
Megaupload to Sue Universal, Joins Fight Against SOPA - llambda
http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-to-sue-universal-joins-fight-against-sopa-111212/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
======
skore
I find it particularly curious that this was taken down. It was supposed to be
something that the music industry is smart enough to understand for the
"attack that you need to sit out for now" that it is - instead, they took the
bait and went into attack mode themselves.

The reaction, of course, shows how disgustingly superior (to logic and reason,
really) the industry perceives itself - basically everything that an artist
creates and is related to the profit of the music industry must fit into a
narrow idea of control. When they produce music that sells, the industry wants
control. When it's only an appearance that could funnel traffic to something
they can sell, they will allow it, because they know they will have control
down the line. But if it is something like the Megaupload case - having the
artists create something that does neither, but also seemingly "strengthen the
enemy", they are caught outside of their logic.

Now, anybody who isn't with their back to the wall would work with such a
situation creatively. But with the media industry, we have a curious case of
not _needing_ to get defensive (after all, they still turn record profits),
but having bought into the idea that that is the attitude they have to display
in order to survive.

It would be interesting to hear precisely how much standing they have on this,
really. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the artists that appeared in that
clip do have contracts that say - whatever you do, we own, if we don't like
it, we will fight it. After all - the industry isn't stupid and they certainly
have the access to the best legal defenses you can get these days.

The good thing about this hack by Megaupload is that it's a loose-loose for
the industry and while they have no shortage of material in that area (it
seems like we hear a horribly backwards story like this every month), that
steady drip really may end up give us some progressive approaches.

~~~
throwaway64
I am almost certain the DMCA take-down request was at least semi-automated via
tag searches on youtube and rubber stamped by one of their employees. You can
see this yourself by submitting a video with tags that contain artists they
have on contract.

I am also almost certain that MegaUpload understood this, and their video was
specifically engineered to trigger these bots....

~~~
Natsu
They can't just use a bot to DMCA stuff, they have to have a lawyer sign off
on it. Granted, in practice, I think they pretty much rubber stamp it, but the
law says that they're _supposed_ to be acting in good faith. If they're not,
well, they have nobody but themselves to blame. I mean, how can they expect
YouTube or the government to police their stuff if even they can't get it
right?

Copyright infringement hinges on permission. If even they don't know who has
their permission to do what, nor even what they actually own, it seems
ludicrous to suggest that the government or other companies should be expected
to know.

If they're confused here, it's because they thought they owned these people,
only to find out that they do not.

~~~
jcr
> _They can't just use a bot to DMCA stuff, they have to have a lawyer sign
> off on it._

This is incorrect. Anyone operating with the consent of the rightsholder can
send a DMCA take-down request. You do not have to be a lawyer.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Ac...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_L...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act)

~~~
Natsu
Oops, you're right. You do still have to make that statement under penalty of
perjury that has never, to my knowledge, been enforced, about representing the
rightsholder and having a good faith belief that something is infringing.

~~~
jcr
Sorry my statement was so terse. After getting some much needed sleep and
rereading it, I most certainly could have written it better/nicer.

Bogus DMCA take-down requests from unknown/anonymous/incorrect entities are
actually a significant problem. It would be nice if you were right and only
lawyers could send such requests (and risk being disbarred for intentionally
misrepresenting facts). Sadly, any anonymous nut-job can send DMCA take-down
requests for any reason, and like spam, they can get away with it. I've seen
no cases where the stated "penalty of perjury" has actually been prosecuted.

------
nextparadigms
The camel's back has been broken. Because of the label's stupidity, this trial
will un-do a lot of the stuff the labels have been pushing for over the years.
It will not only stop the trend of more restrictions dead in its tracks, but
also reverse it. Megaupload will bring the necessary attention to the labels'
abuses of DMCA and their other proposed bills, and we'll probably going to end
up with laws that strengthen our online liberties.

~~~
tiles
It's important that we don't let this happen in a bubble. We have to show that
citizens are behind Megaupload (in this case). The recording industry has no
qualms on speaking on behalf of public interest, and I can imagine they'll
suggest the public would prefer censorship with false positives than to risk
"hurting musicians" through piracy.

If there have been other cases where artists have had music taken down by
recording labels that did not own copyright, now would be a good time to bring
them back to light.

~~~
jasonlotito
While we are fighting the recording companies, why not put pressure on the
people that give them power: the artists themselves? UMG is speaking on their
behalf, acting on their behalf. If they are going to play the musicians card,
why not strike back. It's one thing to hear the music industry wants to
silence your speech. It's another thing when your favorite artist supports the
same efforts.

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VonLipwig
This isn't an isolated case.

In a similar story Warner Bros abused the DMCA to take down HotFile content
that didn't infringe their copyright.

[http://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-admits-sending-
hotfile-f...](http://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-admits-sending-hotfile-
false-takedown-requests-111109/)

Label's and studio's have every right to defend their products. However, they
must do it in a responsible way. Stories like this make it difficult for
politicians to legislate for more power's when the existing ones are already
being abused by those they are set up to protect.

~~~
mattmanser
This isn't really like that at all.

To be honest I found Warner Bro's mistake, apart from the OSS takedown, to be
not that odious, you can't on the one hand have the web industry say that
trying to deal with so much infringing content is almost impossible because
there's too much of it, and on the other moan that Warner Bros make a few
mistakes when trying to deal with that vast amount of infringing content, not
on one site but on hundreds of sites.

There's a happy medium somewhere and safe harbour isn't it, for example
YouTube knows that hence the auto filtering software they've developed.

Universal's action, however, is pure censorship in a massively misguided
attempt to further their own goals. Ultimately it has resulted in utter
failure.

~~~
Vivtek
If I recall correctly, Warner Bros was issuing DMCAs without even cursory
research into whether they had rights to the IP or not. The problem isn't even
so much that Warner Bros was cutting lawyer fees - fine - but that they
weren't held to the minimum of responsibility provided by the DMCA for issuing
fraudulent (OK, or at the very least incorrect) notices.

~~~
mattmanser
If someone puts up a 600mb file called 'Thor (2011)', what do you think it's
going to be. Do you need to open and watch it? 10s or 100s of times on 10s or
100s of sites?

On the one hand many sites are making _no_ attempt to stop the flood, pointing
at the DMCA, on the other the film and music industry want to legitimately
stop these files being shared.

I guess what I'm saying is are they supposed to download and watch every
single file?

As that's precisely what the website owners have claimed is something they
can't do, but the music/film industry suddenly has to do that on 100s of
sites?

It's a rock/hard place scenario.

~~~
mquander
You're still giving the industry way too much credit for being reasonable.
This is not a case of 600MB files named "Thor (2011)" that aren't Thor. In the
link above, you can see that Warner Bros., having the copyright to the film
"The Box" and the Harry Potter films went on to issue takedown notices for:

\- Things that sounded sort of maybe like "The Box", like _"The Box That
Changed Britain"_ and _"Cancer Step Outsider of the Box"_ (sic)

\- Portuguese Harry Potter fanfiction unrelated to the films

\- Open-source software that Warner Bros. didn't approve of since it might
speed up downloads

\- "URLs" such as _"<http://hotfile.com/contacts.html> and give them the
details of where the link wasposted and the link and they will deal to the
@sshole who posted the fake."_

Does that really represent a reasonable effort on their part to get it right?

~~~
mattmanser
Yes, I do agree somewhat, there should have been someone checking the matching
as well as some oversight on the employees. I find it odd that someone would
get so indignant that they'd take down an OSS piece of software.

But in the end the music/film industry has been asked, with little to no
programming skills, to try and regulate the web industry, who's livelihood
depends on lots of programming skill.

I think YouTube have moved strategically as they can see where that's
ultimately going to end up, with a swing back towards sites doing the
filtering.

~~~
Vivtek
The music/film industry _has not been asked_ to try to regulate the Web
industry. Instead, the music/film industry _has demanded_ the right to do
whatever the hell they like, with no oversight, no due process, and no
hindrance, to ensure their own profits to the exclusion of all other
considerations. It's bad for the artists, bad for consumers, extremely bad in
terms of collateral damage to the Internet and society alike, and ultimately
bad for the music and film industry themselves. Every study done by
independent observers, every bit of evidence that is examined by people not
being paid for alarmism, every new scandal that comes out, underscores the
short-sightedness, venality, and sheer moral failure of the bozos running that
show, and yet true to form, Congress continues to lick their spittle for a
couple nickels come payday.

It's time they got theirs. Seriously.

------
w1ntermute
It seems to me that the only way to end the labels' dominance over the music
industry is to deprive them of their sole revenue source - popular and
successful artists.

What services exactly does a label continue to provide, now that the internet
has made it much easier for artists to self-promote? I presume that large
portion of what the labels used to do can now be done very easily by the
artists themselves.

There may be an opening for a tech startup here (maybe there's already one (or
more) in this field) to take whatever the labels _still_ need to do and
undercut them on price and ease of acceptance (the labels are pretty picky
about which artists they take). It seems to me that the labels have spurned a
lot of the technological advances that have been made possible over the last
decade or two in favor of clinging to an increasingly outdated business model
in the hopes of squeezing a final dollar or two out of their musicians.

~~~
untog
_What services exactly does a label continue to provide, now that the internet
has made it much easier for artists to self-promote?_

Promotion.

Artists can self-promote all they want, but they're up against thousands of
other artists that are also self-promoting. Labels pay people to listen to
artists, work out which ones are actually talented (or, in reality, which ones
will make the most money) and focus their promotion on those artists only. The
signal to noise ratio is totally different, and they can afford to put far
more resources behind this smaller pool of artists. They also have a lot of
experience in promotion, which up and coming bands simply don't have.

There isn't a tech startup solution to everything. Maybe you could set up a
site that crowdsources this artist selection process but I wouldn't be
optimistic- there is no personal reward in listening to hours upon hours of
awful music. Maybe you could give those initial listeners a stake in the bands
they vote for? That could be an interesting idea.

I've long thought that MySpace might yet have a life as some sort of band-
centric site. Since it died a horrible death nothing has really come up to
replace it.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Tech companies hire PR firms to do their promotion. They don't give the PR
firm a cut of all the revenues the company makes, nor do they give them equity
necessarily (it does happen but its not the rule).

The 'labels' have no reason to exist, there is however a great market for
Artist PR firms. We need that first disruptive one though, where an artist
'signs' with them meaning that they do the promotion but they don't own the
music copyright. And as it is a new business model for the music industry it
will take some time to work out.

~~~
mjdwitt
In that sense, record labels are like VCs that also provide PR. For the amount
of the investment that both labels and tech VCs make, its quite normal in our
society to take an equity cut rather than a flat rate. Making the analogy to
VCs also relates a lot better to the odds of failure, given that labels lose
money on most of the bands they sign. And similarly to founders that don't
know how to negotiate for good terms on their funding, many bands are also
poor negotiators.

~~~
chc
The labels don't really provide funding in the same way that VCs do; they
essentially provide a very large payday loan. Any VC who demanded the kind of
terms record labels do would be run out of the Valley.

The interesting question is, is there room for a real VC industry in music? I
think there might be someday, but not in the current market — the existing
cartel is so horribly messed up that they'd be pleased as punch to take you
down with them.

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xer0
This is part of a trend to abandon due process. In some cases it's the
government itself, with ICE seizing domains without having to go to trial and
prove their case. In this case it's government abdicating their role in due
process, telling corporations to do what they will.

This is leading to vigilantism, by the government and by corporations.

~~~
nocipher
_This is leading to vigilantism, by the government and by corporations._

This is one the most pointed comments I've heard about copyright litigation
and wanton take-down notices.

------
NameNickHN
I would be 100% behind this if it weren't for that stupid Kim Dotcom.

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bigohms
I'm surprised to learn Megaupload is a Kim dotcom, aka Kimble production.

~~~
Element_
I always wondered who owned the mega label sites and why they were never
talked about in the mainstream media. Then your comment led me to the
following article: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20087753-261/the-
mystery-m...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20087753-261/the-mystery-man-
behind-megaupload-piracy-fight/)

~~~
bigohms
Cool. I would opine that a good 50% of the internet money made out there is
very unsexy, hidden and underground. The people behind the businesses have
absolutely no incentive to draw attention to themselves but occasionally they
do slip through the cracks.

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rmoriz
Money laundry....

=> Hongkong => BVI

<http://imgur.com/a/7fqbg>

