6 ms·

I never assumed that. The DMCA never assumes that, which is why there's an entire section about counternotices. The fact that YouTube receives many legitimate

by ikeboy 6y ago

I never assumed that. The DMCA never assumes that, which is why there's an entire section about counternotices. The fact that YouTube receives many legitimate complaints of infringement is common knowledge. If you genuinely believe this isn't the case, look through their transparency report. >What is actually happening under the DMCA is that one party gets its claim accepted as fact without question, and the other party, if they object, has to try to fight it. All they need to do is file a counternotice, which is less difficult than the affirmation you're proposing, if you need a notary. And then if the rights owner doesn't like it, they need to go to court. Is the 14 day period for this to happen really that objectionable? If it was changed to 1 day, would you be ok with it?

pdonis 6y ago
> The fact that YouTube receives many legitimate complaints of infringement is common knowledge. No, the fact that YouTube receives many complaints of infringement is common knowledge. How many of them are actually legitimate is impossible to judge since in many cases the content is now invisible and no due process was ever applied. > look through their transparency report And then look at this, for example: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/07/top-10-takedowns-googles-copyright-transparency-report https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/07/top-10-takedowns-googl... > Is the 14 day period for this to happen really that objectionable? It's not a matter of how "objectionable" the 14 day period is. I object to the entire premise of the law in the first place, that someone should be able to make a claim that someone else is violating the law (that's what copyright infringement is), and have that claim acted on as if it were valid with no legal due process. Taking the content down based on the claim alone is acting on the claim as if it were valid. It doesn't matter if there's a way to reverse the action in 14 days, or even 1 day. Legal claims are not supposed to be acted on as if valid at all without legal due process.
- ikeboy 6y ago
  Sure, there's plenty of abuse. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of legitimate notices. I don't think you can seriously tell me you don't think there's a significant amount of legitimate DMCA notices. They can't all be abusive. You're making what amounts to a deontological challenge to the law, which I reject. The question for me is which legal framework leads to the best results. If you're not trying to answer that question but are instead trying to make sure it comports with some rule you think laws should follow, then I'm not going to be able to convince you within the framework you're working in, and vice versa. But we should understand the difference in frameworks, if that's what's really going on. Also, all the DMCA does is create a safe harbor. It doesn't require the site to take down the content. They're free to do their own investigation and refuse to take it down, they just run the risk of being liable if they get it wrong.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > all the DMCA does is create a safe harbor. It doesn't require the site to take down the content. They're free to do their own investigation and refuse to take it down, they just run the risk of being liable if they get it wrong. And yet, even the corporations like YouTube who can most afford to do the latter--to both investigate claims on their own, and to defend their decisions in court--don't. So this alternative is meaningless in practice. Also, you say elsewhere that YouTube is not the business of suing people frivolously (with which I agree), so a person who wants to post content might feel ok making a contract with them but not ok about being subjected to a lawsuit by some arbitrary company. Now take this a step further: wouldn't it be nice if YouTube, a company who far more afford to do so than the average person, were to include in their contract that, if they find that an infringement claim against a user's content is invalid, they will keep the content posted and defend it, if necessary, in court, and not require the user to do so? Or, better yet, they could give the user the option: either the user signs up for the "YouTube will defend my content if they believe it's legitimate" option, and provides the legal documentation supporting their legal ownership of copyright for the content they provide; or the user checks the box that says "if anyone complains that my content is infringing their copyright, just take it down and leave it at that, it's not worth the trouble to me". That, or something like it, is what I would expect to happen in a sane legal regime, where the law did not impose a one-size-fits-all solution on everybody, but treated everyone fairly and reasonably and allowed people with different preferences to find different solutions that suited them. But the DMCA "chills" all of that by providing even large corporations like YouTube, who least need it, a "safe harbor" that absolves them from having to do any work at all on actually figuring out how to meet the different needs of different users.
    - ikeboy 6y ago
      YouTube does, in fact, have a program to defend fair use, and they reject DMCA notices in those cases. But it's expensive and they can't do it in every case. Lawyers are expensive. YouTube gets sued enough by idiots who think the DMCA safe harbor doesn't apply for whatever reason. Anyway, I disagree that YouTube doesn't need the safe harbor. If they had to pay a lawyer for a minute of time for every DMCA request received, they'd lose money. YouTube did innovate. They created a system for the largest content creators which automated complaints and created a special appeals process, which discourages DMCA complaints. They also placed protections on this program and ban people from it that submit too many false complaints.

by ikeboy 6y ago

pdonis 6y ago

> The fact that YouTube receives many legitimate complaints of infringement is common knowledge. No, the fact that YouTube receives many complaints of infringement is common knowledge. How many of them are actually legitimate is impossible to judge since in many cases the content is now invisible and no due process was ever applied. > look through their transparency report And then look at this, for example: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/07/top-10-takedowns-googles-copyright-transparency-report https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/07/top-10-takedowns-googl... > Is the 14 day period for this to happen really that objectionable? It's not a matter of how "objectionable" the 14 day period is. I object to the entire premise of the law in the first place, that someone should be able to make a claim that someone else is violating the law (that's what copyright infringement is), and have that claim acted on as if it were valid with no legal due process. Taking the content down based on the claim alone is acting on the claim as if it were valid. It doesn't matter if there's a way to reverse the action in 14 days, or even 1 day. Legal claims are not supposed to be acted on as if valid at all without legal due process.

ikeboy 6y ago
Sure, there's plenty of abuse. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of legitimate notices. I don't think you can seriously tell me you don't think there's a significant amount of legitimate DMCA notices. They can't all be abusive. You're making what amounts to a deontological challenge to the law, which I reject. The question for me is which legal framework leads to the best results. If you're not trying to answer that question but are instead trying to make sure it comports with some rule you think laws should follow, then I'm not going to be able to convince you within the framework you're working in, and vice versa. But we should understand the difference in frameworks, if that's what's really going on. Also, all the DMCA does is create a safe harbor. It doesn't require the site to take down the content. They're free to do their own investigation and refuse to take it down, they just run the risk of being liable if they get it wrong.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > all the DMCA does is create a safe harbor. It doesn't require the site to take down the content. They're free to do their own investigation and refuse to take it down, they just run the risk of being liable if they get it wrong. And yet, even the corporations like YouTube who can most afford to do the latter--to both investigate claims on their own, and to defend their decisions in court--don't. So this alternative is meaningless in practice. Also, you say elsewhere that YouTube is not the business of suing people frivolously (with which I agree), so a person who wants to post content might feel ok making a contract with them but not ok about being subjected to a lawsuit by some arbitrary company. Now take this a step further: wouldn't it be nice if YouTube, a company who far more afford to do so than the average person, were to include in their contract that, if they find that an infringement claim against a user's content is invalid, they will keep the content posted and defend it, if necessary, in court, and not require the user to do so? Or, better yet, they could give the user the option: either the user signs up for the "YouTube will defend my content if they believe it's legitimate" option, and provides the legal documentation supporting their legal ownership of copyright for the content they provide; or the user checks the box that says "if anyone complains that my content is infringing their copyright, just take it down and leave it at that, it's not worth the trouble to me". That, or something like it, is what I would expect to happen in a sane legal regime, where the law did not impose a one-size-fits-all solution on everybody, but treated everyone fairly and reasonably and allowed people with different preferences to find different solutions that suited them. But the DMCA "chills" all of that by providing even large corporations like YouTube, who least need it, a "safe harbor" that absolves them from having to do any work at all on actually figuring out how to meet the different needs of different users.
  - ikeboy 6y ago
    YouTube does, in fact, have a program to defend fair use, and they reject DMCA notices in those cases. But it's expensive and they can't do it in every case. Lawyers are expensive. YouTube gets sued enough by idiots who think the DMCA safe harbor doesn't apply for whatever reason. Anyway, I disagree that YouTube doesn't need the safe harbor. If they had to pay a lawyer for a minute of time for every DMCA request received, they'd lose money. YouTube did innovate. They created a system for the largest content creators which automated complaints and created a special appeals process, which discourages DMCA complaints. They also placed protections on this program and ban people from it that submit too many false complaints.