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Since you said, "Correct me if I should be wrong"... the burden of proof is on the person who uploaded the content to prove they have the right. The only burde

Since you said, "Correct me if I should be wrong"... the burden of proof is on the person who uploaded the content to prove they have the right. The only burden on the UGC company is to take down content that is in dispute. But to also correct you on your implied sob story for UGC companies... Some person you don't know comes to you and says, "I wrote this e-book, or I wrote and recorded this song, or I made this movie," and they upload it to your site. You take them at face value without any due diligence, even though in some cases the file is called "Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin". Laws require you to have a license to play copyrighted works, but thanks to the DMCA they now say you can proceed as if you have that license, even if the person who gave it to you is not who they say they are. Thanks to this clusterfuck, you are protected as long as you take it down upon complaint. You must do no work to research whether you're dealing with the true copyright owner, no "due process", if you will. Now, someone comes along and says, "Hey, that content is mine. Please take it down." And you're upset that you have to take down this content and make the person who uploaded it verify ownership. You're upset about the work involved, even though your entire business is built on the backs of not verifying claims, and the entire creative world is left to police your site and every one like it. After you've had the content up on your site and, in many cases, profited from it being there, you're upset that now your user has to do some work when someone complains. Let's take the number of real copyright abuses and hold it up to the highly dramatized number of false claims and see who deals with the larger clusterfuck.

dhume 15y ago
1. Reviewing everything submitted by users is unreasonable to expect. 2. People are upset that takedown notices are issued for works to which the issuer does not hold copyright and that those who issue such notices do so with impunity.
- earbitscom 15y ago
  I am not saying that reviewing everything is reasonable. I'm saying let's be glad the laws let you accept content without verifying ownership at all, and stop complaining that you have to take down content in dispute. The abusive takedown notices are a fraction of the number of legitimate infringements that take place. Content owners have to police the entire internet for their works. And we're supposed to have all this sympathy for the companies who have to respond to takedown notices by simply removing the content, not paying any penalty at all, when most of them are legit?
  - slowpoke 15y ago
    >Content owners have to police the entire internet for their works. See, here's the problem. That is highly unfeasible, if not impossible (not to mention unethical) and should tell you more about the brokenness of distribution as a business model than it tells you about the need for copyright protection. Oh, and about most of the notices being legit: Google estimates that more than a third of the notices they receive - of which more than 50% are aimed at competing businesses - are plain and simply bogus.[1] I'm sorry but I don't believe the claim that most of them are legit. And even then, such a high number of "false positives" are plain and simply unacceptable. Oh, and there is still the thing about due process, which the DMCA completely eschews. But in the end, it's meaningless to discuss this. I'll say it again: the DMCA is just one of the many useless tries to fight a symptom whose cause are the violent death throes of a business model that should have died nearly two decades ago. The root of the problem is still copyright, and as long as we cling to it we won't be able to find any meaningful solution, but keep trying to band-aid a leper with hemophilia. [1] http://pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/pcw.nsf/feature/93FEDCEF6636CF90CC25757A0072B4B7 http://pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/pcw.nsf/feature/93FEDCEF6636CF9...
    - earbitscom 15y ago
      I wrote a lengthy response but I'm just going to pretend I stopped reading when you called protecting interests in your creations unethical.
      - slowpoke 15y ago
        I could write a lengthy response to this too but you are unwilling to even try to grasp my point, as apparent by your utter misinterpretation of what I said. Hint: I was talking about policing the internet, not about protecting interests. The latter will always have to take a backseat if we have to prevent the former. Oh, and yes, I consider the notion that you can "own" non-scarce resources such as music and software highly unethical. Anyways, have nice day. Or night.
      - billpatrianakos 15y ago
        Right?! It's unethical to check to see if someone is ripping off your work online? Let me tell a kind of embarrassing story related to this. Some years ago I got into blogging... Like, a lot. And I was checking out all sorts of desktop apps that posted to your blog and I came across one I liked. It was going for about $20 so I got a pirated copy and decided to share it on a certain torrent site. The creators tracked me down and asked me to take it down. They very sanely explained how they worked how to produce this and would like to be able to keep making it better but couldn't if people like me kept ripping them off. They had to police the web and I don't see anything wrong with their actions. I ended up seeing things their way and took it down. They weren't being unethical by asking me not to steal their app. It was me who was being unethical. I'm baffled by that statement.
DrStalker 15y ago
Isn't it possible for the user who uploaded the content originally to file a DMCA counterclaim, at which point the content can go back up until a traditional court case finalizes the issue? It's still (IMO) a bad piece of legislation that is being abused, but it's not as bad as putting the complete burden of proof on the accused.
- earbitscom 15y ago
  Yes, it is possible for the original person to provide documents showing their ownership, and for the company to put the content back up. It has the potential to be a decent piece of legislation. It removes friction for sites to allow UGC, it allows copyright holders to issue takedowns, and it allows for companies to make decisions about contested takedown requests if they care enough to do so. However, users who upload content abuse it, sites who know they have a lot of infringing content abuse it, and people without claims abuse it by issuing false takedown notices. The law would be better if takedown notices, their resolution, and most things about the process were transparent, and there were penalties for users who upload content they don't own, penalties for companies who infringe far more than they don't, and penalties for people who issue takedown notices without a legitimate claim. I believe an administrative organization responsible for tracking and reporting these things is worth the expense to let companies keep innovating while protecting the rights of content owners, and making it easier to penalize abusers of the law.
dodedo 15y ago
"the burden of proof is on the person who uploaded the content to prove they have the right" It is impossible to prove that you have the right to content. There's just no reliable legal mechanism for this. Sometimes I can author an original work and have a copyright claim placed against it because it is similar to another. Sometimes I can outright copy someone else's work without a license and I retain rights to the content because it's a legally protected use (such as using Led Zeppelin's song in a form of satire). In other words, to require proof is to prohibit all communication. Entirely! No exceptions!

dhume 15y ago

1. Reviewing everything submitted by users is unreasonable to expect. 2. People are upset that takedown notices are issued for works to which the issuer does not hold copyright and that those who issue such notices do so with impunity.

earbitscom 15y ago
I am not saying that reviewing everything is reasonable. I'm saying let's be glad the laws let you accept content without verifying ownership at all, and stop complaining that you have to take down content in dispute. The abusive takedown notices are a fraction of the number of legitimate infringements that take place. Content owners have to police the entire internet for their works. And we're supposed to have all this sympathy for the companies who have to respond to takedown notices by simply removing the content, not paying any penalty at all, when most of them are legit?
- slowpoke 15y ago
  >Content owners have to police the entire internet for their works. See, here's the problem. That is highly unfeasible, if not impossible (not to mention unethical) and should tell you more about the brokenness of distribution as a business model than it tells you about the need for copyright protection. Oh, and about most of the notices being legit: Google estimates that more than a third of the notices they receive - of which more than 50% are aimed at competing businesses - are plain and simply bogus.[1] I'm sorry but I don't believe the claim that most of them are legit. And even then, such a high number of "false positives" are plain and simply unacceptable. Oh, and there is still the thing about due process, which the DMCA completely eschews. But in the end, it's meaningless to discuss this. I'll say it again: the DMCA is just one of the many useless tries to fight a symptom whose cause are the violent death throes of a business model that should have died nearly two decades ago. The root of the problem is still copyright, and as long as we cling to it we won't be able to find any meaningful solution, but keep trying to band-aid a leper with hemophilia. [1] http://pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/pcw.nsf/feature/93FEDCEF6636CF90CC25757A0072B4B7 http://pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/pcw.nsf/feature/93FEDCEF6636CF9...
  - earbitscom 15y ago
    I wrote a lengthy response but I'm just going to pretend I stopped reading when you called protecting interests in your creations unethical.
    - slowpoke 15y ago
      I could write a lengthy response to this too but you are unwilling to even try to grasp my point, as apparent by your utter misinterpretation of what I said. Hint: I was talking about policing the internet, not about protecting interests. The latter will always have to take a backseat if we have to prevent the former. Oh, and yes, I consider the notion that you can "own" non-scarce resources such as music and software highly unethical. Anyways, have nice day. Or night.
    - billpatrianakos 15y ago
      Right?! It's unethical to check to see if someone is ripping off your work online? Let me tell a kind of embarrassing story related to this. Some years ago I got into blogging... Like, a lot. And I was checking out all sorts of desktop apps that posted to your blog and I came across one I liked. It was going for about $20 so I got a pirated copy and decided to share it on a certain torrent site. The creators tracked me down and asked me to take it down. They very sanely explained how they worked how to produce this and would like to be able to keep making it better but couldn't if people like me kept ripping them off. They had to police the web and I don't see anything wrong with their actions. I ended up seeing things their way and took it down. They weren't being unethical by asking me not to steal their app. It was me who was being unethical. I'm baffled by that statement.

DrStalker 15y ago

Isn't it possible for the user who uploaded the content originally to file a DMCA counterclaim, at which point the content can go back up until a traditional court case finalizes the issue? It's still (IMO) a bad piece of legislation that is being abused, but it's not as bad as putting the complete burden of proof on the accused.

earbitscom 15y ago
Yes, it is possible for the original person to provide documents showing their ownership, and for the company to put the content back up. It has the potential to be a decent piece of legislation. It removes friction for sites to allow UGC, it allows copyright holders to issue takedowns, and it allows for companies to make decisions about contested takedown requests if they care enough to do so. However, users who upload content abuse it, sites who know they have a lot of infringing content abuse it, and people without claims abuse it by issuing false takedown notices. The law would be better if takedown notices, their resolution, and most things about the process were transparent, and there were penalties for users who upload content they don't own, penalties for companies who infringe far more than they don't, and penalties for people who issue takedown notices without a legitimate claim. I believe an administrative organization responsible for tracking and reporting these things is worth the expense to let companies keep innovating while protecting the rights of content owners, and making it easier to penalize abusers of the law.

dodedo 15y ago

"the burden of proof is on the person who uploaded the content to prove they have the right" It is impossible to prove that you have the right to content. There's just no reliable legal mechanism for this. Sometimes I can author an original work and have a copyright claim placed against it because it is similar to another. Sometimes I can outright copy someone else's work without a license and I retain rights to the content because it's a legally protected use (such as using Led Zeppelin's song in a form of satire). In other words, to require proof is to prohibit all communication. Entirely! No exceptions!