Like others in the industry, 20th Century Fox is constantly hammering Google with requests to remove links pointing to pirated copies of its TV shows. In this case that series is Homeland, and the studio’s strategy has proven a bit clumsy; it’s recently been including a Creative Commons-licensed book in its DMCA notifications. A book that has absolutely nothing to do with the Showtime hit. But unfortunately for accomplished sci-fi scribe Cory Doctorow and his book Homeland — which coincidentally is centered around censorship — Fox isn’t being very scrupulous in its longrunning war against online pirates. Doctorow’s novel has been tossed into a number of Google DMCA notices that target torrent sites. To be fair, the studio has good cause for being irked with many of these links; a wide majority appear to be blatantly illegal recordings of its successful property.
Fox’s lawyers want ‘Homeland’ novel off Google despite no relation to TV show
Likewise, Doctorow has no illusions that his book’s inclusion within each notice appears to be a mistake. But he still takes issue with the careless approach Fox and others take in defending their content. “What’s not clear is why or how anyone sending a censorship request could be so sloppy, careless and indifferent to the rights of others that they could get it so utterly wrong,” the Boing Boing co-editor recently wrote. “I have made inquiries about the possible legal avenues for addressing this with Fox, but I’m not optimistic.” If Doctorow hopes to avoid future false IDs, his best option at this point may be examining what’s on TV before naming his next book.
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