CoreCodec makes apology
It wasn't our fault, really
THIS MORNING, CoreCodec, the company who spitefully used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to force Google to remove its open source coreavc-for-linux project, has apologised. The company says that it is now working with the search engine giant to get the project up and running again.
The coreavc-for-linux open source project allowed a high-definition video decoder called CoreAVC to run on Linux systems, as the company version of the codec only ran on Windows. Yesterday we reported that Google had complied with a DMCA takedown notice, which accused Google of infringing on CoreCodec's copyright. These allegations were blatantly false as the project in no way infringed on the codec’s code and was only ever meant to make the video decoder compatible with Linux applications like mplayer.
CoreCodec's president and CEO, Dan Marlin, who yesterday accused Google of " reverse engineering without permission", has now apologised in a formal statement in which he says that the company's over-eager lawyers were to blame for the notice. He also said that the company were in talks with the lead developer of the coreavc-for-linux project, Alan Nisota, to get the project underway again.
Marlin backtracked, "the DMCA does allow for reverse engineering for compatibility purposes and hence in the end no matter what the 'other points' are the DMCA takedown request was wrongly sent."
CoreCodec has apparently now also set up a new way of dealing with intellectual property issues which won't involve invoking the DMCA every time it feels the urge. The firm have also declared that an official GStreamer-based CoreAVC codec will be released soon for Linux users, which should help them out until the coreavc-for-linux project bears fruit.
If anything, the lessons to be learned from this incident are that it is all too easy to use the DMCA's name in vain, especially if the company abusing the power doesn't have a firm grasp of the whole situation and its various complexities. This unfortunately results in the DMCA being used all too frequently to censor the Internet, rather than to do its job properly and uphold fair use, whilst protecting copyright where it is really in danger of being infringed upon. µ
L'Inqs
coreavc-for-linux
See Also
DMCA complaint prompts Google to take down open source project
Comments
Wee, reverse engine for everybody!
Does that mean I can reverse engineer OSX to run on linux?AMD64 support
Maybe while they're at it, they could write in support for 64-bit Linux distros too. I was looking at getting CoreAVC to run specifically on my machine until I found out it only supported 32-bit x86 processors (not very useful when you have 4GB memory in your PC as 32-bit Ubuntu at least doesn't support 4GB memory without some messing around). In the end I resorted to playing the media on Windows (without CoreAVC).Rob
Can't the victims...
sue for a malicious abuse of the DMCA?Companies need to think before they leap. However, I don't know of any company that has been penalized for filing a false DMCA complaint...
Well who'd a thunk it ?
A CEO with a brain, impressive ! And with enough balls to recognize a legal cock-up, even more impressive ! Okay, blaming the lawyers is less impressive. If they really are incompetent, then fire their asses. If you don't, then just acknowledge that you signed off for the lawsuit in the first place. Even better, just keep quiet about it.But hey, let's not get all hot and bothered over who's fault it actually is. The project is getting back on rails again, and that is a good thing.