Irony, thy name is DMCA

That the U.S.'s Digital Millennium Copyright Act is something of a mess is something that any YouTuber could probably attest to... and many have. Criminalizing acts as innocuous as making backups of media for your own use, and inviting all manner of systemic abuse by moneyed corporate interests, all while providing almost no additional protections for fair use, the DMCA would almost read like parody if clueless U.S. lawmakers hadn't passed it at the behest of the lobbyists of those same moneyed interests (and the moneyed corporate donors that they represented).

But this tidbit of news finally illustrates the absurdity of the DMCA in ways that nothing else ever could, that I could think of.

From The Beeb:

Film studio Warner Brothers has asked Google to remove its own website from search results, saying it violates copyright laws.

It also asked the search giant to remove links to legitimate movie streaming websites run by Amazon and Sky, as well as the film database IMDB.

The request was submitted on behalf of Warner Brothers by Vobile, a company that files hundreds of thousands of takedown requests every month.

[...]

The self-censorship was first spotted by news blog Torrent Freak, which said Vobile had made some "glaring errors".

In one request, Google was asked to remove links to the official websites for films such as Batman: The Dark Knight and The Matrix.

Licensed online movie portals such as Amazon and Sky Cinema were also reported for copyright infringement.

"Warner is inadvertently trying to make it harder for the public to find links to legitimate content, which runs counter to its intentions," said Ernesto van der Sar, from Torrent Freak.

[...]

Companies such as Vobile typically work on behalf of major film studios, reporting illegally uploaded copies of movies and television programmes.

Google's transparency report says Vobile has submitted more than 13 million links for removal.

It also reveals other potential mistakes - such as film studio Lionsgate reporting a copy of London Has Fallen found on the Microsoft download store.

"Unfortunately these kind of errors are very common," said Mr Van der Sar.

Warner Brothers has yet to comment, but really, what can they say? The DMCA, a law they lobbied hard to get, which tramples the free expression rights of U.S. residents on a regular basis, and whose features the RIAA and MPAA are working hard to see adopted globally through such vehicles as the Trans Pacific Partnership, is such a mess that a company as big as Warner Bros. is issuing automated DMCA takedowns against itself. We're through the looking glass here, people.

The DMCA needs serious revision, as do similar laws already passed in the UK, EU, and elsewhere, and I think that's going to have to start with at least one major movie studio admitting that they got it completely wrong when pushing for the law's passage in the first place. It's not an enviable role, by any means, so kudos to Warner Bros. for stepping up, and nominating themselves in such hilarious fashion.

</sarcasm>

EFF attacks DCMA

Now that actual government regulators in France are tackling Microsoft, the Change.org petition asking the Electronic Frontier Foundation to investigate is obviously irrelevant, so I don't mind at all that the EFF is turning to other things... like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

From Boing Boing:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just filed a lawsuit that challenges the Constitutionality of Section 1201 of the DMCA, the "Digital Rights Management" provision of the law, a notoriously overbroad law that bans activities that bypass or weaken copyright access-control systems, including reconfiguring software-enabled devices (making sure your IoT light-socket will accept third-party lightbulbs; tapping into diagnostic info in your car or tractor to allow an independent party to repair it) and reporting security vulnerabilities in these devices.

EFF is representing two clients in its lawsuit: Andrew "bunnie" Huang, a legendary hardware hacker whose NeTV product lets users put overlays on DRM-restricted digital video signals; and Matthew Green, a heavyweight security researcher at Johns Hopkins who has an NSF grant to investigate medical record systems and whose research plans encompass the security of industrial firewalls and finance-industry "black boxes" used to manage the cryptographic security of billions of financial transactions every day.

[...]

The EFF's complaint, filed minutes ago with the US District Court, is as clear and comprehensible an example of legal writing as you could ask for. It builds on two recent Supreme Court precedents (Golan and Eldred), in which the Supremes stated that the only way to reconcile free speech with copyright's ability to restrict who may utter certain words and expressions is fair use and other exemptions to copyright, which means that laws that don't take fair use into account fail to pass constitutional muster.  

Anyone who spends time watching videos on YouTube is probably familiar with the DMCA woes of its content creators, including Channel Awesome's "Where's the Fair Use?" campaign, and The Jimquisition's "Copyright Deadlock" sort-of-solution to the problem:

 

Concerns about the DMCA's international propagation is also a big part of why people like Michael Geist oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership:

Part of the trouble with the TPP is the remarkable lack of balance within the intellectual property chapter. For example, early drafts of the agreement that featured provisions emphasizing balance and the public domain were opposed by the U.S. and ultimately removed. The lack of balance is also evident in how new rights are treated as mandatory requirements, but user-focused provisions are typically just optional. The same is true with how the TPP addresses IP treaties: countries are required to ratify or accede to as many as nine international IP treaties, but the Marrakesh Treaty for the Visually Impaired, the only treaty concerned with user rights, is buried in a footnote and is not required. The lack of balance is also found in specific substantive provisions. For example, the border measures rules do not include the safeguards contained in Canadian law.

Considering how far-reaching, how utterly stifling, and how easily-abused the DCMA has proven to be, it's really, really heartening to see someone taking the damn thing on. Go get, 'em, EFF!

There's a lot more to find Cory Doctorow's Boing Boing piece, including links to statements from both Huang and Green, and a link to an even more detailed analysis that Doctorow did for the Guardian.