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Music Publishers File (Somewhat Weak) Copyright Lawsuit Against Twitter
To be honest, I’m somewhat amazed that more copyright lawsuits haven’t been filed against Twitter yet. There have been multiple reports of how the company’s DMCA takedown response systems have been...
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Terrible People Are Still Using Forged Court Orders To Disappear Content They...
Copyright is still high on the list of censorial weapons. When you live in (or target) a country that protects free speech rights and offers intermediaries immunity via Section 230, you quickly surmise...
View ArticleCopyright As Harassment: The DMCA Attack On IPFS Gateways
The Internet is amazing, but it’s not perfect. There are many aspects that are unsatisfactory – its protocols are inefficient, and it is far from resilient. The InterPlanetary File System, created in...
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Guinness World Records Did An Automated Copyright Strike Oopsie On YouTubers
This is and will keep happening. As complicated a landscape as copyright law is, the idea of automating the policing of copyright infringement without creating all kinds of collateral damage is simply...
View ArticleParamount DMCAs ‘Star Trek’ Fan Project, Apparently Deaf To The History Of...
Of all the things we cover here at Techdirt, content producers going legal on pure fan-made productions that amount to fans expressing their fandom will always be the most befuddling for me. All the...
View ArticleMajor Sports Leagues Want ‘Instantaneous’ Site Blocking, ISPs To Be Real Time...
Back in May of this year, the USPTO put out a request for public comments from interested parties in how to modernize its policies and/or copyright law to combat counterfeiting and online piracy. The...
View ArticleAppeals Court: You Can’t Sue YouTube Because It Didn’t Ban An Account You...
Last year, we wrote about the really bizarre case of a website called “Business Casual” that filed a couple of copyright infringement lawsuits. One was against TV-Novosti, the Russian state-owned news...
View ArticleTwenty Five Years Of The DMCA: Some Good, But Mostly Bad
Somehow I missed this (and I’m surprised it didn’t get much attention) but last month was the 25th anniversary of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) being signed into law. I only spotted it...
View ArticleHow The DMCA Is Being Weaponized Against E-Commerce Sites
The copyright system is flawed at many levels, as hundreds of posts on this blog make clear. One particular class of problems concern takedowns. The best known of the ‘notice and takedown’ systems,...
View ArticleCopyright Bot Can’t Tell The Difference Between Star Trek Ship And Adult Film...
Given that the overwhelming majority of DMCA takedown notices are generated by copyright bots that are only moderately good at their job, at best, perhaps it’s not terribly surprising that these bots...
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Ubisoft Tries To DMCA Leak Of BG&E Remaster Footage Before Finally Getting It...
One of the more famous, and my favorite, quotations attributed to Winston Churchill is: “Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else.” My second favorite...
View ArticleGoogle Takes Down ‘Downloader’ App Again After Bullshit DMCA Complaint,...
Earlier this year we discussed an app being removed from the Google Play store over copyright concerns and a DMCA notice that was sent in by a firm representing several Israeli television networks. The...
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Copyright Enforcement Is Hard: Mr. Beast Apologizes For Copyright Strikes On...
While not super common, we have seen issues surrounding copyright claims or negative reactions to so-called “reaction videos.” These videos essentially take content that is out there, typically on the...
View ArticleGoogle Sues Over Bogus, Anti-Competitive DMCA Takedowns
This one is from a couple months ago, but I’m clearing out some older stories that I didn’t have the time to write up when they were new. For years, we’ve highlighted how the DMCA is regularly abused...
View ArticleBrian May With An Awesome Response To Reports Of Queen Videos Getting...
Copyright strikes on hosted video content happens all the time. There are tons of strikes issued in error, plenty that are purely fraud and abuse, and a bunch that may have been done in good faith but...
View ArticleNew Japan Pro-Wrestling DMCAs Its Own Channel Over Video It Uploaded
As all manner of content creators will tell us, copyright enforcement is both very important and is at least doable enough that it sure would be nice if platforms like YouTube could do even more to...
View ArticleNintendo DMCAs ‘Palworld’ Mod That Puts Actual Pokémon Into The Game
Just days ago, we were talking about the release of PC game Palworld, an open-world monster collecting game that has often been described as “Pokémon, but with guns.” The point of my post was that this...
View ArticlePalworld Modder Changes ‘Pokémon’ Mod To Include Generic Characters Instead
Well, this is certainly moving fast. We had begun talking about the recently released PC game Palworld as a great example of the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law, specifically as the game has...
View ArticleHas Wired Given Up On Fact Checking? Publishes Facts-Optional Screed Against...
What is going on at Wired Magazine? A few years ago, the magazine went on a bit of a binge with some articles that completely misrepresented Section 230. While I felt those articles were...
View ArticleAs Predicted, Judge Dismisses Nearly All Of Sarah Silverman, Michael Chabon,...
Can’t say we didn’t warn everyone. Last summer we pointed out that Sarah Silverman and a bunch of other authors suing AI companies for copyright infringement seemed to only demonstrate that they didn’t...
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