(CelebrityAccess) — Warner Bros. anti-piracy contractor is so good at ferreting out copyright infringement that they have reportedly flagged Warner Bros. own website for a DMCA takedown request.
According to technology blog Torrent Freak, Warner's anti-piracy partner Vobile asked Google to block several websites for infringing content. Included among the URLs Vobile claimed contained pirated material was Warner Bros. own landing pages for several of their more popular films, including the Batman movie The Dark Knight, the Lucky One and Sci-Fi classic The Matrix.
The same DMCA notices obtained by Torrentfreak also included takedown requests for Amazon.com's store page, where people can rent or buy a legitimate copy of the Dark Knight film.
Companies such as Vobile work on behalf of content producers, using specialist software to scour the Internet for links that lead to potential copyright infringing material and often file hundreds of thousands of takedown notices a month.
Some critics, such as the digital rights advocacy group Electronic Freedom Foundation have noted that the DCMA regime lends itself to abuse, particularly in regards to the legally protected fair use of copyrighted material.
“Every few weeks, you are constantly having to defend your work … You thought you were clear two weeks ago, and now you’ve got to defend it again because someone else is saying that they own a portion of your work,” video remix artist Elisa Kriesinger told the EFF in an interview last fall, describing her battles with DMCA takedown requests.
