Microsoft, for example, has sent Google dozens of notices about the massive infringements that occur on the site Youhavedownloaded.com, a site that is completely non-infringing. As a result, many pages of the website have been de-listed from Google’s search results, directly damaging the site’s owners.
Other rightsholders make even stranger mistakes by massively taking down content that they don’t own. The adult content outfit AFS Media for example asked Google to remove links to the movies Braveheart, Monsters Inc, Green Lantern and many more titles that have nothing to do with the content they produce.
Similar mistakes are made at NBC Universal who got Google to censor the independent and free-to-share movie A Lonely Place for Dying.
Or again by Microsoft, who successfully requested Google to remove a link to a copy of the open source operating system Kubuntu.
And then there’s YouTube’s content-ID system. We previously outlined many mistakes that were made by the DMCA-style anti-piracy filter, resulting in tens of thousands of ridiculously inaccurate claims.
This week yet another example came up when YouTube labeled birds tweeting in the background of a video as copyrighted music. Again a mistake, but one that probably would have never been corrected if Reddit and Hacker News hadn’t picked it up.
Aside from the mistakes outlined above, there’s also a darker side to DMCA abuse. Google previously revealed that 57% of all the DMCA notices they receive come from companies targeting competitors.
Much more:
http://torrentfreak.com/dmca-horrors-of-a-broad-and-automated-censorship-tool-120304/
