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6 September 2016Copyright

Warner Bros requests takedown of its own websites

US entertainment company Warner Bros has asked Google to take down its own websites, claiming its copyright has been infringed.

Vobile, a US-based company which helps content owners protect their audiovisual content online and acting on behalf of Warner Bros, filed a number of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown requests against websites run by the film company.

Vobile filed the requests on August 18 and the websites listed included the official Warner pages for the films “The Dark Knight”, “Batman Begins”, “The Matrix” and “Inception”. The notices also listed alleged pirate links to the films.

According to Torrent Freak, Warner Bros has flagged more than four million allegedly infringing links this year.

Commenting on the case, Robert Lundie-Smith, partner at law firm EIP, said: “While the news about the Warner Bros website may bring a wry smile to the faces of all but the film studio and Vobile, there is a more serious side to the takedown notices that lie behind this story.”

He explained that takedown notices are a useful tool for rights owners as the internet enables intellectual property infringement to proliferate, but that the notices are “unfortunately regularly misused to the detriment of the rights holders they were meant to protect”.

“While a company like Warner Bros will no doubt have its listing and links reinstated with veritable ease, this is not so easy for the vast majority of rights holders,” he said.

“They will have to fight their corner against the relevant website, hosting platform or internet service provider to prove that they do indeed hold the appropriate rights in the content complained of.”

He added that if someone’s work has been removed from the internet because it infringes copyright, the paper chase involved to rectify the situation can be “very distressing”.

“Some of these notices will arise from error, some out of disputes, but a further disturbing development is the use of takedown notices for internet censorship,” said Lundie-Smith.

“As the recipient of the takedown notice will need to react, it is unfortunately all too easy for legitimate comment and criticism to be removed and for the author to face a battle to get it reinstated.”

In August this year, Warner Bros accused social networking site Reddit of infringing its copyright via a forum dedicated to helping internet users access pirated movies and TV programmes.

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1 August 2016   Warner Bros has accused social news networking site Reddit of infringing copyright via a forum dedicated to helping internet users access pirated movies and TV programmes.