Tag Archives: Copyright

$23 Million YouTube Royalties Scam

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/08/23-million-youtube-royalties-scam.html

Scammers were able to convince YouTube that other peoples’ music was their own. They successfully stole $23 million before they were caught.

No one knows how common this scam is, and how much money total is being stolen in this way. Presumably this is not an uncommon fraud.

While the size of the heist and the breadth of the scheme may be very unique, it’s certainly a situation that many YouTube content creators have faced before. YouTube’s Content ID system, meant to help creators, has been weaponized by bad faith actors in order to make money off content that isn’t theirs. While some false claims are just mistakes caused by automated systems, the MediaMuv case is a perfect example of how fraudsters are also purposefully taking advantage of digital copyright rules.

YouTube attempts to be cautious with who it provides CMS and Content ID tool access because of how powerful these systems are. As a result, independent creators and artists cannot check for these false copyright claims nor do they have the power to directly act on them. They need to go through a digital rights management company that does have access. And it seems like thieves are doing the same, falsifying documents to gain access to these YouTube tools through these third parties that are “trusted” with these tools by YouTube.

Suing Infrastructure Companies for Copyright Violations

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/10/suing-infrastructure-companies-for-copyright-violations.html

It’s a matter of going after those with deep pockets. From Wired:

Cloudflare was sued in November 2018 by Mon Cheri Bridals and Maggie Sottero Designs, two wedding dress manufacturers and sellers that alleged Cloudflare was guilty of contributory copyright infringement because it didn’t terminate services for websites that infringed on the dressmakers’ copyrighted designs….

[Judge] Chhabria noted that the dressmakers have been harmed “by the proliferation of counterfeit retailers that sell knock-off dresses using the plaintiffs’ copyrighted images” and that they have “gone after the infringers in a range of actions, but to no avail — every time a website is successfully shut down, a new one takes its place.” Chhabria continued, “In an effort to more effectively stamp out infringement, the plaintiffs now go after a service common to many of the infringers: Cloudflare. The plaintiffs claim that Cloudflare contributes to the underlying copyright infringement by providing infringers with caching, content delivery, and security services. Because a reasonable jury could not — at least on this record — conclude that Cloudflare materially contributes to the underlying copyright infringement, the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment is denied and Cloudflare’s motion for summary judgment is granted.”

I was an expert witness for Cloudflare in this case, basically explaining to the court how the service works.

In a win for the Internet, federal court rejects copyright infringement claim against Cloudflare

Post Syndicated from Patrick Nemeroff original https://blog.cloudflare.com/in-a-win-for-the-internet-federal-court-rejects-copyright-infringement-claim-against-cloudflare/

In a win for the Internet, federal court rejects copyright infringement claim against Cloudflare

In a win for the Internet, federal court rejects copyright infringement claim against Cloudflare

Since the founding of the Internet, online copyright infringement has been a real concern for policy makers, copyright holders, and service providers, and there have been considerable efforts to find effective ways to combat it. Many of the most significant legal questions around what is called “intermediary liability” — the extent to which different links in the chain of an Internet transmission can be held liable for problematic online content — have been pressed on lawmakers and regulators, and played out in courts around issues of copyright.

Although section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the United States provides important protections from liability for intermediaries, copyright and other intellectual property claims are one of the very few areas carved out of that immunity.

A Novel Theory of Liability

Over the years, copyright holders have sometimes sought to hold Cloudflare liable for infringing content on websites using our services. This never made much sense to us. We don’t host the content of the websites at issue, we don’t aggregate or promote the content or in any way help end users find it, and our services are not even necessary for the content’s availability online. Infrastructure service providers like Cloudflare are not well positioned to solve problems like online infringement.

Also, while we cannot prevent online infringement, we’ve set up abuse processes to assist copyright holders address the issue by connecting them with the hosting providers and website operators actually able to take such content off the Internet.

But the combination of decades-old copyright statutes and rapidly innovating Internet services has left some copyright holders believing they might have a viable claim against us. Add in the fact that statutory damage provisions in the United States copyright law were not written with the Internet in mind and seemingly allow for the possibility of astronomical damage awards when content is transmitted online at scale. So it’s not altogether surprising that plaintiffs are sometimes tempted to try their luck suing Cloudflare.

A Novel Theory Rejected

Yesterday, in Mon Cheri Bridals, LLC v. Cloudflare, Inc., the United States District Court for the Northern District of California rejected one such lawsuit, granting Cloudflare’s motion for summary judgment and concluding that no reasonable jury could find Cloudflare liable for the alleged copyright infringement at issue.

The plaintiffs in the case sell wedding dresses online, and they asserted that other websites illegally used their copyrighted pictures of the dresses while selling knockoff dresses. In a quirk of US copyright law, most fashion designs are not copyright protected, while pictures of those designs can be protected. Rather than pursue their claims against the website operators, their hosting providers, or any of the numerous other service providers necessary to their business, the plaintiffs targeted Cloudflare, seeking to hold us liable for contributory copyright infringement on the grounds that the websites at issue used our CDN and pass-through security services, most of them for free.

The district court rejected that claim, holding that merely providing CDN and pass-through security services to the websites did not make Cloudflare responsible for their alleged infringement. The court explained that Cloudflare’s services were not necessary to and did not “significantly magnify” any infringement. It also recognized that Cloudflare cannot eliminate infringement by websites using its CDN services, because “removing material from a cache without removing it from the hosting service would not prevent the direct infringement from occurring.” Finally, the court observed that Cloudflare’s abuse reporting system is designed to put copyright holders in the same position they would be if the websites at issue were not using our services, by connecting copyright holders with the hosting providers and website operators actually able to effectively address the issue. Notably, the court decided the case solely on the contributory infringement issue, and it did not even reach our independent arguments that we are protected from any liability by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s safe harbors.

Moving forward with clarity

Obviously, we agree with the district court’s reasoning, and we hope it goes a long way towards discouraging these types of claims in the future. Throughout this case, we’ve worked closely with our attorneys at Fenwick & West who have demonstrated great skill and diligence.  We plan to continue to fight other lawsuits of this nature. We have long understood that different types of services have different abilities and responsibilities to address online infringement, and we designed our abuse process with that in mind. Broader recognition of those principles will allow us to “help build a better Internet” by providing security and reliability services without being dragged into every dispute between third parties and someone who uses our services.  We think that will be better for the Internet.

Deliberately Playing Copyrighted Music to Avoid Being Live-Streamed

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/02/deliberately-playing-copyrighted-music-to-avoid-being-live-streamed.html

Vice is reporting on a new police hack: playing copyrighted music when being filmed by citizens, trying to provoke social media sites into taking the videos down and maybe even banning the filmers:

In a separate part of the video, which Devermont says was filmed later that same afternoon, Devermont approaches [BHPD Sgt. Billy] Fair outside. The interaction plays out almost exactly like it did in the department — when Devermont starts asking questions, Fair turns on the music.

Devermont backs away, and asks him to stop playing music. Fair says “I can’t hear you” — again, despite holding a phone that is blasting tunes.

Later, Fair starts berating Devermont’s livestreaming account, saying “I read the comments [on your account], they talk about how fake you are.” He then holds out his phone, which is still on full blast, and walks toward Devermont, saying “Listen to the music”.

In a statement emailed to VICE News, Beverly Hills PD said that “the playing of music while accepting a complaint or answering questions is not a procedure that has been recommended by Beverly Hills Police command staff,” and that the videos of Fair were “currently under review.”

However, this is not the first time that a Beverly Hills police officer has done this, nor is Fair the only one.

In an archived clip from a livestream shared privately to VICE Media that Devermont has not publicly reposted but he says was taken weeks ago, another officer can be seen quickly swiping through his phone as Devermont approaches. By the time Devermont is close enough to speak to him, the officer’s phone is already blasting “In My Life” by the Beatles — a group whose rightsholders have notoriously sued Apple numerous times. If you want to get someone in trouble for copyright infringement, the Beatles are quite possibly your best bet.

As Devermont asks about the music, the officer points the phone at him, asking, “Do you like it?”

Clever, really, and an illustration of the problem with context-free copyright enforcement.