App developer Elias Saba has had some unhealthy 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 Could after a number of Israeli TV corporations complained that the app might 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 more durable to grasp. Primarily based on a imprecise DMCA discover, it seems that Downloader was suspended just because it could possibly load the Warner Bros. web site.

Downloader is just like normal net browsers in that it lets customers entry each authorized and illegally shared content material. The app can be utilized for basic net browsing and might obtain recordsdata from a web site when a consumer inputs the specified URL. In line with 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 evening, in keeping 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 stated.

The discover features a copy of the DMCA criticism, which got here from MarkScan, a “digital asset safety” agency that content material house owners rent to implement copyrights. MarkScan stated in its criticism that it represents Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.

“Properties of Warner Bros. Discovery”

A DMCA discover is meant to establish 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 gives no element on which Warner Bros. work was infringed by Downloader.

A DMCA discover can be supposed to supply an instance of the place somebody can see “a certified instance of the work.” On this area, MarkScan merely entered the primary Warner Bros. URL: https://www.warnerbros.com/.

“I’ve religion perception that use of the copyrighted supplies described above as allegedly infringing shouldn’t be licensed by the copyright proprietor, its agent, or the regulation,” MarkScan’s discover stated.

Unsurprisingly, Saba is outraged. “You’d assume that Google would no less than 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 entire lack of know-how 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 keeping with an Web Archive seize taken earlier than the most recent suspension.