Another Day, Another Anomaly: Paramount Issues DMCA Takedown On Ubuntu Linux Torrent

from the but-stopping-copyright-infringement-is-easy? dept

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The legacy copyright industries keep insisting that it's "easy" to recognize when something is infringing and thus it's "easy" to stop copyright infringement. They're very, very wrong on both counts for a variety of reasons. We could go into the details for why, but it's easier to just let them show us themselves. Not too long ago we wrote about Warner Bros. issuing DMCA takedown notices on its own sites (and also Amazon and IMDB links for its movies), and now TorrentFreak alerts us to Paramount issuing a DMCA takedown on a torrent of Ubuntu , the popular version of Linux that many people use all the time.It's kind of a weird request, and it's not at all clear why it's included in this takedown notice , which is for a variety of movies. In the section on the movie, Paramount (filed by notoriously clueless IP Echelon), it includes a link to a torrent of an Ubuntu iso.So, once again, we have a major Hollywood entertainment entity -- which has been insisting for years that Google and others should "just know" when something is infringing and take it down and block all future infringements -- who can't even properly identify the content that it's claiming to hold the copyright over. And, again, copyright is context specific, meaning that the absolute best party to understand if there's infringement is the copyright holder, rather than some random third party. But in just a week or so, we've seen examples of how two of the biggest studios in Hollywood can't even figure out their own takedown notices properly. How can they possibly expect others to do so for them -- and why should we trust them when they ask for a "notice and staydown" system that will inevitably take down (and keep down) tons of non-infringing material?

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, false takedowns, linux, takedowns, torrents, ubuntu

Companies: paramount