Film Studios Send Takedown Notices About Takedown Notices 197
another random user sends this excerpt from the BBC:
"Two film studios have asked Google to take down links to messages sent by them requesting the removal of links connected to film piracy. Google receives 20 million 'takedown' requests, officially known as DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notices, every month. They are all published online. Recent submissions by Fox and Universal Studios include requests for the removal of previous takedown notices. ... By making the notices available, Google is unintentionally highlighting the location of allegedly pirated material, say some experts. 'It would only take one skilled coder to index the URLs from the DMCA notices in order to create one of the largest pirate search engines available,' wrote Torrent Freak editor Ernesto Van Der Sar on the site."
Indexing the URLs (Score:4, Informative)
Why would you need a skilled coder when the databases are in plain CSV format ?
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/data/ [google.com]
Re:Unless (Score:5, Informative)
Hell, in some places, the laws themselves are copyrighted.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/31/ignorance-of-dcs-copyrighted-laws-can-be-costly/ [washingtontimes.com]
Re:Indexing the URLs (Score:4, Informative)
Because to most of these sites and executives a CSV file is a magical thing that requires highly talented programmers.
Re:Confidentiality not lawful (Score:2, Informative)
Those just got ruled unconstitutional, as is right and proper.
Re:DUH! (Score:3, Informative)
In this case I think the takedown notices are not for the removal of the pirate websites, but the removal of their URLs from Google's results. If the URLs remain in Google's takedown notice database, and the sites themselves are still up, people can just comb Google's database for pirate links.
That isn't to say that the larger 'problem' of piracy itself is anything but fiction, of course.
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