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All DMCA notices filed against TorrentFreak in 2019 were bogus

torrentfreak.com

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Re: All DMCA notices filed against TorrentFreak in 2019 were bogus

#51

Post by kevingadd »

ikeboy wrote: post #49
kevingadd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true (in my experience) for search results but not for the chrome web store. Sure, you could take Google to court if you have more money and time to waste...

Searching turns up https://adampash.kinja.com/google-just-dmcaed-my-chrome-exte... , which has the text of an email Google sent out that does include the sender information. You can submit a counter-notice, and if for some reason they didn't give you the required information I'd expect you could contact support and ask for it.

Yeah, they omitted critical information and rejected my attempts to get the information. They also kept the extension down for a month. I contacted a lawyer about this but the costs would have been extravagant, so.

You'll note how in that example, they provide lots of information on the party that filed the DMCA claim. That info is only provided to you if the DMCA notice actually included the info - Google will for some reason process malformed notices that don't contain the required information, which leaves you with no options.

In this case the person filing the claim provided no information except their name (4 japanese kanji) with no further contact information or other details. I was unable to find them on Google, if that was even their name.

Re: All DMCA notices filed against TorrentFreak in 2019 were bogus

#52

Post by ikeboy »

kevingadd wrote: post #51
ikeboy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Searching turns up https://adampash.kinja.com/google-just-dmcaed-my-chrome-exte... , which has the text of an email Google sent out that does include the sender information. You can submit a counter-notice, and if for some reason they didn't give you the required information I'd expect you could contact support and ask for it.

Yeah, they omitted critical information and rejected my attempts to get the information. They also kept the extension down for a month. I contacted a lawyer about this but the costs would have been extravagant, so. You'll note how in that example, they provide lots of information on the party that filed the DMCA claim. That info is only provided to you if the DMCA notice actually included the info - Google will for s…

That's a different issue from Google not providing the actual notice.

It shouldn't prevent you from filing a counternotice with whatever information was provided - did it?

Re: All DMCA notices filed against TorrentFreak in 2019 were bogus

#53

Post by DanBC »

bawolff wrote: post #11
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #8

> Japanese company "유니콘미디어" That looks like Korean, to me (Unicorn Media) . DMCA seems to have been one of those things that we say "It seemed like such a good idea, at the time" after the fact. I'm certainly waiting to hear positive stories about it.

Perhaps not a "positive" story, but legit dmcas do happen from time to time and seem reasonable enough to me (or at least reasonable enough in a world with copyrights). For example look at this list of dmca notices against wikipedia that wmf actually thought were valid https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Office_actions/DM... most of them seem reasonable enough to me. (IANAL) The problem is no effective oversig…

This one seems to be a reasonable use of DMCA: this is a logo that shouldn't exist, it's never used, but it's on Wikipedia and people are finding it there and attempting to use it for actual purposes, which is confusing. So BP issues a narrow DMCA for only this incorrect version of the logo, leaving all others untouched.

https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:DMCA_BP_logo

Re: All DMCA notices filed against TorrentFreak in 2019 were bogus

#54

Post by masklinn »

rosybox wrote: post #32
masklinn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AFAIK DMCA notices don't go through the courts. They're just sent to the site owner, who must comply or file a counter notice. I think you're mixing two things: * if a site owner receives a DMCA notice and believes the content is not infringing they can just do nothing and / or tell whoever sent it to get bent, sender may escalate to the courts * service providers which want to be protected under safe harbour must…

> if a site owner receives a DMCA notice and believes the content is not infringing they can just do nothing and / or tell whoever sent it to get bent, sender may escalate to the courts The site owner in the case of TF receiving the request is Google, not TF. Google probably automatically acts on the DMCA request and TF has to go through the process of contesting it. So TF can't just sit around and do nothing.

> The site owner in the case of TF receiving the request is Google, not TF.

GP states that the site owner must [take down the content] or send a counter-notice, that’s not true regardless of whether you assume the “site owner” is the service provider or the subscriber, which is why I tried explaining the duties of each.

Re: All DMCA notices filed against TorrentFreak in 2019 were bogus

#55

Post by aaronax »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19
aaronax wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe similar ramifications should apply to the uploader in the case of a valid DMCA complaint to make this fair. There are some logistical issues with enforcing that. I admit that upfront as I don't think those are a fruitful topic if you wish to discuss my initial "belief."

> similar ramifications should apply to the uploader in the case of a valid DMCA complaint to make this fair They do. They're the penalties for copyright infringement. DMCA provides a quick takedown mechanism; other copyright law lifts the rest.

Good point. I guess I've never heard of someone getting penalized for uploading stuff to YouTube for example.

Re: All DMCA notices filed against TorrentFreak in 2019 were bogus

#57

Post by matheusmoreira »

snuxoll wrote: post #44
komali2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of punishment for bad requests make me wonder if a valid business strategy is DMCAing competition at every turn. Also makes me wonder if people could DDOS an entire company with DMCA takedown requests.

17 USC § 512(f), knowingly misrepresenting a DMCA takedown claim can result in liability for damage, attorneys fees, etc.

No individual will ever pursue this in court because of the cost in time and money and the risk of being declared liable anyway. Corporations with legal departments are certainly capable of pursuing this against individuals.

There's a significant power imbalance here.

Re: All DMCA notices filed against TorrentFreak in 2019 were bogus

#58

Post by jkaplowitz »

_jal wrote: post #45
snuxoll wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

17 USC § 512(f), knowingly misrepresenting a DMCA takedown claim can result in liability for damage, attorneys fees, etc.

Except I don't believe it ever has, even in egregious cases. However, there is a pending test case attempting to give it some teeth. I expect it will be entertaining, no matter how it substantively turns out: https://www.popehat.com/2019/12/13/randazza-confederates-dou...

Yeah, very few enforcements, indeed.

This was the first successful 512(f) verdict back in 2004, though it may still stand nearly alone, and did not yield enough in damages to affect megacorp behavior in the absence of a huge flurry of such lawsuits: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Policy_Group_v._Diebo....

Re: All DMCA notices filed against TorrentFreak in 2019 were bogus

#59

Post by snuxoll »

_jal wrote: post #45
snuxoll wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

17 USC § 512(f), knowingly misrepresenting a DMCA takedown claim can result in liability for damage, attorneys fees, etc.

Except I don't believe it ever has, even in egregious cases. However, there is a pending test case attempting to give it some teeth. I expect it will be entertaining, no matter how it substantively turns out: https://www.popehat.com/2019/12/13/randazza-confederates-dou...

Lenz v Universal was fought over this, and has opened the floodgates for these claims. Copyright holders cannot just blanket issue DMCA takedowns without evaluating the supposedly infringing content, including consideration of fair use.

While it’s not an easy case to win, it has teeth - unfortunately they are limited to ACTUAL damages, which does give companies incentive to file misrepresented claims as one cannot easily hire a contingent attorney without the possibility of a statutory windfall.

Re: All DMCA notices filed against TorrentFreak in 2019 were bogus

#60

Post by dependenttypes »

unlinked_dll wrote: post #25
jakear wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've used DMCA to request GitHub takedown repos containing our proprietary software.

I've seen DMCAs take down GitHub repos where the code was a clean room reimplementations of proprietary software.

Would you happen to have links?
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