It turns out that asking a piece of software to decide which websites should be censored and which ones are legitimate has some problems, which I think comes as a surprise to all of us.
But it’s true!
Warner Brothers is one of many companies that uses software robots to compile lists of pirate websites, which are then turned over to search engines, hosting providers and other online services, accompanied with a legal demand that these sites be removed, on pain of legal retribution.
Warner Brothers is also one of many companies that make dumb, risible mistakes when it draws up this million-URL censorship demands.
But Warner Brothers does have the distinction of being one of the few companies sloppy enough to repeatedly demand the removal of its own site.
With help from its anti-piracy partner Vobile, Warner asked Google to censor several of its own URLs from the search engine.The screenshot below, taken from the following DMCA notice, lists the official Warner page of the 2008 Batman movie The Dark Knight among various reported pirate links.
The same notice also lists another Warnerbros.com URL for the sci-fi classic The Matrix. Again, Vobile asks Google to remove this link from search results, acting on behalf of the Hollywood studio.
The apparent ‘self-censorship’ is not a one-off mistake either. A few days earlier, a similar DMCA takedown notice targeted Warner’s website, claiming that the official page for The Lucky One is infringing Warner’s copyrights.
Warner Bros. Flags Its Own Website as a Piracy Portal [Ernesto/Torrentfreak]
(via /.)
