[Infowarrior] - Warner Admits It Filed Many False Takedown Notices

[Richard Forno]

(c/o JH)

A Glimpse Of The Future Under SOPA: Warner Bros. Admits It Filed Many False Takedown Notices

from the is-this-what-we-want? dept

While entertainment industry execs still continue to pretend that it's obvious when things are infringing, they continually ignore the very real concerns raised by many of us about SOPA/PROTECT IP/ICE seizures. The concern isn't about taking down the infringing content. It's about the overreach of these efforts, and how it can and will be used to take down other, legal content. This is not some hypothetical scenario. We hear about bogus DMCA notices being issued all the time, and now we have a perfect example of what a future under SOPA would be like, as Warner Bros. has admitted in court that it issued a bunch of takedowns for content it had no copyright over -- including over some software that it just didn't like. 

As you may recall, Warner Bros. was among those who sued the cyberlocker Hotfile for infringement. Hotfile hit back, pointing out that it had worked with Warner Bros., and even created a tool to make it easier to issue takedowns. And Warner Bros.'s response was to takedown tons of content that it had no right to. In responding to these countercharges, Warner Bros. flat out admits that it did exactly that. It says that sometimes it just did basic keyword matching, which caught all sorts of other content it had no right to, admitting that it never checked the actual file to make sure it was infringing.

< -- snip worth reading for yukks -- >

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111110/10135116708/glimpse-future-under-sopa-warner-bros-admits-it-filed-many-false-takedown-notices.shtml

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