Live data from Hacker News

Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

theverge.com

11–20 of 201 posts

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#11
post #2

The system is broken and I can't see a way to fix it. Maybe pay to send a takedown notice?

I think a sufficiently large company would still pay - it'd likely be a drop in the bucket compared to hiring a legal team. (A troll like the one in the article? Still, depends on the price.) I think it should switch to the strike system that YouTube, at least, favors: if you issue three fraudulent DMCA notices, you lose the ability to do so again in the future.

Not a lawyer but isn’t it your rights to protect your copyright? As in, if you file fraudulent notices, YT removes you ability to file more, then you have a legitimate notice to file, now you presumably can sue YT for denying you the right to defend your copyright.

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#12
post #2

The system is broken and I can't see a way to fix it. Maybe pay to send a takedown notice?

This thing should be based on some cryptographic proof/claim, it's really not that difficult to setup. More problematic part is to agree that everybody should be using "this" method, not "that" method.

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#13
post #2

The system is broken and I can't see a way to fix it. Maybe pay to send a takedown notice?

10 year prison sentence for anybody sending fraudulent takedowns, including all lawyers involved.

This is great until a small time artist gets put on trial facing 10 years for art used by megacorp, that is originally theirs but hard to prove it.

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#15
post #7
post #2

The system is broken and I can't see a way to fix it. Maybe pay to send a takedown notice?

The problem with any loser-pays or adjacent system is that you inherently favor anyone with deep pockets even more than the system does today.

It's "fake" lawyers, so I doubt they have deep pockets.

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#17
post #2

The system is broken and I can't see a way to fix it. Maybe pay to send a takedown notice?

I think a sufficiently large company would still pay - it'd likely be a drop in the bucket compared to hiring a legal team. (A troll like the one in the article? Still, depends on the price.) I think it should switch to the strike system that YouTube, at least, favors: if you issue three fraudulent DMCA notices, you lose the ability to do so again in the future.

And who decides a claim was fraudulent? Historically, the fraudulent claims have gotten away with it while the target has at least had to remove the video or at worst had their accounts banned. Yet, nothing happened to the fraudster.

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a sufficiently large company would still pay - it'd likely be a drop in the bucket compared to hiring a legal team. (A troll like the one in the article? Still, depends on the price.) I think it should switch to the strike system that YouTube, at least, favors: if you issue three fraudulent DMCA notices, you lose the ability to do so again in the future.

Not a lawyer but isn’t it your rights to protect your copyright? As in, if you file fraudulent notices, YT removes you ability to file more, then you have a legitimate notice to file, now you presumably can sue YT for denying you the right to defend your copyright.

Tough shit, you shouldn’t have sent the three fraudulent ones then. It’s all in the terms of service you have agreed to.

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#19
post #2

The system is broken and I can't see a way to fix it. Maybe pay to send a takedown notice?

FRAND registry of copyrighted works. The registry would be provably connected to the creator, the royalty rate would be published ahead of time based on use. Infringement could be seen as accidental at first instance and royalty rates charged after discovery. Copyrighted work not registered? Then you are free to attempt your own single distributor network without legal protection, you can always register it some time after you fail. Charge the creator the royalty rate (or some fraction) they define in taxes to the registry so they don't set ridiculously high rates. Could also charge maintenance fees to automatically lower the rates that are so high that nobody wants to distribute at that price, heck the entire copyright limit could just be replaced with some compounding increase in maintenance fees over time. If the work is really successful they may maintain it longer, but unsuccessful works might just become moneypits very quickly.

In this case, the identity of the legal department would be directly connected to the infringing content found in the video which YouTube would have access to to verify. It also wouldn't be a takedown but a royalty demand or they could have registered "Let's play" as not requiring royalties. In principle though, YouTube or even the creator could just do all of this upfront.

That's my idea, in the vein of, "We have the technology to do this better."

Re: Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear YouTube can stop it

#20
post #5
post #2

The system is broken and I can't see a way to fix it. Maybe pay to send a takedown notice?

For larger and more litigious companies like Nintendo one would think YouTube wouldn't continue to accept takedown requests from random unverified users

The problem with that is, the law absolutely demands that the platform comply with any valid takedown notice, so YouTube isn't going to risk having any false negatives (due to internal miscommunications on Nintendo's side, etc.). It's made the responsibility of the uploader to challenge it with a counter-notice, but YouTube makes the process for those far more difficult than what the law says. (YouTube opens itself up to liability if it doesn't put the video back up upon receiving a counter-notice, but it's not like the uploader would be able to sue YouTube for much of anything.)
Post reply on HN