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Publishers carpet-bomb IPFS gateway operators with DMCA notices
- wellthisisgreat 3y agoIs there a societal benefit to US approach to lawsuits where anyone can sue anyone for anything? Is it something like MAD?
- 0xcde4c3db 3y agoMy understanding as a non-lawyer is that one can file a lawsuit against anyone for anything, but for it to actually go anywhere instead of being quickly dismissed, it needs to be within the court's jurisdiction and it needs to "state a claim", i.e. allege a violation for which the court could apply some relevant remedy.
- trompetenaccoun 3y agoMaybe one could use this analogy, but those with the WMDs are the rich, the right owners that can hire an army of lawyers. So it's legal warfare against regular people. Also unlike MAD large corporations do regularly engage in fierce IP battles. Like Apple vs Samsung. I do see the pro arguments, but overall I find it doubtful if if it's a net positive for humanity to have strict IP laws at all. The American approach is the world's approach as far as rule-of-law countries go btw.
- qingcharles 3y agoAs someone who has moved from a non-litigious society to the USA I used to see it as insane. Then my rights were violated again, and again, and again, so I spent a decade getting legal smart and fighting back. Again and again I have forced government agencies into policy adjustments to stop their rights violations, and I am still in litigation now. The USA does make it very easy to sue someone, and when that someone is the government you can force practical changes that can affect a large number of people with your litigation. It might not get you any monetary benefit (it certainly hasn't for me), but that might also be a bonus.
- halfcat 3y agoHow does one get “legal smart”? Or do you mean you become a lawyer?
- qingcharles 3y agoRead. A lot. Go to court a lot. Sue a lot without a lawyer. I would love to be legally able to practice law because then I could represent other people who can't afford a lawyer, as it is I can only sue for myself without a lawyer. The issue is that people think you only need to pass the bar exam, which I'm pretty certain I could do tomorrow if I brushed up on real estate, trusts, wills etc (my suits are all civil rights, torts, criminal defense). BUT, only four states allow you to take the bar exam without a law degree. And those four states still need apprenticeships. Which makes it really hard to become a "real" lawyer these days.
- wmf 3y agoHow's the progress on an IPFS browser client that doesn't require a gateway?
- brunoqc 3y agoOr progress on useful stuff like an encrypted Dropbox clone or something. Everytime I see ipfs stuff it's about silly crypto things.
- inhumantsar 3y agoIPFS isn't the right use case for a dropbox clone. It behaves like a CDN with no persistence guarantees. Arweave is better suited to archival storage. There are options for participants to ban particular types of content which may be illegal to host in their jurisdiction. This was designed to prevent the spread of CP, terrorism related info, etc. but that means it is also susceptible to DCMA issues too. https://www.arweave.org/ https://www.arweave.org/
- brunoqc 3y ago> IPFS isn't the right use case for a dropbox clone. It behaves like a CDN with no persistence guarantees. Peergos kinda do it but maybe it's only for the transport and it uses S3 or something like that. > Arweave is better suited to archival storage Thanks, I'll take a look. I wish there was more exciting ipfs news beside nfts. EDIT: Arweave seems to be part of the crypto/web3 thing I'm not a fan of.
- imtringued 3y agoArweave promises a perpetual motion machine. Prepaying for storage is good but there is no way it is permanent.
- colinsane 3y agoway back (well before Ethereum and NFTs), i hosted a blog on IPFS. DNS level stuff: - TXT record with an IPFS content identifier - A record pointing to an IPFS gateway that ran on my laptop (and was restricted to only serving my own content) - fallback A records that pointed to the public IPFS gateways i could publish new content from my laptop, and as long as i had one other reader who browsed it via native IPFS (i did), then i could pretty safely not worry about my own uptime. that was pretty useful to me at the time who had no clue how to be a sysadmin and keep good uptime and whatnot.
- compilator1 3y agoWondering, where is that red line where publishers cross and someone introduce complete resilient and super simple solution to this whack-a-mole.
- gigel82 3y agoI recommend they hire an expensive law firm to process the requests, and a few contractors, then send the bills back to the reporter (one per request). I recon if more recipients do this it'll become expensive to carpet-bomb and they'll want to do some modicum of review on their side before sending these out.
- wmf 3y agoYou can bill for subpoenas and warrants but I've never heard of billing for DMCA takedowns. It's a cost of doing business.
- hedora 3y agoSkip to the last paragraph: https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/responding-dmca-takedown-notice-targeting-your-content https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/responding-dmca-takedown-no... Fraudulent takedown notices and fraudulent responses create liability. There's probably room for a "no-win, no-pay" law firm that bills $500/hour to handle fraudulent DMCA takedown notices. Bonus points to them if they donate half their income to the EFF.
- creer 3y agoThis is interesting. I was not aware of effective counter attacks to abusive DMCA notices. That site lists two very different results from 2004 and 2007 (and that web site is unmaintained and out of date.) There were other attempts, Cox in 2021, California Beach Co., LLC in 2020. And this law firm calls for customers in that area of DMCA abuse: https://www.hinchnewman.com/internet-law-blog/2015/04/legal-copyright-dmca-takedown-notice/ https://www.hinchnewman.com/internet-law-blog/2015/04/legal-... There might be a developing environment in which to monetarily fight that abuse.
- derbOac 3y agoTo be honest, this imho is what the EFF should be doing, hiring laywers to counteract this kind of thing. If they were doing this (or some whatever strategy they decided would be most effective), I'd probably donate more money to them.
- jwilk 3y agoRelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36425433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36425433 ("Did I receive fraudulent DMCA takedowns?", 3 days ago, >150 comments)
- jstanley 3y agoI'm the hardbin guy. Since I wrote the post about the DMCA takedown notices the other day, someone kindly offered to provide alternative hosting for hardbin.com that should be more resilient to bogus DMCA takedowns, so happily hardbin.com is back online (but not operated by me any more). Also I emailed Sean Lang (the guy with the github repo with dozens of example DMCA emails from these guys) and it turns out that in the last few months he also took his IPFS gateway offline because dealing with the takedowns was too much trouble.
- briantakita 3y ago> because dealing with the takedowns was too much trouble. What are the consequences of ignoring these notices?
- thrashh 3y agoThe DMCA is protection for an operator because instead of the first step being “get sued,” you get a letter and if you comply, you are protected. If you ignore them, it’s basically as if the DMCA never existed and they can just sue you. And without the DMCA, you are liable if it’s some random user uploading copyrighted content to your website.
- lol768 3y ago> If you ignore them, it’s basically as if the DMCA never existed and they can just sue you. Pretty sure jes is in the UK though, and it's not the sort of thing you'd ever be extradited over... so not really sure why the notices matter. I guess some hosting providers are more sympathetic here than others.
- masfuerte 3y agoDon't be so sure. The English courts agreed to extradite Richard O'Dwyer to America for link sharing. In the end he avoided it by signing a deferred prosecution agreement and paying a fine.
- rch 3y agoI'd like to be able to run something like an IPFS gateway if I could be reasonably certain I'd never get any annoying legal notices or attention. Are there any community maintained hash tables of verifiably unencumbered content that I could use as the basis of a filter?
- slang800 3y agoIt wouldn't matter if you used a filter and your gateway didn't host copyrighted content. The ciu-online.net application doesn't check whether or not the content is accessible through your server before sending a notice. It sends notices for all content that might be on the IPFS network. You'll get annoying emails no matter what.
- unshavedyak 3y agoRelated, what's "modern best practices" in both software (ie what to write) and operator (ie you are running software, and need to do something with DMCA)? I ask in the context of ActivityPub, Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, etc. I'm writing software for ActivityPub and i want to ensure self-hosted instances have the tools to respond and manage to legal .. threats (or w/e) like DMCA. Likewise i don't even know what is good advice for people to manage these notices. Of course there's also all the other undesired things too, CSAM, etc. Hosting user content is tough, heh. As someone invested in getting people to self host more of their life in ways like ActivityPub, that also then means more exposure to this type of .. stuff. Not sure what the current consensus even is, tbh.
- deadly_syn 3y agoIsnt the beauty of activity pub that you can tenat an instance juat for yourself? That could avoid a lof ot the legal headaches. You could also make it invite only through yourself, your instance doesnt need to be big if everyone elses is.
- unshavedyak 3y agoThat would be nice but i don't think it's realistic in the general space. ActivityPub in what i've researched so far is inefficiency for that granularity of P2P. For example I've seen complaints with Mastodon where small instances get ignored on the federating. Which i believe translates to data that comes from those instances taking a long time to get populated on the larger instance. Leaving the smaller instances feeling like they're speaking into the void - as no one replies, because no one can see it. Instead i think it will shine with many small instances. 500-30k maybe? Still similar issues with federating, but less so than hundreds of thousands of 1person instances. I'm focusing on what i'm calling micro instances, 50-1000 range i suspect. So we'll see.
- imtringued 3y agoThe solution is to make instances publish their block lists and import these block lists to the self hosted instances.
- MrStonedOne 3y ago“I did some bash-fu to extract the IPFS hashes from the emails and grep for them in my nginx logs, and was surprised to find not a single match,” Stanley explains. “None of them have ever been accessed, and of the ones that I checked, none even worked.”
- shrubble 3y agoAt least in the USA, it is a requirement that any legal representation by a corporation, be done by an actual lawyer. If a law firm or solo lawyer is not identifying themselves properly in a DMCA takedown request, which is a legal document, what happens? Does anyone know?
- kevingadd 3y agoYou can basically do anything you want as a large corporation when it comes to this stuff. The law doesn't have any teeth, as a smaller player you can't do anything about bogus DMCA notices or legal violations. Many services like Twitter or Chrome Web Store will at best put your content back up a few weeks (or months) later after you file a counter-notice; in some cases they will just nuke your account after a few notices even if the notices were bogus.
- cookiengineer 3y agoHow about a counter strategy? - randomize the url list - ask for evidence of copyright violation of a specific url number - if human does not answer, claim they acted in bad faith - give them 14 days to respond Win/win. Gotta game the system, and increase the cost/effectiveness ratio.
- realusername 3y agoMaybe we should create a fund to sue those illegal DMCA requests back
- chii 3y agoI don't know if it's true, but in another comment thread, it was mentioned that if you truly are the owner of the copyright, filing a DMCA takedown against someone who didn't actually have a violation is not perjury and thus have no real consequences (cept perhaps to say 'sorry bro'). So it's apparently not going to be effective to counterclaim as it cost you more to do this than they lose.
- cookiengineer 3y ago> it cost you more to do this than they lose. My proposed responder can be easily automated. It might cost them no money in court, but it costs them human salaries - and that's the point. We have to make DMCA takedowns an unfeasible business model to change the status quo of bad actors.
- RobotToaster 3y agoIsn't filing a false DMCA takedown perjury, which is a criminal (rather than civil) matter?
- Natsu 3y agoThe provision is infamously toothless. A proper DMCA notice (yes, you can send improper ones...) is supposed to contain a statement made under penalty of perjury saying you are or represent the owner of the allegedly infringed upon work. So you just have to own the thing you claim is infringed, you do not have to be correct that the items you target with the notice are actually infringing upon your work. That stops me from claiming to own Mickey Mouse and sending notices against it. It does not stop me from claiming something I actually own copyright to and sending spurious notices to non-infringing works. Now, there might be some minor monetary liability for costs incurred by a completely bogus notice, but they're probably not large enough to sue over without ending up losing more money on the suit than you win in most cases, so it's relatively untested, though I think there may have been a settlement or two over such claims.
- StanislavPetrov 3y ago>A proper DMCA notice (yes, you can send improper ones...) is supposed to contain a statement made under penalty of perjury saying you are or represent the owner of the allegedly infringed upon work. I'm aware of numerous cases where this was not the case, but I haven't ever seen anyone ever prosecuted for making a false statement in regards to a DMCA notice. Does anyone know of an actual case where someone faced legal jeopardy for a false DMCA notice?
- Natsu 3y agoThere were one or maybe two cases that settled out of court, but they were about the claimed infringement being bogus, not that the person filing the notice didn't have the copyright they claimed to be infringed upon.
- _8j50 3y agoWhat is preventing a class action for frivolous DMCA notices?
- titoCA321 3y agoLawyers are expensive which is why most folks settle when they encounter legal issues in life and business. When you get a traffic ticket or auto accident do you hire a lawyer? Most do not.
- _8j50 3y agoNever have. But class action has huge payout, lawyers' payment is a cut of that if they win else 0. If the chances of winning are good, I've heard that arrangement is common.
- dabinat 3y agoThe part that caught my eye in the presentation was that it suggested the possibility of digging into someone’s immigration status and reporting them to ICE. It shocks me that a private corporation would get someone deported for doing something that’s not illegal.
- ascendantlogic 3y agoThese are very large corporations with very large profits to protect. It's awful to think about but not surprising in the least.
- jonhohle 3y agoRead about what private corporations did in the 40s and 50s to maintain land in Central America and the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands of people died and democracies were replaced by dictators so Chaquita didn’t have to sell land being repossessed under imminent domain. Simile story in Iran with Standard Oil. Getting someone deported is pretty low on the list of atrocities corporations would do to make a buck.
- FireBeyond 3y agoImmigration and Customs Enforcement. Customs applies to digital goods, too.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago> “The weird thing is, [the system used] doesn’t actually verify that a given file is available through my server before sending a DMCA request. I’ve looked through the traffic logs, and the vast majority of the files listed in these takedown requests have never been requested in the history of my gateway. I haven’t checked all of them, but I’ve checked a lot,” Lang says. So... DMCA is infamous for its lack of protections against misuse, and I'm not a lawyer, but that's gotta actually qualify as perjury, surely?
- mindslight 3y agoIt doesn't. With the DMCA being a corrupt law wholly bought and paid for by the content cartels, the "perjury" bit only applies to someone falsely claiming to be authorized by the imaginary property owner.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoInteresting; that does appear to be accurate: https://www.aclu.org/documents/text-digital-millennium-copyright-act-dmca https://www.aclu.org/documents/text-digital-millennium-copyr... > ”(3)ELEMENTS OF NOTIFICATION.- > ”(A) To be effective under this subsection, a notification of claimed infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated agent of a service provider that includes substantially the following: [...] > ”(vi) 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 in-fringed. But that makes it completely trivial to abuse. But like... for everyone. What prevents a person from returning the favor? Say, if one of the folks in the article decided to make a list of parties involved in this farce and inundate them with DMCA notices for something they have nothing to do with. Either that's legal, in which case it can be used against the initial aggressors, or it's not, in which case they're equally liable. Edit: Okay, I read to the bottom of the post that pointed me to that text: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/51541/has-anyone-been-convicted-of-perjury-for-false-dmca-takedown-notices https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/51541/has-anyone-bee... and it does in fact list "at least two" civil suits that look really similar to the situation we're discussing here.
- Beldin 3y ago"Law enforcement - I.C.E. referals" This is from a slide deck on how to "protect" content, apparently by someone working for a law firm. Assuming the firm is US-based, this is literally suggesting to get immigration services to check out a suspected "wrongdoer". Lawyers huh... I just can't even.
- FireBeyond 3y agoI have no love for lawyers, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement has, for better or worse, a role in these issues.
- lmkg 3y agoHere's my completely-unsourced conspiracy theory: Someone is using ChatGTP to look for infringing content. DMCA notices are being sent on the basis of AI hallucinations.
- riedel 3y ago>To uphold the highest standards of integrity, responsible behavior, and ethical conduct in professional activities. (IEEE Code of Ethics) [1] Letting this happen IMHO is clearly a breach of IEEE's own rules. This goes against the public and has serious side effects. Nobody with a bit of knowledge on networking (which I hope exists within IEEE) should seriously think that those gateways are hosting the content. If someone with a role in IEEE reads this they should really stop this rogue firm they contracted before they seriously destroy some part of the internet some people rely on. [1] https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html#:~:text=To%20treat%20all%20persons%20fairly,and%20to%20avoid%20injuring%20others https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html#:~....
- pclmulqdq 3y agoThe IEEE has no power to stop people from doing things. It's a professional society, not a licensing/regulatory body.
- soraminazuki 3y agoAs the article and the parent comment makes clear, this was done on behalf of organizations including Elsevier and IEEE. Surely it's within their powers to not pay money to lawyers to do their dirty work?
- thrashh 3y agoCopyright law doesn’t talk about hosting content. It talks about distributing content. And by all means, an exit node is distributing content.
- RagnarD 3y agoAny lawyers think that there's a case against the publishers for these harassing, inappropriate notices?
- hecturchi 3y agoPeople operating IPFS gateways might benefit from using NOpfs, pulling the official public gateways badbits.deny list: https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/nopfs https://github.com/ipfs-shipyard/nopfs
- theonlybutlet 3y agoCould this not be construed as vexatious litigation?
- notanatty 3y agoIs there an easy way to comply with an accountable, non-oprressive-regime e.g. at least CSAM IPFS block list? "Implement Allow Lists and Block Lists" (2018) https://github.com/ipfs/notes/issues/284 https://github.com/ipfs/notes/issues/284 "IPIP 298: (allow|deny)lists for IPFS Nodes and Gateways" (2022) https://github.com/ipfs/specs/pull/340 https://github.com/ipfs/specs/pull/340
- exabrial 3y agoWe need a cloudflare for DMCA DOS attacks.