6 ms·

If someone sends you a DMCA takedown request for URLs that aren't even valid, then you can reply that you've complied with their request and taken the (nonexist

by not2b 3y ago

If someone sends you a DMCA takedown request for URLs that aren't even valid, then you can reply that you've complied with their request and taken the (nonexistent) material down: you are no longer serving content from those URLs because you never were. I think that what's going on here is incompetence, not fraud.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
Yeah, and then the sender writes back to complain about the 1 address that was real. If this person is a paralegal, complain to the law firm. If the law firm doesn't respond, complain to the bar.
- HWR_14 3y ago
  Does the bar regulate paralegals?
  - unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
    If the paralegal works for a lawyer, yes.
klabb3 3y ago
> I think that what's going on here is incompetence, not fraud. There’s a middle ground: sabotage. DMCA complaints have asymmetric incentives. You can, afaik, send a near-infinite number of (generated, duplicated, likely-to-not-exist) complaints at the cost of an email. As a host, you are obligated to comply with each individual report. Automating the process of decoding arbitrary emails, mapping to content you have and verifying that it’s copyrighted is extremely hard if not impossible, so you end up with a manual defense against an automated attack. This can obviously be exploited for purposes of sabotage. Imagine sending bulk emails to the police reporting all people you don’t like for all crimes you can think of, without any risk. Or if you could call mayday on the sea, get other ships to reroute and risk their lives, with no consequences.
- tough 3y ago
  Also a legal hack. If you even reply to them you acknowledge their validity and accept whatever legal geography they send it from to be judged on, if you're outside the US. ignore them
  - HWR_14 3y ago
    Is that also true with a response of "this is outside your/my jurisdiction"?
  - worik 3y ago
    > you're outside the US. ignore them Sadly that is nor good advice You can find yourself being extradited. The legal grounds matter little, as you may find yourself in a Kafkaesque process that will ruin your happiness
    - bragr 3y ago
      You cannot be extradited for civil matters in any jurisdiction that I'm aware of, not that I'd recommend ignoring them either.
      - tough 3y ago
        I have ignored this for years when I was a digital pirate in Europe. Fake DMCA bogus can also index you out of google, even your homepage where no 3rd party links are found if you don't fight them I got lawsuits from the RIAA but non related. You can safely ignore DMCA's if they're not applied to your jurisdiction, BUT your host and other providers won't when they go upstream unless they also are like in china russia or whatever ignores the US asks
      - dontlaugh 3y ago
        https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jan/13/piracy-student-loses-us-extradition https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jan/13/piracy-student-l...
margalabargala 3y ago
> I think that what's going on here is incompetence, not fraud. Due to the following bit in the notice: > Gareth Young, Internet Investigator, swears, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate It would appear that in this situation, incompetence in fact constitutes fraud.
- mjg59 3y ago
  No, since the law is what defines whether you're actually under penalty of perjury, and the law says "A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed". You're only committing perjury if you falsely assert that you're authorised to act on behalf of the owner of the allegedly infringed right. Incorrectly asserting that you're under penalty of perjury if you falsely assert that the information in the notice is accurate is further evidence of incompetence rather than of fraud, sadly.
  - rerdavies 3y ago
    Isn't perjury the act of swearing to something that isn't true? He did do that. Whether he was required to swear to that is surely a separate question. He wasn't required to swear to that, but he did. Is there not a penalty for just plain lying under oath?
    - lmkg 3y ago
      > Isn't perjury the act of swearing to something that isn't true? Perjury is lying under oath. The statement must be made under oath to be eligible for perjury. And making a statement under oath is a formal process, dictated by court or law. You cannot make yourself be under oath. Swearing something to be true doesn't count, unless there is a legal context that makes it true. Swearing in a witness in court makes that happen. Some laws (like DMCA) make statements in certain documents oathful. But it is the law, not the document, that decides that.
catminou 3y ago
"ddos" via DMCA requests is an actual thing. There are actual methods that a few ddos-as-a-service providers provide (aka booters or stressers) that will fling tons of DMCA/abuse reports at your hosting/cloud provider to get them to take action on you.
slang800 3y ago
In this case the URLs contain valid IPFS hashes. The ones that I've tried all resolve to real files with the IPFS CLI. The issue is they've never been requested from the gateway that the DMCA notices are being sent to. They might be blocked by the gateway, they might fail to resolve on the gateway for other reasons, or they might work. Nobody checked before sending the complaint.
Libcat99 3y ago
You shouldn't have to reply with anything. Entities with no proof, due diligence, or process shouldn't be able to make you incur a cost (of discovery of compliance) just because they feel like it. Sure, in this case, 30 minutes spent and done. Recently I got a per capita tax bill for a town I didn't live in. They wanted payment for the last 8 years. I lived in a different town entirely (2 towns during the time in question). When I filled out their form to contest it, they asked for deeds or leases for the duration to prove I didn't live there. I told them I wouldn't provide such documentation without some proof to the fact I didn't live where I said I did. They responded to ignore the bill, it would be removed (which it was). To me even the time I spent on this was excessive. In a just world, they'd be liable for my time. Entities, private or government, shouldn't be able to incur costs on our time and life due to their bullshit reasons or error.
- throwaway_ab 3y ago
  If there were a law that stated the organisation (corp and gov) must reimburse people for their time wasted due to false accusations it would make a lot of these time wasters go away, when they know there is a consequence for these types of accusations they'd think twice. I would support such a law.
  - _nalply 3y ago
    Then some people would misuse such a law to waste other people's time.
    - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
      And then they’d be liable for timewasting.
      - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
        Absolutely, and if there are legal remedies to make them pay... all victims should. Too few people take stock of the fact that those who deliberately waste their time are stealing from them.

by not2b 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

unyttigfjelltol 3y ago

Yeah, and then the sender writes back to complain about the 1 address that was real. If this person is a paralegal, complain to the law firm. If the law firm doesn't respond, complain to the bar.

HWR_14 3y ago
Does the bar regulate paralegals?
- unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
  If the paralegal works for a lawyer, yes.

klabb3 3y ago

> I think that what's going on here is incompetence, not fraud. There’s a middle ground: sabotage. DMCA complaints have asymmetric incentives. You can, afaik, send a near-infinite number of (generated, duplicated, likely-to-not-exist) complaints at the cost of an email. As a host, you are obligated to comply with each individual report. Automating the process of decoding arbitrary emails, mapping to content you have and verifying that it’s copyrighted is extremely hard if not impossible, so you end up with a manual defense against an automated attack. This can obviously be exploited for purposes of sabotage. Imagine sending bulk emails to the police reporting all people you don’t like for all crimes you can think of, without any risk. Or if you could call mayday on the sea, get other ships to reroute and risk their lives, with no consequences.

tough 3y ago
Also a legal hack. If you even reply to them you acknowledge their validity and accept whatever legal geography they send it from to be judged on, if you're outside the US. ignore them
- HWR_14 3y ago
  Is that also true with a response of "this is outside your/my jurisdiction"?
- worik 3y ago
  > you're outside the US. ignore them Sadly that is nor good advice You can find yourself being extradited. The legal grounds matter little, as you may find yourself in a Kafkaesque process that will ruin your happiness
  - bragr 3y ago
    You cannot be extradited for civil matters in any jurisdiction that I'm aware of, not that I'd recommend ignoring them either.
    - tough 3y ago
      I have ignored this for years when I was a digital pirate in Europe. Fake DMCA bogus can also index you out of google, even your homepage where no 3rd party links are found if you don't fight them I got lawsuits from the RIAA but non related. You can safely ignore DMCA's if they're not applied to your jurisdiction, BUT your host and other providers won't when they go upstream unless they also are like in china russia or whatever ignores the US asks
    - dontlaugh 3y ago
      https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jan/13/piracy-student-loses-us-extradition https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jan/13/piracy-student-l...

margalabargala 3y ago

> I think that what's going on here is incompetence, not fraud. Due to the following bit in the notice: > Gareth Young, Internet Investigator, swears, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate It would appear that in this situation, incompetence in fact constitutes fraud.

mjg59 3y ago
No, since the law is what defines whether you're actually under penalty of perjury, and the law says "A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed". You're only committing perjury if you falsely assert that you're authorised to act on behalf of the owner of the allegedly infringed right. Incorrectly asserting that you're under penalty of perjury if you falsely assert that the information in the notice is accurate is further evidence of incompetence rather than of fraud, sadly.
- rerdavies 3y ago
  Isn't perjury the act of swearing to something that isn't true? He did do that. Whether he was required to swear to that is surely a separate question. He wasn't required to swear to that, but he did. Is there not a penalty for just plain lying under oath?
  - lmkg 3y ago
    > Isn't perjury the act of swearing to something that isn't true? Perjury is lying under oath. The statement must be made under oath to be eligible for perjury. And making a statement under oath is a formal process, dictated by court or law. You cannot make yourself be under oath. Swearing something to be true doesn't count, unless there is a legal context that makes it true. Swearing in a witness in court makes that happen. Some laws (like DMCA) make statements in certain documents oathful. But it is the law, not the document, that decides that.

catminou 3y ago

"ddos" via DMCA requests is an actual thing. There are actual methods that a few ddos-as-a-service providers provide (aka booters or stressers) that will fling tons of DMCA/abuse reports at your hosting/cloud provider to get them to take action on you.

slang800 3y ago

In this case the URLs contain valid IPFS hashes. The ones that I've tried all resolve to real files with the IPFS CLI. The issue is they've never been requested from the gateway that the DMCA notices are being sent to. They might be blocked by the gateway, they might fail to resolve on the gateway for other reasons, or they might work. Nobody checked before sending the complaint.

Libcat99 3y ago

You shouldn't have to reply with anything. Entities with no proof, due diligence, or process shouldn't be able to make you incur a cost (of discovery of compliance) just because they feel like it. Sure, in this case, 30 minutes spent and done. Recently I got a per capita tax bill for a town I didn't live in. They wanted payment for the last 8 years. I lived in a different town entirely (2 towns during the time in question). When I filled out their form to contest it, they asked for deeds or leases for the duration to prove I didn't live there. I told them I wouldn't provide such documentation without some proof to the fact I didn't live where I said I did. They responded to ignore the bill, it would be removed (which it was). To me even the time I spent on this was excessive. In a just world, they'd be liable for my time. Entities, private or government, shouldn't be able to incur costs on our time and life due to their bullshit reasons or error.

throwaway_ab 3y ago
If there were a law that stated the organisation (corp and gov) must reimburse people for their time wasted due to false accusations it would make a lot of these time wasters go away, when they know there is a consequence for these types of accusations they'd think twice. I would support such a law.
- _nalply 3y ago
  Then some people would misuse such a law to waste other people's time.
  - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
    And then they’d be liable for timewasting.
    - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
      Absolutely, and if there are legal remedies to make them pay... all victims should. Too few people take stock of the fact that those who deliberately waste their time are stealing from them.