Skip to main content

View Post [edit]

Poster: guyzilla Date: Oct 6, 2009 11:24pm
Forum: feature_films Subject: COPYRIGHT ALERT

A vigilant patron has discovered uploads of recent copyrighted films in the Open Source section a couple of days ago. Jungle Jane reported in this post that she discovered a number of recent movies and tv shows are being uploaded to the Archive:
http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id=267758
She and I have both e-mailed staff about this situation yesterday. As of yet I have seen no response to my e-mail and not only are those files still there but on checking out Open Source's recent uploads I've found at least a couple more have been added, and I'm not really sure how long the ones she found have been in the archive. There may be a lot more in there than the ones we know about. At this point I would urge all you people out there who care about the wellbeing of the Archive to e-mail your concerns to the staff at info@archive.org so they will take action on this. I feel that the Archive is in serious danger of severe legal action if they don't act soon and that it's up to us to do what we can to make them aware of this.

Reply [edit]

Poster: skies Date: Oct 8, 2009 5:31am
Forum: feature_films Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT ALERT

Hi, Guyzilla !

Reply [edit]

Poster: FP Date: Oct 8, 2009 9:29am
Forum: feature_films Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT ALERT

Copyrighted content has been showing up in OPEN SOURCE for years. The velocity of uploaded video is simply too huge to effectively police with a small, volunteer crew. YouTube spends millions on payroll for just that activity. In the past, copyrighted files would be uploaded to substitute for derived files, and movies would be uploaded as files that didn't appear in the main listing, among other methods. Now uploaders of infringing video are no longer concealing their efforts.

Even when attempts were being made to cull discouraged content from the archive, offending material was often left online for days or longer because no one noticed. More than once I spent an hour or two digging through random uploads, finding certain unbelievable items that might shock even the jaded. I hit the REPORT button for those, and sometimes they'd eventually disappear.

Reply [edit]

Poster: Bill T. Date: Oct 12, 2009 12:05am
Forum: feature_films Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT ALERT

I guess I'll play lone sherriff here and help you guys. You just help me out here, give me links and I'll dust off the guns.

Reply [edit]

Poster: Roger G T Date: Feb 13, 2010 1:35am
Forum: feature_films Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT ALERT

I just think it is ridiculous for us to be worrying about every single copyrighted file with this small quantity of copyrighted uploads. Let the moderators moderate when they can, I'm sure they realize that there are a few questionable uploads, and as an earlier user posted, it would be impossible for them to police everything. I didn't even realize there was copyrighted things on here until I read these posts about them. No one else would have either. This is a case of Streisand Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect). Also, the onus is ultimately on archive.org, not you, to police for these files. I don't see a report button, do you?

Don't post about this on the forums for risk of aggravating the problem, email the moderators if you feel you absolutely have to, and as a previous poster indicated, this obviously would have caught on a lot earlier if it was going to be a problem. With the existance of plenty of other blazing fast, free file-upload sites that don't care about copyrighted uploads (rapidshare, megaupload, depositfiles, hotfile, mediafire etc.), why would people start flocking to upload on archive.org?

Reply [edit]

Poster: Detective John Carter of Mars Date: Feb 13, 2010 7:44am
Forum: feature_films Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT ALERT

@impossible for them to police

many hands make light work

Reply [edit]

Poster: NoiseCollector Date: Oct 7, 2009 2:04pm
Forum: feature_films Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT ALERT

You must be new... I gave up reporting stuff years ago over copyright issues and was worried something would happen to the archive... it never did.

Drawing attention to the violation privately is better than posting the link, it will only drive downloads up.

I heard they did away with the error reporting feature as well, is that true? That was the best way to notify someone back then...

Reply [edit]

Poster: billbarstad Date: Oct 7, 2009 5:15pm
Forum: feature_films Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT ALERT

Yeah, the error reporting feature is gone, and you're right, it was the best way to catch these illegal uploads when they got past the moderator.

Reply [edit]

Poster: finnobrit Date: Oct 7, 2009 4:34pm
Forum: feature_films Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT ALERT

On top of all the other problems this makes me wonder if archive.org's days are really numbered. If they can't respond to this kind of thing, it will be overrun with pirated video and music, and who knows what kind of other illegal material might show up if the staff continue their indifference (are there even any staff?). Legal download sites need to have an active moderation system with a clear violation reporting system too. If both of these are absent then such a site simply cannot go on, it will be shut down sooner or later. Apart from anything else the bandwidth costs would become horrendous. I really can't see archive.org continuing if the moderators don't start moderating right now. They're allowing the best Public Domain and Creative Commons site on the web to disintegrate.
This post was modified by finnobrit on 2009-10-07 23:34:46

Reply [edit]

Poster: guyzilla Date: Oct 7, 2009 4:35pm
Forum: feature_films Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT ALERT

Yes, compared to some I'm fairly new, and I Agree with what you said about posting the links, that I'm likely only giving people looking for free copyrighted material some leads. Thats why from here on I'll only post the links in e-mails to the Archive. Someone a while back posted the Archive's phone number and I've since lost it, so if someone who knows could post it again, I'll try giving that a shot. Could be that it will be wasted effort too but I'm not ready to give up on it yet. It does seem like the ship's going full steam ahead but no one's at the helm.

Reply [edit]

Poster: billbarstad Date: Oct 7, 2009 5:13pm
Forum: feature_films Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT ALERT

"It does seem like the ship's going full steam ahead but no one's at the helm. "

that's exactly how I feel about the situation right now.

Reply [edit]

Poster: billbarstad Date: Oct 7, 2009 6:22am
Forum: feature_films Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT ALERT

Since removing copyrighted materials is in the Internet Archive's best interest, I doubt a mass emailing alerting them to these illegal uploads would serve any purpose other than letting them know members are aware and concerned about the problem. I think our concerns mean little to the Internet Archive at this point, considering the lack of attention to or action on our outrage over the exposure of our email addresses.

Thanks to you and the others for alerting the Internet Archive to the problem and to you for letting us at Feature Films know, too.

Reply [edit]

Poster: guyzilla Date: Oct 7, 2009 12:54pm
Forum: feature_films Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT ALERT

You could very well be right, billbarstad, the same thought has crossed my mind, but I had to try. I'm still hoping things will get back to where they were when I discovered this site about eight months ago. The fact is, as goofed up as things are right now, I'm as hooked on the Archive as I was when I started, and it's not just becuase of all the movies but mostly due to talking with guys like you. In my "real" life I don't really get to hang out with other movie junkies like this. If they're around, I haven't met too many of 'em. In fact my wife of ten years is just starting to show some interest in this sort of thing and now that she's given it a chance she really seems to be getting into it. And that brings me back to what I'm concerned about. I've visited other sites where the focus was on PD films and the guys running the sites started letting their guard down and not doing anything when copyrighted material started showing up. Those sites are gone now and from what I see the Archive is starting to fall into the same pattern. I don't know what exactly staff is doing right now, but whatever it is I hope they get it together soon because from what I saw, there's even more copyrighted material coming in as I write this. I was able to find in Open Source, without really trying, episodes of "Heroes", "90210", and "Smallville" as well as recent films such as "Year One", "G.I. Joe", "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", and a lot of others that don't belong here. I'll bet you could go to the "this just in" box and find even more now! But you are right, staff has to be the ones to deal with this and I've done what I can. Maybe if they they get enough e-mails it will get their attention and they'll get a move on. I can only hope they don't blow this off. Meanwhile, there's till a lot of neat stuff here and I intend to download as much as I can!

Reply [edit]

Poster: Wickson Date: Oct 7, 2009 1:55pm
Forum: feature_films Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT ALERT

I suspect it's an individual with duplicate accounts because I see the same copyrighted films here, Texas Chainsaw Massacre etc.