Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Royal☭]

Is Piracy Helping Game of Thrones? | Idea Channel | PBS

Apparently the producer of Game of Thrones likes pirates.

[Thad]

CISPA sponsor decides it's a good idea to gloat that he's sponsoring it because lobbyists gave him a shitload of money, later deletes the tweet.

[Thad]

Fox sends fraudulent takedown notices for Cory Doctorow's novel Homeland, because whatever pattern-matching software they're using is not smart enough to tell the difference between an ebook and a video file.

It's clear that Fox is mistaking these files for episodes of the TV show "Homeland." What's not clear is why or how anyone sending a censorship request could be so sloppy, careless and indifferent to the rights of others that they could get it so utterly wrong. I have made inquiries about the possible legal avenues for addressing this with Fox, but I'm not optimistic. The DMCA makes it easy to carelessly censor the Internet, and makes it hard to get redress for this kind of perjurious, depraved indifference.

Actually, the last half of that paragraph answers the question posed in the first half.

Companies send out massive numbers of takedown notices, with no human being involved, just an automated system searching for keywords.

And the perverse thing is, the DMCA actually ENCOURAGES them not only to do that, but to make those programs as rudimentary and sloppy as possible.

Because of the word "knowingly".

Via Ars:

It's hard to see how anyone at Fox or Warner Brothers could have a "good faith belief" that these works infringed their copyrights. Unfortunately, while the DMCA does include a provision punishing misrepresentations by copyright holders, this provision is basically toothless. Punishing a bogus takedown request requires proving that the sender "knowingly materially misrepresented" information in the takedown notice. But proving knowledge is difficult; the sender can always chalk bogus takedown requests up to carelessness rather than fraud.

In other words, if you're sending out DMCA takedown notices and are worried about liability, the absolute BEST thing you can do is write a program to send them out automatically and ensure that as few human beings as possible even look at them.

And, moreover, you want to make that program cast as broad a net as humanly possible, to MAXIMIZE your ability to claim any false positives are entirely unintentional.

We'll see where this goes.  It's a pretty clearly-cut case of abuse, and if anyone's got the resources and inclination to prove it in court it's Doctorow.  If it can be done, he'll be the guy to do it -- but I still don't like his odds in a copyright system that is clearly and deliberately designed to protect corporate interests over individual ones.

[Brentai]

I'll go ahead and do the very obvious tinfoil hat thing: The first thing to do is make sure these takedown claims actually weren't deliberate.

[Thad]

New bill would make circumvention legal if not used for actual copyright violations.

I don't have a whole lot of hope that this Congress will pass it or anything that will benefit anyone ever, but at least we've reached a point where people in Congress -- from both parties -- are actually willing to put a bill like this forward.

[Thad]

Film company making a documentary about Happy Birthday sues Warner, claiming the song is public domain.

Oh, and it's a class action and they're seeking to make Warner refund all the license fees anybody has ever paid for the rights to the song, plus damages.

[Thad]

Lofgren and Wyden introduce Aaron's Law.

The crux is that they want to narrow the definition of "access without authorization" so that you can't be charged with a felony just for violating a click-through license.  (Well...at least probably not successfully.)

The proposed definition for “access without authorization” is to obtain information on a computer that the accesser lacks authorization to obtain by knowingly circumventing technological or physical measures designed to prevent unauthorized individuals from obtaining that information.

The proposed changes make clear that the CFAA does not outlaw mere violations of terms of service, website notices, contracts, or employment agreements. The proposed definition of “access without authorization” includes bypassing technological or physical measures via deception (as in the case with phishing or social engineering), and scenarios in which an authorized individual provides a means to circumvent to an unauthorized individual (i.e. sharing login credentials).

It's going to be an uphill battle, but I salute them for picking this fight.

[A²]

Darkspore, a game with always-online DRM, is permanently unplayable due to EA abandoning the game

In short: The Title had always online DRM, but recently a bunch of issues cropped up, preventing people from logging in. EA eventually said the title is now considered abandoned, and would no longer perform any work on it. Barring any sort of incredible fan effort (Unlikely for such a panned game), the game is now rendered permanently unplayable.

EDIT: Remove the "DELETEME" between "Game" and "Trailers" in the URL to load it. The forum software keeps trying to load it as a video because it sees "Gametrailers.com"

[François]

I just logged in and played a round, and it seemed to work fine, though there were only like 5 people in the lobby (not surprised by that). That said, I don't doubt that the clock might be running out if I ever want to get back into it. Might just take a bunch of screenshots of my dudes for posterity, I got some cool shit done in there.

[Büge]

http://excesscopyright.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/bill-c-8-re-anti-counterfeiting-is_26.html

uh oh.

Canadian Parliament is trying to push ACTA into law.

[Thad]

Anti-patent troll bill passes House 325-91.

It's a good start.