only in this case it mostly google which makes matters worse. They don't or badly check DMCA claims, don't monitor or publish the filers that are most frequently counterfiled against and to top it off: mostly use their own contentid system anyway which heavily favors ip holders.
Google, nor any other corp, should be a Judge on a legal matter. That's why a Judge should be involved.
The entire idea of of the DCMA is just massively flawed and biased towards a world where only big publishers and big criminal enterprises exist.
There are 600 million DCMA notices to Google along every year. Let's be insanely Conservative and assume there are a billion across all platforms.
Let's say a judge can review a notice every 5 minutes. 12 an hour, say 100 in a day. Say 20 000 per year. So 50 per million, 50 000 judges per billion requests.
Let's say a judge costs 100k per year. With say another 100k in costs. That's a price tag of 10 billion per year. I'm guessing the real number is likely well over double that.
So your plan to include humans, never mind actual judges who went to law school and so on, is, well a non-starter.
This is an argument to re-write the DMCA to prevent frivolous claims, and thus reduce the total number of claims. It's not an argument to throw up our hands and pretend that it's unreasonable to expect human involvement.
I don't think anyone is advocating for the status quo, but that doesn't mean human involvement is required either at an initial stage.
One proposal is that you should need full legal identification to file a takedown claim, and be on the hook for damages and penalties if is malicious. This would solve 99.999 of the problem.
One proposal is that you should need full legal identification to file a takedown claim
How exactly? Require a government issued ID? What if it's fake? How would you validate that the ID is authentic? Even if it is authentic, how do you ensure that person has proper rights to issue the takedown?
and be on the hook for damages and penalties if is malicious.
How? They could either not be who they say they are and/or not located in the United States. Like in this exact case, the two defendants are located in Vietnam. There's zero chance they're going to show up, so it'll result in a default judgement that will never be collected on.
The best suggestion I've seen so far is to require an escrow deposit on takedowns that is forfeit on fraudulent/malicious claims. However, this then raises the issue of who would determine that. Also, this deposit could potentially tie up a lot of money of legitimate claimants, becoming a financial burden for them and preventing them from issue further claims (which further adds to that burden).
How? They could either not be who they say they are and/or not located in the United States.
Require either US Identity papers or a corporate identity that is registered in the US in order to file a DMCA (or <country here> id/corpid for filing a <country specific> copyright claim)
Furthermore, tweaking the reporting times for DMCA would help: 1. Claim made, soft-takedown immediately (delist but don't remove) 2. Proceed to hard-takedown after 24 hrs if no counterclaim is made. 3. Counterclaim made, reinstate and inform original claimant. 4. Original Claimant can then either sue or obtain a court-ordered injunction. 5. Optionally Claimant can pay a nominal fee for "human decision-making" by Google or a mutually agreeable arbitrator. 6. Respondent has 14 days to file their own nominal fee to move it to arbitration or can proceed to countersue.
I like this idea. It adds enough friction to scare away most scammers.
This would pretty much entirely remove the ability for regular people outside the US to use the DMCA while corporations to abuse the system. Corporations don't really need that help and can get a court to approve an injunction instead - if they don't already have a business relationship with the host they can levarage to get the content taken down.
No, requiring any party to be damaged based on accusations alone is absurd. Copyright infringement is not a life or death matter. It can wait for a judge to at least look at the matter. And if that is too expensive for society then maybe reconsider copyright instead of externalizing the cost required to maintain the fiction that information can be scarce.
How exactly? Require a government issued ID? What if it's fake? How would you validate that the ID is authentic? Even if it is authentic, how do you ensure that person has proper righgts
There is an infinite list depending on how strict you want to be. They could require government ID. They could require a notary. They could require a court order.
There will always be a balance between ease of takedown for legitimate claimants vs fighting false claims.
and be on the hook for damages and penalties if is malicious.
Honestly, I think both conditions might be met with an already vetted credit card number, which obviously involves an associated identification of a person or company.
When signing up for cloud service providers, I'm always terrified that I'll leave something on and incur a massive bill. Basically, every cloud service move I treat as if I'm walking on eggshells. I'd assume those issuing a DMCA would end up the same way.
It needs to be easier to claim damages from inaccurate takedowns. Not only do you need to prove that the claimant knew his takedown was false, you also need to demonstrate "tortuous business interference".
A simple, fixed price minimum damage for inaccurate claims would solve this. No more robo-claims because a forum user mentioned keywords which a poorly written scraper matches to their (brokered) client's intellectual property.
You mean you actually have to pay a significant number of humans to run a giant monolithic content platform responsibly?!
But our profits!
Petty technicality, but most jurisdictions in the USA don't require judges to have gone to law school, passed the bar or even know how to read.
Flood the system as a form of protest.
Yup, that's about right for enforcing the current system of copyright, at the current level of enforcement, but with better than piss poor accuracy.
Frankly, we're over-enforcing copyrights, which is why this looks ridiculous. It doesn't make economic sense to try a sane system for most of these complaints because we'd be spending thousands of dollars on court costs to take down a webpage that gets 10 views per day.
There should be a nominal fee to file a DMCA complaint just to prevent wasting everyone's time with enforcement actions against pages that no one cares about. Call it $10 or maybe $50. If the site is causing damages to you, the $10 is worth it, but if they aren't causing the $10 of damage to make it worth filing then nobody else should have to deal with that paperwork either.
Also the DMCA doesn't require Google to takedown sites based on obviously fraudulent DMCA notices.
It's just that Google would lose its liability shield if the claim turned out to be real.
i thought that was the main flaw with the DMCA - it actuallydoesrequire you to obey all properly formatted and submitted DMCA notices, regardless of how obviously fraudulent they are, until a court decides they're not fraudulent.
DMCA doesn't require you to do anything, because it only shields you against liability you would otherwise have to the filer (or the owner whose agent they are), and if the notice is obviously not from thr owner or agent, or obviously incorrect about the content being infringing (or even existing), then there is no source of liability.
Yes, it's cheaper not to check, but its not required by the DMCA.
Honest question, Does the DMCA allow hosts to require proof before action?
If their liability isn't contingent on being provided valid evidence beyond a simple statement, then hosts don't have much of an ability to perform an assessment.
Honest question, Does the DMCA allow hosts to require proof before action?
The DMCA (well, the Safe Harbor provision under discussion, the DMCA has lots of other provisions that are irrelevant to the discussion) doesn'trequireaction in the first place, so it necessasrilyallowsanything before action.
If their liability isn't contingent on being provided valid evidence beyond a simple statement, then hosts don't have much of an ability to perform an assessment.
The DMCA doesn't create liability in the first place.
What stops the Google's of the world from simply ignoring every dmca takedown request? Alternatively what do you think prevents them from requiring rigorous proof in a machine readable format before honoring a request? What do you think the incentives at play are?
Google's primary customers are rights-holders: particularly giant media corporations and very-popular youtubers.
Shouldn't giant media corporations also care about illegitimate take down notices against them?
All of their content is on a totally isolated platform like Netflix or YouTube Red.
The law binds the out group to profit the in group.
The lawsuit with Viacom in the mid 2000s that could have basically killed the entire platform over copyright complaints with big studios. ContentID was a direct result of that lawsuit with the explicit goal of making sure google would never be held responsible for copyright violations.
The vast majority of "Copyright claims" on youtube are not DMCA takedowns.
Google doesn't require proof or ask for evidence or anything because they don't give a fuck about the rights of a creator. The entire goal of youtube's copyright programs are about the continuation of youtube as a profitable entity. They do that by purposely making it easy for big rightsholders to get what they want, and in the process have made it easy for strangers to bogus claim things and possibly get advertising revenue for a bit unless the creator has enough clout and access to youtube support reps to get it fixed.
Don't big rights holders also care about having their content taken down?
What stops the Google's of the world from simply ignoring every dmca takedown request?
They become liable for copyright infringement if the work in question is actually in violation of copyright.
You’d want to be very sure that a work you were hosting wasn’t in violation of copyright before outright ignoring a DCMA request.
What stops the Google's of the world from simply ignoring every dmca takedown request?
The same thing that leads them to make deals with big money copyright-based industries for copyright systems that go far beyond what the DMCA safe harbor requires for situations it covers: the fact that they are deeply and actually aware of the copyright violation they facilitate (putting them outside of the DMCA safe harbor to start with), and rely almost entirely on the fact that that is hard and expensive to prove (which the DMCA negates, but which forces them to go beyond the DMCA for industries for which the cost and expense of proving actual knowledge would otherwise be worthwhile.)
The DMCA does not give service providers leeway to check DMCA claims. Ignoring a correctly filed notification, even if it is garbage, prevents a service provider getting the relief from liability.
Source: 17 USC 512(c)
And "Big Copyright" prefers it that way. They are only interested in maximizing sensitivity (probability of taking down a true violation), they have no incentive to care about the trade-off with precision (probability that a taken-down violation is a true violation).
They process incorrectly filed notices too, for example notices that don't contain the information required. I had my content taken down once in response to a notice that just had a person's name and no other information (they were not the rightsholder)
The service provider is only liable if an infraction has actually taken place. Checking DMCA claims means determining if that is the case. Service providers do have that leeway.
Yeah, and what is funny, is that it totally misses content on smaller artists while incorrectly IP on older, open-domain, classical music performed by smaller artists (think high-school bands performing Beethoven).
Google has another set of motivation: rights-holders are its primary customers.
It's pretty clear at this point which motivator has won Google's favor.
Part of that is due to how the platform plays games with appeals.
Who wouldn't be pissed off when legitimate content gets taken down, and the platform's response to evidence to the contrary is dumb looks and blank stares?
Holding Defendants Accountable
Those who knowingly make false statements in a DMCA notice can be held liable for damages, costs, and attorneys’ fees. In this matter the defendants’ conduct is said to have caused Google to suffer economic harm due to lost advertising revenue, damage to business relations, and the allocation of significant resources to investigate their wrongdoing.
Does this apply only to "two vietnamese men" or also companies like sony, nintendo etc., when they happen to forget about the fair uses clauses?
Urgh, yeah. If you're trying to set an example, suing two individuals in a US court... individuals that don't even reside in the US, that's an odd choice.
Suing an actual company and recovering some of the judgement would surely send a stronger message.
Edit: maybe a more cynical view is that racking up default judgements is used as low-effort proof of "we're policing the system...see all of our lawsuits" if government or public pressure rises.
That's how it works though. You go after the weakest , least sympathetic, least able to respond, and set the precedent.
Sorta like weev. There are plenty of reasons to not like the guy. But that's the case that made changing the numbers in a URL a possible felony.
Anyway, once they get that first win, they pick on a slightly larger target, and cite the first win as precident.
Does a default judgment (no show) set any citable precedent?
Not a lawyer.
I'd imagine if they rack up a bunch of no-shows They could change their dmca handling process. We're not honoring these without property X, because these last hundred or thousand or whatever turned out to be fake.
I guess, I'd assert google lawyers are not dumb, and they probably have a reason to start stacking "wins". But I don't know what the strategy or end goal might be. I'm just some random guy on the internet with an opinion.
That makes sense to me. "Procedural precedent + metrics" versus actual legal precedent.
Not really. Sure you can refer to them, but the first lawyer who shows up will point out the others were no shows and the judge won't pay much attention to results.
Why not sue in their home country? Google has a business presence. This is more for show and headlines.
DMCA is a US law.
That implements the requirements of international copyright treaties.
Hum, no, international copyright treaties get nowhere the contents of the DMCA. The US has an entire copyrights law for implementing those.
Might they be trying to set a precedent and receive a quick 'no show' judgement?
when they happen to forget about the fair uses clauses?
oh those are just innocent omissions and no malice nor intent is implied!
I mean.. who could expect highly paid copyright lawyers in their massive legal teams to know such obscure rules such as fair use :)
They know about it; but I think they know:
A. Are you going to fight it?
B. Fair use, from a legal perspective, is much narrower than people think and narrower than the wording suggests. A reaction video is not considered sufficient commentary or criticism, for example. Making even a single word change to a cover song, even if you paid the compulsory license fee, is not fair use. Etc.
C. Especially in video games, everyone loves quoting Sega v Accolade or Sony v Bleem as proof emulation is perfectly legal. There’s just one problem: Both of those cases were decided before the mother-of-all-DRM laws, the DMCA, was passed. They are both likely irrelevant cases now. This happens elsewhere too - quoting old cases as proof of legality without other modern developments.
Especially in video games, everyone loves quoting Sega v Accolade or Sony v Bleem as proof emulation is perfectly legal.
There's no need to prove emulation is legal. There's a need to prove it's illegal. There's a long history of making compatible things. Everything from toner cartridges to PC compatibles to auto parts. And especially in the context of copyright law, explain the possibility of a copyright violation in a piece of software written to emulate a hardware platform when there is no ROM or firmware distributed by the authors? Now how most people choose to run emulators is copyright violation from horizon to horizon, but I don't see how that has anything to do with people making emualtion products.
explain the possibility of a copyright violation in a piece of software written to emulate a hardware platform when there is no ROM or firmware distributed by the authors
It specifically has to do with the DRM keys used for decrypting the games; which would appear to run afoul, in most cases, of the DMCA.
It’s also not theoretical. Unauthorized DVD players and ripping software have had their authors legally prosecuted repeatedly (even big companies at the time, like RealPlayer). Gary Bowser also went to prison and had his fines set, in part, for violating that law (notice that it was a criminal case, not a civil one; Nintendo could not have dismissed those charges voluntarily.) Apple sent Psystar into bankruptcy for daring to use their keys to make macOS run on non-Macs as a commercial service. Psystar is actually the best example because they went through the entirety of the legal system to where there was nothing left but appeal to SCOTUS, and they still lost.
I think that the biggest danger to emulation, by far, which archivists should be panicking more about, is the people who emulate to avoid buying a game. Which, according to most estimates, is 90%+ of emulation. On an old console who cares? On the Nintendo Switch though, that’s actual market harm (the lack thereof being one of the pillars of determining fair use in a courtroom).
Making even a single word change to a cover song, even if you paid the compulsory license fee, is not fair use.
Wouldn't obtaining a license supercede any claims of fair use? The defense wouldn't be "this falls under fair use", the defense would be "I've licensed this, there can't be any complaint".
I am speaking of the compulsory license that music companies are obligated to offer if you want to make a commercially-produced cover of a song. Currently, it costs 9.1 cents per copy that you sell of a covered song.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_license
You might read the above and go, “wait, that wasn’t Fair Use this whole time?” Nope. Fair Use doesn’t cover nearly as much as people think.
You just have to consider fair use to make a dmca claim. It takes 1 second in your head. The bar is very low.
The "DMCA abuse" rule feels a lot like perjury where it's technically illegal but a legal and prosecutorial mess that means it never rarely punished and makes headlines when it finally does.
It's there to prevent the most obvious potential abuses.
Very little in the copyright sphere is "obvious" though. Is this riff original or was it stolen? Etc.
These four chords are totally unique and original!
I like the live version of that better[1], and while the Axis of Awesome wins in the shear number of songs, I like Rob P's presentation[2] of the same idea more.
Nope. The part of a DMCA notice that is under penalty of perjury is that youown the copyright in question. That's what the defendants here lied about.
You can't get sued if you believe something is infringement but the person using the copyrighted material believes it's fair use. Honestly I'm not even sure how that could work.
In Lenz v. Universal Music Corp the courts found that rights holders do need to consider fair use when submitting a DMCA takedown, and they are liable for damages if they fail to do so
Counter-notice and it goes to court, I believe.
Everyone knows that rules don't apply to big corpos because they have the monies and lawyers.
Well, they do, technically, the issue is that they aren't enforced... because they have the monies and lawyers. :(
Does this apply only to "two vietnamese men" or also companies like sony, nintendo etc., when they happen to forget about the fair uses clauses?
Who advertises on Google: "two vietnamese men" or “companies like sony, nintendo etc”? Both cost Google money through bogus DMCA filings, but one cohort also brings in a lot of cash.
Our lawsuit targets bad actors who set up dozens of Google accounts and used them to submit thousands of bogus copyright claims against their competitors. These fraudulent claims resulted in removal of over 100,000 businesses’ websites, costing them millions of dollars and thousands of hours in lost employee time.
So Google needs to remove the sites first, likely to be legally compliant themselves, hurt the businesses in question, then sue to be able to re-instate the websites that they knew shouldn't have been taken down in the first place?
Yes, but blame the DMCA, because this is literally what it requires content providers like Google to do:
OSP must accommodate and not interfere with "standard technical measures." "Standard technical measures" are defined as measures that copyright owners use to identify or protect copyrighted works, that have been developed pursuant to a broad consensus of copyright owners and service providers
Basically, if somebody claiming to be a copyright owner (even if they aren't) files a claim saying they have copyright over someting (even if they don't) using "standard technical measures", Google "must accommodate and not interfere", meaning they need to take down first and ask questions later.
What a shitty law, how did that get passed? Or is there something I missing from all this?
Unanimously approved by Congress to implement a treaty obligation
as this was the mid-late 1990s, both the law and the treaty obligation did not consider the future state of the internet, and it mostly focuses on physical but electronic mediums
distinctive bills to patch the DMCA have largely failed due to general partisan paralysis in Congress for decades now, it simply needs to be a rider in must-pass bills but so far it hasnt been
I see, so it never got updated properly?
Also knowing how little the average politician probably knows about this subject I don’t see it changing.
Copyrights are basically a long lineage of shitty laws on top of older shitty laws all due to people lobbying to become rent seekers, most on works that they themselves never created.
Follow the money.
It would be fair to say google should put more work into vetting DMCA takedowns, but DMCA is a bad law, and it is enforced badly. A long term coordinated effort at fraudulent takedowns should be criminal in several ways: The false report should be criminal. It should be a sworn statement. There should be a statutory penalty against the reporting party. Reporting parties should be bonded on a sliding scale. The criminality should not be able to hide behind the corporate veil.
Google is suing, and it's not even the harmed party. Obligatory IANAL disclaimer applies, but surely a strong first-party case could be made for, at least, tortious interference?
Google is suing, and it's not even the harmed party.
Google is a harmed party; the false reporterts have engaged in the crime of theft (of services/labor) by false pretenses against Google.
(Its true that that crime was merely instrumental to their goal of harming other businesses, but its a real crime and a real harm to Google.)
"A particularly damaging batch of fraudulent notices targeted more than 35,000 URLs operated by a Google customer that spends tens of millions of dollars per year on Google search ads. The effect was a significant drop in traffic during the holiday season, revenue losses for the customer and its sellers of $5 million, and a loss to Google of between $2 and $3 million." So you'd think the competitor firms could certainly sue also, if they were so inclined.
It would be fair to say google should put more work into vetting DMCA takedowns
They're effectively not allowed to, by the law, that forces them to assume every take down is good, or they end up at legal risk of being liable for the content. DMCA is just fundamentally broken.
I'm not an expert in DMCA but yes I believe that to be the case. The only recourse for the victims is to file a counter-notice, which obligates the service provider to start a waiting period. Then the victim has to wait out that period before having the content reinstated.
If they are following DMCA procedures and notifying the targets, they can (even if there would be actual copyright liability otherwise) restore without risk 10 days after getting and notifying the complainant about a counternotice, at which point the copyright claimant needs to sue the end user.
(Some hosts are lax about the end-user side of DMCA safe harbor process, because they have no user-side liability that they feel the need to avoid, and there's no other benefit to them, besides PR, for taking any action after a takedown.)
Great, now do the Dallas and DeSoto, TX police departments who took down my videos of police brutality and violent home invasions with phony take-down notices to YouTube in addition to destroying my computers and cameras and stealing computer discs with video of their misconduct from the US Mail with the help of (then DeSoto post master Linda H. Norwood.
You probably want to host that sort of content yourself. If your only backup is on Google's server, you have to prepare for a reality where they get rid of it.
Sounds like they did, and it was destroyed/stolen?
Not a bad use case for backing up to other people's computers.
This seems like a great case for client side scanning. If a file is flagged it gets removed from all devices that go online.
Have you written about this story anywhere? I feel like multiple subreddits would be very interested in this story.
Not to mention prominent channels on YouTube that cover police matters like this. [0]
Yeah, that went federal. Very interesting.
I think we have this reoccurring on a frequent basis that it is now part and parcel of living in the US.
If true, that story would make national news...
In additional to the state-level crimes committed by local law enforcement, your claim suggests a number of federal crimes as well.
I know prosecutors, police officers who have committed multiple state and federal crimes. I've tried contact dozens of media outlets and they are all like "Mmkay".
I agree with the media outlets on this...
Lots of people "know" law enforcement that have "committed" multiple "crimes." But when asked what the crimes were, they can't actually articulate any specific acts, or what they do articulate aren't crimes, or they don't have any evidence supporting their claims.
Media outletsloveto report on public corruption. It's what gets journalists awards and fame. If they don't believe you, it's not because they're part of some conspiracy, it's because you haven't given them enough evidence to make it worth their while to investigate.
There's no conspiracy, it's just that one single person going to the papers with a story usually isn't that compelling. You don't have enough weight to make them interested.
I guarantee I gave them enough evidence. I've got over a decade of courtroom experience litigating cases, I gave them citations to the statutes down to the paragraph with supporting documentation for all claims. I also had signed confessions from two of the officers. Due to litigation over the matters they were pulled into court, but refused to take the stand under oath and sat outside the courtroom. As an alternative they suggested just signing a confession so they could leave. They didn't want to get cross-examined as it could potentially open up a larger can of worms -- if you're hiding a lot of dirty laundry you don't know what questions will come up under examination; you don't know what the lawyer might know and surprise you with.
Two of them did resign, which protected their pensions/benefits. One of the prosecutors made a come-back as a state legislator though, so a win there for him. (On a side note, while I managed to force that prosecutor to admit to perjury and he was investigated for it, after that incident the state bar regulator seems to have given up -- I got a letter from them regarding another prosecutor stating that they no longer investigate misconduct by prosecutors, only by defense attorneys)
I believe this is what everyone has been suggesting someone do about fake DMCA for a while so, although it pains me to say it, thank you Google!
False DMCA claims are technically considered perjury I think. The problem is that most so-called DMCA claims are actually not using the DMCA mechanism at all: filing a bogus copyright claim on YouTube for example doesn't have to involve the DMCA at any point.
I have heard that perjury thing before. However, what is the actual consequence of doing that? Also in this particular type of thing? Is it a 'liar liar pants on fire' designation, or some sort of fine, or time in jail? What do the actual statutes say, and what is the case law here?
In California, perjury is a felony punishable by 2,3, or 4 years in jail. [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....]
Theoretically.
[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x...]
It’s also explicitly listed as a deportable offense for Green Card holders.
Let me know when Sony has been put in jail for 2 years. So far they've been getting away with bogus DMCA notices for years.
Sony lawyers represent Sony so don’t fall under the perjury rule.
Near as I can tell, almost no one wants to prosecute Perjury.
Partially because lawyers are so good at weaseling out of it, but secretly I think it’s because lawyers are afraid of what would happen if it was consistently applied.
For Family court in particular, I imagine it could turn 1/4 of the state into felons.
The only cases I’m aware of were very high profile, ‘successful’ (as in folks believed it, and took action based on it) lies under oath with severe and high profile damages, that later evidence clearly showed was done in bad faith.
And by severe and high profile damages, I don’t mean something as simple as a single (non famous) person being dead when they didn’t have to be, unless it’s a huge scandal anyway.
You, like many others, are misunderstanding the "perjury" part of the DMCA.
It's only perjury if you're don't have legal authority to act on behalf of the company issuing the DMCA takedown.
In other words, Sony falsely claiming to have ownership over something is not perjury. Some random person claiming to be working for Sony when they don't and claiming ownership and sending a DMCA takedown is.
Perjury cases are very, very rarely prosecuted even in cases where the violation is blatant (from my experience).
Occasionally the system works, though. I remember one suspect I knew defending himself against what he said were totally bogus domestic violence charges. The woman came and testified against him and he lost. A week after the trial, and before his sentencing, his lawyer came and told him the government had just disclosed that they had discovered the complainant had three separate perjury convictions in three other states for being caught lying in domestic violence testimony.
False DMCA claims are technically considered perjury I think. The problem is that most so-called DMCA claims are actually not using the DMCA mechanism at all […]
The other issue is that, if I recall correctly, the perjury penalty is not about whether the claim is accurate. It’s about whether you actually represent the rights holder of the content you claim is being infringed.
That is, if I make a DMCA claim that says this video infringes on Frozen, it’s perjury only if I’m not the rights holder (or representative thereof) for Frozen.
Whenever you see some small content creator complaining about people stealing their videos and such, they never actually file a DMCA to get relief, they just use youtube's bogus form and then complain when nothing happens.
>I believe _this_ is what everyone has been suggesting someone do about fake DMCA for a while so,
The problem is the"_this_"in this thread's example is a full-blown lawsuit by Google. Yes, this is a change from just blindingly obeying DMCA notices butfiling lawsuits is not scalableto apply to all the other frivolous and illegitimate takedown requests. These 2 men just did it in high enough volume to attract the attention of Google's lawyers.
An example of all the other illegitimate DMCA takedowns "flying under the radar"...
A few years ago, I was selling some Total Training DVD tutorials of Adobe products on ebay like these:https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=total+training+adobe+cr...
Ebay then mysteriously cancelled my listing after a few days. Why? Because Ebay has a VeRO (Verified Rights Owners) program and Total Training sent a DMCA takedown request to remove my legitimate listing. I then sent a harsh email with my invoice to Total Training that provedI bought the DVDs directly from themso they are not counterfeit pirate copies and warned them not to interfere when I re-listed it. They didn't takedown my listing so I was finally able to sell it. Total Training wasn't really trying to stop piracy; their real intention was to prevent lower-priced used DVDs from competing with the sales of their new DVDs by intimidating sellers on ebay.
That's the type of small-scale DMCA abuse that happens constantly on Ebay, Youtube, Google search results page, etc. Abuse the DMCA to their advantage but not enough to attract lawsuits.
This is one of the few cases where the "perjury rule" actually matters. The "perjury rule" says that it is considered perjury to falsely claim that your are authorized by the rights holder to make the DMCA takedown request. Contrary to popular belief, the perjury rule does not say that it's perjury to falsely identify something as the copyrighted work.
That’s an interesting distinction. And, I would think, a much broader rule. It is inclusive of the “popular belief”: if you falsely identify a work as copyrighted, but it’s not, then you are misrepresenting your authorization because there is no way for you to have obtained it.
Sadly, that's not how it works. The claimant just has to have authorization on behalf of the work they are claiming is being infringed upon. Essentially making this part of the law useless. IMHO, it was just added to make the layman think there is some protection or responsibility on behalf of the people making the claim.
Not sure why the sad unfortunate face here.
If you know of a work that is copyrighted and you find this work on a website that is not given the license to the copyright, and you are not the copyright holder but instead the copyright holder is your cousin, you should not have the authority to issue a DMCA takedown noticem, even if you may be aware of who your cousin gave the license to.
Instead, only your cousin should have this authority and the people your cousin assigns.
i think the scenario prompting the sadface is that the law doesn't prevent your cousin from picking any random URL on the internet and claiming that his copyright (which he does legitimately own the rights to) is being infringed on that page. even if he knows perfectly well that it's not his content on the page.
what the parent comments seem to be saying is:
not perjury: "i own this content (true) and it's available at this unauthorized url (false) and i want it taken down"
perjury: "i own this content (false) and it's available at this unauthorized url (true) and i want it taken down"
but both statements have the same effect of getting the url taken down.
The problem is there's no penalty for blatantly lying about whether the target content is infringing or even related.
Unfortunately, perjury only applies in court. DMCA is extrajudicial.
"GOOGLE LLC, Plaintiff, v. NGUYEN VAN DUC, PHAM VAN THIEN, and DOES 1-20, Defendants."
What are those "Does 1-20"? Are they 20 no-name individuals?
"John/Jane Doe" is a common placeholder name, it's twenty people they couldn't identify.
Roe is less common, but not unusual. Most memorably, "Roe" inRoe v. Wadewas a pseudonym for the plaintiff who was called "Jane Roe" to protect her privacy. I don't know the mechanism, but I assume the judge in such cases has the real identity of a pseudonymous plaintiff to make sure a real party has brought the case.
Ah! I read it as "DOES" as in 'do', not "more than one DOE"
Thanks for clearing that up
For boring reasons sometimes people tack on placeholders in case more defendants are identified later.
Pre-allocating memory so you can use it later instead of doing it in the render (justice) loop and slowing that down. Good call.
Great, now do Kay Bailey Hutchison who took down my political web sites by filing fony DMCA notices with DirectNic.
Did you file the counter notices that force them to put the content back up?
Often the damage from fraudulent takedowns is relative to timing.
For example (and this is just an example): Let's say I put up an expose of bad behavior by a politician two days before an election. Something awful that will get coverage in the media and social media, too. The campaign fake DMCAs it, the content is gone, and the election is won before the content is re-posted after the reply is processed.
There are situations where the notice/counter notice does not work and causes almost irreparable harm.
Sure, although if you know for a fact that your content is true, nothing is stopping you from reposting it multiple times/places for those two days. Regardless, I suspect the previous poster didn't follow the DMCA process and instead just wanted to complain. It's trivial to send a response and have your content rehosted, but most people don't bother.
Then the headline could be, "Google Sues Woman Who Weaponized DCMA Notices..." It definitely makes the headline's genderfication a bit more ridiculous looking.
Why would Google have anything to do with this?
If you pointed out their bogus YouTube copyright strikes problem, that'd be relevant.
But DirectNic doesn't seem like it has anything to do with Google. (?)
Wow, this is probably the most brazen misuse of the DMCA process I've seen in a while. Actively advertising on YouTube how merchants can file fake DMCA claims with Google to improve their business isinsane.
Part of why this works is that Google refuses to provide you information on claimants if you want to sue them, presumably because it's more work for their customer service staff to respond to requests like that
So, file a vs. John Doe lawsuit and then subpoena Google for the idebtifying information they have.
That's what copyright owners do, in reverse, when providers don't give customer information (which they generally don't.)
Exactly. The court will have to allow you some discovery to find the defendants.
This is kind of a tragedy of the commons situation that works for everyone. Because DMCA abuse is so rampant, it encourages lawmakers to come up with another system.
Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, LeVar Burton, and Kanye West.
LeVar Burton? That's a bizarre inclusion on that list. Some Google lawyer is probably a Trekkie.
They were using DMCA to shut down competitors websites, and they were in the business of selling printed T-shirts, so anyone with a face or brand that would be printed on a shirt could be used as the claimant on the DMCA notice.
The four listed in the complaint were mentioned as examples of who they imitated. They could have stopped at three examples, the sports teams had three examples while the bands had one. The inclusion of Burton was almost certainly because the lawyer is a fan.
Maybe the lawyer thinks the likelyjudgeis a fan. That would be a ninja move.
Is the likely judge Otis Wright?https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/judge_boldly_uses_st...
How do they plan on enforcing US law in Vietnam? Since the defendants live in Vietnam won't they have to either extradite them to the USA or place a judgement against them which will never be paid, as long as they don't have any assets in the states? I have wondered for a while how this works, so anyone who knows specifics is welcome to respond.
Maybe through their credit card payment provider?
I’m guessing that’s the weak point, but I don’t know how that would work exactly.
It depends on how the Vietnam legal system works, but in theory you can enforce a civil judgment across borders.
After winning a judgment, Google would have to go to court in Vietnam and ask for the judgment be enforced. The court would look at wether proper notice was given, the jurisdiction was proper and that the underlying conduct was something you could sue for. They may also look at the award to determine it isn't excessive. If they're satisfied the court can then issue an order to enforce it.
This all depends heavily on how the Vietnam legal system works, which I have no idea. Obviously every country has their own quirks and processes.
Considering the gov's antique about copyright there, and the state of US-VN relations, Google will get what they want.
Why are they suing them in California and not in Vietnam?
Probably because this is where ToS set the jurisdiction.
So presumably the defendants will just shrugs their shoulders and not even appear to the court.
The complaint is claiming that this group should be held liable under the section of the DMVA relating to misrepresentation. California since that’s where Google principal place of venue is and also that given in the TOS allegedly breached.
Why is 'Men' featured in the title? It's like the title goes out of the way to call attention to gender here. It's distracting and adds nothing.
I agree, it's a bit disorienting.
Because they are men. And yes, it adds context, as it makes easier for you to picture concrete people with your imagination. Having a gender is part of the concrete reality of the human species, so having this information provides a clue of concreteness.
the defendants can be found in
Vietnam from where they proudly
advertise their ‘SEO’ scheme to
others, including via YouTube.
People forget this goes both ways. Legal systems completely break down across international borders except for the most esteemed international criminals.
The number of hoops someone has to jump through to launch international investigations is incredibly expensive, both in time and money. It's also a lot of luck and playing hyper-political games like throwing a party for an ambassador. Ask how I know :)
In short, one could hire locals to dish out vigilante justice with virtual impunity.
Ask how I know
Oh, I know. There was a guy working remotely in a country that doesn't extradite and embezzled millions. They invited him (and the rest of the company) to a "company party" in the US just to arrest him while giving everyone else in the company free booze for a week.
What was their angle? Did they try to funnel people to their own pirating site or something?
Based on TFA it reads like they used them for SEO by filing illegitimate notices against higher-ranking competitors.
This happens a lot. It's all pretty rotten.
How exactly does a lawsuit filed in California reach two defendants located in Vietnam?
Wouldn't suing them in Vietnam be appropriate here?
The claim is under US law. Enforcement is a different matter!- incidentally there are also 20 Does whose locations aren’t mentioned.
I guess my question remains then. How does this stop their behavior exactly?
I very rarely feel like I take the side of Google, but in this case, feel like this is a win for everyone and not just the big guy
Dont give them too much credit, Notice they did not go after any of the big media companies that are just as abusive.
They picked a small time organization to target, they would not want to upset advertisers, hell I bet they got the blessing of the big media companies to even go after these guys..
If they really wanted side with creators they would push back against their RIAA and MPAA abusers, but of-course they will not
My understanding is if Google wins it would still set a legal precedent, which would help future lawsuits with this sort of thing. Of course not many criminals make a YouTube video on how they execute their own crimes... that would certainly help.
(those fake DMCA takedown submitters that do not have enough money to fight back)
Literally none of them are going to fight this. In a case like this you're going to be found bogus enough to have to pay Google's legal fees on top of your own. You'll be half a million in the hole before you blink.
99% of them either won't accept service on the Complaint or will fail to attend court. Google will win by default judgment on most of the Complaints.
Two men who allegedly used 65 Google accounts to bombard Google with fraudulent DMCA takedown notices
Here, the problem has revealed itself: Google is the weapon here, not just DMCA.
How does your own medicine taste, Alphabet?
How does your own medicine taste, Alphabet?
Tastes like money and lawsuit.
Cherry flavour.
Didn't Google used to have a service where they would publish dmca take down notices? Chilling effects or something like that?
Googlecontributeto Chilling Effects, which got renamed to Lumenhttps://www.lumendatabase.org/
[edited to remove “used to”]
Nice and finally. People have been saying this for a long time already.
Shame Google doesn't the same with people crushing the competition by adwords/adsense and SEO abuse.
Google started to care when it started costingthemmoney.
Great job!
One of these days we will start treating fraud as seriously as we do copyright.
Anyone have the case nos./captions (+ court) for the DMCA suits? Would like to read the Complaints and see who the defendants are.
Anyone have the case nos./captions (+ court) for the DMCA suits? Would like to read the Complaints and see who the defendants are.
Only companies like Google are allowed to use the weapon that is DMCA.
Be nice if Amazon did this on the merch platform.
Can't stop but think that somehow public justice has been delegated to Google.
You know, I'd feel a lot safer if Google would fix the mountain of malware in their Chrome app store.
Does that include YouTube too?
If that's the case Google will be suing half the lawyers in the US, many very powerful.
Either way, decades later looks like they want to put an end to it, when figured out they are spending millions with this BS, not because it was wrong in the first place and was ruining people's business and lives.
I think a meta point that is interesting here is that nobody could be more motivated to lobby for DMCA changes than large platforms like Google. Wrongfully targeted victims take out their anger on the platform, who thus far wrings their hands and says "sorry, it's the law, file a counterclaim if you want."
If it's enough of a problem for the platform (and not the victims), they can just pay off their congresspeople to write a law allowing DMCA abuse detection systems.