Paramount Pictures Targets Ubuntu Torrent in DMCA Notice

It is common for the rights owners to try and take down as much pirated content as they can. However, this doesn’t mean that they can target open source software as well. This is what happened: Paramount Pictures has just sent a DMCA takedown notice to Google, listing a copy of the popular OS Ubuntu. Industry experts believe that it is a worrying mistake.
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Google receives dozens of millions of DMCA takedown requests every month, so it is not surprising that mistakes occur. Here is an example of quite a worrying mistake: Paramount Pictures targeted one of the most shared files on BitTorrent – Ubuntu release. Unlike copyrighted movies, Ubuntu distributives are released under free software licenses, i.e. Internet users are encouraged to share them. Actually, Ubuntu’s official download website lists BitTorrent as one of the options.

However, Paramount Pictures for some reason doesn’t want to see the popular operating system shared online: its anti-piracy partner sent Google a DMCA notice asking to remove an Ubuntu torrent download page on our site. The copyright owner claims that the Ubuntu release somehow infringes the copyrights of its movie Transformers. Or course, the entire page doesn’t contain any references to Transformers. The good thing is that a search for Ubuntu download still results in plenty of options.

Perhaps, the list of “recent searches” at one point included a Transformers mention, but even in this case the takedown request would clearly be overbroad. Anyway, Google removed the page from its search index, regardless of the obvious non-infringing status of the Ubuntu release. Well, it can be understood, considering the volume of requests Google has to process every day: around 3,000,000 “pirate” URLs. Google has some automated filters to catch mistakes, but it is almost impossible to check all requests manually.

This mistake demonstrates once again how much can go wrong with these automated DMCA notices. In the meantime, Google assured that it is determined to prevent abuse and mistakes so it doesn’t mistakenly disable access to non-infringing content. The search engine invests substantial resources into improving and streamlining this process.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.