14 DAY TRIAL // Respecting copyright is obviously important, but when trolls come out to play, the entire issue loses its value. This time around, an anti-piracy company working for Sony sent Google a DMCA takedown notice that included dozens of legitimate links related to the World Cup.
According to TorrentFreak, MarkScan, an anti-piracy company that is based in India is to blame this time. With clients such as HBO, Nokia, Vodafone, Viacom and more, you’d think they know what they’re doing.
Alas, that’s the furthest thing from the truth if we only glance at one recent DMCA sent to Google on behalf of Multi Screen Media Pvt. Ltd, a Sony Entertainment Television subsidiary in India.
Not too long ago, this Sony subsidiary launched LIV Sports, a sports site that was chosen by FIFA to be the official mobile and Internet broadcaster for the World Cup this year. Pumped by the idea of representing such a big client, MarkScan became a bit overzealous and basically targeted any site they believed to be streaming the World Cup, all in the name of protecting their clients’ interest.
Several days before the football event even kicked off, MarkScan began sending copyright complaints, taking a leaf out of FIFA’s own tactic book. One particular notice covering 46 different domains that were being accused of streaming the matches managed to unlock a special achievement by getting Google to remove exactly zero links. The notice was 100% rejected by Google, something that we don’t see too often.
What did the list contain? Well, there are plenty of perfectly nice articles that direct readers to legal sources for streaming the World Cup matches, even if those don’t belong to LIV Sports, as well as links leading to BBC, ESPN, Fox Sports and more. Many of them weren’t even from this year, but rather from the previous World Cup.
They even tried to censor the EA Sports’ Twitter account, as well as one of FIFA’s own sites. Even an article from Symantec trying to steer readers away from World Cup-related scams was given the same treatment as the hundreds of other sites.
This particular DMCA was followed by several others, targeting some 700 URLs. A few of the links were valid, given the fact that Google actually gave a “90%” rejection score to one of the notices.
While MarkScan claims that it has done everything with care to make sure it doesn’t impact legal content, the feedback from Google and the incredible list of links they have put together stand proof of a very different story.