Comments on: Microsoft claims ownership of the number 45, asks Google to censor the US government and Bing

By: Tom Forest

Tom Forest — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 08:34:00 +0000

I’m sure the Meaning of Life is public domain… isn’t it?

By: Shannon Shaw

Shannon Shaw — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 20:32:00 +0000

In a perfect world, yes. But, Microsoft is a very rich company. To catch you up to speed, any person or company that is super-rich or powerful is either above the law or has legal ways to ignore the law (including our own president). Welcome to the 21st century where the law (& constitution) is meaningless to those who have money & power.

By: dabble53

dabble53 — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 13:33:00 +0000

MS hasn’t thought a coherent thought since the dancing monkey took the helm.

By: dabble53

dabble53 — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 13:32:00 +0000

“good fait” just means you THINK you are correct. Remove that and make it “if you send a take down notice without being able to prove (notice PROVE, not SHOW) you are the lawful copyright holder”…..then you get slapped with fines proportional to the number of violations and your gross annual income.

By: dabble53

dabble53 — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 13:30:00 +0000

Incompetent law firm, incompetent MS….what’s the difference other than spelling?

By: Donald Clifton

Donald Clifton — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 00:46:00 +0000

Doug Adams has dibs on “42″

By: Jonathan W. Hendry

Jonathan W. Hendry — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 20:22:00 +0000

So are these really generated by Microsoft, or is there some incompetent service provider or law firm that is doing these on behalf of other companies?

By: Gyrofrog

Gyrofrog — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 18:58:00 +0000

This is driving me nuts; think I’ll sit down and chill with a nice cold Colt—heeyyy!?

By: Terry

Terry — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 18:20:00 +0000

As stated in the first sentence of the article.

By: schr0559

schr0559 — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 18:16:00 +0000

Reminds me of a fun time I had with MS’s code-sanitizing organization. They’re tasked with scrubbing offensive words and images from all their products, to ensure nobody anywhere ever gets offended by anything. Not sure who ran it, but I’d guess a combination of HR, legal, and a couple high school interns.

Their automated tool flagged the two-letter combination “pd” in some random binary file I dealt with. I guess that means “pedophile” in French or something, but it took weeks to convince them that it was just a compiler artifact, and not a ringing endorsement by our developers of unspeakable acts.

By: TheMadLibrarian

TheMadLibrarian — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 18:02:00 +0000

Since the notices are autogenerated by the ukujillion, their rep should be in the hole in a matter of seconds.

By: bluest_one

bluest_one — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 16:50:00 +0000

Maybe companies, like Google, who get sent DMCA takedown notices should employ a reputational model, where based on the number of incorrect DMCA notices sent from a given source, the reputation of that source diminishes and they have to jump through additional hoops before those notices are accepted.

Requiring valid signatures signed off by someone who will accept legal costs for missent notices, requiring them to be sent by post, requiring a valid human confirmation before action is taken, etc.

Start off with a score of 100 and knock off a point for every incorrect DMCA. Add points back on after a penalty period, or earned after every x number of correct notices sent.

By: Joe Buck

Joe Buck — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 16:09:00 +0000

” Microsoft and other rightsholders are censoring large parts of the Internet” …

Incorrect in this case: Microsoft sent a bogus censorship request, and Google implemented it. Google needs to add sanity checks. Florian’s suggestion for fines would also be a good idea.

By: Zukey Badtouch

Zukey Badtouch — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Well, we could all stop purchasing MS products. Oh, wait…

By: austinhamman

austinhamman — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 15:40:00 +0000

45base11(49) or 45base10 represented in 45base11(41)?

By: Florian Bösch

Florian Bösch — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:48:00 +0000

For every DMCA takedown you send that wasn’t made in good faith (such things as just grepping for the number 45 in the URL) you should be fined, oh, I don’t know, a *lot*. It’d stop real quick.

By: Over the River

Over the River — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:37:00 +0000

Are you sure this wasn’t Apple?

By: Mohammad Elwakeel

Mohammad Elwakeel — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:37:00 +0000

what about the 45mm glock?

By: nivcharayahel

nivcharayahel — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:01:00 +0000

That’s Numberwang!

By: Paul Renault

Paul Renault — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 12:38:00 +0000

Maybe they thought Spotify was broadcasting a torrent of an .iso of Windows 8 by playing music that had bird song in it?

By: Nathan Hornby

Nathan Hornby — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 12:02:00 +0000

Poorly automating takedown notices, I guess.

By: Nathan Hornby

Nathan Hornby — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Not everyone is located within the jurisdiction of the US you know. Well, they are – but, you know.

By: Tynam

Tynam — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 11:17:00 +0000

It has been well-known for years that this is the case. When there is no penalty for getting it wrong, why bother to include intelligent judgement?

By: That_Anonymous_Coward

That_Anonymous_Coward — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 10:42:00 +0000

And we are supposed to respect copyright when it only benefits corporations and they are allowed to send out what amounts to a a waste of electrons of a notice.

Until there are actual penalties the system will not get better. They have a system that cost the least and is accepted, why do they need to make sure its correct?

If you reported someone to the authorities in this manner you’d get arrested, but a major corporation can send out these chicken little claims over and over and not a damn thing happens.

By: Nathaniel

Nathaniel — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 09:52:00 +0000

Came here to say this.

By: Lemoutan

Lemoutan — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 09:15:00 +0000

My 45 is base 11. Dodged a bullet there. Phew.

By: roger crouch

roger crouch — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 08:08:00 +0000

This thread is Copyright myself, cease reading it or pay $19.99 for the iTunes version.

By: ocker3

ocker3 — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 06:02:00 +0000

Good Faith is probably a legal term, right? Without any penalties for breaking it, unlike committing perjury.

By: Clifton

Clifton — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 04:31:00 +0000

I posted a slightly longer bit up above, but just to emphasize it:
In the passage you quote, note carefully the structure of those clauses – the only thing being sworn under penalty of perjury is that you are the copyright owner or are authorized to act on behalf of a copyright owner.

Everything else is on the honor system, and we all know how well that works once money, greed, and corporations are involved

By: Clifton

Clifton — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 04:27:00 +0000

The only thing you have to swear to on penalty of perjury is that you are the copyright holder or represent the copyright holder of the allegedly infringed whatever-it-is. The act requires that you have a “good faith” belief that the URL(s) you are filing a complaint against actually infringes your copyright in some way, but that isn’t sworn under penalty of perjury, and there is no penalty, not even the slightest, if you get that wrong or just lie through your teeth.

I could file a DMCA complaint against Boing Boing, or against Microsoft, alleging that this very page infringes the unpublished fragments of a novel I tried to write 20 years ago, and while the complaint would be completely bogus no penalty would be possible.