March 21, 2013 at 15:58GoPro demanded to remove a comparative review of its camera, citing copyright infringement
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act ( DMCA ) allows any holder of intellectual property to demand that access to any material on the Web be closed that, in his opinion, violates its copyright. And on demand. Without any evidence. Referring only to the “bona fide assumption” of the copyright holder’s lawyers. If the person who published the material objectionable to the legal trader can prove that there were no grounds for closing access, then censorship can be lifted. In a week, another. Without damages - he will have to go to court separately if there is a lot of extra money for the services of lawyers.
Comparison of GoPro Hero 3 camera and competitor - Sony HDR AS-15, publishedon digitalrev.com, something GoPro didn’t like. And she sent the administrators of the DMCA website a takedown notice - a requirement to remove material that had to be fulfilled, because the law is the law. The essence of copyright violation was that the author of the review without permission used the GoPro and Hero trademarks.
This behavior of GoPro caused a sharply negative reaction on the Internet, and now the PR department of the company claims that they simply misunderstood, and did not want to block access to the article at all, and have claims only of incorrect branding and use of “unauthorized” on the site Images in the online store site. Although the demand referred to trademarks, not images, a specific article URL was given.
The use of legal copyright protection mechanisms for censorship and unfair competition on the web is rampant. So, according to Google , more than half of the blocking requirements were used as a competition tool, and 37% of all requirements were groundless.
A recent example of such an abuse of DMCA - the Designmodo FlatUI repository of interface elements on Github was closed almost immediately after publication, when hundreds of people actively subscribed to it. Access to it was restored only after two weeks. How many more subscribers would he have if LayerVault, which sent the blocking request, did not cover the “take-off” repository at the moment of active promotion?
The worst thing is that large sites that encounter hundreds and thousands of such claims per day have to satisfy them literally without looking, automatically, because otherwise you can run into a lawsuit. So, on Youtube, the Content ID algorithm is widely used to block content. As a result, even videos containing wind noise and birdsong sometimes even fall under the distribution .
Comparison of GoPro Hero 3 camera and competitor - Sony HDR AS-15, publishedon digitalrev.com, something GoPro didn’t like. And she sent the administrators of the DMCA website a takedown notice - a requirement to remove material that had to be fulfilled, because the law is the law. The essence of copyright violation was that the author of the review without permission used the GoPro and Hero trademarks.
This behavior of GoPro caused a sharply negative reaction on the Internet, and now the PR department of the company claims that they simply misunderstood, and did not want to block access to the article at all, and have claims only of incorrect branding and use of “unauthorized” on the site Images in the online store site. Although the demand referred to trademarks, not images, a specific article URL was given.
The use of legal copyright protection mechanisms for censorship and unfair competition on the web is rampant. So, according to Google , more than half of the blocking requirements were used as a competition tool, and 37% of all requirements were groundless.
A recent example of such an abuse of DMCA - the Designmodo FlatUI repository of interface elements on Github was closed almost immediately after publication, when hundreds of people actively subscribed to it. Access to it was restored only after two weeks. How many more subscribers would he have if LayerVault, which sent the blocking request, did not cover the “take-off” repository at the moment of active promotion?
The worst thing is that large sites that encounter hundreds and thousands of such claims per day have to satisfy them literally without looking, automatically, because otherwise you can run into a lawsuit. So, on Youtube, the Content ID algorithm is widely used to block content. As a result, even videos containing wind noise and birdsong sometimes even fall under the distribution .