App developer Elias Saba has had some dangerous luck with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedowns. His Android TV app Downloader, which mixes an online browser with a file supervisor, was suspended by Google Play in May after a number of Israeli TV corporations complained that the app may very well be used to load a pirate web site.
Google reversed that suspension after three weeks. However Downloader has been suspended by Google Play once more, and this time the reason being even tougher to know. Based mostly on a obscure DMCA discover, it seems that Downloader was suspended just because it could actually load the Warner Bros. website.
Downloader is just like commonplace internet browsers in that it lets customers entry each authorized and illegally shared content material. The app can be utilized for basic internet browsing and might obtain information from an internet site when a consumer inputs the specified URL. Based on Saba, the app itself comprises no infringing content material, nor does it direct customers to infringing content material.
Google notified Saba that the app was suspended once more final night time, in line with the discover that Saba shared with Ars. “Your app comprises content material that allegedly infringes upon the copyright of others, and violates relevant copyright legal guidelines within the related nation/jurisdiction,” the discover from Google mentioned.
The discover features a copy of the DMCA criticism, which got here from MarkScan, a “digital asset safety” agency that content material homeowners rent to implement copyrights. MarkScan mentioned in its criticism that it represents Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.
“Properties of Warner Bros. Discovery”
A DMCA discover is meant to determine and describe the copyrighted work that was infringed. However MarkScan’s discover about Downloader identifies the copyrighted work solely as “Properties of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.” It offers no element on which Warner Bros. work was infringed by Downloader.
A DMCA discover can also be supposed to offer an instance of the place somebody can see “a certified instance of the work.” On this area, MarkScan merely entered the principle Warner Bros. URL: https://www.warnerbros.com/.
“I’ve a very good religion perception that use of the copyrighted supplies described above as allegedly infringing will not be licensed by the copyright proprietor, its agent, or the legislation,” MarkScan’s discover mentioned.
Unsurprisingly, Saba is outraged. “You’d suppose that Google would at the very least confirm that the takedown request is definitely making a believable declare,” he informed Ars immediately. “A very powerful area within the takedown the place the claimant has to specify the place the copyright infringement exists is void of all element. If this whole lack of awareness is all it takes to take an app down, then no app within the Google Play Retailer is protected from being suspended with just some clicks and a frivolous takedown request.”
The Downloader app had been put in over 10 million occasions, in line with an Internet Archive capture taken earlier than the most recent suspension.