Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

chillingeffects.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–168 of 168 posts

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#161

Post by dragonwriter »

jasonlotito wrote: post #151
otterley wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

No, there are two separate claims:

1) that the person represents the owner of a particular copyrighted work, and

2) that particular hosted content violates the copyright on the particular copyrighted work.

Only the first of those is under penalty of perjury. If the particular identified copyrighted work is owned by the party represented, then even if the particular identified hosted content doesn't violate the copyright of the identified work, there is no perjury issue (there may be a knowing false claim of infringement issue, but that requires proving that the person sending the notice knew that the identified hosted content did not infringe.)

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#162

Post by Natsu »

Aeoxic wrote: post #85
freehunter wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But if I claim that something I actually do own the copyright on is infringed by something that clearly isn't infringing... well, there's nothing in the DMCA penalizing that. Well that's not true. As posted by dangrossman above, the DMCA stipulates penalties if you misrepresent that the material is infringing. You will be liable for damages, including lawyer's fees.

"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." The wording actually results in "under penalty of purjury" to modify the succeeding part of the sentence, not the preceding part. As a result, the penalties only apply if you act on behalf of another…

I think he's talking about the knowing misrepresentation clause that I forgot about, actually (which is not the same as signing off on it under penalty of perjury). As noted by one of the comments above, this provision is completely toothless. To quote DannyBee: "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."

So you have to prove that they actually KNEW that Github was not a porno movie owned by them, not just that they were (hypothetically) filing legal papers while intoxicated or without actually reading them.

How you're supposed to prove they actually know anything at all in the face of the sheer stupidity demonstrated by this notice is an open question. I think a real lawyer would need to answer that, but I found something that makes it seem like the standard could be met if they made the statements with a complete disregard for the truth thereof - http://legal.practitioner.com/regulation/standards_9_3_1.htm

But it makes it seem like they could argue that they were simply careless and avoid it, so I don't honestly know.

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#163

Post by Natsu »

userbinator wrote: post #137
Natsu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, this was sent by "Takedown Piracy LLC" working on behalf of Wickedpictures. They file DMCA notices by the truckload according to the results I get in Chilling Effect's search, so you can safely assume they're a DMCA notice spammer. Unfortunately, it does not list the individual lawyer who signed off on this complaint, or I would be tempted to draft a letter to their local bar association pointing out how ca…

Wicked might be paying them to do it, and if they're charging "per infringing URL removed", it makes a lot of sense that they're trying to get as many removed as possible. Wicked might also be a victim in this case.

I thought this kind of service was usually paid per work "protected," but I have no knowledge of this specific arrangement.

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#166

Post by kruczek »

Scaevolus wrote: post #52
lukesandberg wrote: post #15

This is most likely due to a script screwing up. A lot of these companies retain companies that specialize in filing these requests (see: www.google/com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/faq/ for some more details. My limited understanding is that these companies just use google search apis to try to find search results matching keywords. Then they file requests for every matching url. This is how obviously wrong…

Proving bad faith or that someone "knowingly materially misrepresents... that material or activity is infringing" when it's completely automated sounds very difficult.

Then why is it allowed to be automated? Why we don't require a few sentences of explanation for each of submitted URLs, explaining how each of them infringes copyright.

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#167

Post by drostie »

dspillett wrote: post #127
dangrossman wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only have to send a counternotice and the content is restored after 10 business days. With most companies, you can just send a properly worded e-mail. Others, like Google, have a web form you fill in. The DMCA never forces content in dispute to remain offline indefinitely even if you have zero resources; the complaining party has to go to court to make that happen.

10 business days could be a long time if your company is in the middle of a launch or other time sensitive period, and that is 10 days after you notice: I assume they won't contact you (how would thy know who to contact and how with any reliability?) to say "we've de-listed these sites, you might want to look into if you need to respond". This could be used to damage competitors, or in this case to accidentally damag…

YouTube got an interesting DMCA takedown request back in the day: it was issued by the Chinese government at the time of the Beijing Olympics. The details escape me but the title of the video was something like "Olympic Gymnastics Beijing" or some other searchbait/clickbait, with a plausible-looking thumbnail, but the video itself was a super-critical video directed at the Chinese government. China issued a bad-faith DMCA takedown on the grounds that they are the only authorized distributors of what the video claimed it was.

IIRC YouTube refused to block the site for this very reason; the "10 days later" would have ruined the clickbait purpose of the video as the event would have been well over and actual legitimate outlets for its content would have sprouted up.

Re: DMCA Copyright Complaint to Google

#168

Post by greenjello »

magicalist wrote: post #77
teddyh wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Note that this situation probably won't get that far. That's because the DMCA doesn't require Google or any other provider to comply with bogus takedown notices. And Google happens to have some smart attorneys (at least one ex-EFF lawyer, in fact) on its payroll who are well aware of that fact. Google removed all URLs except 3: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/... In other words, Google i…

Considering that they get requests for something like 8 million URLs to be removed every week, your ire seems a bit misdirected. Safe harbor has enabled the modern web in many ways, but the DMCA takedown process is still heavily, heavily weighted toward the claimants. It looks more like the URLs not taken down were mostly malformed or duplicates of earlier claims and they took action on the rest. Purposefully not act…

Yes, but you can certainly automate the process to a large extent. For example, many sites simply don't have the functionality allow copyright infringement. Also many sites will have >99% false positives, whereas torrent sites will have >99% true positives.

They could hire a few people to get through as many computer sorted reviews as possible, and the rest of them fall through the cracks.

Post reply on HN