DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google • Hacker News Board

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#151

Post by jasonlotito » Wed, Jan 07, 2015, 3:30 PM UTC

otterley wrote: post #70

declan wrote: post #55

If you send bogus DMCA takedown notices, and this qualifies as one, there can be legal consequences. The DMCA requires: "A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed." Whoops! This particular list of "infringing" URLs wasn't actually, well, accurat…

The "under penalty of perjury" phrase modifies the second clause, not the first. In other words, it's not perjury if the information in the notice is inaccurate -- it's perjury if you falsely claim you are authorized to act on behalf of the grieving party.

Well, not quite, at least by my reading. It says specifically:

"that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."

In other words they are acting on behalf of the owner of the owners of the content being infringed (the content located at the URLs).

If the content at the URLs is NOT owned by Wicked, than they are claiming to represent the owner of the content at those locations, when they are in fact not.

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#152

Post by daveloyall » Wed, Jan 07, 2015, 3:59 PM UTC

otterley wrote: post #73

dangrossman wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

17 U.S. Code § 512(f) Misrepresentations.— Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section— (1) that material or activity is infringing, or (2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or…

The standard is one of actual knowledge -- so it's really difficult to enforce when a computer program is most likely generating the lists, and probably not being reviewed in detail.

Whoa, stop right there.

Setting loose a bot that takes real action in the world when you don't know what it is going to do and failing to even review its actions?

That is a waaaay worse crime!

Punishing or preventing irresponsible bot use will only become more important with the rise of machine intelligence/deep learning, IoT, drones, etc.

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#153

Post by calvinr » Wed, Jan 07, 2015, 4:16 PM UTC

lstamour wrote: post #64

Nobody's pointed it out, so I'll say I'm really surprised wet-boew was picked up in all this -- it's from the Government of Canada, and what they've done to try and advance web accessibility, etc. http://wet-boew.github.io/v4.0-ci/index-en.html#about The name is not ... the greatest, though. Maybe they should have called it "Boilerplate, eh?" ;)

Yeah we aren't the best at coming up with names, we love acronyms and they always have to be bilingual.

So Web Experience Toolkit - Boîte à outils de l’expérience Web

I'm pretty sure it was named by a committee.

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#154

Post by Zancarius » Wed, Jan 07, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

jkrems wrote: post #68

Zancarius wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, they just took down rust's package manager on Github. Just in case anyone skims this far and panics by misreading jkrems' post, I should clarify that they took down the Google search results for Cargo, rather than the Github repo [1]. Unfortunately, for the average user, removing something from Google may as well be a complete takedown... This implications of this are troubling. [1] https://github.com/rust-la…

Yeah, sorry. I took a lazy shortcut there. What I meant was "they targeted the URL of rust's package manager and took a link to it down". It was less about the impact and more about how they couldn't claim that they honestly thought ("good faith") they had any claim on that page. But from all I can find that doesn't matter since there don't seem to be any repercussions for these kinds of takedowns.

I figured. Even in spite of my checking, there was a kernel of panic in my stomach when I read your statement, so I had to double check. ;)

I'd imagine anyone quickly perusing the comments might've had a similar thought!

You're absolutely right, though. It really doesn't matter: The DMCA protects content owners to the detriment of innocent parties.

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#155

Post by TheCapn » Wed, Jan 07, 2015, 4:59 PM UTC

verroq wrote: post #108

nl wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing that it was difficult to find the responsible party, and that posting their address somehow helped that? What possible outcome are you hoping to achieve by doing this? Isn't this little more than a low level case of "dox"-ing someone you disagree with?

I like how these poor corporate entities are now the victims. >Isn't this little more than a low level case of "dox"-ing someone you disagree with? You might as well have said >Isn't this little more than a low level case of "dox"-ing someone that hurt your feelings But I digress. Given that various socially unacceptable activity on the internet are frequently punished by doxxing ( http://racistsgettingfired.tumblr.c…

This is based under the assumption that this is the correct people and OP's witchhunt hasn't turned a wrong corner. Doxxing is often discouraged by civil communities because the chance of collateral damage is too high.

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#156

Post by instakill » Wed, Jan 07, 2015, 5:46 PM UTC

personjerry wrote: post #8

How the hell does https://help.github.com/articles/dealing-with-non-fast-forwa... relate to their movies? Why are they allowed to take down sites so obviously unrelated? I imagine it's pretty easy to use this sort of takedown in a malicious manner to remove competitors' sites, surely there is some defense mechanism against this?

Github has a legal team. They should sue.

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#157

Post by DannyBee » Wed, Jan 07, 2015, 6:58 PM UTC

MichaelGG wrote: post #95

DannyBee wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody has successfully gotten anyone fined/real damages for this provision yet. Partially because it requires knowing misrepresentation, not just negligent or even grossly negligent misrepresentation.

What about the Diebold case?

Diebold was an actual knowing misrepresentation. (They also only paid 125k in damages)

IE Diebold knew they were doing it. There is no real caselaw (that i'm aware of) around "not investigating" or "willful blindness".

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#158

Post by inigoesdr » Wed, Jan 07, 2015, 7:25 PM UTC

shakethemonkey wrote: post #117

sfeng wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very specific procedure they have to follow outlined in the DMCA law.

That's true, but there is no legal requirement that Google accept DMCA notices electronically.

I imagine they do because it makes the process easier for them(Google) to manage. Otherwise they would need interns typing out the URLs for all of the tomes that would be coming in every day.

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#159

Post by tdaltonc » Wed, Jan 07, 2015, 7:30 PM UTC

Google's legal department might be a fun place for a machine learning expert to spend some time teaching machines to detect bogus DMCA takedowns.

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#160

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Jan 07, 2015, 8:04 PM UTC

johnlbevan2 wrote: post #140

otterley wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard is one of actual knowledge -- so it's really difficult to enforce when a computer program is most likely generating the lists, and probably not being reviewed in detail.

Send one communication saying "your bot is clearly throwing up false positives; take action to investigate & remediate, ceasing all bot usage until implemented". Now they're aware / can't claim lack of knowledge. Give them a week or two to read the mail & turn the bot off, then any subsequent requests charge them for. If the fine's based on damages, charge them for all employees time taken to trawl through removing a…

> Send one communication saying "your bot is clearly throwing up false positives; take action to investigate & remediate, ceasing all bot usage until implemented". Now they're aware / can't claim lack of knowledge.

Yes, they can. The fact that someone made that claim about the reliability of the process doesn't mean that the person sending the notice knew that any particular notice was in fact false at the time they sent it, even notices made after the claim of unreliability.

It is possible that if it can be proven that the recipient read the complaint, and failed to investigate it because they believed it was likely to be correct (or if, even without such a notice, they knew of the unreliability of the process and failed to investigate the facts of particular notices and just blindly relied on the process), and that decision was motivated by a desire to avoid discovering that the information was false, then they might be considered to have constructive knowledge, but that's a far cry from "a notice was sent claiming that the process was unreliable, so any error resulting from that process automatically will be found to be 'knowing'."