This is a fun problem.<p>Issuing takedowns for things you don't control is wrong, and it's easy to verify that it costs the host time and money to resolve their mistakes. Suing material, basically.<p>Meanwhile, having penalties for issuing faulty takedowns means it's impractical for owners to police things fast enough - the uploaders can always out-pace them. So it's essentially the same situation, in reverse.<p>I side with the hosts on this, especially as issuing a takedown seems equivalent to a company claiming ownership of something that's definitively not theirs - a bit of a no-no, I hear. And since issuing the takedowns is easily poorly-automated, but not actually performing the takedowns or dealing with unhappy paying customers, it seems (completely) unfairly weighted against hosts unless they're explicitly protected.<p>But really, there's <i>absolutely</i> no way to make everyone happy in this, unless illegal sharing goes away entirely on its own. Hosts can't catch everything, owners can't watch everything, and removing user-uploaded content sites would massively cripple the internet.
>"given the volume and pace of new infringements on Hotfile, Warner could not practically download and view the contents of each file prior to requesting that it be taken down."<p>This seems to be the same line of reasoning that protects YouTube from legal responsibility for users' content.<p>YouTube won't (and doesn't have to) police everyone's uploads, because there are so many. Well now the media companies can spam DMCA takedown notices, but "there are too many to verify"... putting the costs of verification/validation of content back on the hosting sites?
Re: the 'Stop Online Piracy Act': <i>"given the cavalier way that Warner Brothers has used the powers it already has under the DMCA, policymakers may be reluctant to expand those powers even further."</i><p>Should read: "They <i>should</i> be reluctant to expand those powers even further ... but they probably won't."
A company can send non-legally binding notices to copyrighted content it does not own?<p>What legally stops me from filing it against all of Warner Bros' legitimate content like trailers then?
Just as if the whole situation weren't complex enough already, a lot of online "file locker" services <i>deliberately</i> make it difficult to mass-download content -- one common practice, for instance, is to throttle users to one download per IP per hour or so unless they've registered and/or paid. While this is ostensibly to encourage users to register/pay/not download excessively, I can't imagine it makes things any easier for rights holders.
In defense of Warner Bros., I've had a few iOS apps receive takedown letters, and WB was the only company to actually work with me and let me make the app non-infringing.<p>The other companies went along the lines of "you can try changing your app, and you'll know if it wasn't good enough when we file the lawsuit."
Surely this is a simple legal problem? Don't you have to swear under penalty of perjury that you've done it in good faith, etc.? Is WB essentially admitting to perjury? Don't the courts know how to deal with this?
I found my document/textfile/video/data on your hard drive, and you didn't pay me a ridiculous amount of money for it. So I'm going to sue you for compensation.<p>Seems like a terrific profit model. Spread your data files far and wide, get millions of people to download it, then make profit doing takedown and settlements. This problem isn't going to be fixed, because if you were to fix it, the people making profits would cease making profits, because then they would be unable to sue anybody for profit, and nobody would buy their lame content for their ridiculous price. Corruption makes me sick.