Overly Aggressive Automated Takedowns Hit Scribd
from the though,-they-corrected-it dept
Scribd has come under some totally mistargeted criticism for being a supposed haven of book piracy. The company is clearly protected by DMCA safe harbors, and appears to work extra hard to deal with any infringement found on its platform. Part of that is an automated system that will take down content it believes is infringing. And, as we’ve seen with automated takedowns on others sites, sometimes it gets a little too aggressive. The folks over at Against Monopoly point out that it took down a copy of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, a book most of you would agree is very much in the public domain at this point. To Scribd’s credit, the company quickly admitted the error (saying it was a technical error) and corrected it. But, still, it shows the dangers of such automated systems. They certainly don’t do a good job dealing with fair use cases, and they often have problems with the public domain as well.
Filed Under: adam smith, dmca, takedown, wealth of nations
Companies: scribd
Comments on “Overly Aggressive Automated Takedowns Hit Scribd”
DMCA Being Used to Censor NOM (anti-gay group) critics?
“HRC releases audition tapes of ‘Gathering Storm’ actors.” Note that the YouTube videos of the auditions have apparently been pulled from YouTube due to a copyright claim by NOM, the group whose political views are being attacked.
Hey!
Adam Smith has descendants! Are you saying they shouldn’t get paid for his hard work?! Haven’t they earned it?!
OMG! A mistake was made..by software no less! Time to hoof it over to Congress and get copyright law stricken from the books.
Re: Re:
Burn the servers! Damn things, nothing but trouble!
Re: Re:
OMG! A mistake was made..by software no less! Time to hoof it over to Congress and get copyright law stricken from the books.
I think you’re trying to be funny, but that’s a cogent argument in my book.
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sounds good to me
right
FUCK YOU WEIRD HAROLD!
Yes, lets not EVER question the almighty copyright of your lord and masters. To question is to advocate FREE!
Sometimes, laws ARE WRONG. Sometimes, people ABUSE them. And people should ALWAYS question the validity, ESPECIALLY when they are clearly wrong.
You fucking retard.
Re: right
I don’t often agree with W.H., but that’s inappropriate.
Please back up powerful statements with at least some thing other than a plea to morality.
I do agree with you that I think copyright laws are wrong in their current incarnation. But I don’t think they should be entirely done away with.
Better than ...
An occassional, easily repairable software glich is better than participating in a shambles like the one going on in the music industry.
Why would you consider the automated takedown software any different than the mechanism that allows content to be posted?
What effort does YouTube do to ensure material being posted should be? None. Why should their effort to remove anything be any more?
No Excuse
Automation is no excuse.
Where I live it is legal to shoot someone if they are breaking into your house. However, it is illegal to rig up a shotgun to do it automatically. If you do, and it “accidentally” shoots the wrong person, crying that it just a “technical error” isn’t going to get you very far.