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Since you have to attest in a legal document that you are the copyright holder in order to file a DMCA, then you are guilty of a crime (would it be perjury?) if

Since you have to attest in a legal document that you are the copyright holder in order to file a DMCA, then you are guilty of a crime (would it be perjury?) if you provide such an attestation under false pretenses. If we don't punish these false claims when they happen, then they will continue. An alternative approach based on civil disobedience would be in the form of a large group of individuals filing claims against large swaths of content (basically using the same broken rules of DMCA against the people who advocate them).

wlesieutre 9y ago
That's why the article says "Copyright Notices" and not DMCA takedown requests. Youtube has a not-legally-binding made-it-up-ourselves copyright notice system where you're allowed to file as many false claims as you want without breaking any laws. No need for an actual DMCA request.
- cup-of-tea 9y ago
  Has this changed at some point? Many years ago I had a takedown request on one of my videos. It was me showing a musical composition I made in some sequencing software and the claim appeared to be from the published of that software. I don't know why that company would have done that but I wondered if just anyone could have filed it claiming to be that company. They told me that to contest I had to provide loads of legal documentation and essentially escalate it to a serious claim. It wasn't worth my time or worth risking actual legal trouble. I decided to just never upload a video to Youtube again and felt like it was a case of guilty until proven innocent. I'm sure it mentioned the DMCA in the request, though.
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    They still respond to real takedown requests (it'd be illegal not to), so you may have gotten an actual DMCA takedown. But the term "copyright notice" as I understand it applies to less serious flagging, mostly done automatically by some kind of content fingerprinting system.
- appleflaxen 9y ago
  this is a really helpful distinction; thank you for pointing it out.
wodenokoto 9y ago
These are not DMCA complaints. They are a Youtube copyright notices. The difference is that a DMCA will tell Youtube to remove content from Youtube, while a copyright notice is Youtubes way of telling you that they are giving partial control of your content to someone else, because Youtube believes that someone else have the rights.
- patcheudor 9y ago
  Only partial control if you don't file a counter. I've had just around ten or so of these notices for videos I've uploaded, all related to iTunes bits I've used or in one case music playing in the background at a sporting event. In every case I easily "won" the counter and was never bothered with a notice again.
predakanga 9y ago
There's a bit of conflicting verbiage around this, but the 'copyright notices' that are mentioned in the linked article aren't actually DMCA takedown requests; they're Content ID matches. The Content ID system is a private arrangement between Youtube and various rightsholders, and it allows them to assert control without the legal repercussions involved in DMCA claims. The EFF has another article[0] which goes into more detail on the two systems, but I found that to be a bit confusing as well - it seems to conflate the two systems at times. [0]: https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property/guide-to-youtube-removals https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property/guide-to-yo...
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  And this enabling of nonsense is why I refuse to use YouTube to host anything. Those provisions in the DMCA were about the only good thing in it, providing a way to sidestep the consequences of this kind of action has been immeasurably toxic and the fault lies squarely with YouTube and Google
  - bringtheaction 9y ago
    I recently read about a decentralized alternative to YouTube called DTube. https://d.tube/ https://d.tube/ https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2018/3/7/17087668/steemit-dtube-bitchute-youtube-purge https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2018/3/7/17087668/steem... It’s built on STEEM and IPFS. > DTube is an application fully written in javascript, that runs in the browser, that allows you to upload and watch videos on top of the IPFS Network. Moreover, it uses STEEM as a database and enables earning [...] https://steemkr.com/video/@heimindanger/introducing-dtube-a-decentralized-video-platform-using-steem-and-ipfs https://steemkr.com/video/@heimindanger/introducing-dtube-a-...
    - allthenews 9y ago
      There is also lbry, a decentralized media hosting platform based on cryptocurrency. Although I'm still not convinced that the crypto is necessary here...
gergles 9y ago
The only thing you have to attest under penalty of perjury in a DMCA claim is that you (the person filing the notice) are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner you are claiming has had their copyright violated. The attestation that the use is unauthorized is merely a "good faith belief", which is a standard of evidence so low as to be meaningless. I don't believe there has ever been a successful case going after someone for filing frivolous DMCA notices. (As others have said, YouTube has their own inhouse process that does not actually use the DMCA in most cases, but I wanted to elucidate this point, because lots of people seem to think the DMCA takedowns have some repercussions for fraud. In my opinion, they don't.)

wlesieutre 9y ago

That's why the article says "Copyright Notices" and not DMCA takedown requests. Youtube has a not-legally-binding made-it-up-ourselves copyright notice system where you're allowed to file as many false claims as you want without breaking any laws. No need for an actual DMCA request.

cup-of-tea 9y ago
Has this changed at some point? Many years ago I had a takedown request on one of my videos. It was me showing a musical composition I made in some sequencing software and the claim appeared to be from the published of that software. I don't know why that company would have done that but I wondered if just anyone could have filed it claiming to be that company. They told me that to contest I had to provide loads of legal documentation and essentially escalate it to a serious claim. It wasn't worth my time or worth risking actual legal trouble. I decided to just never upload a video to Youtube again and felt like it was a case of guilty until proven innocent. I'm sure it mentioned the DMCA in the request, though.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  They still respond to real takedown requests (it'd be illegal not to), so you may have gotten an actual DMCA takedown. But the term "copyright notice" as I understand it applies to less serious flagging, mostly done automatically by some kind of content fingerprinting system.
appleflaxen 9y ago
this is a really helpful distinction; thank you for pointing it out.

wodenokoto 9y ago

These are not DMCA complaints. They are a Youtube copyright notices. The difference is that a DMCA will tell Youtube to remove content from Youtube, while a copyright notice is Youtubes way of telling you that they are giving partial control of your content to someone else, because Youtube believes that someone else have the rights.

patcheudor 9y ago
Only partial control if you don't file a counter. I've had just around ten or so of these notices for videos I've uploaded, all related to iTunes bits I've used or in one case music playing in the background at a sporting event. In every case I easily "won" the counter and was never bothered with a notice again.

predakanga 9y ago

There's a bit of conflicting verbiage around this, but the 'copyright notices' that are mentioned in the linked article aren't actually DMCA takedown requests; they're Content ID matches. The Content ID system is a private arrangement between Youtube and various rightsholders, and it allows them to assert control without the legal repercussions involved in DMCA claims. The EFF has another article[0] which goes into more detail on the two systems, but I found that to be a bit confusing as well - it seems to conflate the two systems at times. [0]: https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property/guide-to-youtube-removals https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property/guide-to-yo...

abritinthebay 9y ago
And this enabling of nonsense is why I refuse to use YouTube to host anything. Those provisions in the DMCA were about the only good thing in it, providing a way to sidestep the consequences of this kind of action has been immeasurably toxic and the fault lies squarely with YouTube and Google
- bringtheaction 9y ago
  I recently read about a decentralized alternative to YouTube called DTube. https://d.tube/ https://d.tube/ https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2018/3/7/17087668/steemit-dtube-bitchute-youtube-purge https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2018/3/7/17087668/steem... It’s built on STEEM and IPFS. > DTube is an application fully written in javascript, that runs in the browser, that allows you to upload and watch videos on top of the IPFS Network. Moreover, it uses STEEM as a database and enables earning [...] https://steemkr.com/video/@heimindanger/introducing-dtube-a-decentralized-video-platform-using-steem-and-ipfs https://steemkr.com/video/@heimindanger/introducing-dtube-a-...
  - allthenews 9y ago
    There is also lbry, a decentralized media hosting platform based on cryptocurrency. Although I'm still not convinced that the crypto is necessary here...

gergles 9y ago

The only thing you have to attest under penalty of perjury in a DMCA claim is that you (the person filing the notice) are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner you are claiming has had their copyright violated. The attestation that the use is unauthorized is merely a "good faith belief", which is a standard of evidence so low as to be meaningless. I don't believe there has ever been a successful case going after someone for filing frivolous DMCA notices. (As others have said, YouTube has their own inhouse process that does not actually use the DMCA in most cases, but I wanted to elucidate this point, because lots of people seem to think the DMCA takedowns have some repercussions for fraud. In my opinion, they don't.)