Web-Sheriff Mistakenly Targets Legal Torrent Site

Ernesto
February 21, 2010
64
legittorrents,
web-sheriff
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The Web-Sheriff has made quite a name for himself, targeting dozens of torrent sites in recent years for clients such as Prince, Michael Jackson and The Village People. This week, however, a painful mistake was made when the anti-pirate tried to take down a torrent from Legit Torrents.

The Web-Sheriff, aka John Giacobbi, has been chasing after many torrent site owners for years. With his polite style and distinguished font use, he sets himself apart from other anti-piracy crusaders tasked with sending out DMCA takedown requests on behalf of copyright holders.

The Sheriff’s resume includes big shot artists such as Prince and the late Michael Jackson, and in his high times Giacobbi went as far as taking a stab at The Pirate Bay founders, who have mocked his actions extensively in the past.

Although he might not be particularly well-liked by many operators of torrent sites, he and his team have earned respect over the years by staying polite where other representatives of copyright holders tend to display arrogance, frustration and hostility.

This week, however, the Web-Sheriff slipped up and dented his badge. Acting on behalf of Magnolia Pictures, a batch of take down requests was sent out to various sites, trying to take down torrents of the movie Warlords which will be released by the movie studio in a few weeks time.

In order to track down all infringing copies of the film, the Sheriff probably searched through a few dozen torrent sites to send DMCA notices for all infringing torrents. For some reason the ‘legal’ torrent site Legit Torrents was also included in the batch, wrongfully, because the “Warlords” torrent hosted there is one of a free MMORPG Kungfu game.

Web-Sheriff Trademarked Letterhead

En3r0, the owner of Legit Torrents told TorrentFreak that he pointed out the mistake to the Web-Sheriff, but thus far hasn’t heard anything back. The notice was obviously sent out in error and the description of the files as well as the site’s url should have made some alarm bells go off.

This is the first time that legittorrents has received a DMCA notice, En3r0 said, and hopefully the last. The Web-Sheriff, who signs the notices with “the information in the notification is accurate” might have to reconsider putting that in, as he’s clearly off his A-game.

Perhaps it’s time for a new Sheriff in town?

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kabuki0009

too bad Sheriff
http://www.eZee.se www.eZee.se

Warlords eh?
Thanks, I had no idea about it but will check it out and seed it a while now.

Cheers!
johnisaredneck

Yee-haw buckaroo! Good thing it’s mainly people like John taking part in the anti-piracy whack-a-mole game, I might be worried if someone who actually knew what they were doing had a part in it. As long as guys like him have their business model revolving around filesharing, we have nothing to worry about :)
Gabby

This again enforces why a three strikes law without judicial oversight is a serious mistake.

Any individual receiving three of these types of notification gets their net cut off without so much as a by your leave.

Worse these files on the net have no fence around them. Nothing to tell you what to avoid if you are serious in “minding the law”.

To add insult to injury, the copyright holders have absolutely no intention of just coming out and telling you which files are ones to avoid.

Without such a list, no one can say for certain what file infringes or what does not.

With the penalties involved, it’s far from a joking matter. Not even the RIAA Radar site can say for sure which are which and that’s what they do. If they can’t tell, doing it every day, what makes anyone think Joe Public will just know because “he should have”.

Then you get into the mistaken identification of some legal material like here which I might add happens all the time, and it just adds another layer of confusion on top of the pile.

No wonder everyone is downloading because they can get it. No one knows for sure till it’s in, just what the heck they have gotten.
Alex

Yup, Comic Sans just radiates professionalism.
Irrelevant

Between this and the Carol Kaye link on the right side of the page, I can’t help but crack up.

Keep humiliating yourselves into irrelevancy, old media!
Anonymous

Hmm isn’t part of the DMCA process swearing accuracy under penalty of law .. any one taking him to court on this?
johnisaredneck

Seriously though, guys like John depend on torrent sites, or else he’d be out of a job and would have to pursue a legitimate career… instead of sitting on his computer, petting his stupid cat and drinking a chai latte while complaining about how badly his life sucks. It works both ways too: Filesharers keep sharing because nimrods like john do everything they can to mismanage their company, which means there is no real deterrent..Which equals more filesharing and thus more business for john, which also equals more ridicule and news-worthy posts. The only part of the equation that doesn’t make sense is why companies continue to hire fly-by-nighters like Web Sheriff. But without guys like John, we’d have nothing to talk about. We’re all laughing at the expense of the companies who pay him. He’s just the face for humiliation, nothing more.
Companies like websheriff are a dime a dozen these days..And they all crash and burn in the end – Mediadefender being the big one, I wonder what he’s up to these days?
Barry

@5 Too True

I do like the web sherrif, and i very much enjoyed reading his emails to TPB.
Irrelevant

@4
>No wonder everyone is downloading because they can get it. No one knows for sure till it’s in, just what the heck they have gotten.

There may be a certain degree of “OMG FREEEEEEE”. But the paradigm of owning information was ridiculous in the first place, and the measures needed to stop “piracy” would subjugate or perhaps even destroy the Internet. That is unacceptable. The world has never stopped turning for somebody who can’t hold on and it never will. As for humans, if we seriously pursue the artificial restriction of information, I hope everyone is ready for a second dark age…
zqft

You know, I think “who you gonna call” is trademarked.
Jay

thanks for the heads up on the movie, might as well head over to TPB to check it out :)
gorehound

Web Sheriff protecting spider webs the world round
duane

@11
Well, their job IS to chase after ghosts…
ZarathustrA

The movie is 3 years old.

If you are just now getting your heads up on it maybe it’s not your kind of movie. ;)
anticapitalism

i think we need to boycott the movie industry
frankly i find most of the movies pretty boring and a waste of our hard earned dollar. the sheriff is only doing it because their is a reward otherwise he could care less.
it really disgust me that everything is about profits and exploiting our free time for big bucks
i like to do something productive with my free time. why waste your time and money on junk movies or music. my life ain’t going to improve no matter how much music or movies i am expose to. i am very active, watching movies make you passive and a time waster.
‘

WOW someone made a mistake/
Afficianado

Shot ‘im down
paul

HAha, this guy is a joke and I remember the rather humorous letters he sent to TPB.

Pathetic. Anything to make a buck without leaving the confines of your own home. Something tells me this sheriff can’t run very far without stopping to catch his breath. That’s about the only thing he has in common with the real police.
Anonymous

too bad mr web sheriff has no real expertise nor any authority. what is odd that he has any respect at all.

Hang on

“who you gonna call” ghostbusters that clearly must be a imaginary property violation.

silly web sheriff stupid extremist.
Gabre

Can it be that he’s a made up person, and they are documenting every step he takes and every move he makes, just to sell it?
Adams

f*ck web sheriff in his f*cking *ss.

And for ALL those that think they lose money to piracy, F*CK YOU TOO!

If I pirate your show/album it’s because I CAN. If I can’t, then I DON’T/WON’T pay for it anyway. And you lose a viewer/listener.

It helps you if I pirate and watch your show because I can then talk about it with others and raise awareness about it.

If your sh*t is good, then I will PAY for it after viewing/listening.
antiantipiracy.blogspot

@ Adams

Amen brother.
Nicholai

Am I the only one that thought this was bound to happen eventually?
RoestVrijStaal

I hope LegitTorrents can sing “I shot the sheriff” :)
Air Head

no big deal. mistakes happen.
Anonymous

IIRC DMCA take down requests are “under penalty of perjury”.
I think this should be taken to court.
If they use the law to prosecute people, then they should be also be prosecutes if they infringe it.
(It would be nice seeing some of these …. doing time.)
Scorched-Earth

The copyright enforcers in the US have absolutely nothing to lose by making false accusations – the DMCA law is on their side 100%

In the war against file sharers, their preferred tactic has therefore always been carpet-bombing.
Bisby

@Gabby: “Then you get into the mistaken identification of some legal material like here which I might add happens all the time”

News to me – can you show one scrap of evidence that this happens “all the time”? Some isolated cases I know about but they hardly qualify that description. I’d have expected TF to be all over it if taht were the case.

@Irrelevent: “But the paradigm of owning information was ridiculous in the first place, and the measures needed to stop “piracy” would subjugate or perhaps even destroy the Internet. That is unacceptable. The world has never stopped turning for somebody who can’t hold on and it never will. As for humans, if we seriously pursue the artificial restriction of information, I hope everyone is ready for a second dark age…”

You seem to be suffering from a major case of over generalisation and wild speculation which doesn’t fit with past history. The best predictor of what actually happens is to look to the past.

The “information” your talking about is entertainment for the large part – so why are you using a term which covers everything from word-of-mouth to TV shows and feature films if not to falsely exaggerate your claim?

“Destroy” the internet sounds extremely histrionic.

And despite your claims of the danger of entering a “second dark ages” (ROFL, scare tactics much?) we as a civilisation have arrived at this point in time with large amount of entertainment and information only being available legally by making payment in exchange for it.

And more critically the means of making reproduction weren’t even available to almost everyone until a mere 15-20 years ago.

It would be interesting to read any studies produced by uninterested third parties (not interest groups and reputable institutionally in other words as clearly some people have trouble making the line between genuine evidence and their own feelings, hint hint) regarding whether IP laws have the effect of stifling progress, innovation and indeed pose the danger of holding back civilisation. I rather doubt you can find any but maybe I will be held wrong on this.

You sound like you’ve taken a page out of Paul Watsons book and started to manufacture or parrot ideas to advance the cause – ideas which really don’t stand up under scrutiny IMO.
Artificial Energy

lol @ people who post comments longer than the article they’re commenting on.

and let the little e-rent-a-cop have his fun. like it’s been said in the past, people like that kid are a dime a dozen.
Hop234e

WHY DO PEOPLE STILL USE PUBLIC TORRENTS?

torrents are done wit, NEXT are private torrent sites

the future is sites liek rlslog.net
and other blog type sites.
Mehz

i agree who in todays world uses a public tracker… its private or warez-bb for me =D
SherifHater

Shoot the sherif!. Just leave the deputy out of it.
Irrelevant

@29

>You sound like you’ve taken a page out of Paul Watsons book and started to manufacture or parrot ideas to advance the cause – ideas which really don’t stand up under scrutiny IMO.

I said nothing of copyright’s effect on “creative output”, if that can even be measured objectively.

>The “information” your talking about is entertainment for the large part

Or any information that can be copyrighted… which is all of it.

>And more critically the means of making reproduction weren’t even available to almost everyone until a mere 15-20 years ago.

Except that with further legislation on what can and cannot be spread about the Internet, it will just end up as it was 50+ years ago. Only somebody with a lawyer on retainer would even dare publish ANYTHING for fear of getting an arbitrary “infringement” lawsuit which they could never afford to defend.

>“Destroy” the internet sounds extremely histrionic.

Destroy everything the Internet has been so far. Enjoy your interactive cable television.

>we as a civilisation have arrived at this point in time with large amount of entertainment and information only being available legally by making payment in exchange for it.

Oh wow, no. Only in the past 100 years could really even force somebody to pay for entertainment. Sure, there was theater but unless you had piles of cash you weren’t watching that anyways.

>The best predictor of what actually happens is to look to the past.

You mean like when the roman empire fell, the roads in europe went to shit and the church tightened its control of the spread of information? Sounds awfully fucking familar. Just substitute “roads” with “the internet” and “the church” with “intellectual property lawyers”.

But then I can’t imagine how ridiculous legal liability would make anyone wary of publishing content.
GP

@29: College textbook industry. The biggest example of information “ownership” destroying the world. People can barely afford knowledge anymore. Companies won’t hire you without a degree, and you need to have a big paycheck to be able to afford the knowledge required to get a degree.
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Bisby

“Or any information that can be copyrighted… which is all of it.”

Once again with the total exaggerations and misinformation. 0ver 90% the worlds information – which by the way doubling every 7 – 8 years and that rate is rapidly increasing, is under no license at all and then there’s the various licenses that allow free use with conditions.

Stop, please just stop using the word “infomation” as it’s so broad to be meaningless (but I guess it goes with you “all infomation will be stopped and the internet will die argument doesn’t it). And using the word “entertainment” of course makes your argument look petty.

“Destroy everything the Internet has been so far. Enjoy your interactive cable television.”

Believe it or not free entertainment is not a major part of the internet there are a myriad of other uses. P2P traffic is made up less than 20% in 2009 and the trend was downwards.

“Only in the past 100 years could really even force somebody to pay for entertainment. Sure, there was theater but unless you had piles of cash you weren’t watching that anyways.”

More histrionic sounding utter crap. No one is forced to pay for entertainment now or in the past. Love to see your evidence where people are forced to do that LOL.

And you need to go look at your history books as theatre has been paid for by people in droves since at least the 12th century that I know of in England – it was what you might call the equivalent of cinema today up until the invention of cinema as a viable artform. And as a matter of fact in cultures where people could pay for it – ie. they had the freedom to – they have been paying for it for 100′s of years in the form of books, theatre, circus sideshows and many other forms.

“You mean like when the roman empire fell, the roads in europe went to shit and the church tightened its control of the spread of information? Sounds awfully fucking familar. Just substitute “roads” with “the internet” and “the church” with “intellectual property lawyers”.”

Why are you picking arbitary catastrophic events in history to illustrate your point when they have nothing to do with what your talking about? Makes you look somewhat lunatic.

My point was is your claiming that we will enter a “dark ages” (your words) when this is clearly ridiculous as WE HAVE ARRIVED WHERE WE ARE CULTURALLY IN THE PRESENT WITHOUT THE MEANS OF MASS COPYRIGHT INFRINGMENT or MASS DISTRIBUTION, ie. the internet, AS A MATTER OF FACT.

If anything, talking of films, the already very high risks to funding films are now somewhat higher owing to piracy. This means producers are not willing to take the same risks on films as 10 years ago leading to massive blockbusters and “family orientated” movies becoming more the norm and films such as those made by Steven Soderburgh such as the Che duology becoming complete failures – people invested and it made a loss in other words.

In some circumstances piracy is causing cultural expression to contract in other words – films don’t fund themselves.

In short you are acting like some sort of silly child who keeps dancing about offering unrelated and imagined “scary things” rather than offering any real argument that makes sense.
Kringle

“College textbook industry. The biggest example of information “ownership” destroying the world. People can barely afford knowledge anymore. Companies won’t hire you without a degree, and you need to have a big paycheck to be able to afford the knowledge required to get a degree.”

Please, quit it with your ridiculous exaggerations.

For a start, the knowledge in textbooks is not copyrighted, the book is copyrighted. That knowledge is free for anyone to access via the internet and libraries. You pay for the knowledge to be presented to you and it is copyrighted in this form.

The cost of the knowledge in textbooks as I’ve just pointed out is free either through internet or libraries. Anone can access it if they get off their proverbial and leave the basement.

You want to get a college education – here’s an idea, instead of being a self-defeating victimised no hoper who has taken the stance of an emo to personal relationships except it’s about job prospects, how about … dah dah! getting a job and paying for it. Millions of people have already done it, it’s really not impossible at all – but I guess they didn’t have your problem of giving up because it’s all too hard though. Sucks for you I guess.

Despite you idiotic claim of “Companies won’t hire you without a degree, and you need to have a big paycheck to be able to afford the knowledge required to get a degree”, in the real world people people are putting themselves through college. BTW, I don’t supppose you managed to analyse the statement to work out that if that was the case then the workforce would rapidly run out of people to participate in it.

Also teh phrase “destroying the world” is rich LOL – the same phrase would be applicable to all out thermo-nuclear exchange or the sun expanding. If you keep telling yourself crap like this you wont get anywhere. Each one of us makes our own reality and the way you’fe made yours seems to indicate you will remain a loser your whole life frankly. Buck up.
Irrelevant

@36

I hope they aren’t wasting much money on you. Your astroturfing is terrible.
Angry Canuck

@36

Ever being to College?
duane

@36
You can tell people to shut up all you like, but the holier-than-thou attitude won’t get you very far, and misanthropic arguments won’t change anyone’s opinion on copyrights.

The fact is, copyright legislation IS being abused by a small number of individuals to oppress and exploit the vast majority of the public. You can argue that it’s specific works that are copyrighted and not the information included within them, but that wouldn’t be true: if you lock up the container, you lock up the contents.

The kids posting here represent the next generation, who were born in the “digital age” when the selling of information for such ridiculous prices is plain wrong. In a few years, this generation will be ruling the world, and the absurd notion of intellectual “property” will become what it was originally meant to be — a means to promote the progress of science and the useful arts.
your son

@38 “ever being to college?” haha funny being aint ya?

@25 they’ll send you a dmca for that lyric son..
duane

@29

“News to me – can you show one scrap of evidence that this happens “all the time”? Some isolated cases I know about but they hardly qualify that description. I’d have expected TF to be all over it if taht were the case.”

What world do you live in?

Did you hear that Google was forced to take all those music blogs offline because of DMCA notices.. but all those blogs had permission to share that music by the companies who sent the DMCA?

What about that Viacom lawsuit, that sued YouTube for infringing clips, yet a lot of those clips were put up by.. Viacom.

What about all those extortion letters sent out by ACS Law in the UK, targeting random people without real evidence and demanding cash for alleged infringements?

Did you hear that content companies are scheming with some bought governments to spy on people’s internet connections for copyright infringements?
BIOS

@7

Can anyone prove or deny this statement? I am very interested on the details if this is true.
Anonymous

EPIC FAIL! xD
=b0|)Y

lmfao
’0ver 90% the worlds information – which by the way doubling every 7 – 8 years’
this clown is clearly pulling stats out of his ass.
maybe he is ‘parroting’ ideas, like the guy he heard about….
hak

And here I thought all torrent sites were legal.
azlan

just a small thought, does the declaration of accuracy on a DMCA takedown not state that to send a takedown notice on something you do not own the copyright to is perjury?
Jim

ugghh what a tool
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Rob

Everyone makes mistakes, granted someone in his position shouldn’t and should at the very least apologise if one is made. But at the end of the day there are so many torrents out there now compared to just a few years ago it must be hard to do his job. I download movies all the time and am in one way supporting his role against us but taking the piss because he made 1 mistake compared to the amount of work he must do is pretty pathetic. As if everyone here is an expert and has never made one, if you said that you’d just be a liar.
Hop234e

Torrent Freak ; Home of the Trolls Novel Publishing.
Reasoned Brain

Rob, that wouldn’t be a problem if the Sheriff left out the “the information in the notification is accurate” part.
Fail Sheriff

I may actually join the Village People…
smart pirate

@31 &32 If things are private stuff would not be as prolific and redundant. Also why the feck would I want to sign up for 10+ trackers and keep up with all that info when I could just head to a public site and get the torrent no problem point and click?
Rob

@51 Thats why I said ACCIDENT. It was more then likely that the letter was generated by a computer and the same letter was sent to all except for the header. So he just made a mistake, pencils have erasers for a reason
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M-RES

Come on TF, you missed a glorious opportunity to reference rusty Sheriff’s badges here! ;P
neko

they’ve also been targeting CDN’s with takedowns for ip’s they do not control
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Mr Innocent

Wow…up until tonight when i just read every comment i had never seen half of those really long winded words that describe stuff that shorter words could have sufficed ;)

Although if anything i now have a whole new dictionary for my scrabble games…

on the subject of the content of the actual article i would say this…Although the torrent site in question could take the sheriff to court & his deputy if needs be due to falsely filing a dmca i doubt they would due to not wanting attention…but i do hope that one day they try it with somebody who will.

Thanks for reading n as usual its great to read the comments even if one or two of you get a bit carried away lol.
your son

@57 “i had never seen half of those really long winded words that describe stuff that shorter words could have sufficed ;)”

hmmm a shorter post may have sufficed. and yes keeping on topic… the torrent site doesn’t really care about the dmca, they just wanted people to know that this guy is an idiot.
cando22

That is hilarious… Thanks for the up Ernesto… You do such good work…If not for you guys we would be clueless as to what is going on out there in the torrent world… Your hard work is much appreciated..
Anonymous

Problem, officer?

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