expire, it doesn't specify when, which is being exploited.
Company like Disney, built their empire on public domain works, but fiercely fights to prevent them to become public domain. Every time copyright for Mickey Mouse is about to expire, our Congress extends it.
We need to get back to sensible time frame. 14 years was more than enough to make profit from your works.
Does he/she have right to tell it to others?
This is how we, humans, functioned for ages, you are basing your opinion on already artificial constructs.
We as humanity, achieved most thanks to copying information and constantly improving and building on top of it.
Copyright was meant to provide short time for the authors to make money, before releasing it to pubic domain.
Initially copyright, protected the work only for 14 years, now it is 100 years after the death of the author and it is extended perpetually, because our constitution says that copyright needs to expire, it doesn't specify when, which is being exploited.
Company like Disney, built their empire on public domain works, but fiercely fights to prevent them to become public domain. Every time copyright for Mickey Mouse is about to expire, our Congress extends it.
We need to get back to sensible time frame. 14 years was more than enough to make profit from your works.
I completely agree with you. The original idea behind copyright was "we'll pretend your intellectual work is scarce for a couple decades so you can turn a profit and then it'll enter the public domain". When was the last time something entered the public domain? Probably the early 20th century. All the great films we grew up with? They were supposed to have entered the public domain a long time ago but Netflix still has to pay for them and as a result they're unavailable. After all these extensions, we'll probably be long dead by the time they become public property. If it ever happens -- I have no doubt they'll try to make their copyrights last forever.
The copyright industry isn't really keeping up their end of the deal. People should respond by voiding the social contract. There is no reason to recognize copyright as a legitimate concept much less lose any sleep over any infringement.
The copyright industry isn't really keeping up their end of the deal. People should respond by voiding the social contract. There is no reason to recognize copyright as a legitimate concept much less lose any sleep over any infringement.
I'll bite. I don't see any problem with the copying itself. Indeed that's what the Internet Archive does, and I don't see anything wrong with that.
There only relevant problem I see here would be if they attributed the text to themselves, which is an entirely separate issue.
There only relevant problem I see here would be if they attributed the text to themselves, which is an entirely separate issue.
It's OK because it's their computer and the electrons in their machine didn't become yours when the became configured so as to represent different words.
In the same fashion if I write your words on my paper with my pen the common sense ownership of pen and paper doesn't change.
Copyright is an invented right drawn from nothing that derived its legitimacy solely from utility derived from paying for creativity.
Turns out that we are already rich enough as a society to pay for a decent life for everyone and most of the money sticks to the hands of greedy people with lumps of coal for souls and zero creativity.
The kind of morons who would try to take down a dictionary.
In the same fashion if I write your words on my paper with my pen the common sense ownership of pen and paper doesn't change.
Copyright is an invented right drawn from nothing that derived its legitimacy solely from utility derived from paying for creativity.
Turns out that we are already rich enough as a society to pay for a decent life for everyone and most of the money sticks to the hands of greedy people with lumps of coal for souls and zero creativity.
The kind of morons who would try to take down a dictionary.
Copyright is an invented right drawn from nothing
So are all property rights. The "common sense" ownership of pen and paper that you mentioned is that if I'm bigger than you, or I have a better weapon, or I have more friends, then your pen and paper are now mine. Fortunately for almost everyone, as a society we have learned to cooperate better than that.
So are all property rights. The "common sense" ownership of pen and paper that you mentioned is that if I'm bigger than you, or I have a better weapon, or I have more friends, then your pen and paper are now mine. Fortunately for almost everyone, as a society we have learned to cooperate better than that.
We can't both eat the same sandwich we can both read the same epub.
Only if someone wrote that epub in the first place, though.
True and the equipment required to create the book in most cases is now down to about $200.
Access to the internet comes at a comparatively princely $60 a month. In a lot of first world nations education and health are gratis. Donations can be solicited to fund the creation of desirable works. I wonder if copyright went away people would still write books?
Access to the internet comes at a comparatively princely $60 a month. In a lot of first world nations education and health are gratis. Donations can be solicited to fund the creation of desirable works. I wonder if copyright went away people would still write books?
I wonder if copyright went away people would still write books?
I respectfully suggest that you're asking the wrong question. Obviously some books would still be written.
More insightful questions might be whether people would still write as many books, whether the books written would be as good, and whether books would reach as large an audience as happens under copyright.
I contend that it is utterly implausible that an entirely voluntary or even patronage-based system would come anywhere close to our current situation by any of those metrics. The vast majority of the cost of making a book has nothing to do with buying a laptop or paying for an Internet connection. It comes from the time and skill and creativity and understanding of the author. Depending on the nature of the book, it also comes from the time and skill and creativity and understanding of proofreaders, editors, illustrators, graphic designers, researchers...
I respectfully suggest that you're asking the wrong question. Obviously some books would still be written.
More insightful questions might be whether people would still write as many books, whether the books written would be as good, and whether books would reach as large an audience as happens under copyright.
I contend that it is utterly implausible that an entirely voluntary or even patronage-based system would come anywhere close to our current situation by any of those metrics. The vast majority of the cost of making a book has nothing to do with buying a laptop or paying for an Internet connection. It comes from the time and skill and creativity and understanding of the author. Depending on the nature of the book, it also comes from the time and skill and creativity and understanding of proofreaders, editors, illustrators, graphic designers, researchers...
> Copyright is an invented right drawn from nothing that derived its legitimacy solely from utility derived from paying for creativity.
All property rights are invented rights drawn from nothing justified (if at all) solely by the resulting utility of providing the exclusivity they grant.
All property rights are invented rights drawn from nothing justified (if at all) solely by the resulting utility of providing the exclusivity they grant.
The rivulrous nature of physical goods is inherent
> The rivulrous nature of physical goods is inherent
As is the rivalrous nature of all subjects of non-physical property. Otherwise, there'd be no advantage to exclusive privileges. Exclusive access being more valuable to the exclusive holder than shared access would be is exactly rivalry.
But the rivalrous nature of the subject of property doesn't make property rights natural, it just provides the basis by which such rights create incentives which drive behavior which may or may not produce social utility.
As is the rivalrous nature of all subjects of non-physical property. Otherwise, there'd be no advantage to exclusive privileges. Exclusive access being more valuable to the exclusive holder than shared access would be is exactly rivalry.
But the rivalrous nature of the subject of property doesn't make property rights natural, it just provides the basis by which such rights create incentives which drive behavior which may or may not produce social utility.
> In economics, a good is said to be rivalrous or a rival if its consumption by Satvik consumer prevents simultaneous consumption by other consumers, or if consumption by one party reduces the ability of another party to consume it.
You aren't the red queen and words don't mean what you want them to mean.
It makes property rights a reasonable answer to a question that had to be resolved one way or another because we can't all eat the same sandwich. Because we can all ready the same epub or build the same machine intellectual property rights are an answer to a much higher level question of how do we as a society achieve success.
Conflating this higher level abstract question with a low level physical question confuses the issue and makes it impossible to arrive at some potential solutions because of the baggage provided by the lower level question.
Because we already know we can't all eat the same sandwich we refuse to ask if the world is better off if we make information free of constraints. We act as if we were ripping a sandwich out of somebodies mouth instead of asking if that particular sandwich actually ought to exist in the first place.
You aren't the red queen and words don't mean what you want them to mean.
It makes property rights a reasonable answer to a question that had to be resolved one way or another because we can't all eat the same sandwich. Because we can all ready the same epub or build the same machine intellectual property rights are an answer to a much higher level question of how do we as a society achieve success.
Conflating this higher level abstract question with a low level physical question confuses the issue and makes it impossible to arrive at some potential solutions because of the baggage provided by the lower level question.
Because we already know we can't all eat the same sandwich we refuse to ask if the world is better off if we make information free of constraints. We act as if we were ripping a sandwich out of somebodies mouth instead of asking if that particular sandwich actually ought to exist in the first place.
> Is it okay for somebody or some company to copy that content to their own website without my permission?
Sure. Why not? It's just data and it doesn't actually belong to anyone. By reproducing your work and making it more widely available, I'd even say they're helping you by propagating your ideas.
The most common problems with this is the subversion of the creator's business model and reputation. If people get your content via someone else's website, they won't look at your ads and might think someone else wrote it. We need alternative business models that don't depend on artificial scarcity. Advertising is becoming more and more unacceptable so we'll have to come up with something better one way or another. As for reputation, I think the way academia handles plagiarism is much more sane: misrepresenting authorship causes damage to one's own reputation.
Even if the work did belong to you and someone did copy it without permission, would you sue them? Would you spend thousands of dollars and years of your life fighting against them in court? Most people wouldn't. This intellectual property stuff disproportionally benefits rich corporations with lots of expensive lawyers at their disposal.
Sure. Why not? It's just data and it doesn't actually belong to anyone. By reproducing your work and making it more widely available, I'd even say they're helping you by propagating your ideas.
The most common problems with this is the subversion of the creator's business model and reputation. If people get your content via someone else's website, they won't look at your ads and might think someone else wrote it. We need alternative business models that don't depend on artificial scarcity. Advertising is becoming more and more unacceptable so we'll have to come up with something better one way or another. As for reputation, I think the way academia handles plagiarism is much more sane: misrepresenting authorship causes damage to one's own reputation.
Even if the work did belong to you and someone did copy it without permission, would you sue them? Would you spend thousands of dollars and years of your life fighting against them in court? Most people wouldn't. This intellectual property stuff disproportionally benefits rich corporations with lots of expensive lawyers at their disposal.
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Unfortunately, in comparison to the patent trolls, the bigger copyright trolls are also the biggest producers of "copyrighted content" (not that content produced by anyone doesn't have copyright, but they often forgot this fact) and they push for damaging legislation.
In your world, Siraj Raval is a messiah
A provider like reddit, youtube, google, etc can't "push back" and not then themselves become party to the infringement. Don't blame them blame the law as written. Providers don't get to choose a side. Counter DMCA exists though so legitimate content can be restored pretty quickly with a counter claim
> Counter DMCA exists though so legitimate content can be restored pretty quickly with a counter claim
When people get arrested after a false accusation, they shouldn't be happy just because they can prove their innocence in court later. Unjustified preemptive punishment should never happen in the first place. The accuser should have to prove beyond doubt that the accused is guilty in order to justify the intervention of any higher power. If they can't do it, absolutely nothing should happen.
When people get arrested after a false accusation, they shouldn't be happy just because they can prove their innocence in court later. Unjustified preemptive punishment should never happen in the first place. The accuser should have to prove beyond doubt that the accused is guilty in order to justify the intervention of any higher power. If they can't do it, absolutely nothing should happen.
You do not have to be proven to be guilty beyond reasonable doubt to be arrested. That happens after arrest and before prison. Someone who is falsely arrested or whose works are wrongly taken down by DMCA can sue in civil court. The remedy is exactly the same in both cases.
In this case, a counterclaim was filed long ago and Google has not acted. See the article.
Edit: oh, I see that the content has now been restored (from another comment).
Edit: oh, I see that the content has now been restored (from another comment).
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What infringement? The 'infringement' of using 'did' in a dictionary definition, of all things?
How does one file a DMCA takedown request?
Is it just an open form on the internet or is there a charge per request?
Is it just an open form on the internet or is there a charge per request?
It's not DMCA that's broken, it's the people that run those companies implementing the policies that are broken.
It was always economically impossible for Google or Youtube or Reddit or any major website with thousands of new user-generated posts a day (let alone millions) to review each of these cases. I'm not even blaming the companies like Reddit, it really is an unrealistic thing to ask of them.
What is going to stop these professional "copyright companies" or people exploiting it from existing? Better laws against people who file "false" claims? Maybe... but even then only people with the funds and time and jurisdictional ability (a very important one for anyone who knows civil law) to file the suits will ever get justice.
Still something needs to be done here obviously.
What is going to stop these professional "copyright companies" or people exploiting it from existing? Better laws against people who file "false" claims? Maybe... but even then only people with the funds and time and jurisdictional ability (a very important one for anyone who knows civil law) to file the suits will ever get justice.
Still something needs to be done here obviously.
> It was always economically impossible for Google or Youtube or Reddit or any major website with thousands of new user-generated posts a day (let alone millions) to review each of these cases.
The only review required is that the notices and counter-notices are signed, identify the work in question, have the filer's contact information, include a statement that the filer has a good faith belief about the infringement or lack of infringement, and include a statement (in notices) that the information in the filing is accurate or (in counter-notices) that you consent to jurisdiction of the Federal District Court in the district the address in your contact information is in.
This level of review should not require much effort, and the people doing it just need basic literacy. They don't need any legal training.
The only review required is that the notices and counter-notices are signed, identify the work in question, have the filer's contact information, include a statement that the filer has a good faith belief about the infringement or lack of infringement, and include a statement (in notices) that the information in the filing is accurate or (in counter-notices) that you consent to jurisdiction of the Federal District Court in the district the address in your contact information is in.
This level of review should not require much effort, and the people doing it just need basic literacy. They don't need any legal training.
If you’re going to allow internet bullies to curbstomp your user bases maybe your product sucks and you should go out of business. “There’s nothing we could’ve done” - bullshit. You sent that message from your fourth Lake Tahoe vacation this quarter. (You as in the metaphorical person who said “there’s nothing we could’ve done” not the comment above me).
I think the important thing here is not many people have figured this out yet where it's a major problem on Reddit, one probably only a threat to smaller subreddits but certainly possible with individual posts on bigger ones. There's probably thousands of angry users getting banned every day with way too much time who would love to know this fact.
I was quite impressed by how clever the person was for figuring out how to take down an entire subreddit he didn't like, but the implications were quite scary and it made me realize how dangerous DMCA is. Especially in an age where political groups and sites like Twitter encourage outrage mobs looking for mob justice.
But I agree Reddit, Google, etc should be working towards solving this, through lobbying or whatnot. I haven't figured out a good solution I just know it's a massive problem.
I was quite impressed by how clever the person was for figuring out how to take down an entire subreddit he didn't like, but the implications were quite scary and it made me realize how dangerous DMCA is. Especially in an age where political groups and sites like Twitter encourage outrage mobs looking for mob justice.
But I agree Reddit, Google, etc should be working towards solving this, through lobbying or whatnot. I haven't figured out a good solution I just know it's a massive problem.
Anyone with significant social media influence can take down subreddits they don't like. All they have to do is make enough noise on social media until advertisers notice. When they refuse to associate with Reddit because of the controversial community, it will be summarily neutralized by either quarantine or deletion.
If a website has a business model at all, it's safe to assume it has no integrity and will censor anything if that business model is threatened.
If a website has a business model at all, it's safe to assume it has no integrity and will censor anything if that business model is threatened.
The DMCA doesn't just enable abuse, it also prohibits security research, reverse engineering...
DMCA was a reaction to the digitization of media. People were sharing pirated media faster than companies could take them down. Some of these people hid behind websites that provided varying degrees of anonymity.
How the tables have turned. Companies are now the ones hiding behind anonymized parties that use bots to scan and take down everything that might be related. In this case it's not even remotely related.
How the tables have turned. Companies are now the ones hiding behind anonymized parties that use bots to scan and take down everything that might be related. In this case it's not even remotely related.
What they pick seems so bizarrely random.
How is it those sites were chosen and the bazillion other sites with the word did... weren't?
And if someone was talking about the show DID... what is wrong with that?
How is it those sites were chosen and the bazillion other sites with the word did... weren't?
And if someone was talking about the show DID... what is wrong with that?
Even if "DID" was indeed, unambiguously referring to the dance show, what would need infringed on? It's not a copyright violation, since the article would just be talking about the show and not reproducing the copyrighted content. If anything the name would fall under trademark, but even that wouldn't be violated here.
In short: why would just mentioning something covered by copyright ever make for a legitimate takedown?
In short: why would just mentioning something covered by copyright ever make for a legitimate takedown?
If anything, a mention (a real one) should be thought of as free publicity for their shitty who-cares show! Like if you had a mind to firmly put an end to any possibility of a viral word-of-mouth campaign (which is the fondest wish of most producers of attention-based product e.g. entertainment, but let's say you were a dangerously stupid one), this is how you would do it.
Let's hope the people behind the dance show maybe get word of how this copyrights defender company used the money they gave them to protect their brand, realized how bad this publicity is and fire the Rights Hero team.
> “Got a cheery confirmation email from Google saying, ‘Thanks for contacting us!’ and that it might be a while until the issue is resolved. I assume that’s because this is the point where finally a decision has to be made by a human being. It is annoying indeed.”
It should be nearly automatic. The procedure given by DMCA is:
1. Someone claiming their copyright is being infringed (CLAIMANT) by material hosted at a particular service files a DMCA notice with the service.
2. Service checks the notice to make sure that it contains all the required information. Let's assume that it does.
3. Service takes down the allegedly infringing work and notifies the alleged infringer (ACCUSED).
If the content was infringing, it probably ends here. If the accused believes the work was not infringing, we continue...
4. Accused files a counter-notice with the service provider, saying that the work is not infringing.
5. Service provider notifies the claimant of the counter-notice.
6. Service provider is required to restore the material from 10 to 14 business days after receiving the counter-notice, unless the service provider receives notice from claimant that claimant has filed an action seeking a court order to restrain the accused from engaging in infringing activity relating to the material on the service provider's systems.
It should be nearly automatic. The procedure given by DMCA is:
1. Someone claiming their copyright is being infringed (CLAIMANT) by material hosted at a particular service files a DMCA notice with the service.
2. Service checks the notice to make sure that it contains all the required information. Let's assume that it does.
3. Service takes down the allegedly infringing work and notifies the alleged infringer (ACCUSED).
If the content was infringing, it probably ends here. If the accused believes the work was not infringing, we continue...
4. Accused files a counter-notice with the service provider, saying that the work is not infringing.
5. Service provider notifies the claimant of the counter-notice.
6. Service provider is required to restore the material from 10 to 14 business days after receiving the counter-notice, unless the service provider receives notice from claimant that claimant has filed an action seeking a court order to restrain the accused from engaging in infringing activity relating to the material on the service provider's systems.
Nearly automatic, yes. But step 6 requires a statutory minimum waiting period of 10 business days, to allow the claimant time to file a lawsuit and notify Google of it. Google probably has the lawsuit notification handling sufficiently automated as not to add any additional delay, but if counter-notices are rare enough, this may be manual involving a check with Google legal.
I often write here on HN:
Make the laws so that companies who claim false copyright infringements receive the same punishments and (financial) penalties as you would as if you infringed the copyright.
Also the entity falsely accused of copyright infringement should receive the same compensation as it would be sued for if it had infringend copyright.
Make the laws so that companies who claim false copyright infringements receive the same punishments and (financial) penalties as you would as if you infringed the copyright.
Also the entity falsely accused of copyright infringement should receive the same compensation as it would be sued for if it had infringend copyright.
They'll just lobby the government and say such a thing would make it "too risky" or "too hard" to enforce copyright. Actually making sure a DMCA complaint is valid is too much work and they shouldn't have to do it. What they want is a magic button that deletes from the internet everything that matches their content but doesn't come from them directly. They don't care about false positives or fair use either, it's just collateral damage.
Copyright laws exist to benefit corporations, not the public.
Copyright laws exist to benefit corporations, not the public.
> They'll just lobby the government and say such a thing would make it "too risky" or "too hard" to enforce copyright.
Any sensible person should counter that argument with the argument that it is currently "too hard" to defend oneself against false copyright claims.
Any sensible person should counter that argument with the argument that it is currently "too hard" to defend oneself against false copyright claims.
This assumes that sensible people can afford to pay lobbyists to influence law makers. Maybe the EFF could do that.
The copyright owners usually have better lawyers than the alleged infringers, but they can be sued. https://blogs.lawyers.com/attorney/intellectual-property/con...
Or my recent suggestion here:
> 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.
Of course neither of those are going to happen, those companies donate way too much money.
> 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.
Of course neither of those are going to happen, those companies donate way too much money.
The DMCA was very carefully drafted to make the perjury but only apply to your claim of ownership, not to the claim of infringement.
In other words, this idiocy is the intended behaviour of the law.
In other words, this idiocy is the intended behaviour of the law.
Only the owner (or an authorized agent of the owner) can claim infringement. I suppose the claim of being an authorized agent is also free of perjury penalty.
> Only the owner (or an authorized agent of the owner) can claim infringement. I suppose the claim of being an authorized agent is also free of perjury penalty.
Forget perjury, why isn't this outright fraud?
Forget perjury, why isn't this outright fraud?
Hmmm, let's weaponize then DMCA claims to the point they no longer will blindly be followed by drones. So, please start file DMCA for everything they publish that's used to track/infringe our privacy. Unfortunately I do not have required SEO (?) skills, so someone please give specific advice for this - but you folks understand what I'm saying.
Rest of the story: the article was restored about two days later.
https://twitter.com/TwoBitHistory/status/1228332876099473409
https://twitter.com/TwoBitHistory/status/1228332876099473409
That's one URL, the article implies there's many.
Deliberately false or recklessly false claims ought to be punished.
Make any claimant or their lawyer put up a bond of 100 usd before making any claims. Publish the claims on a site. Allow anyone, not just the damaged party, to claim the bounty for the fraudulent claims by submitting proof.
Increase the bond exponentially as it is paid out making it eventually hideously expensive if you keep breaking the law.
Make the increases eventually expire allowing people to reform their behavior.
Make any claimant or their lawyer put up a bond of 100 usd before making any claims. Publish the claims on a site. Allow anyone, not just the damaged party, to claim the bounty for the fraudulent claims by submitting proof.
Increase the bond exponentially as it is paid out making it eventually hideously expensive if you keep breaking the law.
Make the increases eventually expire allowing people to reform their behavior.
We need a paid search engine. Google is willing to lose entire subsets of the possible results because they don't want to pay humans to handle DMCA complaints.
Google or any alternative free or otherwise has no choice if they want to maintain their safe harbor under the DMCA. It's not up to them to referee the issue, or they become culpable for any infringement on their platform.
My understanding is they also must restore the content when a counter notice is filed by the alleged infringer (but I'm not a lawyer).
My understanding is they also must restore the content when a counter notice is filed by the alleged infringer (but I'm not a lawyer).
The big catch is that to file a proper counter-notification you have to reveal your name, address and phone number to the claimant (whereas the claimant is only required to provide "reasonably sufficient" contact information). This is ostensibly to allow for service of process if they decide to sue you, but it's also been abused to harass and intimidate people in various ways.
Also, there's allegedly a loophole where the claimant can notify the provider's DMCA agent they're suing you, at which point the provider is obligated to keep the claimed material inaccessible, but then not actually sue you. I'm not sure this has actually been done, though.
Also, there's allegedly a loophole where the claimant can notify the provider's DMCA agent they're suing you, at which point the provider is obligated to keep the claimed material inaccessible, but then not actually sue you. I'm not sure this has actually been done, though.
Sounds like we should make a bot that makes a counter notice for every notice. Is there a page on Google that discloses all the recently issued DMCA notices?
On sites like YouTube this is what would happen:
Abusive bot makes fraudulent DMCA requests against your account. Your bot automatically files disputes. Abusive bot automatically verifies with youtube that they are the owners of the content, because they say so. Your account is demonetized and/or shut down for multiple dispute violations.
The entire system is rigged so the abusive bots have more or less free reign as long as they're backed up by some big media cartel. Google really doesn't want to anger said cartels who have been more than willing to sue individual people for trillions of dollars for sharing a single CD. Google has never been sued by creators for letting media cartels steal their works. They have no incentive to change policy at the moment.
Abusive bot makes fraudulent DMCA requests against your account. Your bot automatically files disputes. Abusive bot automatically verifies with youtube that they are the owners of the content, because they say so. Your account is demonetized and/or shut down for multiple dispute violations.
The entire system is rigged so the abusive bots have more or less free reign as long as they're backed up by some big media cartel. Google really doesn't want to anger said cartels who have been more than willing to sue individual people for trillions of dollars for sharing a single CD. Google has never been sued by creators for letting media cartels steal their works. They have no incentive to change policy at the moment.
Then perhaps a more adversarial approach.
Let's make software that generates content that to the big-media-bots looks like their copyrighted content, but to a human arbiter looks like anything but. This can be done automatically, by continuously gauging the response of the bots to variations in our generated content, and adjusting accordingly.
We'll spray this content all over, using throw-away accounts. Then dispute all the claims. Could we increase the volume of all claims n-fold this way? If so, at some point this would have to affect the trustworthiness of these bots with Google.
I refuse to accept that there is no way to fight back. If we could abuse the system in some way as to make this a problem for Google, I believe change can be achieved.
Let's make software that generates content that to the big-media-bots looks like their copyrighted content, but to a human arbiter looks like anything but. This can be done automatically, by continuously gauging the response of the bots to variations in our generated content, and adjusting accordingly.
We'll spray this content all over, using throw-away accounts. Then dispute all the claims. Could we increase the volume of all claims n-fold this way? If so, at some point this would have to affect the trustworthiness of these bots with Google.
I refuse to accept that there is no way to fight back. If we could abuse the system in some way as to make this a problem for Google, I believe change can be achieved.
Payment would not help. We need reformed copyright laws. Google is simply complying as would any search company, paid or not.
Yellow Pages?
In VoIP, a DID is a Direct Inbound Dial, that is a phone # you can buy. There are a lot of websites offering DIDs - like say https://www.didx.net/ - I wonder if they'll kick them all off Google....
Searching for DID also gives me dissociative identity disorder. I wonder if they'll DMCA all the scientific journals hosting articles about that.
Moderator of the Dissociative Identity Disorder subreddit here. This was my first thought upon reading the article.
is this part of seo strategy?
if you are result #11 on google, but you dmca the first ten...
if you are result #11 on google, but you dmca the first ten...
You joke, but just wait...
1. Create some organization with a name that can be abbreviated to some basic copular verb in the language of your choice
2. Claim copyright for the name and the abbreviation
3. Use DMCA to censor pretty much any article you may have issues with for whatever reason
2. Claim copyright for the name and the abbreviation
3. Use DMCA to censor pretty much any article you may have issues with for whatever reason
Register a trademark on every single english word and just take down everything.
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This sounds like a trademark claim, not copyright. You can’t copyright 3 letters, can you? Even as a trademark claim it’s bonkers
It was a copyright claim under the DMCA. You're right in thinking that it's bonkers, regardless of whether under copyright or trademark.
That's a result of the contributory infringement nonsense that has been used to prosecute people who posted links to works, not works themselves.
Can we not remove words from titles? This title should read "Don’t Use the Word ‘Did’ or a Dumb Anti-Piracy Company Will Delete You from Google"
I get that some people think a is useless here, but its really not.
I get that some people think a is useless here, but its really not.
There's an 80-character limit. The title you quote is 89 characters. Something's got to give.
I added one letter (and one space). Somethings not adding up with your logic
Your title's 82. ($ pbpaste | wc --> 0 15 82)
I appreciate the sentiment, but don't see the issue in this case. Omitting articles is standard headlinese for a good reason - I can't see how it could be interpreted differently without the 'a'.
It makes it harder to read without it. It sounds like broken english that I keep tripping up over myself trying to read it thinking that I misread a word
There could be a link between DID numbers and India... Would removing these results provide any ancillary value?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_inward_dial
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_inward_dial
DID is getting to be fun :) https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/
DMCA is one part of the problem, the second is the centralised internet of now.
"Distributed global" network my ass - one stupid US law and content becomes inaccessible.
"Distributed global" network my ass - one stupid US law and content becomes inaccessible.
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The only idiotic thing in all of this is the enduring reliance on single go to sources by so-called individuals making this army of unconscious drones called humanity, and which I'm giddily part of. Then, switching point of view, one can see how incredible this Internet experiment is for a semiconscious bystander actor and observer like me. All evolution flaws common to our species are now totally exposed to anybody daring to look at. Then, probably too many seek to profit from such perspectives, poisoning the well in the process. What a great time and place to be living in.
What the hell are you talking about dude
The allegedly infringing URLs include:
Mind-boggling. This sort of abuse should lead to substantial fines and the cancellation of their DMCA complaint privileges at the very least. Censoring websites should not be this easy and consequence-free.