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Google Takes No Action for 99.2% of Copyright Notices Targeting Internet ArchiveAndy Maxwell, 23 Jul 08:26 PM The Internet Archive (IA) is a massive

Google Takes No Action for 99.2% of Copyright Notices Targeting Internet Archive Andy Maxwell, 23 Jul 08:26 PM The Internet Archive (IA) is a massive content resource by any metric. In addition to its Wayback Machine that archives 330 billion web pages, IA operates a huge media repository too. According to the site's data, it currently offers 20 million books and texts, 4.5 million audio recordings (including 180,000 live concerts), 4 million videos, (including 1.6 million Television News programs), 3 million images and 200,000 software programs. Internet Archive can't proactively police every piece of content that ends up on its servers (anyone can upload with a free account) so with four million unique IP addresses accessing the site every day, some infringement is bound to take place. Those complaints are dealt with via the platform's abuse team and its registered DMCA agent but some copyright holders go to Google instead, hoping the search giant delists IA URLs from its indexes. Filing Complaints with Google is Probably a Waste of Time According to the latest data made available by Google, the Archive.org domain has had 10,840 delisting requests made against it, covering 100,075 URLs. Given the scale of the Internet Archive, this isn't particularly surprising but Google's overall response is interesting. As the image below shows, in the vast and overwhelming majority of cases, Google takes absolutely no action in response to 99.2% of the complaints it receives, clearly marking them with "no action taken". Google's data further reveals that in addition to the 99.2%, a further 0.6% of complaints are rejected as being duplicate requests. Currently a couple of handfuls of complaints are marked as pending meaning that of all complaints, just 0.1% result in content being delisted. So Are All Complaints Bogus Then? This, of course, is the million-dollar question. Even with the massive resources at its disposal, not even Google is in a position to check every single complaint for validity. However, most notices sent to the company are available on the Lumen Database which reveals complaints being sent by industry giants including Springer Nature, Viacom, Macmillan, RIAA, Warner Bros., SiriusXM, Adobe, Paramount, Disney and a couple of hundred others. Tackling some of the bigger names and recent senders, we can see that a complaint sent by Sirius XM in June targeted what appears to be hundreds of episodes of the Howard Stern Show, none of which were removed by Google and remain on the Internet Archive today. Interestingly, however, the same notice demanded that episodes of the same show indexed by torrent site MagnetDL should be removed too. According to Google's data, these were all processed, with 43 episodes/links delisted and others marked up as duplicate requests. This tends to suggest that Google treats certain categories of sites differently. A complaint sent late May by Macmillan reveals the publisher trying to have links to eBooks taken down. However, the links – while still live on the Internet Archive – reveal only limited previews of books that must be loaned from the Archive as part of its controversial program that currently has publishers up in arms. None were delisted by Google. No Shortage of Screw-Ups in DMCA Notices Sent to Google Another notice sent in May, this time by Disney, targets hundreds of URLs on other sites but just three on the Internet Archive. Unfortunately, however, all three complaints are erroneous. The first, which attempts to take down copies of the movie 'Stuber', actually asks for the removal of the movie's classification document. The second, in an effort to remove a copy of an episode of 'American Horror Story', actually targets a podcast talking about the show. The third request makes a similar error. Another notice, again sent by Disney, seeks to remove copies of the movie 'Tolkien' but again misidentified a podcast and an image of some Tolkien-related icons. Plenty of Legitmate Claims Too During the dive into the archives it was clear to see that, at least in some cases, copyright holders must've also contacted IA directly with duplicate takedown notices. When following complained-about links to the site, some showed the following message: "This item is no longer available. Items may be taken down for various reasons, including by decision of the uploader or due to a violation of our Terms of Use." This would account for Google taking no action in relevant cases. However, there are some cases where contentious content has stayed up, music tracks by NWA/Eazy-E and anti-virus software published by Avast, to give just two examples. Overall, however, it does seem rather pointless sending complaints about the Internet Archive to Google as its own stats reveal that in only a tiny minority of cases does it ever act on them. Copyright holders would be better off sending complaints directly to the site itself but only if they target the correct content which is not always the case. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Charter Demands More Evidence from Anti-Piracy Tracking Company Ernesto Van der Sar, 23 Jul 11:34 AM Internet provider Charter Communications is one of several companies being sued for turning a blind eye to pirating subscribers. These lawsuits, filed by dozens of major record labels and music companies, allege that Internet providers fail to terminate accounts of repeat infringers. This is no trivial matter, as a similar suit resulted in a billion-dollar damages verdict against Cox late last year. This is a fate rival ISP Charter hopes to avoid so the company is doing all it can to refute the claims. That defense involves a thorough inspection of the evidence. In this case, that is heavily based on the copyright infringement notices that were sent by anti-piracy company MarkMonitor, which acted on behalf of the RIAA. $1.6 Billion Damages Claim These notices are the basis for a $1.6 billion damages claim currently hanging over Charter's head. To see what they're up against exactly, the ISP asked MarkMonitor to produce detailed evidence on its piracy notices, its tracking system, as well as communications it had with the RIAA. This request was subpoenaed earlier this year as part of the regular discovery process but Charter was not pleased with the response. "Rather than perform the promised reasonable search to respond to Charter's subpoena, MarkMonitor ultimately produced a scant 15 documents comprising 94 pages, and insists that it possesses virtually none of the requested material," Charter informs the court. This sentence comes from a motion to compel MarkMonitor to comply with Charter's subpoena. It was originally submitted to a California court but has now been transferred to the District of Colorado, to merge with the main case. Hundreds of Thousands of Missing Evidence Packages? Charter believes that MarkMonitor is holding information back, as it claims not to have information which it was contractually obligated to preserve. This seemingly includes "evidence packages" related to the copyright infringement notices that are at the core of the case. "Indeed, taken literally, MarkMonitor's denials that it possesses responsive evidence would mean that it lacks the very data the Plaintiffs' interrogatory responses indicate will be used to prove infringement," the ISP states. "For example, MarkMonitor claims it does not possess any of the following: Each infringement notice is supposed to be accompanied by an evidence package. While Plaintiffs claim that over 660,000 infringement notices were generated by Markonitor and sent to Charter, only 357,000 evidence packages have been produced. Where are the remaining 300,000 'evidence packages'?" Charter also wants to see the source code of MarkMonitor's anti-piracy tracking system. Among other things, it wants to know how this interacted with Audible Magic's music fingerprinting system to identify the allegedly-pirated music tracks. On top of that, the ISP is also missing responses to questions about the Copyright Alert System, which both the major labels and MarkMonitor were connected to. This is relevant, according to Charter, as this anti-piracy agreement didn't require ISPs to take drastic actions following repeated piracy warnings. MarkMonitor's Communications with the RIAA Finally, Charter notes that MarkMonitor should disclose its communications with the RIAA. This could be relevant for the case as well, especially when considering that the piracy tracking outfit apparently allowed the RIAA to send notices under a variety of 'accuracy levels.' Charter would like to know which accuracy level the RIAA picked, and why. "The MarkMonitor-RIAA contracts indicate that there were various options available, related to the level of accuracy in MarkMonitor's infringement detection. What level of accuracy was MarkMonitor directed to employ, and why?" Charter writes. "What was MarkMonitor told regarding the purpose of sending infringement notices, and the supposed efficacy of those notices? What did MarkMonitor tell the RIAA on these issues? These are all critical issues in the litigation, and MarkMonitor has provided no explanation why documents bearing on them would be protected from production." The ISP asks the court to compel MarkMonitor to hand over this information, as required by the subpoena. And if it doesn't have any of the requested information, it should explain how it was destroyed or lost. — A copy of the motion to compel compliance with the subpoena, which is now under review at the Colorado federal court, is available here (pdf) From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. ©2020 TorrentFreak | Office 21338 PO Box 4336 Manchester, North West M61 0BW United Kingdom Web Version   Preferences   Forward   Unsubscribe     Powered by Mad Mimi®A GoDaddy® company