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

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181–190 of 201 posts

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

#181

I have a forum that receives a high number of DMCA claims. They link to pages on my forum where they claim I'm violating their copyright. However, when I review the pages, the content only mentions the name of a product or service. Imagine I write something here, like how I watched the movie "Inception" last week. A third party then sends me a DMCA request on behalf of Warner Bros, and Google removes this page from t…

does your forum have download or something in the name that could lead them/a scanning tool to think it's piracy download links? Not saying that would make the situation any more justified, I'm just kind of curious

Nope, it doesn't offer any downloads, or questionable content. The site has strict guidelines against any comments even mentioning piracy.

The DMCA notices from Google direct me to the complaint in the Lumen Database. In those notices it lists my domain along with hundreds of others for each complaint, so I'm not alone here.

I'm assuming a third party company is being paid to look after sending DMCA complaints for businesses. If they remove 100,000 URLs by sending DMCA notices, they can charge higher fees or get more contracts compared to other companies that only take down 10,000 URLs. There are no repercussions, so might as well automate the process and aim for big numbers.

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

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've had the capability to detect audio for a long time. What changed suddenly in the last few years to deploy/enforce this at scale? Certainly not any improvements to detection. I've made a whopping total of $46 in something like 12 years on these platforms. Something tells me this level of enforcement is ridiculous and against the spirit of the law, and I'm certainly not an expert on the DMCA or a lawyer, but I'd…

A modest proposal: sell "streamer" licenses for a game that include audio/video watermarking features, or require an active internet connection and redisplay a sequence of numbers like a security key over the corner of the screen. Any footage without this would be taken down automatically. Publishers could charge upwards of $200 for these. Larger publishers could offer package subscription deals for you to be able to…

Some governments [0] and IP holders [1] already offer this.

There's some back and forth about the exact underlying licensing, without an industry standard just yet - free streams are sometimes exempt, or require a partial license.

However, there is movement towards this concept.

[0] https://ablis.business.gov.au/service/ag/music-streaming-and...

[1] https://ccli.com/us/en/streaming

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

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And how long do you think it would take until the competitor would end up in the same situation? YouTube ended up in that situation for two reasons. First, the original YouTube before Google bought it was playing fast and loose with the law and was in the process of getting sued over it after Google bought them. Second, Google wants to license Hollywood content for YouTube TV etc. So between wanting to settle the l…

So like dailymotion? Why won't people use that instead of youtube?

Partially because it kind of sucks, but maybe more because Google owns YouTube, has 90% search market share and heavily favors YouTube videos over other video hosts in search results.

Which means you need it to not suck or have some other countervailing advantage which is enough to overcome that, e.g. TikTok, but without the geopolitical issues of that one.

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

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way it works is that after someone sends a takedown request, the content can't be restored until 10 business days after the person who uploaded it sends a counter-notice. I'd be curious to know if this has ever been challenged in court as an unconstitutional prior restraint. Pretty obvious problems if you get people e.g. issuing fraudulent takedowns 10 days before an election.

YouTube is a private entity; as long as they comply with the DMCA, they're under no obligation to take content down or even make content available (outside of contracts they enter into voluntarily). The DMCA doesn't provide strict timelines (just that the initial takedown requires the provider to "act expeditiously", and nothing for restoration). The bigger issue is that Content ID has always been a way for YouTube t…

> YouTube is a private entity; as long as they comply with the DMCA, they're under no obligation to take content down or even make content available (outside of contracts they enter into voluntarily).

"Comply with the DMCA" is the issue. If the law requires user-generated content hosts to take down content and leave it down for 10 days or they lose a legal protection that keeps them from being incinerated by lawyers, that's effectively a legal requirement that they take it down for 10 days, i.e. a prior restraint, which is typically not allowed.

> The DMCA doesn't provide strict timelines (just that the initial takedown requires the provider to "act expeditiously", and nothing for restoration).

What's this about the 10 days in 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(2) then?

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

#185
post #173
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google shields the false-DMCA complainers and will absolutely not reveal their identities.

The identity is in the takedown request. It's Tatsumi Masaaki from Nintendo USA. The problem is that it's fake.

Interesting, I suppose their practices have changed because in the past youtube/google absolutely stonewalled me.

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

#186
Maybe the US Congress can amend the DMCA so that every company must publically list an email contact that must respond correctly to requests that take the form of forwarded DMCA notices and communications about IP issues. The company would have to reply with a confirmation or denial of the communication.

Companies could easily do this by including a tracking number for each communication, along with a copy of the communication then checking that tracking number on requests for confirmation.

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

#187
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the following: I make a form of parody that is known as a Youtube Poop. It was all the rage last decade, but now it's a dying art. In part because of these stupid DMCA rules preventing people like me from expressing their creativity. I can appeal the strikes, but every time I do so I risk losing my channel forever. I don't monetize, and I only make parodies of stuff that came out over 10 years ago. So I've a…

Nobody has a right to an audience. > Also, I'm from Europe. Which court should I go to when I infringe on an american dub copyright for a japanese cartoon, exactly? Well the copyright and the site are American so probably America.

> Nobody has a right to an audience.

If you are an American citizen, the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution mentions your God-given right to any audience that wants to listen to you.

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

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just ignore the DMCA claims, are you really afraid of getting sued ? Meanwhile if you're still using platforms to host these videos, and not something like PeerTube, you're part of the problem.

You can just ignore the DMCA claims, but your service providers cannot, at least not without the risk of assuming legal liability themselves. Also, cynical as it may sound, I assume the rise of a popular, successful peer-to-peer YouTube alternative would, in the US at least, result in the passage of even more consumer-hostile legislation, think "three strikes"-style anti-torrent laws with actual teeth (e.g., rather t…

"Service providers" are in a very unequal situation here, with very different rights and liabilities, if you meant grouping ISPs (net neutrality) and platforms together.

And I don't care about the USA at this point, they made their bed, now let them lie in it, in fact the more they squeeze their fist, the sooner the free world will get the courage to dump them.

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

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please define severe. At worst your account on a platform is deleted. This is not severe.

That's pretty severe if your entire income is from said platform. And I was talking about severe consequences for the platform, not the creator. The platform could become liable for all the content across the entire platform if they don't act on a single DMCA notice, if they lose their protection as a platform because of it.

> That's pretty severe if your entire income is from said platform

But that is also pretty dumb to base your entire income in a platform that can delete your account for any reason at any point in time.

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