Google Pulls Open Source CoreAVC Project Over DMCA Complaint

rippe77 writes "Google has taken down the open-source project CoreAVC for Linux due to a DMCA complaint. The CoreAVC codec is a commercial high-definition H.264 DirectShow filter for windows provided by CoreCodec Inc.. The CoreAVC for Linux project provided various patches for Linux applications (mplayer, MythTV, xine) to use these DirectShow decoder filters in Linux. The takedown is quite controversial, as the CoreAVC project did not provide any copyrighted material — only the means to use the DirectShow filters in Linux." (The takedown notice is not yet up at Chilling Effects, but Google's page has a link that will take you there when it is.)

This is why not to rely on Google, Sourceforge, &a

They drop projects faster than Paris Hilton's panties in the face of legal threats. Version control over Freenet or the like would be a good start.

Re:This is why not to rely on Google, Sourceforge,

If it will help keep the panties on Paris Hilton, then I'm all for it.

File a counter notice

If Google have received a notice then they have no option but to take down the site. Someone needs to file a counter [chillingeffects.org] notice [chillingeffects.org], then Google will reinstate them.

Re:

I keep thinking "Google is a big company now... do they really not have a legal department to handle BS like this yet?"

Re:File a counter notice

The law is clear: they get a notice they have to take down the material in question. Of course they have a legal department, and that department will be telling them to take it down.

Re:File a counter notice

Well, they don't *have* to take it down. It's just that if the DMCA complaint is valid, then Google and the person responsible for posting the content can both be held liable if Google doesn't.

From a legal standpoint, it looks like it's wise for Google to always take stuff down. However, from a customer retention standpoint, it might be wise for Google to occasionally refuse when DMCA notices are blatantly inaccurate.

Re:File a counter notice

Well, they don't *have* to take it down. It's just that if the DMCA complaint is valid, then Google and the person responsible for posting the content can both be held liable if Google doesn't.

IANAL, but it's not clear to me that Google can relinquish safe harbor status for one complaint without also relinquishing it for all other complaints. Far better to let the user deal with it - all they have to do is post a counter notice. It's not hard. Why would or should Google risk themselves just to save a user from having to post a counter notice?

From a legal standpoint, it looks like it's wise for Google to always take stuff down. However, from a customer retention standpoint, it might be wise for Google to occasionally refuse when DMCA notices are blatantly inaccurate.

That is true only if there are other ISPs that refuse to take down content. I'm not aware of any.

Re:File a counter notice

it's not clear to me that Google can relinquish safe harbor status for one complaint without also relinquishing it for all other complaints. Far better to let the user deal with it - all they have to do is post a counter notice.

And the user eats all costs of business interruption while the disputed content stays down for a minimum of two weeks (10 business days).

Re:File a counter notice

it's not clear to me that Google can relinquish safe harbor status for one complaint without also relinquishing it for all other complaints. Far better to let the user deal with it - all they have to do is post a counter notice.

And the user eats all costs of business interruption while the disputed content stays down for a minimum of two weeks (10 business days).

Yes. If the cost is really that high the user is free to sue to recover those costs. The law sucks, I'm not defending it. I just don't see why people expect Google to assume the risks.

Re:

Did you mean sue the party who served the notice?

Yes.

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If the content were that important to a business, it would probably make sense to pay $10/year for a domain, and roughly $20/month for hosting.

The $20/mo hosting provider still has to take down the content for two weeks to keep its own safe harbor under the DMCA or foreign counterparts.

Re:

After looking at it more, I realized I was assuming this was a Google-owned project, not that they were just hosting it, so you're right.

Torrent?

Or post a bittorrent link with the word "banned by DMCA" in the title, ensuring it will NEVER go away and may in fact increase distribution by increasing demand.

It's 1st year economics: scarcity creates demand.

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It's 1st year economics: scarcity creates demand.

It's 1st year economics, and you managed to fuck it up anyway. Good job.

Supply and demand do not cause each other. In other words, an item being scarce does not imply many people will want it. It implies that the people who *do* want it *may* have to pay a lot, but it doesn't automatically mean those people exist.

Re:File a counter notice

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but they do not have no option here. The safe harbor thing basically says if you take it down immediately they can't sue you. So if they are not in the right to ASK you to take it down, you can tell them where to stick it. (and maybe then they sue you anyway, but that's always how it goes)

Just taking it down is of course the safer route, but them you get into the use of takedown notices as a scare tactic, sent out in many more cases than are appropriate, and still getting almost everything taken down.

Insta-caving to takedown notices just encourages them to abuse them more tomorrow, so this should not be looked upon as a good thing. Sure, if they sent YOU a takedown notice, maybe it would be prudent to take it down since you can't really lift a lawsuit even if you ARE in the right, but then there's even that 1% chance they find against you and you lose your shirt. Google on the other hand, has deep pockets and real lawyers on retainer that can evaluate a takedown notice, determine if it's something they need to comply with or not, and tell them where to shove it if they can.

Re:File a counter notice

You have to look at it like Google's legal team will be looking at it: Pick your battles! While this might clearly not be right, is it the one that we want to take to court? What are the 14 chess moves if we leave it up? How will this come out in court and will it hurt our position in ANY other legal situations?

What Google really needs here is someone to tell them Hey, put that back up! here's the counter DMCA notice! Then Google risks little in terms of far reaching results of putting it back. That is the way the DMCA works, so somebody on the project should do that, pronto, asap, yesterday even.

Re:

And if I had the private number to Larry's and Sergey's yacht, I'd call them and give them a piece of my mind.

And you would say... what exactly? Google is doing nothing more than obeying the law. The law very clearly states that in order to have 'safe harbor' protection from copyright infringement lawsuits, Google must take down the content, and it's up to the person who put it up in the first place to challenge the DMCA notice.

I don't think Google could fight this particular battle even if they wanted to. I'm not entirely sure about this point, but I think DMCA is an all or nothing deal - you either don't m

Re:File a counter notice

I don't think Google could fight this particular battle even if they wanted to. I'm not entirely sure about this point, but I think DMCA is an all or nothing deal - you either don't monitor any content, or you monitor all of it, so if they don't obey this DMCA notice, they're liable for all the other copyrighted material they host/link to.

Actually, no. The DMCA does not create any liability. Whatever protection from liability existed before the DMCA still exists. See 17 USC 512(l) This protection was actually quite substantial; the main reason the copyright interests supported the DMCA is because in exchange for something they didn't actually have (liability for online hosting providers and search engines), they got something they wanted (takedowns outside the judicial process).

Further, failure to act on one DMCA notice should not expose the provider to liability with respect to other unrelated claims of infringement; it would take some twisted legal maneuvering to get that one across (or perhaps a judge with the same motivations as the district judge in the Verizon case). The only way they could lose DMCA safe harbor for everything is if they didn't designate an agent to receive the notices.

So yes, a service provider could receive, e.g., a notice from the James Bond people for "PussyGalore.jpg", check and see that it's a picture of your cats, and tell the James Bond people to stuff it, and still be protected by the DMCA safe harbor for "Octopussy.mpg" which turned out to be the actual movie.

Where Else?

Google and SourceForge may be convienent, but US coders should really start to consider hosting in countries that do not have DMCA-esque laws.

Re:Where Else?

As long as people continue to want entities like the US Fed, the EU, and the UN to solve all of their problems, we can expect more, not less, crappy legislation.
Concentrated power makes manipulation too easy.

Re:Where Else?

Only because the UN isn't a lawmaking body. If it were, you could expect their corruption to make corrupt politicians at the national level look like saints.

Re:

Like the IOC, International Olympic Committee. Has there ever been a more corrupt organiztion on the face of the earth? The mafia (no such thing), the RIAA, the MPAA, lawyers as a whole and bankers... take them all and roll them up into one big ball and they've got NOTHING over the IOC.

Re:

After a crossover point, the government is the singleton coroporation.
As I age, it becomes more apparent that Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine" is really an unofficial anthem for a huge chunk of the population.

At least government is nominally accountable to the people.

This is a statement with lots of acceleration, but little mass, and therefore negligible force.
Government accountability is about keeping decision-making power low in the hierarchy, where the decision-maker is more likely to live with

Re:Where Else?

DMCA is a US law. It can only be enforced in the US. This is why, for example, piratebay.org has been able to get by ignoring DMCA take down notices for the past several years.

That said, I believe most EU countries, as well as Australia and recently Canada have laws similar to the DMCA. Other than Sweden I'm not sure of any specific countries that don't, though I'd venture to guess Russia, the middle east, india, china, the Koreas, africa, and most S american countries.

Re:Where Else?

Actually no, most countries do not use or follow a DMCA law. Israel for example, outright refuses it, as it allows abuse in the form of takedowns. Israel has like a "notify 3x before takedown" type scenario.

Re:Where Else?

That said, I believe most EU countries, as well as Australia and recently Canada have laws similar to the DMCA.

FYI: A DMCA-like law was proposed in Canada, but it was never ratified. Actually, it is being repeatedly tabled, but has always been struck down. For the time being, Canada doesn't have any DMCA-like legal provisions. (Refer to Michael Geist's blog [michaelgeist.ca] for more information.)

You are incorrect about Canada, for now

I forgive you for getting it wrong, since there keep being stories about "Canadian DMCA about to pass!!!!1" but as it turns out we've had really weak governments for the past while and thus in fact a full equivalent of the DMCA has yet to pass (unless I've missed something in the past month?). Key word being "yet", but it has never been a priority of the recent minority governments, nor have they quite had the time.

In terms of oppressive new legislation and expansion of corporate rights, Canada tends to

Re:

Next thing you're going to tell me Australia is a continent!

"Free" trade agreements

The DMCA is a US only law. It is inapplicable in other countries.

Until the United States executes two-party "free" trade agreements with foreign countries that require both parties to implement legislation identical to the DMCA. The United States has already done so with Australia.

I figured this might happen.

The DMCA is starting to rear one of its real intent. Its use of takedown notices to suppress Linux and other OSS operating systems ability to get advanced technology because if the OSS OSes gain traction they could lose the control they have over multimedia and users could regain fair use rights.

Hopefully, this project made it to the mplayer people in Hungary, or PLF. So it will still be availible.

Re:

That's insane.

Re:

The DMCA is starting to rear one of its real intent. Its use of takedown notices to suppress Linux and other OSS operating systems ability to get advanced technology because if the OSS OSes gain traction they could lose the control they have over multimedia and users could regain fair use rights.

That's insane.

Why's that? It seems reasonable to me, F/OSS frequently pushes the "information wants to be free" idea, so I can see companies confusing that with "these people want to 'steal' 'our' content".

Re:I figured this might happen.

these patches were already sent to the MPlayer project.
but were rejected for various reasons.

here is the post which announced the coreavc-linux project:
http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-dev-eng/2007-July/052959.html [mplayerhq.hu]

the coreavc codec is still faster than ffmpeg's ffh264 decoder. ffdshow has a multithreaded ffh264, but it was rejected by ffmpeg developers.

ffmpeg has a GSoC project for multithreaded decoding of most codecs.

http://code.google.com/soc/2008/ffmpeg/appinfo.html?csaid=9FD2BF705A5D5DBB [google.com]

Re:I figured this might happen.

Wow, how many conspiracy theories you managed to roll into one. With the abundance of free hosting, it's easy to do hit-n-run copyright infringement. It means that one uploads clearly violating content for others to download as long as it lasts until it's taken down. Sending a "we believe you're infringing on our copyright" notice to those uploaders is futile because it'd go unanswered and would only extend the time from something is put up until it can be taken down, if the contact information is valid at all. I've seen plenty comments here on how they wish the SCO vs. IBM case (and Novell etc.) go faster, well it doesn't only work to your benefit.

In order to respond to how easy it's to put information up, they made it easy to take it down as well. I bet most DMCA takedowns go entirely unnoticed because whoever caused it never knew, cared or knew it was correct. We only hear about those cases where someone protests a takedown. It's really easy, there's no burden of proof or anything. All it takes is for someone to say "Hey I'm not a runner and I disagree with the takedown" and the ISPs must put it back up ASAP. I think that's a reasonable arrangement. The fact-checking could be a little better at times but some people here on slashdot want to put them in a catch 22 - without downloading a suspected song they don't have good enough proof, and if they do download suspected songs and it turns out they don't own it they're filthy pirates too.

If this is abuse, send a counter-notice. Get some precedent that this kind of code isn't covered by the DMCA. Then use that next time to show that they knew the takedown would be invalid, and take it from there. There's no need to go freaky over getting a DMCA notice. As far as I know, they can only send it once since the counternotice is basicly a STFU or sue response.

Re:

Its true particularly true for google/youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H8hWIGv5L0 [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIVOZB2K6Y0 [youtube.com]
but i suppose its because of thier impending lawsuit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpqgWW0z7vM [youtube.com]

Dont use Trademark/Copywritten name in OSS name

Pretty simple really. All they had to do was give it a name more like "MPEG-4 AVC for Linux" and they would have been ok. It's really pretty simple, they DONT have the right to use their name in a product that isn't truly related to anything the CoreCodec company.

Re:Dont use Trademark/Copywritten name in OSS name

It is, but that doesn't mean that companies don't issue DMCA takedowns when they really are trying to resolve a trademark issue.

Re:Dont use Trademark/Copywritten name in OSS name

Yes, but if the only real issue is trademark and the issuer of the takedown notice does not own the copyright to the material, issuing a takedown notice is a crime. They are issued under penalty of perjury. So if you just don't like the name because you think it violates your trademark, issuing a takedown notice is not a good idea.

Re:Dont use Trademark/Copywritten name in OSS name

They are issued under penalty of perjury. So if you just don't like the name because you think it violates your trademark, issuing a takedown notice is not a good idea.

While this is true - I've yet to see any of the numerous questionable uses of the DMCA lead to charges of perjury. Have I missed something?

maybe it'll turn out all OK in the end

http://www.corecodec.com/forums/index.php?topic=981.msg5695 [corecodec.com]
it looks like coreavc are looking to work with the project to get it all legal and hunky-dorey.

Mod parent up

Again without going into all the details (but your pushing ;-)... this is not about copyright (even thought the DMCA deals with that), this is mostly about reverse engineering without permission under the DMCA... by us giving Alan permission.... problem solved.

Seems there was evidence the writer of CoreAVC-for-linux reverse engineered their codec to get his patch working, they have since given him permission to do so, the DMCA take-down has been withdrawn.

A company not only defending their rights honestly, but then when malice is not shown backing off and giving their blessing to an OSS project, back off /. seems these are the good guys.

Re:Mod parent up

Seems there was evidence the writer of CoreAVC-for-linux reverse engineered their codec to get his patch working, they have since given him permission to do so, the DMCA take-down has been withdrawn.

Although it was reverse-engineered, US case law protects the right to reverse-engineer. The DMCA also offers specific exemptions for reverse-engineering for the purpose of creating interoperable software, provided such use is not for the purposes of a "circumvention device". The takedown was the result of an overzealous employee, and should not have happened.

An official statement will be coming out later today.

Yes..

You appear to have missed this sentence:

"If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint [chillingeffects.org] that caused the removal at ChillingEffects.org."

Re:Yes..

And you appear to have missed the Editorial:

(The takedown notice is not yet up at Chilling Effects, but Google's page has a link that will take you there when it is.)

Hence:

Notice Unavailable

The cease-and-desist or legal threat you requested is not yet available.

Chilling Effects will post the notice after we process it.

Re:

If you click the DMCA complaint [chillingeffects.org] link on the Google project page [google.com] it takes you to the specific takedown to which the submitter refers, not the main page.

Re:

That's like AT&T losing their common carrier status because they refuse to kick a known mob boss off their network. I would actually argue, that doing something to stop the illegal activity would cause them to lose their common carrier status. The common carrier status (if Google even has any in this situation) means that they don't have to do anything to stop illegal activity occurring on their network.

Re:Core codec is based on open source, they lie

Well, yeah, it was open source, and the copies they released with OSS license are likely still freely distributable under the license they released them under.

Using a different license and releasing new code doesn't suddenly make the old one less enforceable, an OSS should be able to use that code as long as the license permitted it, however the DMCA take-down implies they are using code from the closed source version.

Of course as a user of both CoreAVC for windows (the multi threaded h264 codec) and CorePlayer (the mobile phone media player) I hope they are doing this above board, would hate to think my dollars are funding a bunch of tools.

Assuming they are tools and this is all over the name, then this should be a Trademark dispute correct? And isn't the burden of proof on the the plaintiff and not the defendant?

Re:

From the forum thread [corecodec.com] at CoreAVC discussing this, the founder of CoreAVC says "Again without going into all the details... this is mostly about reverse engineering without permission under the DMCA... by us giving Alan permission.... problem solved".

Without seeing the coreavc-for-linux code I can't say whether or not he had to reverse engineer anything about CoreAVC to get it working, but it doesn't seem like hooking up a DirectShow filter via a (relatively) standardized API would need anything like that.

Re:

An overzealous employee? This was sent over the name of the company CEO, claiming to have been sent by him and it was in his name that the "under penalty of perjury" claim was made. Are there really employees there that are empowered to speak with his name, but make these kind of failures of judgment?

Re:GPL: Intellectual Theft

See! That's what Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have been telling us all along. This real life example proves it!