Mastodawn

Lilletale Apr 29, 2017

Lohan G at gnusocial.no

Received a "DMCA Takedown Notice" from Twitter. One of my tweets has been removed, apparently due to a copyright violation. Copyright owner: Board of Control for !Cricket in !India. From what I see, all I did was posting a link to a website that had a live streaming video of a certain cricket tournament. //

Lohan G at gnusocial.no Apr 29, 2017

I wasn't promoting that website. I simply mentioned it in the middle of a discussion about something else.

Lohan G at gnusocial.no Apr 29, 2017

" == Description of infringement: Links to the unlicensed broadcast of the Copyrighted Content. This activity is in direct violation of the BCCI’s and its authorized licensees’ rights. These Exclusive Rights have been granted to Novi Digital Entertainment Private Limited (“Novi Digital”). Novi Digital and its authorised sub-licensees are entitled to enforce the Exclusive Rights in the Indian sub-continent."

Lohan G at gnusocial.no Apr 29, 2017

This is where they got the details wrong: " == Description of original work: Audiovisual footage and production content relating to cricket matches of the Indian Premier League 2017 (“IPL”) organised under the auspices of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (“Copyrighted Content”)."

I didn't post any tweets about the above mentioned IPL 2017 tournament. The removed tweet was posted years ago!

Lohan G at gnusocial.no Apr 29, 2017

In a desperate witch hunt, they have collected all the links pointing to the website in question. Some posts are years old and posted way before the alleged copyright violation took place.

Lohan G at gnusocial.no Apr 29, 2017

This is the tweet in question. It was posted in 2011. It somehow managed to time-travel and violate copyrights during Indian Premier League 2017 https://gnusocial.no/attachment/489205

Nobody [LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1)]Apr 29, 2017

@lohang What's worse, Twitter may ban your account if that copyright troll keeps filing claims that your tweets link infringing content.

Lohan G at gnusocial.no Apr 29, 2017

There is this warning in the email: "
Please note that repeat violations of this policy may result in suspension of your account. In order to avoid this, do not post additional material in violation of our Copyright Policy and immediately remove any material from your account for which you are not authorized to post."

If I am to argue against this nonsense I have to send them my "full name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, and Twitter user name." and my "physical or electronic signature" among many other things. And also "swear under penalty of perjury that I have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.”

Lohan G at gnusocial.no Apr 29, 2017

But, seriously, Twitter. How about you checking the dates and times of these tweets before agreeing to remove them?

Nobody [LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1)]Apr 29, 2017

"Any further violations of company policy may incur penalties up to and including termination."

Bob Mottram Apr 29, 2017

@lohang @lnxw48a1 sounds like a phishing attempt to me. How do you know that any of those claims are genuine?

Maiyannah Bishop Apr 29, 2017

@bob @lnxw48a1 @lohang I've gotten a few notices like this in the past on the HLA twitter. Not a single one of them if you looked at the email headers was from an IP controlled by twitter.

Lohan G at gnusocial.no Apr 29, 2017

This email is from Twitter, no doubt about it. They have already removed the tweet. You can see their explanation here https://twitter.com/lohang/status/126192091549270016

Maiyannah Bishop Apr 29, 2017

@lohang Shitty.

Maiyannah Bishop Apr 29, 2017

@lohang (I don't really know what else to say than that :/

Lohan G at gnusocial.no Apr 29, 2017

@bob @lnxw48a1 the email is from Twitter, it lists several other tweets by various people. And when I logged in to my account I see corresponding changes. There is a notice next to the Tweet in question. Others can now see only a notice saying "
This Tweet from @lohang has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder." See https://twitter.com/lohang/status/126192091549270016

Bob Mottram Apr 29, 2017

@lohang @lnxw48a1 it's another problem of the silos that they can terminate accounts for trumped up reasons. Individual fediverse admins can do the same, but you can just go elsewhere.

Maiyannah Bishop Apr 29, 2017

@bob @lnxw48a1 @lohang Stuff like the DCMA is one of the levers big businesses use to keep any competition down - and competition includes dissenting thought, critical opinion, and even Fair Use. You know they'd do away with the latter if they could.

Maiyannah Bishop Apr 29, 2017

@bob @lnxw48a1 @lohang In games journalism (aka my "day job"), it has become a regular occurance to see people critical of certain studios hit with DCMAs or other specious pseudolitigious threats to try to suppress criticism that gains popular traction.

Maiyannah Bishop Apr 29, 2017

@bob @lnxw48a1 @lohang In this case, Twitter's system seems automated, like their normal reporting, so it would be trivially easy for a bad actor to game for their advantage, and even if Twitter agrees the report is specious (unlikely), they still have damaged your twitter account and suppressed the tweet in the intervening time. The same thing happens on YouTube.

Lohan G at gnusocial.no May 1, 2017

@maiyannah @bob @lnxw48a1 This email is not automated. It mentions the parties that handle the copyright case (Copyright Integrity International, Bangalore / copyrightintegrity.com ) , and several tweets posted by different users, and how they supposedly violate copyrights of the content owner. At the end of the email they have included the entire DMCA takedown notice.

Klaus Jónsson Zimmermann Apr 29, 2017

@lohang damn, turns out that Big Brother really is watching you :( #censorship