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It 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 b

It 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 ago
Interesting; 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.
- mindslight 3y ago
  > But that makes it completely trivial to abuse The perjury bit not applying doesn't rule out there being other forms of liability from incorrect DMCA notices - it just strikes out the most visible and severe one. For instance if you wrote up a fake notice, based on a work you owned but targeting an unrelated URL, you could be sued for some sort of fraud or tortuous interference, even though you didn't run afoul of the perjury provision. The problem is commercial DMCA mills have the standard corporate veil where nothing is any one person's fault to hide behind. So even though it might be technically possible to take them to task, it's much harder to argue something like gross negligence.
  - anticensor 3y ago
    Corporate veil cannot absolve anyone from criminal liability.
    - mindslight 3y ago
      Sure. But there aren't generally criminal penalties for gross negligence in filing DMCA notices, as far as I'm aware. So that's not really relevant. However the corporate veil I'm referring to goes beyond the legal doctrine. I'm referring to the protection that comes from having a bunch of people doing something, so that errors get written off as constructive emergent behavior rather than pinned on singular willful actions. If an individual set up a script that generated a bunch of DMCA notices based on the possibility of infringement with no verification, then signed the requests and sent them off, they'd likely find themselves in court and pinned with a finding of bad faith (regardless of say having set up an LLC or not). Whereas when a group of people does the same thing, each only contributes part of the action, they all point fingers at each another for who's responsible (A: "I said the output of the script had to be verified", B: "I wasn't responsible for the output of the script", C: "I thought everything I got from B had already been verified"), and any argument of willful bad faith becomes much harder.
chii 3y ago
So in other words, as long as you actually own the copyright, sending DMCA takedown against someone who doesn't have that content at all does not count?!
- notanatty 3y ago
  Isn't it already criminal to knowingly and with intent make claims in absence of evidence? If you don't present evidence, and you know that you do not have evidence, and it can be shown that you knew you did not have evidence when you, then that's intent to defame (or obstruct). And also such a pattern of defamation with intent and intimidation may qualify as an OC protection racket? (Plaintiff could not have had knowledge of which content defendant was authorized to archive or fair use, and plaintiff knew that they hadn't such information when they harassed and intimidated defendant and so plaintiff had criminal intent.)

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

Interesting; 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.

mindslight 3y ago
> But that makes it completely trivial to abuse The perjury bit not applying doesn't rule out there being other forms of liability from incorrect DMCA notices - it just strikes out the most visible and severe one. For instance if you wrote up a fake notice, based on a work you owned but targeting an unrelated URL, you could be sued for some sort of fraud or tortuous interference, even though you didn't run afoul of the perjury provision. The problem is commercial DMCA mills have the standard corporate veil where nothing is any one person's fault to hide behind. So even though it might be technically possible to take them to task, it's much harder to argue something like gross negligence.
- anticensor 3y ago
  Corporate veil cannot absolve anyone from criminal liability.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    Sure. But there aren't generally criminal penalties for gross negligence in filing DMCA notices, as far as I'm aware. So that's not really relevant. However the corporate veil I'm referring to goes beyond the legal doctrine. I'm referring to the protection that comes from having a bunch of people doing something, so that errors get written off as constructive emergent behavior rather than pinned on singular willful actions. If an individual set up a script that generated a bunch of DMCA notices based on the possibility of infringement with no verification, then signed the requests and sent them off, they'd likely find themselves in court and pinned with a finding of bad faith (regardless of say having set up an LLC or not). Whereas when a group of people does the same thing, each only contributes part of the action, they all point fingers at each another for who's responsible (A: "I said the output of the script had to be verified", B: "I wasn't responsible for the output of the script", C: "I thought everything I got from B had already been verified"), and any argument of willful bad faith becomes much harder.

chii 3y ago

So in other words, as long as you actually own the copyright, sending DMCA takedown against someone who doesn't have that content at all does not count?!

notanatty 3y ago
Isn't it already criminal to knowingly and with intent make claims in absence of evidence? If you don't present evidence, and you know that you do not have evidence, and it can be shown that you knew you did not have evidence when you, then that's intent to defame (or obstruct). And also such a pattern of defamation with intent and intimidation may qualify as an OC protection racket? (Plaintiff could not have had knowledge of which content defendant was authorized to archive or fair use, and plaintiff knew that they hadn't such information when they harassed and intimidated defendant and so plaintiff had criminal intent.)