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DMCA Takedown Notice for Popcorn Time and Time4Popcorn

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Re: DMCA Takedown Notice for Popcorn Time and Time4Popcorn

#11

Post by maxerickson »

nthitz wrote: post #7

Github Terms state: "You may not use the Service for any illegal or unauthorized purpose. You must not, in the use of the Service, violate any laws in your jurisdiction (including but not limited to copyright or trademark laws)." which seems a bit wishy washy. The use of Github to host code doesn't seem to be violating any laws. The execution of the code does however. Splitting hairs no doubt, but it doesn't seem tha…

They also say We may, but have no obligation to, remove Content and Accounts containing Content that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, pornographic, obscene or otherwise objectionable or violates any party's intellectual property or these Terms of Service.

Which is a long winded "If we don't want to host something we won't."

Re: DMCA Takedown Notice for Popcorn Time and Time4Popcorn

#13

Post by hubbub »

chc wrote: post #2

Is it really even news when an app essentially dedicated to copyright infringement is claimed to violate copyright laws? Popcorn Time isn't a general-purpose app that happened to be used for copyright-infringing purposes sometimes. It was designed to help people infringe copyrights by making it as easy as possible.

What's news is that this isn't how the DMCA is supposed to work. It's supposed to apply to copyrighted material. Not material which when downloaded and run will connect to a P2P network and attempt to download material, which has some probability of being infringing.

This case actually seems relatively flimsy; and as the DMCA notice admits, it hinges on a previous ruling that

    “the distribution of a product can itself give rise to liability where evidence shows that the distributor intended and encouraged the product to be used to infringe”
Unfortunately there's no way this notice will be challenged in court, so we probably won't find out if it was legally valid or not.

Re: DMCA Takedown Notice for Popcorn Time and Time4Popcorn

#14

Post by sarahj »

> Attached as Exhibit A is a series of screenshots taken from within the applications of each Project that includes images of copyrighted works available through the Projects. The representative titles shown in Exhibit A consist of only some of the motion pictures and television programs that are owned or controlled by the MPAA Member Studios and that are being infringed via the Projects. Exhibit A is provided as a representative sample of the infringements being committed as a result of the operation of the Projects and to demonstrate the readily apparent nature of the massive infringement occurring via the Projects.

So by this logic...the source code for any web browser, torrent client, media player etc. etc. should be subject to these notices because they can be used to infringe copyright?

After all, through any of those applications, I can take a series of actions which could infringe copyright....

Maybe we can skirt by with the general purpose nature of the above tools...so what about tools used to facilitate penetration testing (which can also be used for computer crime) - should we get rid of that source code too?

I don't know the architecture of popcorn time, but if they published a generalized application which when given a configuration file (sources of infringing content etc.) would allow copyright infringement should we ban both? Or just the configuration file (which does not in itself infringe copyright)??

Making distinctions like this is dangerous, and allowing speech to be suppressed by corporate interests is a worrying trend.

Re: DMCA Takedown Notice for Popcorn Time and Time4Popcorn

#15

Post by saganus »

trillcode wrote: post #9

Wasn't popcorn time just a "tool" ? The tool is not infringing on copyrights until the user actually runs the application.

Maybe Github does not want to have to deal with the fallout of not complying, even if the DMCA notice is not technically correct (i.e. the tool is not infringing anything, it's the use of the tool that allows you to do so).

I would rather fight the takedown notice, as this will potentially turn into a slippery slope (moreso than now), but then again i don't own Github.

So basically I'm guessing it's a matter of "cost of dealing with this" > "cost of kicking popcorn project out of github", no?

Re: DMCA Takedown Notice for Popcorn Time and Time4Popcorn

#16

Post by illektr1k »

nvk wrote: post #12

It's time to decentralize source repositories.

If only git were good at that already...

>> Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency

Re: DMCA Takedown Notice for Popcorn Time and Time4Popcorn

#17

Post by mtrpcic »

nvk wrote: post #12

It's time to decentralize source repositories.

The funny thing is that git wasn't built to have a centralized host, but that was the paradigm people were used to, and Github was so convenient that the paradigm stuck around. There's no reason we couldn't just `git remote add backup ` to have a secondary host.

Re: DMCA Takedown Notice for Popcorn Time and Time4Popcorn

#20

Post by vlunkr »

sarahj wrote: post #14

> Attached as Exhibit A is a series of screenshots taken from within the applications of each Project that includes images of copyrighted works available through the Projects. The representative titles shown in Exhibit A consist of only some of the motion pictures and television programs that are owned or controlled by the MPAA Member Studios and that are being infringed via the Projects. Exhibit A is provided as a r…

I can't say where the line is, but popcorn time seems to be in a different category than torrent clients, etc. in that popcorn time just gives you a list of copyright protected movies in its interface. With a torrent, you have to get a seed file elsewhere which could potentially be anything.

It could be dangerous though, to start banning tools like this without defining a difference. That's why this is troubling, because in this case, a DCMA makes no sense but they did it anyway.

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