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Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it
121–130 of 139 posts
Re: Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it
#122Ah, yes, you know someone's desperate when you see a bogus DMCA claim like this. Not the first time this happened and definitely won't be the last. This also demonstrates why it is bad for a law to mandate private entities to do moderation, in this case taking down copyright infringement materials when reported. Google, like basically all big platforms, doesn't care if a claim is fraudulent because the parties impact…
A good start would be to require that claimants must verify their real identity. The claim in this case was made by an apparent pseudonym and their address is fictional. Both should themselves be reason to reject the claim. The fact that anyone apparently can submit claims to Google under false names seems insane to me.
> A good start would be to require that claimants must verify their real identity.
I GUARANTEE that if this were tried, "YOU CAN'T FILE A DMCA COMPLAINT WITHOUT A GOOGLE ACCOUNT!" would rocket to the front page here and cause a(nother) general freakout about privacy concerns.
Content hosts can't win here.
Re: Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it
#123Forbes 30 under 30...
In particular, filed under 2019, Europe, Entertainment.
https://www.forbes.com/under30/list/2019/europe/entertainmen...
Re: Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it
#124Re: Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
A middle ground (which wouldn't clog up an overburdened court system) would require a US attorney to draft and sign a complaint for a takedown request, putting their accreditation on the line.
You could also require a signed letter that has been properly notarized. Again, adds an independent 3rd party with a verified identity and something to loose. And falsifying is a crime.
Notaries aren't accountable for the content of the documents they notarize. They're only responsible for making sure the signatures they are witnessing come from the correct people. They'd be happy to notarize DMCA takedowns, since it's nothing more than income for them.
Re: Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
A good start would be to require that claimants must verify their real identity. The claim in this case was made by an apparent pseudonym and their address is fictional. Both should themselves be reason to reject the claim. The fact that anyone apparently can submit claims to Google under false names seems insane to me.
> A good start would be to require that claimants must verify their real identity. I GUARANTEE that if this were tried, "YOU CAN'T FILE A DMCA COMPLAINT WITHOUT A GOOGLE ACCOUNT!" would rocket to the front page here and cause a(nother) general freakout about privacy concerns. Content hosts can't win here.
Nobody mentioned requiring a Google account. That would be an absurd solution, since Google accounts are not real identities, either.
Re: Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How is Google supposed to know if Ellie Piee is a real person? That doesn't really matter. Anyway it's silly to question whether Google, a multi-trillion dollar company, can validate someone's ID when they already do it in many other aspects of their business. But is Google treating some claims different from others? Are Ellie Piee's claim against Gergely Orosz's article, and the latter's appeal treated exactly the…
Google has no problems "verifying" me with mapping to my phone number, etc. (Actually, it does, after a long and storied startup career, I can no longer create a new Google account because my phone number "has been used too often"). There's also the asymmetry of "you don't need to supply ID to make a DMCA claim, but you will to appeal it", which people can and have used to discover identities for more harassment.
There should be verification that:
* the reporter actually exists * and is in fact who claim to be * and ALSO that they have control of the copyright in question
If any of these is not required then asymmetry is far too much.
Re: Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A good start would be to require that claimants must verify their real identity. I GUARANTEE that if this were tried, "YOU CAN'T FILE A DMCA COMPLAINT WITHOUT A GOOGLE ACCOUNT!" would rocket to the front page here and cause a(nother) general freakout about privacy concerns. Content hosts can't win here.
Nobody mentioned requiring a Google account. That would be an absurd solution, since Google accounts are not real identities, either.
So... your solution is that Google implements authentication for DMCA takedowns using an authentication system that isn't Google's? Whose, then? Same headline, different villain. Probably still Google's fault somehow.
No, this is dumb and won't happen, for all the reasons that we yell about in other threads.
Re: Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
A good start would be to require that claimants must verify their real identity. The claim in this case was made by an apparent pseudonym and their address is fictional. Both should themselves be reason to reject the claim. The fact that anyone apparently can submit claims to Google under false names seems insane to me.
Who decides what counts as a "real identity"? Fictional address, sure: that would, as I understand, be some kind of fraud, and can reasonably be prohibited if there's a mechanism to do so… but then you run into the problem that not everyone has an address.
You don’t have to make the quick takedown path available to everyone necessarily. If you don’t have an address it’s going to be harder to show standing to make the takedown request. The fact that makes life harder for homeless people sucks but that’s a feature not a bug. I would venture to suggest that the number of valid dmca takedowns by homeless people is close to zero whereas the number of fallacious dmca takedowns that would be prevented by insisting on identity or at least address validation would be pretty high.
Re: Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Claimants put something at stake: false DMCA takedowns are under prejury laws which carry prison sentences. I doubt this is really a DMCA case though. DMCA laws exist, but to invoke them requires some specific steps which Google prefers you skip. The fact that this probably isn't DMCA may leave Google open to being sued, but you would have to see a lawyer - be prepared to spend several million dollars to win a few th…
Has the US ever opened a single DMCA perjury case against anyone?
If a court order was involved then the offense would be "fraud on the court" -- and much scarier for the undecided fraudster.