Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Movies Your Rights Online

"Pixels" DMCA Takedown Even Worse Than We Thought 272

ForgedArtificer writes: So we all know about the Pixels takedown on Vimeo, and that it was pretty bad in a lot of ways. But did you know that they took down the short film that inspired the movie? Turns out, the 2010 Pixels, which was taken off Vimeo due to copyright notice, was responsible for inspiring the entire Adam Sandler flick. Unlike Sandler's film, it's critically-acclaimed and has won awards. Talk about kicking someone when they're already down. First Patrick Jean gets to watch them violate his work and now they're claiming that his work violates theirs.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

"Pixels" DMCA Takedown Even Worse Than We Thought

Comments Filter:
  • Opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @04:37PM (#50281189) Homepage Journal

    This is an opportunity. Anyone who knows anyone in the media should make it a point to make a story out of this -- it plays as big guy robbing, then kicking, the little guy. An opportunity for the little guy to get their head above water, which -- at times -- can work out surprisingly well.

    Of course, we know that's not what's happening; this is rote behavior by uncaring people resulting in unfortunate collateral damage.

    It's just as wrong, but it isn't based on specific intent.

    Copyright, patent and trademark -- all broken as hell.

    And I say that as someone who makes a significant income from all three.

    • Re: Opportunity (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09, 2015 @04:40PM (#50281201)

      Well, I know what I'm going to do. Pirate this movie. I hadn't planned to do so, but now I will, it and a dozen, no three dozen others.

      Except the Waterboy. That movie is punishment enough.

      • by ColdWetDog ( 752185 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @04:57PM (#50281269) Homepage

        You want to pirate an Adam Sandler movie? That is like cutting your nose off to spite your face.

    • Re:Opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @04:44PM (#50281225)

      There should be a class-action lawsuit from all content creators affected against the DMCA letter spewing company AND the studio who hired them for gross-negligence And copyright abuse.

      They should seek to have creator's copyright interest in the new film struck down by the courts.

      • Re:Opportunity (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Smallpond ( 221300 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @05:11PM (#50281349) Homepage Journal

        The 2010 film should file a claim of infringment against the Adam Sandler film and claim rights to all profits.

        • by amiga3D ( 567632 )

          That shit actually made a profit?

        • Re:Opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09, 2015 @07:14PM (#50281837)

          Revenue, not profits. Never go after Hollywood for profits, there never are any.

        • futurama did it (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ganjadude ( 952775 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @08:20PM (#50282055) Homepage
          didnt the futurama episode come out before that movie as well?
        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          They actually did pay a licensing fee to the creator of the short. Which doesn't excuse the rest of this BS, of course.

        • Send DMCA take-downs to the movie theaters showing the digital form of the movie, the distribution company and the Internet provider that host the movie for the theaters to down-load. Then file suit, $250,000.00 per showing, never sue or sign a contract with a movie company based on profit, they never make a "profit".

      • That's my kind of idea. WTF do we, as a nation, put up with this kind of asinine shit? Boycott everything Hollyweird for a month, and we'll have their attention. "Play nice, or you're out of the pool, kiddies." Fuck Holloweird, and fuck most of the "entertainment" industries.

        We really, really, REALLY need to support the independents, and tell the big boys to go to hell.

        • by lucm ( 889690 )

          We'll get to that, as soon as we're done with Wal-Mart, Monsanto, BP, Wall Street and the NSA. Lotsa people to kick out of pools lately.

    • Re:Opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bmo ( 77928 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @04:49PM (#50281241)

      but it isn't based on specific intent.

      You're kidding, right?

      Copyright trolls and the publishers that love the concept know exactly what they're doing.

      There is no punishment for even malicious DMCA takedowns. It's "kill them all and let God sort them out" behavior.

      --
      BMO

      • Re:Opportunity (Score:5, Informative)

        by Forever Wondering ( 2506940 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @06:47PM (#50281741)

        IIRC, if someone files a takedown notice under the DMCA for a given work at a given website, the author of the work can file a counter notice under the DMCA with the website. Unless the original filer is willing to sue, the work can be restored. The DMCA does provide penalties for filing baseless/frivolous DMCA notices. And, the author can sue the filer.

        The reason for the "hair trigger" effect is that if a DMCA notice is filed with a website, the website must remove the work quickly, or risk losing its "safe harbor" protections. To restore the work, the takedown must be withdrawn or the counter filed with the website.

        In this case, if the Sandler film is too similar to the 2010 short film, it could be considered a derived work. That is, violates the copyright of the 2010 work. That would mean boatloads of cash for Patrick Jean.

        That all said, DMCA abuse is obviously rampant.

        • Re:Opportunity (Score:5, Informative)

          by Cito ( 1725214 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @11:49PM (#50282659)

          You can't win

          I had a YouTube video removed over similar issue.

          I filed counter claim. I got served by some law office , I don't have money for lawyer, I tossed their paperwork in trash, I kept filing counter claims, I got a court date in California, but I'm in Ga. :-P

          I just ignored them, eventually YouTube got tired of taking down then restoring then taking down then restoring so they deleted and gave a strike on my account which a strike bans you from monetizing for 1 year.

          Oh well

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Without knowing exactly what you uploaded, we have no basis to consider if you were actually uploading infringing material or the "copyright owner" was carpet-bombing.

            Like some level of expiry needs to be added to the DMCA, where in a "copyright owner" can not remove content that predates the copyright of the content they say is being derived.

            For example, and I use this as an example that I indeed filed a counternotice for.

            There is a company that publishes covers to songs, like covers that are basically low

          • Sorry to hear about your difficulties. Although, I didn't mention it in my original post, I'm not surprised to hear about such a scenario playing out that way, as I'm sure it's been done countless times to other people in similar circumstances.

            Although the DMCA provides for some degree of dispute resolution, ultimately, it often boils down to having the money to spend on the legal process. Thus, even if you're in the right, you're forced to go to court. No doubt one of the "maneuvers" was getting the ven

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday August 10, 2015 @07:07AM (#50283539) Homepage Journal

            I have found that the best tactic is to not only file counter-notices, but to then file your own DMCA take-downs against their content. Unfortunately some large companies are apparently immune to DMCA notices on YouTube, but many are not. For example, Sky News's live feed was taken down when their own parent company filed a DMCA notice over their coverage of the GOP debate.

            Fight fire with fire. If they are claiming a clip you used isn't fair use then there isn't much you can do, but if they are claiming that some content you made is too similar to their own content then clearly that's because they are infringing your rights and you should scrub their shit off the internet for them. Hit the YouTube account, their social media accounts, their web host. There is no penalty for DMCA claims that don't stand up, so go nuts. Personally I like to rate-limit the notices, so that as soon as they deal with one another comes along and they have to file another counter notice. Only noobs file one notice with 100 URLs, when you can instead file 100 notices for 100 days. A trivial perl script can even automate the process for you.

          • Re:Opportunity (Score:4, Interesting)

            by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Monday August 10, 2015 @08:02AM (#50283715)

            I've faced action for copyright infringement on youtube three times.

            The first was pretty clear: I'd used an old cartoon, still copyrighted, to practice video restoration. At the time it was a vault-and-underground cartoon only, not legally available - the uncut version of Steamboat Willie, the version where Micky Mouse savagely tortures a series of animals in order to make music from their agonized cries. About a year later Disney republished it and DMCAed mine - possibly because my restoration was actually better than theirs.

            The second was another thing entirely: Content-ID picked up some 'infringing' music on another video. The music was actually a recording from so long ago it was expired even in the US - recorded 1914, plus the composer was dead more than 70 years at the time I uploaded it. A collecting agency had still claimed they owned it and submitted it to content-ID though, so youtube detected it as infringing. A DMCA notification can be counter-noticed, but not a content ID match: There is very little in the way of appeal for those, it's an almost entirely automated system

            The third was another DMCA notice, though my usage in that case was clearly fair use: I'd taken about thirty seconds from a TV program episode, no sound, in order to make a joke about it. I find it more interesting that the entire episode had been uploaded without permission by other users. This notice didn't come from a bot: I personally offended someone at the studio to the point that, while they didn't bother pulling entire episode uploads, they still thought my joke in sufficiently poor taste to merit removal.

        • by cdrudge ( 68377 )

          The DMCA does provide penalties for filing baseless/frivolous DMCA notices.

          No it doesn't. The only penalty the DMCA has for filing a false claim below:

          '(vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly in-fringed.

          It's just perjury if the entity filing the claim isn't authorized by the rightsholder to file the takedown request. All they have to do

      • Re:Opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)

        by CanEHdian ( 1098955 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @07:13PM (#50281827)

        There is no punishment for even malicious DMCA takedowns. It's "kill them all and let God sort them out" behavior.

        And that was done *on purpose* to shield the "Rightsholders" from any harm (the strong worded "bla bla penalty of perjury bla bla" -- believed by some to be a check-and-balance -- in fact protects them too, namely that noone can run an extorton racket by make false claim of representing the "Rightsholders" -- to ensure any money flows in their direction and not some fraud).

        There should be a "strike" system for takedowns too; x many false notices and you can only submit on paper, and this time on penalty of perjury that the work in question infringes on the work being claimed. That can eventually lead to JAIL TIME.

        • The "perjury" aspect is always overlooked. If they claim contains the "perjury" line (which it should) then the person making it should face jail time. Simple.
          • No, the perjery line isn't overlooked. It's written in a way that makes it functionally useless. It's only perjery if you don't represent the person who is claiming that their copyright is infringed. It doesn't matter how wild your claims of ingringement are.

        • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Everyone misses the real intent, kill the competition. People can watch only so much so the pigopolists actively try to drive competing content off the internet when ever they can. Obviously the counter claim against a DMCA should not be civil but criminal because it involves fraud and the attempt to maliciously destroy another persons business by devaluing their content. The DMCA should be constitutionally challenge because it is being used to deny owners the copyright to their own content.

    • Anyone who knows anyone in the media should make it a point to make a story out of this -- it plays as big guy robbing, then kicking, the little guy.

      I think they already made a couple movies featuring a similar theme. Starring some ostensible comedian named ... Allan or Aaron or something ... Sandberg ? Kind of low-brow stuff, but popular nonetheless.

    • by jonwil ( 467024 )

      I WAS thinking of seeing this film in the theater when it came out here in Australia but this news is enough to tip me into the "don't bother" camp. I will not go to see it in the theater, nor will I pirate it or otherwise see it (maybe I will see it in a few years when it shows up on free-to-air TV)

      By all accounts the film is a piece of crap anyway (just like every other Adam Sandler film to date) so I am not missing out on anything...

    • by T.E.D. ( 34228 )

      Of course, we know that's not what's happening; this is rote behavior by uncaring people resulting in unfortunate collateral damage.

      It's just as wrong, but it isn't based on specific intent.

      Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

  • Counter DMCA notice (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Todd Knarr ( 15451 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @04:41PM (#50281205) Homepage

    The situation seems ripe for him to file a DMCA notice against all of Columbia's official film sites and materials. He can prove his film existed before Columbia's was even started, and he has Columbia's admission (in their DMCA notice against his work) that their work is similar enough to his for infringement to occur.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      The DMCAs are directed at Vimeo, and it's Vimeo's responsibility to stand up for non-infringing content, or it's their right to remove the content from their site for no good reason. I doubt they'd comply with an individual's request to have all of a major producer's works removed in the same way they'd comply with a major producer's request to have various individuals' works removed.
      • by Anonymous Coward

        Not really.

        Vimeo received the notice. That are forced to take down the content regardless of the merits, and pass the buck to the content author to handle.

        Otherwise they will see themselves in the deep end of the law.

        Not fun, but now is the author responsibility to make a counter claim, and with that, request Vimeo to reactivate the content.

        This process basically forces both parts to identify themselves and remove the "carrier" (Vimeo in this case) from the case.

    • by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @04:54PM (#50281257)

      The situation seems ripe for him to file a DMCA notice against all of Columbia's official film sites and materials. He can prove his film existed before Columbia's was even started, and he has Columbia's admission (in their DMCA notice against his work) that their work is similar enough to his for infringement to occur.

      Except he doesn't own the copyright to the short anymore, Sandler's production company who made the 2015 Pixels film does.

      Now they made a really crappy movie based on the original short, but they had the legal right to do so.

    • Patrick Jean is the executive producer of the 2015 movie, Columbia did not just rip him off. Why would he file a claim against his own film sites an materials?

  • of intellectual property was to protect the little guy with the good idea from being abused by the big guy with the deep pockets

    the intent has been completely subverted and destroyed and now intellectual property simple serves as another club the big guy with deep pockets can use to rob the little guy with the idea

    the concept of intellectual property, the very notion of it, is completely logically and morally bankrupt, and must die

    now i'm no air head optimist, i may never see it happen in my lifetime. it's a slow change. but remember the printing press led to some radical changes in society. when education became cheap, a middle class grew from the previously illiterate serfs, and this class demanded power, giving rise to modern concept of democracy. it took centuries

    likewise, the internet is going to radically change society. and it will also take centuries for all the implications of a new disruptive technology to work it's way out. just like the printing press

    aristocrats then whined "not fair" like some do today as the changes begin. but on the contrary: the radical changes are all about making it more fair, for more people

    give it time

    • Except that the little guy can register his works, he and his family can enjoy exactly the same duration of copyright, and pursue (as many have, to the tune of millions of dollars) punitive infringement damages in court. Your narrative is phony.
    • There never was an original intent to "intellectual property" as you think it does because it doesn't exist in the US. Instead, we have patents, copyrights, and trademarks, three different sets of laws with three different purposes.

      For patents, there was never any intention about protecting 'the little guy', it was to discourage secrets and to enrich the public domain, by making a bargain in exchange for disclosing of secrets. Prior to patents, many technological acheivements were kept secret and when the i

      • do you see the story you are commenting under?

        do you see any problems there?

        good!

        now try commenting again, this time actually commenting on the actual fucking reality of the topic

        thanks

    • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09, 2015 @06:30PM (#50281661)

      the concept of intellectual property, the very notion of it, is completely logically and morally bankrupt, and must die

      Intellectual property is a false property right, in the same way that slavery was a false property right.

      Eventually, we realized that the freedom of mankind was more important than the financial health of plantation owners.

      And, eventually, we will realize that the freedom of our ideas is more important that the financial health of publishing corporations.

      We live in a strange time in history. We understand that people must be free, but we inexplicably fail to realize that a person is not truly free unless his ideas are free as well. Future generations will look back on us for our barbaric, immoral selfishness -- in the same way that we look back on the American slave trade for their barbaric, immoral selfishness.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      of intellectual property was to protect the little guy with the good idea from being abused by the big guy with the deep pockets. the intent has been completely subverted and destroyed and now intellectual property simple serves as another club the big guy with deep pockets can use to rob the little guy with the idea

      Oh please, we started messing with that system not them. Instead of buying a copy so the "little guy with the idea" got his royalties we started mass copying stuff for free, which fucked them both over. Maybe their contracts weren't very nice, but it doesn't matter if there's nothing to share. Since then it's been an arms race between those who want to copy and those who want to prevent copying, with both sides playing dirty.

      The music industry seems to have found its shape with streaming though, games have

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        Nonsense. By the time mass copying even became available, copyright had already been pushed to more than 3 times the original (and reasonable) 28 years. Hollywood accounting was already a thing and double platinum albums that were supposedly still 'recouping' (that is, no royalties yet paid to the artists) had happened. The Girl Scouts were already sued for singing camp songs and nobody dared sing Happy Birthday in a commercial setting (even though evidence suggests the copyright was exhausted nearly a cent

    • I wonder how easy it would be to convince some of our more rabidly anti-tax population to start treating intellectual property as both taxes and regulation. If you compare the price of an out of copyright book, or an expired patent drug, to its government-granted-monopoly version, you can get a dollar amount for the tax. And the regulation is, of course, the restriction on freedom that comes with protecting intellectual property. Each new copyright or patent granted, is itself a new tax and a new regulation

  • by Darth Technoid ( 83199 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @04:48PM (#50281239)

    Reminds me of the bit in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where ...

    "The simplistic style is partly explained by the fact that its editors, having to meet a publishing deadline, copied the information off the back of a pack of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it with a few footnotes in order to avoid prosecution under the incomprehensibly tortuous Galactic copyright laws. It is interesting to note that a later and wilier editor sent the book backwards in time through a temporal warp and then successfully sued the breakfast cereal company for infringement of the same laws."

    • by Falos ( 2905315 )
      Reminds me that copyright law is the grownup, federal version of "I saw it first!"

      Reminds me that copyright law is basically "Dibs".

      I'm all for incentivizing innovation*, but the current system is hilariously incompatible with today's increased... infectivity. Anyone proposing it would get weird looks, then pauses and "What? How's that going to work? Data is a contagion, not a conscious entity we can order around."

      *Faster innovation. Innovation couldn't actually stop because, hey, data is contagiou
  • We already had this story [slashdot.org] ...

    As another posted pointed out

    The indie short was shot by Patrick Jean, who then sold the rights to Sandler and Columbia. He was slated to direct, but turned the job over to Chris Columbus as the budget grew.
    * http://uk.businessinsider.com/... [businessinsider.com]

    And ... [slashdot.org]

    The Columbia picture is acknowledge as being based on that film [wikipedia.org] (and based on French director Patrick Jean's 2010 short film of the same name

    • If the original was legally uploaded by the copyight holder, then surely Vimeo's terms give them the right to continue hosting the original video?
    • by dbIII ( 701233 )

      but turned the job over to Chris Columbus as the budget grew

      Someone must really like Chris Columbus. Terry Gilliam was slated to direct "Harry Potter", and would have been ideal for such a quirky British thing, but when it looked like it would be a high profile movie Chris Columbus was given the job, presumably to raise the profile of Chris Columbus.
      Given that "Home Alone" is the only thing he'd directed before that which was not instantly forgettable I can't see why anyone thought he could make better fil

      • Once again we see the original director skipped over, possibly a far more talented one or at least with an approach that will deliver something better than "Bicentennial Man" when supplied with a vast budget and vast talent.

        I'm not suggesting that there is vast talent with the cast of this new one, just pointing out that Chris Columbus managed to produce a dud despite having Robin Williams on tap.
        • Oh wow, didn't realize he directed "Bicentennial Man". I guess I must be in the minority -- I thought it was charming and under-rated.

          Chris seems to be quite hit-and-miss. His earlier work is decent; his later work quite lacking. What is strange is that he has definitely has been involved in some popular, but not good movies:

          1. He worked with Robin Williams before when he directed:

          * 1993 Mrs. Doubtfire

          2. I see his claim to fame [imdb.com] wast that he was a nobody until he wrote "Gremlins (1984)" and Steven Spiel

          • by dbIII ( 701233 )
            Yes, compare that hit and miss list with a director that proved he could do this sort of movie with an attention getting short (this story) and Gilliam, whose only "failure" still sells DVDs.
            As for writing and producer roles - not what I was discussing. If a movie fails or succeeds it's hard to say whether it was due to the writer or producer. Some utterly shocking writing has been saved by good direction and performance, and vice versa.
  • Justice (Score:4, Funny)

    by Sponge Bath ( 413667 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @04:52PM (#50281251)

    I would say Dinklage should punch Sandler in the nuts, but that may already be the plot of the movie. Anyone seen it to confirm?

  • by dwywit ( 1109409 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @05:04PM (#50281309)

    I just went to vimeo and searched for "pixels".

    Lots of content with "pixels in the title, including the original short.

    Perhaps someone at vimeo woke up, or perhaps someone at entura has been reading /. or other tech news sites.

    Has anyone got a screen grab of that search returning nothing, or DMCA takedown notifications?

  • the Spellympics is being sued by the Olympics for the use of the suffix.. lympics.

    Time to copy right the letter E be used on line and issue an DMCA take down to each web site that uses it that did not pay the fee of $0.00012 per use.

  • should be illegal. OR they should remove the protection from countersuit in the event of an improper takedown for automated systems. "The exemption applies to human error. If you remove the human from the process, the safehaven no longer may be applied."

    • by amiga3D ( 567632 )

      Yes! Outlaw the fucking bots! Giving takedown rights to a fucking piece of code is a shitty idea.

    • should be illegal. OR they should remove the protection from countersuit in the event of an improper takedown for automated systems. "The exemption applies to human error. If you remove the human from the process, the safehaven no longer may be applied."

      Proposed fix. For every takedown you post you also post a $1000 bond, if someone challenges it they post $10 back (since you're probably dealing with giant corp vs little guy). Whomever backs out of the dispute first loses their bond.

      Now I can see three main complications
      1) A big studio is far more capable of handling a lawsuit, so even if a very clear case they could try to bully independents so they don't pay out (but I doubt they'll care about the $1000).
      2) Studios still win fair use cases since they hav

  • It is undisputed that the short film came first.

    If they claim that the short film is so similar to theirs as to require a DMCA takedown, then by definition, their long film is so similar to the short one that they are in violation of it's copyright.

    I would counter sue them right away for the entire profits from Pixel. Whoops, forgot I was talking about the movie business, where they claim no profits (Return of the Jedi officially has 0 profits - and they wonder why people feel fine downloading their movi

  • Guess who owns Columbia Pictures?

    You got it: Sony.

    It's yet another black mark for the company that can't seem to stop shitting all over their public image.

  • by jklovanc ( 1603149 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @06:32PM (#50281677)

    How many of counterclaim notices have been filed? Use the system against the claimants. File a counterclaim and the content must be put back if a suit is not filed in court.

    Crying about take down notices without filing counterclaims is just stupid. A take down notice is not the end of the story.

  • Seriously, somebody should put up a lawsuit on Kickstarter or Gofundme or something.

  • Please don't use the word 'inspire' in the same sentence with 'Adam Sandler flick'.

  • Meh, should have been called 'voxels' anyway.

  • "First Patrick Jean gets to watch them violate his work and now they're claiming that his work violates theirs." No, Patrick Jean isn't being violated at all - he licensed the movie to Happy Madison: http://www.polygon.com/2014/6/... [polygon.com]
  • by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @09:22PM (#50282279) Homepage Journal
    How the hell am I supposed to boycott the movie any more than I already was because it was an Adam Sandler movie? I'm already not seeing it as hard as I can!
  • .. in articles like this to link to the Vimeo short movie?

  • If you want to control something, don't sell it. If you sell it, it's no longer yours.

    There's no reason to feel pity for this guy because he whored out his work.

  • ofcourse the DMCA of everything with the word pixels in them is beyond normal and all video's should be restored as soon as possible as the DMCA has no viable claim..
    But the quote "First Patrick Jean gets to watch them violate his work and now they're claiming that his work violates theirs." is BS ofcourse as Columbia/Happy madisson bought the rights to the property and therefore they can do whatever they want with it (IMHO it's not really possible to do a full feature on the premise of the short anyway, so

  • Don't DMCA takedown notices count as sworn statements? I remember something along the lines of "I swear under penalty of perjury that the information in this document is correct". If the takedown request is actually wrong, isn't this actionable? Is perjury punishable in a civil court?

  • It should be a requirement that somebody filing a DMCA takedown should at least be able to show reasonable cause for believing the work to be a rights violation, with penalties for abuse. That is, if lawyer writes a letter (automated or not) it should be possible for the owner of the work to request justification and, if no satisfactory justification is forthcoming, get compensation.

    This kind of use of the DMCA should be seen in the same light as swatting (calling SWAT round to somebody's house on false info).
  • by ThatsDrDangerToYou ( 3480047 ) on Monday August 10, 2015 @10:58AM (#50284961)
    I pledge to avoid all Adam Sandler movies forever!

    Wow, I feel as if a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders... Oh wait, I was already avoiding Sandler movies. Still..

If all else fails, lower your standards.

Working...