
Warner Bros. Flags Its Own Website as a Piracy Portal - _jomo
https://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-flags-website-piracy-portal-160904/
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davidmr
Many long years ago now in a past life, I was a network security guy for a big
research university. Overall, that was a pretty fun job: universities make for
a target rich environment. The downside was we that we were responsible for
handling DMCA complaints to the university (this was a relatively new law and
p2p sharing was just starting to become mainstream).

We'd take the complaint, check the netflow logs to verify that the IP in
question really was running file sharing software at the same time, turn off
the Ethernet port, report them to the Dean of Students, turn them back on
after the deans talked to them, etc., etc.

My boss at the time was sick of doing the RIAA's dirty work for them (back
then the RIAA was way more vigorous about enforcement than the MPAA. I don't
remember why). So he decided that we were going to make a web site to give
step-by-step instructions with screenshots to show how to disable file
uploading in every p2p client available. We didn't care what the kids were
downloading because the DMCA complaints only came in from uploads.

So fast-forward a year or so and the site is pretty popular. We'd get asked by
at least one or two other universities a week if they could copy our
instructions locally for their students. Being a university, of course we
would encourage it and only ask for attribution for the copyrighted text and
images.

Every now and then, I'd Google around and see who was using our instructions,
and one day I noticed a .com show up in the results, which was unusual. I
don't remember what the name of the site was, but it was some site trying to
convince people that copyright infringement is bad and the music industry
really are the good guys, etc. I know for sure we didn't get any requests from
anyone like that, so I did some digging.

The site didn't have a DMCA contact listed (as required), so it took some
serious digging to find out who really owned the site. As I'm sure you've
guessed by now, it was owned and operated by none other than the Recording
Industry Association of America. They had stolen the entire site, text,
screenshots and all, removed our copyright information, and rebranded the
pages, claiming the work as their own.

I dug through my email to find the most recent takedown notice they had sent
us, changed all the names to reflect the current situation and fired it off to
the RIAA's General Counsel. About 10m later, I got a phone call from a very
concerned attorney. I genuinely couldn't stop laughing as he was talking, so I
referred the matter to our attorneys and thought no more of it.

It sucks to know that your career has peaked so early. It's all been downhill
from there.

~~~
_0ffh
"back then the RIAA was way more vigorous about enforcement than the MPAA. I
don't remember why"

Because sharing music took off faster than sharing videos due to different
bandwidth requirements?

