has anyone heard of... muso tnt?

[Dave_Bee]

Has anyone heard or had experience with a London based copyright infringement detection agency called MUSO TNT Ltd.? I understand they run web-bot searches looking for "names" they are seeking to protect. From what I gather, their searches are simply word searches so yield many seemingly unrelated hits which subsequently receive nasty notices of copyright infringement and impending legal proceedings. For example if one of their clients is a band called "SOS" then this Sound On Sound site will receive such a notice as they use the monogram SOS.

[KMuzzey]

I've been using them since the beginning of this year. I thought I had been really thorough in locating pirate copies of my work online, using all kinds of various google tricks, and within the first week of using Muso, it located about 200 additional links. Since March it has uncovered between 2000 and 3000 take-down-able links: both filelocker sites and Google search results. Of all those results, I'd say about 20 were false matches & the rest were accurate hits. I've been really pleased with the service, and I love that clicking a button sends a takedown, vs me sending an actual DMCA Takedown Notice for each and every link I find.

Kerry

[mbaughman]

These guys are really bad news. They are thugs who harass law-abiding companies by filing false and illegal claims against vloggers and bloggers to suppress negative product reviews.

[zenguitar]

As you can see, your post has been approved. But this topic is 7 years old and you have revived it with some negative assertions but with no details. That suggests that you have an agenda, and it would be better for all concerned if you explained what your interest is.

Andy

[Eddy Deegan]

These guys are really bad news. They are thugs who harass law-abiding companies by filing false and illegal claims against vloggers and bloggers to suppress negative product reviews.

[Note: I was not a moderator when I originally wrote this post]

Andy is a moderator, so let me add a user's perspective to supplement what he said.

Primarily, it would be in both yours and our interests to back your assertions up with some reliable sources.

People get riled about copyright claims, sometimes legitimately, but the ugly truth is that copyright is a real thing and vloggers and bloggers sometimes breach the rules. In such cases a takedown is completely justified but the offenders (and oftentimes their followers) will make a huge fuss about it even if they are in the wrong.

These forums are frequented by professional musicians and engineers, non-professional individuals who compose, record and distribute music, hobbyists who record but do not distribute and beginners. Copyright discussions are common and although members here will freely input their experiences and opinions, ultimately it's often a case of "speak to a professional copyright lawyer" or words to that effect.

Many of the users here have cause to defend their own copyright from time to time and even as a non-professional musician I've issued a DMCA takedown request on more than one occasion.

Copyright is a minefield, especially on the Internet. There are aggressive big players who push the envelope and issue takedowns for ridiculous things in addition to the valid enforcement of their rights, there are individuals who file youtube strikes for blatent plagiarism and there are many more besides.

A new user to this forum making an allegation that "Company X sucks!" is never going to be taken seriously. If you are able to provide a proper account of the reasoning behind your post and ask for input then you will undoubtedly get some replies, but given the tone and nature of the post you've made we simply don't have enough to go on and it has no more strength than someone saying "I don't like Pepsi".

So... as Andy alluded to, why do you assert that Muso Tnt are (in your words) "thugs" and what negative views from which vloggers and bloggers have they tried to suppress?

I know nothing about them, nor have I ever heard of them. They could be rogues, they could be angels. Neither matters unless you provide something solid to back up your claims. We don't do pitchforks here, we do rational discussion.

My vote would be that if no sensible response is forthcoming, all posts after 2013 (including mine) in this thread are deleted, but of course that's up to the moderators.

[Hugh Robjohns]

Agreed Eddy. First point of the forum Rules reads:

[quote="Forum Rules"]Not to post any material which is knowingly false, inaccurate, harmful, threatening, harassing, invasive of a person's privacy, or tending unreasonably to discredit or malign.

It's a case of evidence or eviction.