
The Mueller Report Can’t Be Copyrighted, Is Flagged by Copyright Bots Anyway - sohkamyung
https://www.eff.org/takedowns/mueller-report-cant-be-copyrighted-flagged-copyright-bots-anyway
======
sfifs
While this doesn't seem to be DCMA, a question for the lawyers here on DCMA
takedown requests. Given issuing a request require the requestor to make a
"good faith" affidavit, if they're reporting something flagged by a bot that
is obviously wrong like this if a human had checked, can it be used as
evidence of bad faith & committing perjury?

~~~
mutagenesis
While a false DMCA takedown request can be fined and ultimately punished with
jail time, most of the casework on this has clear malicious intent. These are
parties that send out a notice just for articles or posts that are critical of
said party. In these cases, you had a human on one side knowingly filing a
single false DMCA takedown.

[http://www.aaronkellylaw.com/consequences-of-filing-a-
false-...](http://www.aaronkellylaw.com/consequences-of-filing-a-false-dmca-
takedown-request/)

These are cases of programmers creating takedown bots with false positives. Do
the programmers know that there will be false positives? Yes. Do they not make
a good faith effort to prevent those false positives? Probably. Good luck
proving this in court though.

~~~
pavel_lishin
This is an excellent example of why @qntm called AI "money laundering for
responsibility":

[https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1030846375213379584](https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1030846375213379584)

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inflatableDodo
Given there is a contentID system for explicitly copyrighted works, it seems
insane that nobody involved in these systems has seen fit to do the same for
explicitly public works.

~~~
edgineer
These systems are good at picking up small portions of copyrighted works
within some larger context, but to guarantee that 100% of a YouTube video or
scribd document is in the public domain is a different problem.

For published works like the Mueller report, one wouldn't need contentID.
Matching the document's hash would suffice.

~~~
gizmo686
A hash would still only work for the exact document. Suppose someone uploads a
new version with a better table of contents, or with some added annotations
[0]; now your hash no longer matches, while contentID probably will.

[0] Both things which _could_ be copywrited, but I'll assume will not trigger
the actual flag.

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whym
The issue seems to be skewed incentive towards false negatives vs false
negatives. If leaving false positives (materials being taken down based on a
false claim) give much lower risk to the platform than false negatives
(materials that should be removed but has not been removed), they would
naturally prioritize reducing false negatives.

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fouc
How about some sort of legal punishment against scribd/youtube etc for false
positives?

~~~
Meph504
These companies aren't violating the law, at best they are violating their own
policies in regards to the content they host.

~~~
dmix
Who defines what is a "violation" of their "own" policy? Or what the policy is
exactly? Are there no repercussions if their "policy" is not directly
reflecting the goals and intentions of original copyright law?

~~~
Meph504
If you read the terms and services agreement for almost any company you'll
find you agree to hold them faultless in these sort of issues. And you'll
likely find that you've also agreed to arbitration in the handling of these
matters.

I'm not sure though how you feel they are violating copyright law, can you go
into more detail on that?

Because they basically have the right to remove any content they host at
anytime, regardless of if it is copyrighted or not.

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vojta_letal
Well, the EU has just passed the Copyright Directive. That makes reading such
articles both funny and terrifying.

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3xblah
Is Scribd under any legal obligation to display content that users upload? I
cannot find any in the Terms of Use.

I did find some terms that allow Scribd to remove content for any reason and
terms which purport to limit any remedy for such removal to "Don't like it?
Then don't use it."

12.1 Scribd. You agree that Scribd, in its sole discretion, for any _or no
reason_ , and without penalty, may terminate any account (or any part thereof)
You may have with Scribd or Your use of the Scribd Platform and remove and
discard all or any part of Your account, User profile, _and any content_ , at
any time and without notice to You.

12.2 You. Your only remedy with respect to any dissatisfaction with (i) the
Scribd Platform, (ii) _any term of these Terms_ , (iii) any policy or practice
of Scribd in operating the Scribd Platform, or (iv) any content or information
transmitted through the Scribd Platform, is to cancel Your account and stop
using Scribd.

[https://support.scribd.com/hc/en-
us/articles/210129326-Gener...](https://support.scribd.com/hc/en-
us/articles/210129326-General-Terms-of-Use)

7\. Removal of Content. Regardless of which purchase option You have selected,
Scribd reserves the right to modify or withdraw at any time any Scribd
Commercial Content from access by You at the request of its publisher _or for
any other reason_.

[https://support.scribd.com/hc/en-
us/articles/210129486-Scrib...](https://support.scribd.com/hc/en-
us/articles/210129486-Scribd-Paid-Access-End-User-License-Agreement)

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josteink
I don’t understand why people use something like scribbd to host a PDF a few
megs in size and then complain about takedowns.

Host yourself. The operational and BW cost for hosting static content is
ridiculously low.

~~~
lostmyoldone
I believe that the particular report was 139MB of scanned printouts of a
redacted PDF. Depending on your site hosting, I imagine it could actually
become somewhat expensive if it turns out to be popular.

~~~
colejohnson66
This. 10,000 downloads would already be a terabyte of bandwidth

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Which is <$100 even using something with overpriced bandwidth like EC2.

And there is always BitTorrent if you don't even want to pay that.

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exo762
We need a reform. One that would remove the idea that one can collect
royalties from the work. Royalties are incompatible with the way information
is disseminated.

Authors don't collect royalties. Absolute majority of authors don't live of
royalties. Lets just kill this monstrosity.

If your business model comes with huge externalities for the society as
whole... your business model must go.

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terryschiavo22
Can we not turn this against the record industry's own videos? Genuine
question.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
1) Doing this purposely seems like a good way to get on the wrong end of some
legal process, and is exactly the sort of thing that would end up being
somehow fixed in a way that only works for Hollywood and not anybody else.

2) The major studios don't really _use_ YouTube, and Netflix and Hulu and
Spotify don't use ContentID. If the entire site was destroyed along with all
of their smaller competitors that do use it, they would only celebrate.

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droithomme
Scribd is a massive piracy site that should be sued into oblivion if there is
any justice. Only a very small amount of content there is uploaded with the
owner's permission.

~~~
smelendez
It's almost always inferior to any other way to distribute a legit free PDF.

Which is honestly nothing against Scribd--there's just no point to using an
e-book service to distribute a file every modern browser can open natively.

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tantalor
> it is impossible for a copy of the Mueller report to be infringement since
> it cannot be copyrighted

This is specious reasoning. The report could contain an independent
copyrighted material, like a previously published poem verbatim, "used with
permission". So copies could be automatically flagged for infringement of that
material.

The "public domain" document is tainted.

~~~
gpm
I am not a lawyer - I would appreciate it if a lawyer could confirm or reject
my understanding - I think it's actually the opposite (but take this with a
grain of salt):

This would be a derivative work of the material it is quoting. Derivative
works aren't protected by both the original copyright and the copyright of the
person who prepared the derivative work, only the latter. Since the US
government does not gain a copyright on derivative works that means the entire
derivative work is in the public domain. You can make copies of it, distribute
it, prepare further derivative works (such as cutting out everything except
the poem! Though maybe not a good idea to test that plan), etc.

The only exception to this would be (I think) if the report was created in
violation of copyright law, but there's no way that this would not be found to
be fair use. All the standard factors are in it's favor. There is a strong
public good in it's favor.

~~~
Meph504
Firstly not a attorney, but have spend the last several years working hand and
hand with a large number specifically related to these issues.

My take away is as follows

Including copyrighted material in its entirety and original form in a
different work does not make it derivative. It's original copyright stands.

A quick requirement for derivative work.

The derivative work must demonstrate transformation, modification or
adaptation of the original work must be substantial and bear its author's
personality sufficiently to be original and thus protected by copyright.

