This is clear DMCA abuse, the popcorn time repository itself does not contain copyrighted content. This is why using a centralized closed source service managed by a tech conglomerate as the “hub” of our open source movement might not always be for the best
I’m generally skeptical of these claims as the legal system typically doesn’t look super fondly on technically-correct “I’m not touching you” arguments. So has this been litigated sufficiently to state this with such conviction? I’m not sufficiently familiar to know.
There is no such thing as a DMCA notice for contributory copyright infringement. A DMCA take down notice describes a particular resource that the claimant claims to be their intellectual property.
It is a straightforward I own foo. Using it to take down a tool that helps people access foo is perjury. It's just that we will actually jail people for committing the kind of crimes poor people commit but we refuse to prosecute the crimes rich people commit.
It's entirely possible that in the scope of another legal action the parties behind popcorn time might lose out THAT unlike this is the actually complex question.
This is pretty straightforward. You can only take down popcorn time if you can claim to own it thus its just the kind of crime we allow rich people to perpetrate upon poor people.
Even if Popcorntime was considered functionally the same as Grokster, GitHub certainly isn't. In order for GitHub to be held liable, not only would the DMCA have to stretch to Grokster like tools but even further to anyone who provides any service to such a team building such a tool.
So any Patreon account or Slack account a Popcorntime team uses. I imagine this is what The Motion Picture Association is aiming for.
And as you hint, the difference between the court's regard for ordinary people vs powerful organizations is especially stark here. Copyright infringement and any tool that might be used for it is mightily prohibited while car theft tools like the Slim Jim are still manufactured and easily available in stores. But only tools made by less powerful groups like Popcorntime and Grokster, as far back as VCRs, those tools produced by large corporations remain legal.
SCOTUS has ruled that creating a program who's purpose is to circumvent copyright, is a violation.
> Held: One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, going beyond mere distribution with knowledge of third-party action, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device’s lawful uses.
SCOTUS has ruled that creating a program who's purpose is to circumvent copyright, is a violation.
This doesn't contradict the claim you're responding to. It may well be that Popcorn Time is illegal by way of contributing to copyright abuse, as you claim.
But that doesn't make a DMCA claim the correct tool for taking it down. As was said earlier, a DMCA claim specifically asserts ownership of the IP in question, and that is clearly not applicable here.
So sure, there's probably some tool that could be used to get it removed, but DMCA is not it. I'd guess they'd need some kind of more general cease and desist.
That's because Github doesn't have a different message for non-DMCA threats of lawsuits. If you look at one of the other top-level comments, you'll see that they didn't actually get a DMCA takedown - but a threatening lawyers letter.
> A DMCA take down notice describes a particular resource that the claimant claims to be their intellectual property.
According to the text of the relevant statute (17 U.S.C. 512c), the purpose of the notification is to inform GitHub of “facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent” (1.A.ii), and the notice should include, among other things, “A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by ... the law” (3.A.v). The notice provides the Grokster verdict as evidence for their good-faith belief that distributing the source code isn’t allowed by copyright law.
I won’t get into whether or not Grokster should apply, as I haven’t read it and am not a lawyer. But, on the face of things, this seems like one kind of scenario envisioned by the drafters of the statute. That’s ultimately a good thing, because otherwise GitHub would not be eligible for 512(c)’s immunity in this or similar cases, and would need to keep an army of lawyers on staff to evaluate the copyright status of all the content that goes through thir systems.
> The notice provides the Grokster verdict as evidence for their good-faith belief that distributing the source code isn’t allowed by copyright law.
Subsection c.1.A has very little to do with takedown notices. (c.1.C is the portion of c.1 that does.)
The only part of the law that defines what a notice is supposed to include is 512.c.3.A. None of the six required elements listed by that subsection includes providing your legal theory. A DMCA takedown notice is only meant to be used to assert "hey, that's mine!": c.3.A.ii is where you identify what you own, and c.3.A.iii is where you point to it on someone else's server.
If you don't own it, you cannot file a DMCA takedown over it, because you won't be able to fulfill c.3.A.ii.
c.1.C describes the effect of a notice in essentially the same terms as c.1.A.iii, which describe how to maintain immunity generally when informed of the circumstances in the other two clauses of c.1.A .
My (possibly incorrect) interpretation of this is that notices of the form described in c.3 represent a sufficient de jure form of providing the information in c.1.A.iii that would void immunity if not acted upon. Other means of providing this information to the service provider also require them to act, but will need to be examined on a case-by-case basis in court.
Also note that the infringed and infringing material are to be specified separately (c.3.a.ii,iii). In this case, the infringed material is a list of movies owned by the claimant that are distributed via PopcornTime. The infringing material is the PopcornTime software itself.
Though they needn’t cite anything to justify their “good-faith belief” that the software itself is in violation of copyright law wrt. their IP, nothing prevents such a statement being present, either.
> notices of the form described in c.3 represent a sufficient de jure form of providing the information in c.1.A.iii that would void immunity if not acted upon.
A deficient notice attempting to trigger c.1.C doesn't get to use c.1.A as a fallback. This is guaranteed by c.3.B:
> [...] a notification from a copyright owner or from a person authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner that fails to comply substantially with the provisions of subparagraph (A) shall not be considered under paragraph (1)(A) in determining whether a service provider has actual knowledge or is aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent.
Additionally, you say:
> Also note that the infringed and infringing material are to be specified separately (c.3.a.ii,iii). In this case, the infringed material is a list of movies owned by the claimant that are distributed via PopcornTime. The infringing material is the PopcornTime software itself.
Contributory liability for infringement is not the same as the infringement itself. PopcornTime software does not include any of the movies (or portions thereof) owned by the studios complaining. PopcornTime software itself is not an infringing work on those movie copyrights. It is a tool intended to be used to commit infringement, so they will get in trouble when this goes to court, but it's a different kind of trouble from direct infringement.
Consider this thought experiment: PopcornTime points users to a site that lists torrents of movies. If that's the same thing as infringing on the movie copyright itself, then PopcornTime infringes on every movie listed on that site, provided a PopcornTime user has at some point actually followed the links. Now let's assume PopcornTime development halts, but Hollywood carries on and a new movie is added to the site PopcornTime links to. Now PopcornTime is infringing on another copyright despite the PopcornTime software work not changing, and that movie copyright actually post-dates PopcornTime.
Contributory infringement is, I assume, one category of “infringing activity” that is covered by the safe-harbor provisions. As the purpose of these provisions is to allow service providers to operate legally without having to evaluate the legitimacy of copyright claims, it would make sense.
If that’s the case, then a notice based on a theory of contributory infringement should be legitimate. If it isn’t, service providers are potentially liable for contributory infringement of which they were not aware, and will thus need to preemtively evaluate content they are hosting to detect that situation.
I don't think your analysis is correct. Contributory infringement is not itself infringement, it is enabling someone else's possible infringement.
Two asides: iTunes is a contributory infringer in the UK as format shifting is not allowed here.
A similar situation to that you describe does arise in Germany, IIRC. The law was changed (last year?) to make hosting of software that is intended for criminal activity to be a crime itself.
There was a flurry of interest at the time, and I'm not sure if the German government followed through. But, that would make GitHub potentially liable for hosting "nefarious" applications (and with no safe harbour arrangements, AFAIR).
Copyright infringement is defined by statute thus:
> Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 122 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a), or who imports copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602, is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author, as the case may be.
At least one of the following exclusive rights have to be violated:
> (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
> (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
> (3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
> (4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
> (5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
> (6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
>[...] One infringes contributorily by intentionally inducing or encouraging direct infringement, and infringes vicariously by profiting from direct infringement while declining to exercise the right to stop or limit it. Although “[t]he Copyright Act does not expressly render anyone liable for [another’s] infringement,” Sony, 464 U.S., at 434, these secondary liability doctrines emerged from common law principles and are well established in the law
So I don't think it is justified to say that contributory infringement is covered by the statutory DMCA takedown notice procedure, and if it is justified, the source would be a court precedent from the past 15 years which we haven't found yet.
Back to the question of the validity of this particular DMCA takedown notice: None of the works or actions found at the GitHub URLs in the complaint were movies. Nobody was performing a movie at the GitHub URL for a JS source code file. None of those files were a reproduction of a movie, in whole or in part. The only action happening at those particular URLs was public display and distribution of files, and the thing being publicly displayed at each of those URLs was JS source code, which is not a match for the works that the studios claimed ownership of. This DMCA complaint does not provide "information reasonably sufficient to permit" GitHub to find movie piracy on GitHub, unless the studio wants to claim that the source code is a rip-off inspired by something out of a movie. But if that were the case, they could have been a lot more specific about which movie.
GitHub is probably safe regardless. But the studios will only win a lawsuit by making a substantially different claim from the claim that the JS code is infringing on multiple movies.
> This DMCA complaint does not provide "information reasonably sufficient to permit" GitHub to find movie piracy on GitHub
The whole clause reads "Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material."
The material that the claimant alleges is in violation of copyright law is clearly identified in a way that allows GitHub to locate it. The theory under which it is in violation may be dubious, but it's not GitHub's responsibility to evaluate whether this claim has any merit -- that's the court's job.
It’s not an insurmountable issue, but you need to avoid hosting anything derived from copyrighted works. I would suggest public keys that can be used to verify some other repository is legit. Then running a distributed network those signed repository’s are passed around.
Hashes of copywrited works are derivative works and therefore still subject to the DMCA. Much like how down sampling 4K content to 1080 is irrelevant for DMCA takedown notices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work
Hashing and down sampling cannot possibly be covered for similar reason. A down sampled movie is still a movie, an hash cannot possibly be used to obtain anything of the copyrighted content.
You would need to make the argument that the hash of the movie was somehow relevant to the original content of what made the movie that movie.
It’s not a question of being the same thing. If you use a single frame from a movie in a painting that’s still a derivative work.
It’s not about format, it’s a question of the source of originality. Hashes are a mechanical transformation without creative input, they use the entire work, and are frankly as close to the definition of derivative work as it gets.
Normally the way around this is a fair use exception, but I doubt that applies here.
I disagree on this definition of derivative. A still frame is still clearly part of the movie, on the other hand if I buy an harry potter book, scan it by hand, print it on paper then burn the print and sell the ashes, that is clearly not a derivative work.
A derivative work need to use the copyrighted work for what it is.
The hash of a movie is no different that the weight of a printed book or its number of pages, it would be absurd for an author to file a DMCA takedown against all books that weight the same amount of milligrams.
> on the other hand if I buy an harry potter book, scan it by hand, print it on paper then burn the print and sell the ashes, that is clearly not a derivative work.
For this analogy, you have to talk not about selling the ashes, but about asserting copyright of your own on those ashes. Your printout of the book would unquestionably be covered by the original author's copyright. The fire would certainly be judged to have made your pile of ashes a transformative use, and any remaining legible letters in your pile of ashes would be in every way de minimus, and you haven't hurt the market for the original book, so you have an extremely safe fair use defense.
Then a more similar case. I make a oil painting of the weight in milligrams of the book (either using or not the ashes in the process).
My point is that the object of the copyright is neither the physical book nor the bitstream in which the movie is encoded, but the book itself and the movie itself.
For example writing a fanfiction of a movie is not transformative because the plot, story, setting, and characters are usually all copyrighted and a fanfiction (generally) use them as-is.
The physical medium is subject to copyright to the extent it can act as a medium for the copyrighted work.
I am not saying that it is legal to sell those first ashes as a product if marketed with the recipe. So I am also not arguing that hosting hashes of movies with the purpose of facilitating piracy is legal (I actually think it is not), but I do not think the reason has anything to do with it being transformative of not.
(I just now realize that ashes/hashes looked like the set up for a pun... it was actually purely coincidental)
Fanfiction of Calvin and Hobs with Calvin the 45 year old parent of an 8 year old girl could easily be transformative without reusing any plot elements. However, if 10 people are all going to end up with the same Hash from the same bit stream you can’t argue it’s a creative endeavor. It’s also not a tiny excerpt as changing even a single bit of the work out result in a different hash. Thus the size of the hash is irrelevant, it’s still copying from the full work.
The only possibility I see is to argue the hash as a simple fact without copyright protection, But, the contents of a book is also a piece of factual information yet copyright is not irrelevant.
PS: As much as you want to use burning as an analogy, a burned book can’t be used to verify a download of the original work where popcorn time’s hashes can.
The hash matches an infinite subset of infinite works. The same thing can glibly be said of any digital representation but the difference is that an algorithm exists to turn the number represented by the flac file back into sound that human beings can enjoy. None such exists for a hash it can never be turned back into the original nor even a piece of same.
Copyright isn't about mathematical derivatives its about protecting the licensed distributor as the sole source of the work. A single screen of a movie or a single page at least is part of the work. Even the first letter of the first word of a book represents a larger portion of the work. It's one nothingth of the work because you can't even derive that first letter from it. Judges are probably substantially interested in the purpose of the law. In math not so much.
I have nothing against arguing that hosting hashes is illegal. It is not that far from facilitating piracy. What I am quite sure is that the hash itself is not covered by copyright.
If you can prove that I am hosting a file whose hash is equal to the hash of a mp4 file that encodes your movie then you can (probabilistically) prove that I am hosting that same file. This is also exactly how bittorrent authentication work if I remember correctly. (my only defense would be to exhibit a non-your-movie- file that still has the same hash)
But this would be no different (or at least comparable) than offering an easy to use list of download links. It would still have nothing to do with whether those links/hashes are derivative or not.
A hash won't violate copyright based on two tests:
1. Transformative use. The uses of e.g. an MD5 hash of a movie file are not similar in any way to the uses of the movie itself, however represented.
2. Market substitution. The availability of hashes cannot possibly damage the commercial market for the movie. Nobody who wanted the movie is going to content themselves with the hashcode instead.
So hashes are always going to be in the clear. To the extent that Popcorn Time violates copyright by providing lists of hashes, that is because of a consideration of the Popcorn Time ecosystem generally, not because the hashes are violations in themselves. They aren't.
I don't think we're disagreeing on that point. All I'm saying is that the nature of the hash as being derived from the movie file is irrelevant. If people organized movie torrenting by assigning version 4 UUIDs to movie files, then Popcorn Time would infringe just as much by publishing those UUIDs as it does by publishing hashes. There's no "derivative work" argument being made on either side. If there was, the pro-Popcorn-Time side would win.
Is a list of movie titles and durations also copyright infringement? They require the entire work to determine, obtaining the lengths is a mechanical process with no creative input.
IANAL, but this comes close to the API/phone book/map arguments where you can copyright a specific expression (a specific map, phone book, with a curated selection) but the facts themselves are just that, facts, and not copyrightable.
The hash is not the movie, cannot be transformed into the movie. You can search it on your favourite piracy site to find the movie, but a similar functionality could easily exist for title + length
Purely factional information is not offered copyright protection. However, the specific contents of a book is also a fact yet copyright is still valid. That might seem like a contradiction, but the law is interpreted by humans who make judgement calls.
Use of a hash by a database to index files is likely fair use, but a torrent site aiming to promote copyright infringement is a different argument.
PS: The Harry Potter movies also can’t be transformed back into the books, but they are clearly a derivative work.
A comedy set in South America where off screen they hear someone say obliviate and they start talking to someone who can’t remember anything is still a derivative work. Fair uses may apply or it might not, but it’s not simply a question of how much of the original is reproduced, but where information comes from.
I don't think you can claim to own a plot and a hash is less than a skit or a plot point. Infinitely less in fact because whereas even a single character on a page is some small fraction of the work a hash is a nothingth of the work. It can not be used to reproduce nothing. It is data about the work.
Someone already came up with the correct analog. Its metadata like the ISBN or number of pages. Both datum are in fact derived from the actual work but nobody argues that the number of pages is a derivative of the work.
You can't really talk about legal implications and pretend that intent doesn't matter at all. It's rarely a big part of the equation but it's never completely absent.
Say I hash your movie and my hash is modulo 16. Do you now own the number that happens to come out? How can you prove that it was your movie that generated the hash and not some other piece of data?
Copyright is simply a question of source. Unlike patents, it’s very possible for two independent people to come up with the exact same sentence and those people to independently own copyrights to the exact same words. Proving independent creation may be difficult, but it’s still possible.
Similarly, proving where something comes from can be difficult, but let’s not pretend people are independently coming up with 100’s of bit hashes.
PS: As to ownership, both the creator of a derivative work and the creator of the original source have specific rights which in theory expire at different times. Fair use exceptions can also supersede those rights.
> Unlike patents, it’s very possible for two independent people to come up with the exact same sentence and those people to independently own copyrights to the exact same words. Proving independent creation may be difficult, but it’s still possible.
In cases where this is possible, it's often not possible to hold a copyright over the phrase for reasons of lack of creativity. The main difficulty isn't proving independent creation, it's proving that a third party didn't also come up with the phrase independently.
> Copyright is simply a question of source. Unlike patents, it’s very possible for two independent people to come up with the exact same sentence and those people to independently own copyrights to the exact same words.
if a hash is a derivative work because it is based on the original work, what hope is there that a copying a function call from an API is not a derivative work?
Maybe someone could make a clean room version of the hash.
People have also successfully gotten videos taken down from youtube by claiming copyright to bird noises that doesn't mean anyone owns bird sounds.
It's understandable for Microsoft to follow the DMCA notice and take down procedure but none of this adds legal weight to a "creative" reading of the law. If something isn't clearly in line with the clear text of the law it means exactly jack shit without a actual court decision backing up the lawyers interesting interpretation of the text.
Its insidious because it probably wont be settled at all and the settled truth is that you can mostly abuse the DMCA to have anything taken down for 2 weeks unless they have the funds to sue you for it.
Future imitators will presumably be toolkits where you plug in your own "channels" and will be promoted as tools for people create their own youtube competitors.
With a bit of work you could probably have actual non infringing users for example a provider of tech or how to videos with a more generous sharing arrangement compared to youtube.
The law defines whether a document qualifies as a DMCA takedown notice, not the manner in which the document is being used. Somebody other than a court declaring a document to be a DMCA takedown notice doesn't make that true.
> You can only take down popcorn time if you can claim to own it thus its just the kind of crime we allow rich people to perpetrate upon poor people.
In the US, the DMCA makes a criminal offense to circumvent access control.
As with many matters, the law isn't necessarily black and white (coincidentally, today was the first time the SCOTUS heard a arguments via teleconference--that audio was streamed live, and the subject was whether or not the PTO could block a trademark on Booking.com), and it would be up to challenge in court.
I suspect that whether an open source repository that allows anyone with technical know-how to build software to partake in copyright infringement--is subject to DMCA, would be a matter for the courts to decide.
I could see one argument--plans to create a 3d printed gun are controlled, and a federal court has ruled those plans cannot be put online.
> In the US, the DMCA makes a criminal offense to circumvent access control.
Correct. However:
1) The DMCA takedown process only applies to direct copyright violations, not to circumvention tools. Part of a properly formed takedown request is an affadavit that the content infringes upon the requester's copyright; the request in the OP is technically deficient, and GitHub made an error by honoring it.
2) PopcornTime is not a circumvention tool. It does not itself bypass any forms of rights protection; it merely distributes content (which might have been obtained through the use of circumvention tools, but that's besides the point).
> 1) The DMCA takedown process only applies to direct copyright violations, not to circumvention tools.
Not according to this:
Moreover, the Project in question hosts software that is distributed and used to infringe on the MPA Member Studios’ copyrights. See Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster Ltd., 545 U.S. 913, 940 n.13 (2005) (“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”).
Hence, my point that it's an argument for the courts.
I’m pretty sure what you are quoting is something else entirely, not a DMCA Takedown Notice.
There is perhaps no argument that PopcornTime is committing contributory copyright infringement. The point is you can’t use DMCA Takedown Notices on the source code of a contributory tool.
The form that must be completed as part of a takedown notice does not have a box for “this is a tool which contributes to infringing my copyright”. The box you must check is “this is my copyrighted work and I don’t want it posted at this address”.
My interpretation was whomever filed the takedown notice contemplated your argument and proactively stated (paraphrased) "Based on case law, you can be held liable simply by distributing a product, if that product is clearly used to violate copyright law".
The notice also referenced Githubs terms of service which prohibit using a github repos for copyright infringement.
Is hosting a source code repo "distribution" of a product?
Did whomever filed the DMCA, not have a valid basis for doing so (the argument in this thread)?
By showing thumbnails of pirated movies a copyright violation?
By loading content from "pirated sites" facilitate copyright violations?
My pov is the answers to those questions are not simple, and thus would need legal clarification.
In the interim, Github seems to be picking a side of minimizing liability.
The point the person arguing with you is making, is that you'd actually have to sue for this kind of infringement, not use a DMCA takedown notice for it. The suit would like be valid! But that doesn't mean that a DMCA takedown notice upon the same 'premise' is valid. DMCA takedown notices are a sort of pre-trial motion, used only for a very specific "obvious" kind of infringement, to take it down in advance of suit. For everything else, you have to actually sue—and actually win—in order to get something taken down.
As well, DMCA takedown notices are only supposed to act to take down the relevant content, in the case where the recipient of the notice (i.e. the user of the hosting provider) doesn't respond/contest the notice. The spirit of this is that the takedown notice is only supposed to apply where there is no doubt, no argument, around the copyright-infringing status of the work. If anyone has doubts—the user receiving the claim, the hosting provider themselves, etc.—then legal due process is required, rather than summary judgement.
> Are companies required to adhere to a DMCA notice, or is that just policy to avoid litigation?
By law, if a service provider doesn’t know that material they’re hosting on behalf of someone else is infringing, then they’re not liable for any copyright violations in that content. The notice process exists to inform them of that fact, and if they continue to host the material, they’re then liable for it.
The law also protects the provider from complaints by the original uploader about taking down content pursuant to a DMCA notice; that’s the counter-notices you’ll sometimes hear people mentioning.
Overall, the law is intended to let service providers stay clear of copyright disputes that involve their customers.
> The law also protects the provider from complaints by the original uploader about taking down content pursuant to a DMCA notice; that’s the counter-notices you’ll sometimes hear people mentioning.
There's a separate bit that protects providers who take things down that are obviously infringing, even if nobody filed a takedown notice. But that safe harbor provision doesn't apply in cases where the provider botched their handling of the takedown notice procedure.
Neither of your points is correct. I'll start with your second point since the situation there is more clear.
> As well, DMCA takedown notices are only supposed to act to take down the relevant content, in the case where the recipient of the notice (i.e. the user of the hosting provider) doesn't respond/contest the notice.
Actually, according to the text of the DMCA [1], a provider is supposed to first "inform[] that person that it will replace the removed material or cease disabling access to it in 10 business days", then "replace[] the removed material and ceases disabling access to it not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days following receipt of the counter notice".
They have to keep the content down for two full weeks after receiving the counter-notice. Yes, this is blatantly unfair. But that's how it is.
In practice, providers sometimes restore access sooner, but they're forfeiting the safe harbor by doing so.
> DMCA takedown notices are a sort of pre-trial motion, used only for a very specific "obvious" kind of infringement, to take it down in advance of suit.
I'm not sure whether the question of whether contributory infringement can be the subject of a DMCA notice has ever been tested in court. If you know, feel free to enlighten me. But I doubt it has, since the issue would only come up in a 512(f) lawsuit accusing someone of a fraudulent takedown, and that clause has barely ever been used at all.
From the text of the DMCA, though, a DMCA notice is supposed to contain, among other things (emphasis added):
> (i) A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
> (iii) Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.
"An exclusive right that is allegedly infringed" is broad wording. And point 3 anticipates that the "material" might not be "infringing" but merely "the subject of infringing activity"; it's not clear to me what exactly the difference is, but this also suggests a broad scope of what kind of "activity" might be covered.
Admittedly, that's fairly weak textual evidence. But I don't see any language supporting the opposite position. At minimum the law is ambiguous. So unless it's been tested in court, I don't see how you can claim that DMCA notices are "used only for a very specific 'obvious' kind of infringement".
This seems irrelevant as the person you are replying to is claiming that the notice is by its nature invalid. Quoting the notice they claim is invalid does nothing to prove them wrong.
Addressing the content of the quote more directly, Grokster established that companies marketing file sharing applications have liability for infringement conducted by users. It did not establish that the companies' service providers can be sent DMCA notices, as that wasn't at issue. So that particular case doesn't help your point.
I think the problem here is that the people arguing have two opposing philosophies of the law -
the first is arguing the letter of the law makes the law, and that as this situation does not conform to the letter then the notice is invalid.
the second is arguing that, in the American system, it is actually the interpretation that makes the law, hence it will have to be determined by the courts whether the notice is actually invalid.
This second argument implies some things:
Until such a time as the notice can be voided it is valid, because a valid notice is one that can shut something down as this one has done. There is no such thing as invalidity without court interpretation if you can send a notice and have it always treated as valid until the interpretation is made.
The notice is in force, and there is nothing more valid than force in the American system. Perhaps in any real world system.
I might like to live in a world in which argument number 1 was correct, but I'm pretty sure I live in a world which argument number two more closely models.
I also think the courts will in the end interpret #2 as correct, for the reasons that #1 outlined, that the sending of the notice is a crime that the rich are allowed to commit on the poor.
I think in the end both posters and myself share an equal cynicism about American Law, but display our cynicism in different ways.
If the "valid until ruled otherwise" interpretation was correct, then why does the law have provisions that clearly anticipate that service providers may choose to decide for themselves that a purported DMCA takedown notice they have received is invalid? Those provisions offer significant protections to service providers, so the law seems to encourage rather than discourage providers to ignore deficient takedown notices based on their own judgement of how the notice measures up to the statutory requirements.
Plus, GitHub apparently rejected the first version of this notice that was sent back in March, and only acted upon this amended version. So they clearly feel that it is within their power to decide what is or isn't a valid notice without needing a court to rule on the matter to make it certain and official.
everyone has the ability to ignore any order they are given at any point for whatever reason but some times people obey orders because they think they will get shot if they don't.
the valid until ruled otherwise theory of things is of that spirit which animates such sayings as "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun"
I suppose I am not that aware of all the provisions available to anyone wanting to ignore a DMCA, but I was under the impression they were not that great given that everyone is always complaining that you ignore a DMCA at your own peril.
> everyone has the ability to ignore any order they are given at any point for whatever reason but some times people obey orders because they think they will get shot if they don't.
Why are you talking about orders? DMCA takedown notices aren't orders.
nor do you get shot for ignoring takedown notices, there are in language many things such as analogy, metaphor and so forth that people generally manage to follow.
Let me rephrase the first paragraph then -
anyone can ignore anything anytime for any reason whatsoever but in some cases that can lead to a bad outcome for the person doing the ignoring.
- note: I realize github is not a person, but I will use person in my example nonetheless.
The implication of the above is that sometimes people do not ignore things they could because they fear a bad outcome.
In the example using orders and shot, by making anything an order which is very strict, and bad outcome shot which is very bad indeed it should generally have the rhetorical effect of making the implication that ignoring the thing under discussion is more risky than otherwise and so a wise or cowardly person (take your pick) may choose not to ignore it.
> I might like to live in a world in which argument number 1 was correct, but I'm pretty sure I live in a world which argument number two more closely models.
In the US, this was contemplated by the founders when they setup three distinct branches of government.
Laws are written by humans, and may be prone to error, omission, corner cases, loopholes, and/or contradictions.
The court system seeks to not necessarily interpret the law, but apply it, only interpreting it as needed.
There are landmark cases that are considered "settled law" such as Roe v Wade that limited governments ability to prohibit abortions, or Brown v Board of Education which ended states segregation.
Compound that the body of law is living, changing as society does (the DMCA had no real need prior to the expansion of the internet), and it's clear there is a need for a branch to continue to apply the law.
The downside is we have a specific issue which really comes down to:
1) Is this specific use of DMCA takedone abuse
2) If this is abuse, is this indicative of a problem with DMCA takedown notices
3) What relief should be made provided
As you stated, my position is that this is not something to be litigated in comments on HN, as there is no clear answer as stated in the law as written.
>Grokster established that companies marketing file sharing applications have liability for infringement conducted by users. It did not establish that the companies' service providers can be sent DMCA notices
Sure it did. Those are the same thing under Section 512(c)(3)(A)(iii):
>Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity
The js files are the subject of infringing activity. Popcorn Time is "inducing infringement" as stated in the unanimous SCOTUS ruling against grokster.
> The js files are the subject of infringing activity. Popcorn Time is "inducing infringement" as stated in the unanimous SCOTUS ruling against grokster.
This only comes close to making sense if you are assuming an unreasonably vague definition of "infringing activity".
Copyright is defined in terms of actions that the author/owner has exclusive right to: reproduce, distribute, perform or display publicly, etc. Infringement is defined as doing one of those actions without permission. An infringing activity is reproducing, distributing, etc. something you don't have permission to reproduce or distribute. The subject of an infringing action is the thing being reproduced, distributed, etc.
The MPA's complaint identified JS code as the subject of infringing action, meaning at most that it's the creation or public display and distribution of the JS code at those URLs that the MPA is alleging to infringe their copyright in movies. This does not seem to have been understood by the author of the more rambling, irrelevant portions of that complaint. In order for that JS code's existence or display to be infringing on the copyright of the movies, it would have to be a derivative work of each of those movies—an indeterminate but large number of movies, for what was probably just a few kB of code. That's not the kind of accusation anyone is going to take seriously.
So as best as my non-lawyer brain can figure, one shouldn't use the DMCA to take down anything other that content that infringes the copyright of the person sending the DMCA notice. Since the attachments to the DMCA notice were redacted, we can't see what they're claiming as direct infringement.
However, I'm not sure it's Github's job to decide that. In theory PopcornTime can file a counternotice saying the do indeed own everything in the repo.
> However, I'm not sure it's Github's job to decide that. In theory PopcornTime can file a counternotice saying the do indeed own everything in the repo.
They'll probably do so, as it's not the first time this happen to them, I guess now they know pretty well how to deal with that kind of harassment.
Well, the DMCA is supposedly only for taking down things you actually have the copyright to. I don't think that most DMCA abuse ever gets litigated and a lot of it consists of spam letters claiming that X is infringing on their copyright of Y, even when this is absurd. Alas, the law only has perjury when their claim to own Y is false, not when their claim to own X is wrong, however absurd that claim my be.
They may have other legal claims against PopcornTime for facilitating piracy on whatever basis, but I sincerely doubt they actually own any of the copyrights to the code itself, which is ostensibly what they claim when filing a DMCA claim. But hosts generally respond even to defective DMCA notices, so they've learned just to demand takedowns first and sort anything else out after the fact. There's no reason to expend any effort if they can get what they want with a simple letter and that's something I've learned holds true across most legal endeavors. It seems like a lawyer's first action is almost always to draft a letter demanding whatever they want on whatever basis, oftentimes getting results for a single, rather expensive piece of legal letterhead.
But it's not the first time popcorn time gets shut down because of a DMCA request. Yet it has been re-enabled every time, that's a clear indication of a DMCA abuse IMHO.
Hey thanks for the downvote! I'm guessing it's because of the use of "mafia".
Here is the rule for truck drivers listening to the radio in their truck: they have to pay extra copyright fee because they are listening in their work environment, and therefore the normal copyright that radio is already paying is not enough.
Not as much as you probably think it does. Most of the important legal cases about filesharing/P2P systems and contributory infringement have hinged on whether the service operators had actual knowledge of infringement by their users, not merely a reasonable suspicion that their users expected to be able to use the software for infringement.
IANAL, but I believe in US case law, source code has been ruled to be free speech. Even if the tool itself is implicated in being used for piracy in some way, the code for it should still have strong First Amendment protections. I guess we’ll all find out.
I was thinking something similar. People use email or FTP, HTTPS, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Intel, AMD, to share pirated material. Do we shut them down as well?
Also, I am pretty sure that the person(s) behind popcorn have a copy of their code somewhere else (or at least they sync/backup to their machines every so often.
So they will be fine. I think that this is just a tap on the back so they know that someone is NOW actively chasing them.
Man, they’ve been “chased” basically from day 1, this is not their first DMCA rodeo.
It’s just that the studios have been forced by the pandemic to concentrate exclusively on online channels. See for example the latest Trolls movie, which just made $100m in his first week on streaming: that’s considered fantastic (and possibly a turning point) but it’s still half of what the previous movie made with a classic release in theatres a few years ago. Most “tentpole” releases are on hold and they have to keep pumping ads to keep the hype up. Cashflow must be fairly tight.
So the studios right now need all the help they can get, in order to squeeze money out of digital channels. Taking “off the board” alternatives like PopcornTime, even if just for the 2 weeks DMCA forces ISPs to obey, increases their chances. I would expect they’re ready to repeat the trick a few times from a few different entities, at least until the pandemic is over and people can go back to real (overpriced) popcorn.
Not OP, but No, looks 100% legal. We need to not get into the trap of arbitrary and ridiculous "grey" zones of legality. Yes, we know that set can be used for illegal things, but they can also be used for legal things.
Next up: Mandatory Registration and "licensing" for locksmiths. Because that becomes necessary if we start going down the path of legislating lock picking tools.
Take parking. You can only park Between 9-4 on weekend in the summer on the left side of this street only if you are not in front of a fire hydrate or a drive way. That's before you take into consideration hidden signs because of tree growth forbiding parking.
People fight tickets all of the time because of complex or gray situations.
The notice points out that they provide source / code functionality in the form of their scrapers and providers that take magnet/torrent links from the usualy suspects of sources
This goes back to the whole linking to infringing content is infringement, especially when the main purpose of the site / aggregator is to infringe
The popcorn time name, brand and project has been steadily dying in any case - I found out a few months ago that a friend purchased a $60 a year VPN because popcorn time told him he needed it (that's the revenue model for the developers). Turns out they charged his card for close to $180
Also I use magnet links to download drivers and OS’s all the time. It’s not illegal, although it could be used as such - at least the same way a website can. Shall we start DCMAing chromium or Firefox? Obviously, you can use the web browser for nefarious purposes.
If Chromium or Firefox set their default homepages to 1337x or eztv and tied their search box into their results you'd bet they'd also get an DMCA notice
The business model of virtually every web property in existence is to sell you crap you don't need and would probably be better off without. It's an attempt to hack your brain into confusing familiarity with value.
Your friend is easily manipulated and is a prime candidate for an ad blocker. As silly as it is to sign up to pay multiple years in advance if he is actually using a site where he pirates movies he actually DOES need a VPN and 180 dollars for 3 years is only 5 usd a month which is relatively standard.
The business model of virtually every business is to sell you crap you don’t need - starting from most of the food industry and going all the way to cars and clothing.
Yep. I suspect the reason for it is to deanonymize the authors so they can sue them directly - you have to provide your name and contact information to make a valid counter-claim.
Fortunately, as far as I'm aware, the legality of whether you can provide some service is not based on what the majority use-case is. Otherwise, cryptocurrency would probably be illegal immediately, as I'm pretty sure the current majority use-case is drugs and ransom payments.
I wonder if Plex could be in hot waters though. I guess they've been working hard trying to pivot to providing content themselves with a subscription but I'm sure 90% of the Plex use is still for hosting pirated content.
is there a way to host git repositories on the more distributed file systems? git repos don't need high performance so I feel like something like swarm or ipfs should be good enough
Service providers are not required to comply with a DMCA takedown notice. If they choose not to comply, they forfeit the safe harbor protections and could potentially be held liable for the infringement in a lawsuit. It's a risk assessment on the part of the service provider, but the law gives them strong legal protections if they choose to comply, so usually the only reason not to is that complying with a bogus takedown notice is bad PR.
Without seeing the attachments, it looks like at bare minimum, examples of copyrighted content were shown in their screenshots. But the main issue is that links to piracy was built in, such that a user could immediately download this and begin pirating content.
Movie studios are most concerned that this could even lead to people pirating content without realizing that they're doing something illegal.
Ultimately, choosing a centralized provider versus elsewhere doesn't have a lot of impact. The MPAA can send notices to your hosting provider, your domain registrar, your internet service provider, or ultimately, get the police to raid your house/office and confiscate your personal machines.
The idea that the Internet exists outside of the real physical world, and you can just do whatever you want is a fantasy sold by science fiction, but exactly that: A fantasy.
This is some bootlicking nonsense. Screw the MPAA. How can anyone seriously defend them? We've known they were the bad guy for decades.
The MPAA is a multi-billion dollar bully, that's the long and short of it. PopcornTime has never itself been guilty of copyright violation, even if its users have been, and the MPAA ought to know better. Even if they were going after it for showing copyrighted posters or frames in their screenshots, that's frivolous as hell and clearly covered by fair use. What they're really doing is bullying: they don't like what this application does, even though they know it's legal, so they'll utilize an broken law which is absolutely ripe for one-sided abuse by copyright holders to screw the little guy, knowing there's no oversight and will be no reprecussions for their behavior.
Copyright must be abolished. The fact that anything created today will never enter the public domain within any of our lifetimes proves that the system has failed. We have an obligation to exercise civil disobedience to protest the broken system. I will shed no tears for billionares caught up in the flack. They never shed a tear for the tens of thousands of people they screwed with expensive lawsuits, nor the billions they screwed out of their rightful inheritance of the collective works of humanity.
Nobody likes the DMCA, but this thread is about whether the content falls afoul of it assuming it exists and is enforced. In this case the done is gray but probably closer to black as the tool explicitly links to sources for pirated content.
Wrong. Telling people how to find people who will share copyrighted content isn't copyright infringement. Sharing copyrighted content is copyright infringement. It's a rather obvious difference. In either case, I side against the copyright owner.
"You run Erowid, which is a comprehensive reporting about all sorts of drugs, what they cause, their interactions, their prices, and all details. You don't sell drugs anywhere, and minimally comply with required statues."
In this hypothetical situation, you would personally be giving me the drugs, albiet indirectly. It's not much different from if you set them down on the table next to me. How about this: if you want to get some drugs in Philadelphia, I'll give you directions to Kensington. You hop on the Market-Frankford line, get off at the Kensington stop, and take a walk up Frankford Avenue. There are lots of dealers hanging around there who would be happy to get you your fix.
Did I just commit a crime? I don't think so. Call the cops if you disagree, I'll stand in court for it.
Hm, it would be a closer analogy to Popcorn Time if you made a autonomous vehicle which drives to Frankford Avenue, buys the drugs with a robotic arm, and then carries them back to the car's owner.
I'll admit, I'm not actually sure where the law would fall in that situation, but I think the police would have a lot of questions for the car manufacturer, and I'd be on their side.
So if you came into my shoestore, and you asked me for some good walking shoes, and where to find drugs - then you used those shoes to get there - have I committed a crime?
How easy do I have to make it to commit crimes before I've made it too easy? The answer is it doesn't matter. There is no scenario in which I am legally at fault if you commit a crime with tools you got from me.
I feel like you're being deliberately obtuse here. The law has more nuance than this. Intent matters.
The key phrase is "significant non-infringing use". Shoes are obviously not built specifically to enable people to commit crimes. And most people who use shoes are not using them to commit crimes.
PopcornTime was built specifically to enable copyright infringement. The vast majority of people using PopcornTime do so to gain unauthorized access to copyrighted material.
This bit doesn't even have anything to do with the DMCA. (Regardless, I agree that this particular case is an abuse of the DMCA takedown process.)
I despise our current copyright regime, though perhaps not with the vehemence that you have. But no matter what I wish the state of things would be, this is the law, and this is how judges have interpreted it ever since Napster showed up in their courtrooms (at least).
> There is no scenario in which I am legally at fault if you commit a crime with tools you got from me.
If I serve you alcohol and then you drive drunk...
"The majority of states consider bars and restaurants to be liable for injuries or fatalities caused by an intoxicated individual who's over-imbibed in their establishment." [1]
Drinking and driving gets people killed. Pirating a movie makes a studio executive cry into tissues made out of hundred dollar bills stolen from their artists' pockets. The bartender gets a lawsuit, the pirate goes to jail for 20 years.
I don't disagree at all, I was just trying to find some parallels in law where someone who enables someone else to commit a crime by doing something otherwise innocuous under specific conditions is then held liable. This is the closest thing I could come up with.
After Napster and Grokster, US courts say that enticing people to infringe copyrights can be a form of copyright infringement. The courts say it isn’t necessarily infringement, but that it can be, and it requires talented judges to figure out which side of the law particular projects fall.
> US courts say that enticing people to infringe copyrights can be a form of copyright infringement.
What the courts actually said is that enticing can get you secondary liability (contributory and/or vicarious). They maintain that there is a distinction between contributory infringement, vicarious infringement, and direct infringement. The DMCA takedown procedure is only defined for direct infringement.
My comment was to show that the argument “I’m not infringing copyright; I’m just giving directions and tools to do so, and telling them how much fun it is” doesn’t work in US law.
“One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, going beyond mere distribution with knowledge of third-party action, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device’s lawful uses.”
Unfortunately the law does not see it that way. Your or my insistence that this is ridiculous doesn’t change the fact that this probably isn’t abuse of the DMCA.
The law agrees with me in former case, and disagrees with me in the latter. In the case of PopcornTime, this is an abuse of the DMCA, plain and square. I'm also pointing out that in clear-cut cases of the DMCA, I think the law is wrong, and I side with the defendant, in spite of the law. The law is not the arbiter of my personal code of ethics.
The law agrees with me in former case, and disagrees with me in the latter. In the case of PopcornTime, this is an abuse of the DMCA, plain and square.
> The law agrees with me in former case, and disagrees with me in the latter.
and less about this:
> I'm also pointing out that in clear-cut cases of the DMCA, I think the law is wrong, and I side with the defendant, in spite of the law. The law is not the arbiter of my personal code of ethics.
I suspect we have similar opinions of the DMCA, but would very much prefer if we didn't conflate "I dislike the DMCA" with "I think this is an abuse of the DMCA (specifically: regardless of my opinion on the DMCA, I think this is an overreach)". It's like if we were discussing whether a person sentenced to death is guilty or not, and you came in and said, "I can't possibly see why we could side against the victim, I don't like them, the death penalty is stupid". All of which might even be an opinion shared by the people discussing it, but not only are you off topic but you're doing your argument a disservice as you're tying it to something that's not what you are arguing.
(I'm being a stickler on this, because like I said, I likely agree with your viewpoint and would very much rather you not allow people to come up with lazy responses to you.)
> PopcornTime has never itself been guilty of copyright violation,
Take a look at Fonovisa vs Cherry Auction, a landmark case in developing the concept of “contributory copyright infringement” and “vicarious infringement.” This was a key precedent in the case that effectively shut down Napster.
Cherry Auction was a swap meet that was the site of the sale of counterfeit recordings (probably cassette tapes, it was early 90s) including counterfeits infringing on copyrights held by Fonovisa Inc. It was established that the swap meet knew that alleged piracy was going on; among other things there had been a massive police raid after which such sales continued.
The swap meet’s position was essentially what you are saying — I don’t do any infringement, not my problem. A district court agreed but was overturned on appeal, with the appeals court reasoning, to oversimplify, that the swap meet routinely patrolled vendors, gated admission by consumers, and reaped financial benefit in the form of rent — essentially it had the knowledge and power to stop the infringement, and profited by failing to do so, therefore it was a party to the infringement.
I don’t explain any of this to say the takedown here is necessarily right, just to give some context. And admittedly context only applicable to the app’s US legality. Namely, it’s not enough for PopcornTime to not itself infringe, under the law as now understood. (IANAL, btw! Just followed some cases.) It needs to be in a position where it is not materially contributing to the infringement — knowingly and directly.
I believe vicarious infringement has a financial benefit prong (which popcorn time as a volunteer effort may lack) but that contributory infringement does not. At least based on the wording in Fonovisa which is almost 25 years old https://copyrightalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Fon...
In the Napster case, Napster’s control of the central search index proved key in establishing it enabled and knew about infringement. The particulars of how popcorntime works are presumably important in establish whether it is knowingly and directly enabling infringement. And liability for github if any is going to be murkier — they are some hops out here from the infringement of (some) popcorntime users.
What I find very interesting specifically with the case you describe here is that this is directly opposite to Section 230. Where tech companies have terms and moderation and rules on what people can do on their platforms which they enforce as they see fit for profit purposes... but then turn around and claim immunity for responsibility for any illegal actions that take place within those platforms.
I think such a dichotomy is a strange accident that technology companies have been all the more happy to allow to exist. Personally, I think this kind of construction gives them far too much power over their platform.
USA acquired an extradition order for a UK student for hosting links on a website under this sort of argument. His actions were not unlawful in the UK.
An extreme overstep of jurisdiction by the USA government on behalf of MPAA.
I want to point out how absurd it is that you're talking about "civil disobedience" which amounts to watching video content without paying for it. One would think you're some sort of freedom fighter, but you're just advocating for watching tv shows and movies.
Maybe walk back the rhetoric, calling people who disagree with you "bootlickers", etc.
If I personally "watch video content" without paying for it, that doesn't amount to much. If everyone does, that amounts to a hell of a lot more. That's how civil disobedience works.
The point behind civil disobedience is that you knowingly break the law because you both believe the law is absurd AND you’re prepared to accept the legal consequences in the hope that society will look on your example as the punishment not being appropriate and change the law.
Being prepared for the consequences is just good advice for anything you do in life. But it's not an intrinsic part of civil disobedience, nor is being punished for said disobedience.
No, the point behind civil disobedience is that you knowingly break the law in order to make the law harder to enforce, whether that's for PR reasons or - per the topic - because so many people are doing it that it's logistically impractical to make a dent in them.
I think big pharma companies are corrupt and charge too much, but I wouldn't rob a drug store because of it. Similarly, just because copyright terms are horrifically overextended doesn't mean I think it's okay to steal movies.
Robbing drug stores is different. You're hurting someone who isn't at fault - your local pharmacist - and stealing something of material value.
Now, if you want to talk about synthesising "copyrighted" drugs and giving them away, or even selling them for a fraction of the price, I'm with you 100%.
The little guy can get a Netflix or Hulu subscription. It isn’t like someone has locked away a Van Gogh painting and has ordered all prints destroyed. Don’t like Hulu or Netflix? Start your own company and negotiate your own deals with the content owners.
I mean, if EZTV is something you've explicitly built support for, yeah... But if you aren't wildly popular and easy to use (see: Popcorn Time) it's unlikely anyone will actually care.
I'm not so sure about it being DMCA abuse. You're likely to be convicted of murder if your wife ends up dead and you recently published something that said, "I'm not paying anyone to murder my wife, but if my wife ends up dead, I'll bet someone will randomly find $10k in a duffel bag." Judges and juries are people, not robots, and they can read between the lines. Talking around a crime by saying stuff like, "I'm not a pirate, I only published detailed instructions and make it really easy for other people to be a pirate" is not going to hold up in court. It's pretty clear that even if PopCornTime wasn't committing crimes themselves, they bore some responsibility by enabling other people to commit crimes.
The discussion about whether digital piracy should be illegal is a separate discussion, for now it is illegal and PopCornTime's number finally came up. They the aren't the first piracy enabling tool (UseNet, Napster, BitTorrent, etc.) and they won't be the last. But it is true that the systems that survive are decentralized. PopCornTime was/is pretty decentralized overall, they just took a hit at one of their centralized points. I'm sure there will be several new repositories that appear in other places around the web very soon.
It's not illegal to build knives. It's not illegal to sell knives either. Using a knife to stab someone on the other hand is. No sane jusge could claim that the knife-builder was in fact involved in the killing, nor should popcorntime face any reprecussions for developing a program.
DMCA claims aren't even related to morality and the issues are always black and white. Either the plaintiff has copyright over the items they claim or they don't and it belongs to someone else or no one. In this case they cannot in any way claim that they have ownership of the code or product unless the popcorntime project has a signed dislaimer all devs agree to handing over the rights to the code to someone else (not likely).
> It's not illegal to build knives. It's not illegal to sell knives either. Using a knife to stab someone on the other hand is. No sane jusge could claim that the knife-builder was in fact involved in the killing, nor should popcorntime face any reprecussions for developing a program.
Popcorn Time is ostensibly built to access and watch copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder. No-one is pretending they’re using it only to watch Big Buck Bunny. It isn’t like a general-purpose BitTorrent client either because those generally don’t market themselves as tools for copyright infringement and torrents are widely used legitimately for free-software distribution. You’d have a point if it was uncalled “Popcorn-and-Slackware Time” - but it isn’t.
Disregarding the inevitable 2A analogy (“knife” -> “gun”), the concept of dual-use is recognised by legal precedent: the maker of a knife intends for it to be used in culinary or outdoors survival scenarios. If I sold my own line of knives with a TV and billboard campaign emphasising about how my knives are specifically designed to shank people with - and someone inevitably does get shanked by one of my knives I fully expect to be at the receiving-end of at least a civil liability suit - but most likely some criminal charges for recklessness.
I recognise that Popcorn Time itself isn’t violating copyright and so cannot be the subject of a DMCA takedown notice, Popcorn Time might be viewed as falling under the DMCA’s Anti-circumvention clauses or something similar. And if the courts somehow find it to be completely in the clear, I guarantee that within a few years the MPAA will get a new copyright law on the books that specifically considers the intent of the creator or distributor of a tool involved in copyright infringement.
Have you researched the DMCA? It criminalizes not only direct and indirect copyright infringement, but also the dissemination of tools that circumvent copyright protection. This isn't a case of "knives are legal" this is a case of "PopCornTime is illegal" because it circumvents copyright protection. No amount of doublespeak is going to make the repositories legal, which is what I was getting at in the first paragraph of my first comment.
The language regarding takedown notices in the safe harbor provision is worded toward copyrighted material and not piracy tools, but GitHub really can't play dumb after this notice. They have been notified that they are hosting an illegal tool, and if they want to continue being considered an immune service provider under the safe harbor provision they will have to keep the repository disabled. If GitHub willingly reinstates a repository that they know is illegal they could lose their status as a protected service provider and then the MPA can sue them.
It's not abuse of a DMCA takedown notice to use it against tools that are intended to infringe on copyrights (specific copyrighted works are presumably detailed in Exhibit A of their notice that I couldn't find). The MPA isn't being dishonest and claiming that they own the code, they are claiming that the code is predominately intended for illegal purposes under the DMCA. It's creative, but not dishonest. This isn't someone spamming DMCA notices at some innocent coder, this is pretty much the system working as intended.
You're deeply confused. It's copy protection, not copyright protection, and Popcorn Time is incapable of circumventing it. It is not one of those illegal DRM-breaking tools. Tools for copying unprotected files are an entirely different thing.
> It criminalizes not only direct and indirect copyright infringement, but also the dissemination of tools that circumvent copyright protection.
The text of the law that you encourage us to read says:
> No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
... followed by many exceptions. But that's section 1201, which is not referenced by section 512 that defines the takedown procedure.
> but GitHub really can't play dumb after this notice. They have been notified that they are hosting an illegal tool, and if they want to continue being considered an immune service provider under the safe harbor provision they will have to keep the repository disabled. If GitHub willingly reinstates a repository that they know is illegal they could lose their status as a protected service provider and then the MPA can sue them.
There's actually a provision in section 512 that protects GitHub should they choose to ignore what turns out to be an invalid takedown notice—they are legally considered to not be aware of infringement or infringing activity.
> It's not abuse of a DMCA takedown notice to use it against tools that are intended to infringe on copyrights
The takedown notice procedure is only specified for works that are an actual infringement. A tool for infringement is not the same as the product of an infringing action. There's no room for "creativity" here. The MPA does not own any exclusive rights regarding copying, distributing, modifying, etc. the pieces of software they object to, because that software is not a copy or derivative work of any of the movies they own copyright to.
Yeah but this didn’t go through a court to decide whether they contributed to piracy happening, this was a DMCA takedown which is supposed to target a specific case of piracy itself. The DMCA is about “you pirated THIS” not “you are involved in pirating stuff”.
So yes, this is an abuse of the DMCA, but also yes, PopCornTime contributes to piracy.
Publishing details on how to commit crime is definitely not illegal, so your analogy doesn't hold up here.
Also, you can't simultaneously claim that they "bore some responsibility" and then try to put off "discussion about whether digital piracy should be illegal". Claiming they have moral responsibility is opening a discussion about what's right and wrong, which is at the heart of any serious notion about what should be illegal.
I absolutely can make a statement that as things stand now, something is illegal, while also mentioning that there may be value in discussing whether it should be legal or not. Here's another one: According to federal law (of the USA), recreational marijuana use is illegal. So anyone that smokes weed for fun (in the USA) is breaking the law, and that's a fact. But there is a separate discussion that we should have about whether we should legalize recreational marijuana use. I didn't take a position on the issue, but I do support at least having the discussion.
I also did not claim that PopCornTime has a moral responsibility, I said that using clever phrasing doesn't make something illegal into something legal.
It sounded like a moral argument to me, but I'll take your word for it that you're making a factual claim about the law. What law exactly says that they "they bore some responsibility" for other people's copyright violation?
Analogies rarely work in law. Just because you can construe some imaginary scenario about murder doesn't mean law actually works this way. DMCA notice is to notify hoster about copyright infringement. Not about any illegal activity whatsoever, but specifically about infringing somebody's copyright on specific works. The content of that repo didn't infringe anybody's copyright, therefore whoever submitted that notice is a liar and possibly a perjurer.
If you read the notice, you'll see that absolutely nowhere did they claim that they owned the copyright to the code. They claimed that the code was being used to infringe on copyrighted works. There are no lies in the notice and no perjury. Nearly everything the notice is factual. The only claim that needs a little support is the claim that PopCornTime's predominant purpose and use is for copyright infringement, but that would take about five minutes to convince a reasonable person.
Submitting a DMCA takedown notice without claiming copyright is an abuse of the good will of the recipient (Github) and an abuse of the DMCA takedown system. Even if it is not perjury, it should be condemned and rampant abuse should expose parties like MPA to litigation.
As it happens there is no such thing as a DMCA notice for contributory copyright infringement its a straightforward fraudulent claim to own the resource named. If they can find anyone to sue locally they might win but they can't just make it up as they go along.
It’s a tool that has the stated purpose of violating copyright and essentially stealing. Even though you could use it for legal purposes, their website specifically says “watch TV shows...”
If the creator isn’t getting paid for you to watch, then it’s theft. Doesn’t matter if it’s stealing bits, or stealing gold. It’s theft. Rationalize all you want, but if the owner of the content is having their content used against their will, then you are violating their rights.
If the code were an ATM pin code cracker, would that be any different? After all, money is just data right? Just bits stored at the bank.
Let’s also stop conflating “open source” with “right to steal.” Completely different things. If you download a pirate movie, that’s theft — it weakens the concept of open source when it gets lumped into the movement for “free” content.
It’s ironic that a lot of open source people love to talk about licenses — while desiring enforcement of those licenses while at the same time arguing that the license to use someone else’s work is fair to violate.
>If the creator isn’t getting paid for you to watch, then it’s theft.
Except that bits and bars of gold are nothing alike which is why you can't be convicted of theft for copying bits. Given that there is literally no relation in law nor morality between theft and copyright infringement even if you believe copyright is effective and desirable tool you could skip a lot of misunderstanding by skipping the part where you use a bad analogy to muddy the water.
> Every illegal download reduces the size of the legal purchase marketplace.
Source? Why wouldn't it be possible for every illegal download to increase the size of the legal purchase marketplace? Or to have it effectively stay the same for that matter?
The effects are complicated and hard to measure, but in the Napster era some bands did find that piracy helped their sales. For small bands it definitely can help with promotion. Then there were megabands like Radiohead that put out free albums and cashed in on the publicity via ticket and merch sales.
The back catalog stuff (Rolling Stones etc) probably suffers although IMHO the copyright on this stuff should be much shorter anyway.
By that logic, I should be able to illegally download a movie, immediately delete it from my hard drive and then repeat this process as many times as I want to continuously shrink the size of the legal purchase market from my bedroom until it is zero.
If the cracker were being marketed by their creators as “the easiest way to steal money” would it be any different? Intent does matter. In fact for a crime to have been committed one has to prove intent. If the intent is to facilitate the robbing of banks, that’s different than “pen-testing” as a means to help/protect.
The problem with that statement is that in the eyes of the media consumer, nothing was stolen because it was duplicated and thus nobody 'lost' anything. With money, that wouldn't be the case because it can only exist in one place at a time. Media, however, is not taken from one place and put in another place, but is copied.
On the other hand, the 'stealing' isn't as much the media, as it is the 'consuming' of it. I'm not sure what the correct terminology is, but a lot of people don't think of it as accessing information that isn't public and has a price to access it (be it books, movies, games), but the lawyers (and probably the 'legal owners') do look at it that way. Of course a lot of PR happens during wording and publication and it's much easier to say 'this bad person stole this movie' instead of 'this person gained access and consumed this information while not being allowed to do that'.
"If the creator isn’t getting paid for you to watch, then it’s theft"
Nonsense. In some cases it might be copyright infringement, but only a court can decide and only on a case-by-case basis. How else do we determine if a reproduction is fair use?
"if the owner of the content is having their content used against their will, then you are violating their rights."
That is not how copyrights work. Criticism and parody are allowed whether or not the copyright holder agrees to it, as are various forms of sampling to create new works. Again, whether or not a given act is infringing is something a court has to decide.
I think that's a valid position, but it doesn't justify misusing a legal instrument. Abuse of the legal system, and of the DMCA in particular, is worse than a few kids watching some movies without paying.
Note how that's not a DMCA notice in the usual sense ("we own the IP of content distributed on your platform"), but a "strongly worded letter" that mentions the DMCA but just says "we'd like your assistance in stopping this illegal activity". At least it's not run-of-the-mill DMCA abuse.
It's interesting that GitHub decided to process it like a DMCA notice, unclear to me if they had to, and even less clear if the counter-notice is meaningful.
This is one of those cases where I bet Github's ownership is in play. Github the company may not care about what the MPA thinks of them and could consider fighting this. Microsoft I'm sure have at least some business linked to the film industry and do not want to poke the bear.
I'm not a lawyer, but I believe this is an actual DMCA notice. It has all the required components[0] of one. Is there something I'm missing? What makes this not a DMCA notice?
It's not at all clear that they have identified anything on GitHub that is a copyright infringement. They've correctly claimed that the software is being used elsewhere to accomplish infringement, but the URLs they identified aren't reproductions or derivative works of any movies.
It is always sad when companies that were once small and Anti-Establishment grow to become the establishment and use their new size and power to stomp on people....
I remember when the MPAA (as it was known then) was trying to shut down the little known service that was attempting to rent DVD's via mail....
I received bogus DMCA complaints (over Big Buck Bunny, lol, multiple times), and Google stonewalled me when I tried to find out the identity of the complainant so that I could litigate against them.
I expect situations like that contribute to the lack of response, along with the fact that providers often ignore DMCA complaints or put things back up without following the statutory takedown period.
Probably shouldn't drip gasoline on this smoldering dumpster fire, but pretty much anyone at a high political level that testifies "I can't remember" is probably committing perjury, yes. Oh well.
This is why you should never host your open source project on a US server. You're one DMCA notice away from being destroyed, needing a lawyer to counter claim properly, etc. This is insanity.
Perhaps you're right, but perhaps DMCA takedowns are a preferred alternative to what the MPAA does in other situations, like the Kim Dotcom raid in NZ.
> This is why you should never host your open source project on a US server. You're one DMCA notice away from being destroyed, needing a lawyer to counter claim properly, etc.
This is an excellent takeaway that should be upvoted.
Yes, you can, and there's nothing the victim can do about it. Many service providers won't even give you the details of the person who submitted the notice so you can sue them (Google, for example).
Presumably, you'd have to succeed in that notice leading to a takedown. The 10 day waiting period only presumably kicked in when GitHub decided the DMCA was valid and actionable.
No, Github has no discretion in this process. Their only job is to follow the policy to the letter: provide the notice to the presumed offender and disable content, then forward the counter-notice to the original complainant and re-enable the content in 10 days.
That is absolutely untrue. Github could ignore the notice or put the content back up immediately. If they do so, they may lose the DMCA safe harbor for this complaint-- but if there is no credible infringement, that isn't of much consequence.
To do that is to assume all legal risk themselves, such that should a suit be forthcoming, it's against them, and far less likely to be thrown out, even if it's not credible. They're more likely to have to pay legal fees, and have lost legal protections.
The issue isn't their actions, it's that the process requires a 10 day wait, regardless of whether the content is infringing or not.
GitHub can decide a takedown notice is facially invalid. Of course if it's later found that they're wrong by a court of competent jurisdiction, they'd be in trouble, so they're likely to be extremely conservative in making this determination.
I'm curious to know whether platforms ever even bother to evaluate takedowns, beyond the most basic fact-checking (e.g. the item to be taken down is spelled properly). It seems like one of those cases where the risk of getting it wrong outweighs the benefit of trying to discriminate between good and bad requests.
Sometimes. Not as often as they should, but they will at least reject keyword-based delisting requests for obviously innocent web properties like Wikipedia or IMDB (typically because they have an page about the movie that some overzealous "copyright defense" outfit is trying to protect).
The way I read it, they are required to wait 10 days. I think in part to give the complaining party time to go to court if they think there's a true infringement.
You’d think so, but not. This part of the DMCA has repeatedly been used with the specific intent of censorship. You force content offline for a potentially important period. For example, though I’m unaware of a case, you could issue a DMCA takedown for the last ten days leading up to an election and there is nothing the victim can do.
Require isn't exactly the right word. If they don't they lose the DMCA safe harbor. If it's really obviously not an infringement there isn't much harm in that.
This is the reason that you can't use weak (or even unambiguous!) copyright infringement to take down popular sites-- their hosts will just forego the safe harbor, perhaps in exchange for indemnification.
To file a counter notice, they must have a "good faith" reason for their dispute.
The MPAA's claim is that Popcorn is used for piracy. IANAL and don't know the case law, so I don't know if it has merit.
But a "good faith" dispute has to address the claim. Their dispute is arguing that they own the code. The MPAA never claimed they don't, that's simply not responding to the substance of their argument.
They should really get an attorney. FFS, at least read the counter notice guidelines; I think they believe they're dealing with Github customer support.
You're confusing the broader DMCA law and DMCA copyright violation takedown notices specifically. The DMCA copyright takedown notice is to assert to a common provider (Github) that your copyrighted work is currently copied on their platform (Github). As a result, the platform is obliged to immediately assume guilt on the part of their user and take down the content, regardless of evidence.
There was no MPA-owned copyrighted material in the repository the DMCA takedown notice was invoked on. The popcorn developers own the copyright to their code, and no MPA media assets are in the Github repository. The MPA has no copyright claim against the source code on Github.
The MPA could sue the developers for any reason they like, but that is a very different process from DMCA takedown notices. This was an abuse of the DMCA takedown process and the counternotice is wholly correct.
And if Popcorn had made your point, then they'd have made a good faith counter notice. You're directly addressing the takedown notice by disputing its basis in law.
But a judge can't work off what a party ought to say, they have to adjudicate what they do say.
> And if Popcorn had made your point, then they'd have made a good faith counter notice. You're directly addressing the takedown notice by disputing its basis in law.
Popcorn did make that point. It's obvious English is not the author's primary language, but can be understood to be making that claim:
> The code is 100 % ours and do[es] not contain any [MPA-owned] copyright material[,] please check again[.]
That's a good-faith counter notice and disputes the legal basis for the takedown.
> But a judge can't work off what a party ought to say, they have to adjudicate what they do say.
What are you reading into the counternotice that makes you believe it isn't in good-faith? (Nevermind that the original takedown from MPA was not in good faith.)
> Nevermind that the original takedown from MPAA was not in good faith.
I think people are reaching that conclusion from prior bad behavior, and maybe courts should consider that.
But I don't see a factual basis for that in their filing. The MPAA establishes legal precedent and harm done to them; they check all the boxes for what a complaint is supposed to be.
Also, this doesn't fall into the patterns of verbose but invalid complaints, e.g. it clearly isn't some takedown they spammed at a random publisher.
> What are you reading into the counternotice that makes you believe it isn't in good-faith?
It's what I'm not reading that means I can't make the case that it is good faith.
The complaint addresses one issue. All I can read in Popcorn's response is that they didn't do something else entirely.
Your argument is simply not what they wrote, and the law requires one to be explicit, which is why legal brief is a contradiction in terms.
Because it's not relevant to the complaint, it's as though they left it blank and hit submit.
The argument that BitTorrent had no legal applications is invalid. If people kill each other with guns, why would you put the blame on the gun company?
Popcorn apparently, if the MPAA is correct about the source code we now can't read, specifically helps users pirate movies.
To avoid cranking the discussion up to 11, let me recast your analogy to, "if people break into houses with crowbars, why would you blame the crowbar company?"
I think under the MPAA's argument, Popcorn is like a crowbar sold with a GPS device that finds unoccupied houses to break into.
They have a good faith reason for the counter notice, DMCA notices don't cover contributory copyright infringement. The MPAA committed perjury by submitting this notice.
The MPAA still might still sue them though, DMCA notices don't cover it but copyright law does.
So the question really boils down to "Does the DMCA let you submit takedown notices for tools which aid infringement, even if the code itself is original and not an unauthorized copy of something else." IANAL, can anyone comment on whether the DMCA lets you do this?
It's clear from the takedown notice submitted by the MPA that (a) they are alleging that PopCornTime aids copyright infringement, not that the code itself is a copy, however the counternotice from the devs just says that (b) the code itself is original, but doesn't address that it is used and configured to scrape torrent files.
In short, though, I wouldn't hold my breath for PopCornTime. Napster and Limewire got taken down back in the day too for the same rationale.
Napster and Limewire were operating commercial entities. Popcorn is just a bunch of random developers making an open source project. How do you take down something which can trivially be replicated (Git is theoretically a distributed VCS)?
If you can identify them, and they're in a jurisdiction you can act in, you can sue them. "To pieces?" I don't know; non-commercial copyright infringement isn't exactly a profitable crime and the shakedown settlements which were always kind of slimy turned out to be very illegal, so... good luck?
They've been suing anyone who actually maintains a living instance of Popcorn Time. Maybe they hope that by removing the source code from something as popular as GitHub, this will at least diminish the frequency at which they need to sue.
On almost every Reddit post (European subreddits, German especially) with people asking advice on torrents related cease and desist letter, there are comments "remember not to use Popcorn Time either" and similar even though the post's OP doesn't mention this software. It's like they are conducting a multi front war on Popcorn Time. Glad to see them pissed off and helpless.
In theory, hosting code that runs any part of the internet could be construed to aid in such infringement.
Napster was centralized, that was a different set of facts. I don't know what happened to Limewire.
I watched the Mega Upload saga closely when it all played out. The government's case was pretty flimsy (even without accounting for obvious problems with jurisdiction). They argued that employees of Mega Upload were aware of infringing content, maintained lists of infringing content, made infringing content easy to find, and were generally just an illegal file sharing site. It's quite a fascinating case, it's been ongoing for over 7 years now.
Ultimately, why is it any business of the government to safeguard the precious movies? They should have to run their own security and settle matters civilly. There should be absolutely no criminal penalties for copyright infringement.
> In theory, hosting code that runs any part of the internet could be construed to aid in such infringement.
These kinds of theories have been roundly thrown out in court. What really matters is whether the primary purpose of your app is copyright infringement. It's clear from any "average" person that the getpopcorntime website is promoting the ability to watch copyrighted movies for free. Contrast that with bitorrent itself, which is clearly used for tons of infringement, but it also has a clear legitimate purpose WRT large file distribution, and importantly it doesn't promote itself by shouting "watch free movies" from the rooftops.
I think the Frostwire fork is still around, but I really have no idea how large the Gnutella network is these days. I imagine the primary use case for Frostwire these days is as a Bittorrent client.
I was actually 1 of the 5 full-time Limewire developers when the Grokster Supreme Court case was decided. I left Limewire sometime between when the direct legal threats started and when the lawsuits were actually filed.
As I remember, the CEO panicked for a week or two and looked certain to fold the company as soon as the direct threats started coming in. He ran a hedge fund and a brokerage, and started lots of side projects like Limewire and a non-profit to promote a bike-friendly NYC. Limewire was a pure liability to his fortune, and the rational thing to do would have been to just fold Limewire and walk away. Somehow he mustered the courage to fight the lawsuits. My understanding is that sometime after I left, the recording industry made a credible threat to pierce the corporate veil and directly go after the newly married COO/CTO with a kid on the way. Once the COO/CTO was over a barrel and willing to say whatever the recording industry wanted him to say, the CEO was forced into a protracted negotiated settlement.
I wasn't a party to any of the talks, but the CEO told me directly that the initial meeting went something like "What kind of content filtering is acceptable to you? Can you give us a blacklist of hashes or audio fingerprints?" "No, you must sell us your company, no negotiation." The CEO seemed to think the recording industry was genuinely concerned that they needed to nip open culture and liberally licensed media in the bud or they might find themselves disintermediated.
It's all about "primary purpose". The getpopcorntime website clearly shows that its primary purpose is to link to torrents to be able to watch free copyrighted movies. On the contrary, Google goes to great lengths now to make it harder to find free copyrighted content, and in any case Google has an easy case for its legal use.
The Supreme Court declared years ago that contributory infringement is not mentioned by the Copyright Act (as amended by the DMCA) and its only legal basis is common law precedent. The statement you rate as "mostly false" is actually an entirely accurate statement about the law of the land.
> No, because the word "directly" is not in the law.
"Direct" is the term the judges have adopted to refer to the infringement that is explicitly defined by statute, due to the necessity of distinguishing it from the common law derived categories of contributory and vicarious infringement. The statute does not need to use the term "direct infringement" for that term to have real legal meaning.
I've already quoted the Supreme Court on this elsewhere in the thread. The MGM v. Grokster case (2005) included:
> When a widely shared product is used to commit infringement, it may be impossible to enforce rights in the protected work effectively against all direct infringers, so that the only practical alternative is to go against the device’s distributor for secondary liability on a theory of contributory or vicarious infringement. One infringes contributorily by intentionally inducing or encouraging direct infringement, and infringes vicariously by profiting from direct infringement while declining to exercise the right to stop or limit it. Although “[t]he Copyright Act does not expressly render anyone liable for [another’s] infringement,” Sony, 464 U.S., at 434, these secondary liability doctrines emerged from common law principles and are well established in the law, e.g., id., at 486. Pp. 10—13.
The court is citing and quoting an earlier decision, Sony v. Universal City Studios (1984), the landmark case establishing that it was legal to use a VCR for timeshifting. That decision made numerous references to a distinction between direct and contributory infringement, such as:
> Justice Holmes stated that the producer had "contributed" to the infringement of the copyright, and the label "contributory infringement" has been applied in a number of lower court copyright cases involving an ongoing relationship between the direct infringer and the contributory infringer at the time the infringing conduct occurred. In such cases, as in other situations in which the imposition of vicarious liability is manifestly just, the "contributory" infringer was in a position to control the use of copyrighted works by others and had authorized the use without permission from the copyright owner.
Your own sources demonstrate that the courts have found those who "contribute" to be liable. Strange you didn't quote that part...
> Held: One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, going beyond mere distribution with knowledge of third-party action, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device’s lawful uses.
Being held liable in some form doesn't mean they're being held liable for the same offense. "is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device" does not mean the same thing as "has committed infringement". The courts are saying that you as a contributory infringer have a legal liability relating to the infringement, but you have not actually yourself violated one of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner—which is what copyright infringement means.
You're splitting hairs in a way that doesn't matter. MGM vs. Grokster and subsequent interpretation is clear that inducing copyright infringement is something that a DMCA takedown covers. Indeed, Github links to this ruling in their own documents about DMCA counter notices: https://help.github.com/en/github/site-policy/guide-to-submi...
"Sometimes distributing software can be copyright infringement, if you induce end users to use the software to infringe copyrighted works."
However, content absolutely blows. I regularly go to cinemas, but there are not any tv shows in there. As of today I am going to cancel all of them and I know it's not much of a "blow" to their cash flow, but seriously, this is ridiculous. They kill the only platform that lets me watch content that's not available for me otherwise and that I would have gladly pay for if it was available. Popcorn time had an amazing support for streaming directly to TV, which was my main use case. I have a desktop computer in a separate room and I definitely do not plan on drilling my walls to push an HDMI cable through them. I guess it's time for Plex.
Plex with something like Sonarr set up is a bit of a hassle to configure but generally works pretty well for this in my experience.
I agree though, it used to be great when you could pay $10 a month for Netflix and it actually had most content you wanted. Now you pay more than that to three or four services and still don’t get everything. I wish the film industry would come up with something like what Spotify did for music and what Steam did for video games. Make your content easily available legally for a reasonable fee and piracy rates will naturally go down.
I would be careful btw, I remember there being different clones of popcorn time and who knows what you're executing on your computer. There's also SickChill and CouchPotato but I haven't tried them.
I tried getting Disney+ a week or two ago to watch a few things I still had on my list, but no support for my device and the website is completely broken in multiple browsers (I don't use dns blockers and one of the browsers is a purposefully clean Chromium). Not to mention HBO content, "get HBO" on the website just links to itself and I don't see any sign up page in Germany. I'm really sorry for the people that worked on the content, I tried to pay for it... Paying for ProtonVPN worked fine by the way.
I tried to subscribe for it as well, but couldn't. At the same time I was seeing the baby yoda memes everywhere, so of course I wanted to see what it is, and downloaded Mandalorian :)
In this day and age, when memes and spoilers travel in hours, restricting content by country is just bad business.
I have ExpressVPN, but I saw that I need a US bank account to be able to pay for Disney+, so I gave it up. I see that now some more countries are on the list, and I have bank accounts in multiple countries, so I may try it again :)
Haven't tried that one, but from a comparison I did a few months ago protonvpn seemed like the best option to me. I don't remember what the criteria were, probably jurisdiction, reputation, p2p allowed, Linux support, maybe more.
Stremio is centralized and has terrible license. No, thanks.
While some of the things they are working on seem cool, overall I would not touch it because of the previously mentioned problems.
Popcorn time really is a community project and it doesn't try to earn money by working on a tool that provides pirated content.
supports commercial providers (Netflix, iTunes, Hulu) to find content, magnet links for webtorrent viewing, plugin architecture, no affiliate links or adware, and their github is currently live
This is why I regularly back up my github repos (via git clone --bare, then compress and archive). Mind you, I do nothing that even comes close to piracy, and the vast majority most of my repos are private, but it's a nightmare scenario to have your third party dictate when you have access to your source code and pop up surprises like this, whether by having some asshole try to extort you, or by the git repo having a data disaster with your repo.
For someone who casually wants to do this, Gitea is a lot lighter than gitlab to self host (and in my experience a breeze to install, but gitlab is probably the same).
For some repositories that probably will be terminated on Github at some point, I have set up cloning on private Gitea instance. Disabled tree overwrite on some branches and have them backed up in case something else happens. So far I have never needed to use it, but it makes me feel better.
And no, Gitlab is not as easy to maintain. You can probably set it up in Docker easily, but overall it has many moving parts and it requires more resource, while Gitea is just a single Golang binary and is a joy to use.
Sure. I just prefer to do it where I have 100% of control and not merely hand off from one third party to another. But whatever works. The point is to not be caught off guard when a critical provider decides to take unilateral action against you and then you're at their mercy.
You'd be surprised how simple it is (but I like simple): It's a bunch of batch files (I'm that old) that basically run the "git clone --bare" command on each repo, and then uses 7z to create a single archive of all the repos, plus text file is included that tells me how to restore the backup to another server (git push --mirror <url>). I included that because I figure when I need it I'm gonna be sort of stressed, lol.
I specifically stay away from anything fancier than plain git commands because I do not want to be testing these backups all the time to make sure they're usable.
Since the 7z archives are just plain files, they are backed up with all of my other stuff via my normal cloud/offline backups that I have.
(Not parent) I've been doing a fair bit on automating git lately. I suspect this actually isn't too difficult of a project - golang has a very nice git implementation for it that is a pleasure to use. Honestly even a well written bash/zsh script would get you there as long as you have a way to feed what repos to run into them.
Here is my guess: the people who filed the notice know it is bogus, and also know that to contest it, the PopcornTime authors would have to provide their real names and contact info, and the lawyers want that info so they can sue them for contributory copyright infringement.
So the DMCA requires identification of "material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity". It seems pretty clear that the requested content is not by itself infringing. Is anybody aware of case law on how the "subject of infringing activity" is to be read?
I’m sure the argument is that Napster- and Grokster-style contributory infringement is infringement. I have a hard time imagining source code enticing people to infringe copyright, but if the program encourages infringement, I suppose the repository is a logical target.
I won’t predict whether the contributory infringement argument will win. I’m sure the law was written with direct infringement in mind, but I don’t think that rules out creative interpretations by itself.
I believe the clearest approach would be for the MPA to not bother with a DMCA notice, and just sue the project directly. But if you can get what you want on the cheap, why not try? And I’m not sure a lawsuit against the project would do much good: even assuming the MPA were to get an injunction, they’d need to play whack-a-mole to track down anybody using the PopCornTime code.
Right, I concur with the reasoning that contributory infringement could be argued against the developers, but I think the interesting questions is whether that reasoning can be extended to the "material" under the takedown section - particularly as written. If so that seems like the kinds of thing that could get ugly very quickly. E.g. are instructions on how to google for infringing material suddenly infringing?
I understood that DMCA notice/counternotice procedure was meant to provide a streamlined process for simple cases, which could be migrated to an actual court if necessary. I don’t like seeing it stretched to cover cases that aren’t so simple.
The MPA is not even claiming copyright on any of the files in the repository; it just complaining about the "extensive copyright infringement of motion pictures and television programs that is occurring by virtue of the operation and further development of the Popcorn Time repositories".
> I haven't used PopCornTime for a long time, as I have Netflix+HBO subscriptions, but it's time to reinstall it as a way to disobay the takedown.
> only tested it years ago, can't be arsed with the gobshite one gets mainly from US.. media junk, like the food. but min this is back up, I will give it a swirl.
When will they learn a p2p system/network can never truly be taken down so long as Human's have personal agency. Furthermore, Github was always a central point of failure, made even more vulnerable due to its purchase from M$. This only further proves why that is.
> Out of touch politicians coming up with tech policy in the 90s. Tada!
This is mere optics and one motivated by self-praise as it doesn't really work. But I'm glad some carry on the spirit of Gene Kan.
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:b7861e52eda1961101b605593fd2b4e8c2210e41&dn=PopCornTime doesn't seem to exist, so I'm not sure what you mean by that. But yes; as the saying goes, censorship is damage; the internet routes around it.
Huh, doesn't seem to be in DHT for me, not really sure what going wrong there. Are you sure it's not marked private (aka is a corrupt or invalid infoblob)? And no, none of top three results on duckduckgo has a working tracker for it.
Failing that, and you still want the file(s), here it is for all supported distros [1], download them and re-up and seed and post the torrent/hash here.
> When will they learn a p2p system/network can never truly be taken down so long as Human's have personal agency.
I do think they have learned that by now. However their goal is not to take it down completely, just to make it more difficult to install for a layman. And that they can be rather successful in: if there's a thousand different ways to get Popcorn Time, half of which don't work, your common user will quickly give up and go pay for their Netflix. I myself have done that, and I consider myself a technical person.
> We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.
What an obscene abuse of power that ruling is. Are gun shops liable for the mass shootings that take place by people that bought guns there? Didn't think so. Going after the tool-makers is right out of the authoritarian playbook.
I think there's a valid distinction between a product that can be misused but has a legitimate use, and a product solely built to enable illegal activity. If the business knows their product isn't useful for anything but crime, the only reason they're in business is the crime.
VLC Media Player is a multi-use video player sometimes used to play pirated videos. BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file transfer protocol designed to transfer and distribute large files efficiently. Popcorn Time is explicitly built to find and play illegally shared content.
Practically I agree with you, but I'm not sure there actually is a distinction in a legal sense. Technically Popcorn Time can be used to watch legal/non-pirated content, so they have some form of plausible deniability.
I could go down the street to the smoke shop and buy myself a bong right now, because technically I could use it to smoke tobacco, even though everyone knows that's not what 99% of people are doing with them. You don't see the ATF or DEA shutting them down.
This is (legally) a fair point. If you're linking to illegal content then perhaps that is grounds under this particular ruling for a takedown.
In general though, I object to links themselves being illegal content. If you give somebody the phone number of a drug dealer, can you be charged with selling or distribution of drugs?
The law fundamentally builds on the concept of intent: Did I give you Steve's phone number, or did I give you the phone number of Steve, my drug dealer, because you were interested in buying drugs from him. Criminal law depends on both the actual act, and the intention to commit a crime. That's why most technical workarounds people claim should exempt them from the law tend to not work: The intent is the same.
Disclaimer: I do not actually have a drug dealer named Steve.
Proving intent is the most difficult part of criminal law. If intent was all that mattered, why does Google remove copyrighted links from its search results? The intent for Google clearly isn't to distribute illegal content, but to provide links to as much as possible on the web (or at least, it used to be). But even DDG compiles with DMCA. A generic search engine is still required by law to take down links, even if the intent isn't there. Which proves that the mere act of "handing over a phone number" is enough.
But that's not what Grokster said. It was to the effect that if you promote your service for piracy then you're liable even if it does have non-infringing uses.
The result has, ironically, been quite an inconvenience for copyright holders, because it meant that the developers of piracy-enabling services merely stopped promoting them as such even though nothing about the technology was any different, which made it harder to shut them down because of the optics. If you have someone producing a mixed-use technology but actively promoting it for infringement then it's easier to convince a judge that they're the bad guys. Now that any company with lawyers doesn't do that anymore, it's a lot harder to paint that picture.
Technology-wise there isn't much in Popcorn Time that wouldn't still be there in a legitimate YouTube competitor.
And this gets double complicated when it's software rather than a service because (presumably) the liability for promoting infringement would be on the people doing the promoting, but what does that mean for the software? What happens if somebody else who isn't promoting infringement starts distributing a version of the same code? Is it different than some independent code which does exactly the same thing?
One person's "abuse of power" is another's judicial activism [1].
MGM v. Grokster [2] effectively held that distribution for the purpose of encouraging illegal activity can create liability for that illegal activity. See MGM v. Grokster at 919.
Applied to your gun shop example, do gun shops distribute guns for the purpose of encouraging illegal activity? Proponents of MGM v. Grokster would say no and that this may be the very distinction that the court was trying to highlight. I.e., distribution for the purpose of illegal activity versus distribution for legal activity.
From this perspective, it seems Popcorn Time may not have learned from MGM v. Grokster. Specifically, highlighting and promoting the illegal uses of a product may incur liability for those illegal uses. It may not be a silver bullet, but highlighting only the legal uses of a product may reduce the chance of MGM v. Grokster from being used to create liability for a product that has both legal and illegal uses.
No but they do have liability to perform background checks as per law before selling the firearm. If they do so, they are ok. If not, the law will go after them. This is not dis-similar to how GitHub has safe harbor as long as it follows the DCMA process
Background checks don't prevent people from doing what they like. What would the parallel be with software? Checking their criminal history for piracy or hacking crimes before allowing software downloads? Absurd.
According to the notice the code in the repo included links to pirate sites, so it seems to be the case that it not only promoted copyright violations, but directly enabled them. I wonder if the takedown would still have been possible if those links would have been located outside of the repo.
That seems likely the case. Plenty of tools enable copyright but don't do it for you. For instance, Blu-ray decoder applications generally can operate unharassed as long as people have to "find" the decryption keys elsewhere.
The fact that Popcorn Time comes preconfigured to find illegal content is what they're going off of, and it looks like in Popcorn Time's reply, they're claiming the removal of those specific configuration files, they want the repository restored.
As usual, I truly love GitHub's policy about handling these complaints publicly, they offer so much direct value in being able to see the process and procedures outside of any sort of NDAs.
Just to be clear, I'm not joking here. I've had photos boosted by a reputable publication. When I called them out on it, they paid my invoice. But Pinterest has made a fine living from wide-scale violation of the copyrights of photographers and graphic artists everywhere. The main difference with PopcornTime and this takedown is that the movie industry can afford a lot of well-paid lawyers in a way that rando photographers like myself can't.
The Hawaiian company "42 Ventures" has registered various piracy-related trademarks. The company currently owns the US word marks for YTS, Popcorn Time, and Terrarium, which it uses to target key piracy services. This recently resulted in the suspension of the Twitter account of a popular Popcorn Time fork.[0]
Why did you reply to me? I literally just copied and pasted the project description (the comment section was empty when I posted it, and I didn't even know what Popcorn Time is...), and I didn't state any position on DMCA (to set the records straight, I'm not a fan of DMCA). Please do not blindly assume other people's positions based on what they didn't say. Thanks.
The DMCA is easy to abuse without any consequences. There's no known case of anyone ever being legally sanctioned for filing a DMCA takedown, even when it involved lies such as assertions of copyright ownership that were clearly untrue.
Depends on what your criteria is. Google settled for 25k with someone who submitted fake notices to YouTube. Given that most litigation ends before a decision, it's likely there's been other private settlements.
More broadly than just DMCA, but here's a partial list of successful cases:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4226764/dynamic-designs... awarded declaratory judgement and 37k in attorney fees for a false claim made to eBay (see docket 38)
>On November 11, 2011, Mr. Nalin filed a “VeRO complaint with
eBay asserting that the Dynamic Designs speaker adapter
infringed Nalin’s trademark rights.”
Given the large number of attempts at legal sanctions which have all failed, I'm not so sure that an out-of-court settlement is that interesting. So yes, that's what I think is important.
Edit: I'm having a hard time keeping up with your edits, can you stop editing at some point?
You've added 3 links about counterfitting. The DMCA only applies to copyrights, not trademarks or patents.
I think I only did one edit to add the cases, won't edit that comment any more.
I did disclaim that those are broader than DMCA. I'm well aware of the distinctions.
You're looking only for final judgements? I have a handful where a judge ordered the DMCA notice to be retracted and ordered them not to refile it, and then the case settled, presumably on favorable terms.
I agree DMCA cases seem to be harder to win than trademark/patent abuse.
>A required retraction is not much of a legal sanction.
It gives somewhat of a hint about the nature of the settlement, which in most cases is private. There do seem to be a decent number of settlements; my guess is the most egregious cases all settle, and the ones that move forward are harder to win.
>Since Curtis repeatedly alleged that Defendants knew that the takedown notices contained false infringement allegations, she adequately pleaded all of § 512(f)’s elements.
There seems to be legal precedent for holding GitHub liable for distributing software that encourages piracy according to MGM v Grokster[1]. Unless I'm reading that incorrectly, if they can prove that the software "promotes" the infringement, the claim will stand.
No. The maintainers of Popcorn Time might be able to be held accountable, but GitHub is a platform. As long as GitHub follows the take-down process laid out by the DMCA, they have what is called "safe harbor", which means that they are immunized from claims for copyright infringement.
I think it's worth noting that's a US law and the way things are going with GDPR etc, it wouldn't surprise me if another country viewed things differently.
I'm not convinced the courts will see much of a difference between "company (Grokster) that encourages easy p2p piracy through its software" and "company (GitHub) that publicly hosts software that promotes easy p2p piracy".
If you are running a torrent site with "links" (.torrent files available) it's illegal. Torrent site is not hosting any videos, just links to them. This is exactly the same with popcorn time because they have providers in their code base. In case of the torrent site interface is a website, in case of popcorn time it's an desktop application. If they would remove providers (torrent sites/trackers with illegal content) from their code then DMCA would be invalid.
There's still the risk of losing server hosting and/or network uplink. So it's prudent to use anonymously linked reverse proxies, which are ~disposable.
Required? Not really. You can work without a central server, pulling from individuals machines over SFTP or SMB as we did for a few years in the early 2010s.
It was always awkward and we moved to GitHub shortly before I left.
You can have multiple Git remotes or none at all. Unlike torrents it doesn’t help you with discovery of peers with mirrors, but other than that there’s probably a hundred copies of this repository sitting on people’s hard drives.
I think this is a good opportunity to assess the commutment of github (microsoft) to support free software. I am not a lawyer, but it seems clear that this an abuse. I bet that the repository will become available again. IMHO the duration of the takedown is a good KPI of the trust deserved by github. More than 24 hours would be bad. Less than 4 hours would be good.
PopCornTime is a scraper, could one argue that it does not contain DMCA materials only accesses it like a Doom client accesses a Doom server or you build your own Doom server.
The DMCA violation is on the Internet from servers that allow web scraping and hosts the files or P2P Torrent networks that don't store the file on the PCT software.
I have lost any remaining respect I had for GitHub. The whole point of git is to be decentralized and this is a great example if why that is important.
I do think it makes sense (as, well, majority of people don’t use it to get free videos about how to install Linux), but it’s very very tricky balance, and each time they’re being pushed there should be a lot of discussion and scrutiny.
Compare that to gun rights discussion. Apps like popcorntime are similar to assault weapons - cool tech, but not much legit legal reason for an average joe to own it. And they both make illegal activity much, much easier.
Note - before someone says that I equal downloading movie to killing people. I don’t, but framework of legal thinking is similar.
> Apps like popcorntime are similar to assault weapons
All analogies breakdown under close scrutiny.
What I don't understand is why people contiue to make analogies where none are required.
The arguement against Popcorn Time is simple and straighforward: It is overwhelming used to circumvent copywrite / avoid paying for access to content.
Whether anyone agrees with that argument or not is immaterial to my point: we don't need to compare the arguement against to anything else because its meaning is self-evident.
I would hope that any gun shop that sells products with the slogan "you can murder your spouse or neighbour with them, but you can also shoot animals or walls I guess".gets shut down ;)
They'll come after you anyways if they care. When Apple's iBoot code was put up they presumably scoured GitHub to find unlinked forks because those disappeared soon afterwards.
Can any blockchain hold blobs and more importantly how much it will cost?
For example I know the Stellar blockchain can hold a small amount of text content called "memo" when making a transaction, but not sure if the "memo" field can be used _after_ a transaction is made. Probably it is a public field that can be read by anyone?
I was always wondering what if we start putting content into a blockchain in general.
Patents? 20 years from filing. But copyright is different and usually associated with lifetime of the author. Disney has... bastardized this with aggressive lobbying.
I've changed my view radically on mass piracy since what I believed in my youth, and I no longer agree with or have any sympathy with it.
In the information age, most valuable labor is increasingly the creation of information. "Information wants to be free" means "labor wants to be free." In other words "I want other people's labor to be free," or "gimme free stuff and I don't care if anyone else can make a living."
Then there is the effect of everything being free. In the Internet media world it helped lead to surveillance capitalism, since that's the only viable business model. Another viable model is propaganda. So if you want more of those things, by all means undermine simple overt non-sketchy paid business models.
Most of the comments here seem to miss the crucial point: it doesn't matter whether the DMCA really applies here. Github is privately owned. If Microsoft wants to take down this repository (which they host for free), they are most certainly allowed to and do not even have to give a reason.
Whether the DMCA takedown procedure applies here is important, because it determines who to blame. If the procedure is valid to use in this way, then the MPA is who gets the blame for making it harder to get PopcornTime.
But if it doesn't apply here and Microsoft is acting outside of that procedure and its protections, then legally and morally it's GitHub censoring a project because they don't like it. Which GitHub's Terms of Service let them do, but the ToS doesn't say the users have to be happy about it. (And it would also be the MPA abusing a legal procedure that was already written to favor them, which is certainly a topic fit for public debate.)
