5 ms·

The DMCA does not allow 1, and they risk the possibility of legal liability if they do 2. The DMCA has no concept of fraud prevention builtin, and any efforts

The DMCA does not allow 1, and they risk the possibility of legal liability if they do 2. The DMCA has no concept of fraud prevention builtin, and any efforts a web operator takes to prevent fraud fall into a legal grey area that could increase the operators liability. This is either a flaw in the DMCA, or a.feature, depending on who you are.

ProllyInfamous 3y ago
>depending on who you are. The writers definitely intended towards that spectrum's latter. As a piece of enforceable legislation, it is heavily-flawed.
abigail95 3y ago
There are plenty of solutions within the law that aren't a grey area. As an example, send a DMCA/C&D to shopify.com - do they have to take down their homepage? Of course not. Did they set up a robot to take down their homepage when it receives a request? Of course not. > DMCA has no concept of fraud prevention Yes it does. The safe harbor requirements require that material removed expeditously upon proper notice. A bogus notice is not proper notice. Acting on a bogus notice is against shopify's own notice and takedown procedure. They are creating more harm for themselves by doing this.
- ensignavenger 3y ago
  But if the recipient gets it wrong and misclassifies a proper notice as a bogus notice, they are liable under the law. There is no safe harbor for "we acted in good faith but we were wrong".
  - bluGill 3y ago
    The real problem is Shopify is not the one who should receive this notice. They should act like a post office and pass it onto their users. Shopify should only do more if the poster does not respond in a reasonable amount of time, or if a court order is obtained. (Or of course the user takes things down). Of course a user responding to leave content up needs to provide their legal contact information so this can go to court.
    - freedomben 3y ago
      But if they don't take it down as soon as they are "notified" then they lose the safe harbor protections. I find the DMCA enraging but the law is pretty clear. You incur some liability by not taking down immediately, and no lawyer or business is going to incur liability when they don't have to.
      - bluGill 3y ago
        What I wrote is how the law should have been written (IMHO), not how it is. You are correct the law forces them to act as they do.
- some_random 3y ago
  Fraud prevention is a lot more than "you don't have to respond to a bogus notice"
- onionisafruit 3y ago
  The difference with the home page is that it isn’t subject to safe harbor like third party content assuming the home page doesn’t contain user content (I haven’t actually looked). Shopify is already civilly liable for copyright issues on their home page. Since they have no safe harbor, there is no reason to follow the safe harbor rules.
- thomastjeffery 3y ago
  The website operator is obviously prepared to file a counter-notice in respect to their own content. What they are not prepared to defend is their users' content.
LorenPechtel 3y ago
Yup. DMCA needs to be taken out and shot. Immediately. Then build something reasonable to replace it.
- thomastjeffery 3y ago
  There is nothing reasonable. Intellectual Property is, to its core, unreasonable.
  - pbhjpbhj 3y ago
    To its core? I disagree. To the implementation established through corporate lobbying of media corporation over the last century; yes, I'd very much agree. The core is, people who create useful works deserve to make a living and not simply have the financial benefit of those works go to others who are rich enough to exploit them. I'd be interested if you don't agree with that core, if you could explain why?
    - thomastjeffery 3y ago
      Every person living deserves a living. Monopoly is not the route we should be taking to achieve that. Copyright only manages to support a select few artists. It does so by making it more difficult to create art in the first place! The overwhelming majority of copyright benefit (in dollars) goes to "others who are rich enough to exploit" the system itself, not to the artists who are in need of "a living". Those absurdly wealthy groups make it more difficult and more expensive for artists to compete with them. The tool they use for anti-competitive behavior is copyright. Copyright is only useful for anti-competitive behavior, because copyright is literally defined as monopoly. --- If we did not have copyright, people would still be free to financially support artists. There would only be two major differences: 1. Artists would not be able to compel people to financially support them. 2. Giant corporations would not be able to compel artists to give them monopoly over their art. Artists would be entirely free to create new art, and to seek direct financial benefit from that art. I argue that the second effect is by far the greater of the two, particularly in respect to artists who need a living wage.
muttled 3y ago
> they risk the possibility of legal liability if they do 2 Have any companies been successfully sued for attempting to police DMCA fraud on their platform? Be interesting to know how courts treat good-faith efforts and if there have been instances where a company just phoned it in and got in trouble for half-measures.
- ensignavenger 3y ago
  As far as I am aware, companies are largely very risk averse to this sort of thing and no e have yet made any effort to combat fraud. In fact, I am pretty surprised to hear about Shopify even taking this step.

ProllyInfamous 3y ago

>depending on who you are. The writers definitely intended towards that spectrum's latter. As a piece of enforceable legislation, it is heavily-flawed.

abigail95 3y ago

There are plenty of solutions within the law that aren't a grey area. As an example, send a DMCA/C&D to shopify.com - do they have to take down their homepage? Of course not. Did they set up a robot to take down their homepage when it receives a request? Of course not. > DMCA has no concept of fraud prevention Yes it does. The safe harbor requirements require that material removed expeditously upon proper notice. A bogus notice is not proper notice. Acting on a bogus notice is against shopify's own notice and takedown procedure. They are creating more harm for themselves by doing this.

ensignavenger 3y ago
But if the recipient gets it wrong and misclassifies a proper notice as a bogus notice, they are liable under the law. There is no safe harbor for "we acted in good faith but we were wrong".
- bluGill 3y ago
  The real problem is Shopify is not the one who should receive this notice. They should act like a post office and pass it onto their users. Shopify should only do more if the poster does not respond in a reasonable amount of time, or if a court order is obtained. (Or of course the user takes things down). Of course a user responding to leave content up needs to provide their legal contact information so this can go to court.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    But if they don't take it down as soon as they are "notified" then they lose the safe harbor protections. I find the DMCA enraging but the law is pretty clear. You incur some liability by not taking down immediately, and no lawyer or business is going to incur liability when they don't have to.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      What I wrote is how the law should have been written (IMHO), not how it is. You are correct the law forces them to act as they do.
some_random 3y ago
Fraud prevention is a lot more than "you don't have to respond to a bogus notice"
onionisafruit 3y ago
The difference with the home page is that it isn’t subject to safe harbor like third party content assuming the home page doesn’t contain user content (I haven’t actually looked). Shopify is already civilly liable for copyright issues on their home page. Since they have no safe harbor, there is no reason to follow the safe harbor rules.
thomastjeffery 3y ago
The website operator is obviously prepared to file a counter-notice in respect to their own content. What they are not prepared to defend is their users' content.

LorenPechtel 3y ago

Yup. DMCA needs to be taken out and shot. Immediately. Then build something reasonable to replace it.

thomastjeffery 3y ago
There is nothing reasonable. Intellectual Property is, to its core, unreasonable.
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  To its core? I disagree. To the implementation established through corporate lobbying of media corporation over the last century; yes, I'd very much agree. The core is, people who create useful works deserve to make a living and not simply have the financial benefit of those works go to others who are rich enough to exploit them. I'd be interested if you don't agree with that core, if you could explain why?
  - thomastjeffery 3y ago
    Every person living deserves a living. Monopoly is not the route we should be taking to achieve that. Copyright only manages to support a select few artists. It does so by making it more difficult to create art in the first place! The overwhelming majority of copyright benefit (in dollars) goes to "others who are rich enough to exploit" the system itself, not to the artists who are in need of "a living". Those absurdly wealthy groups make it more difficult and more expensive for artists to compete with them. The tool they use for anti-competitive behavior is copyright. Copyright is only useful for anti-competitive behavior, because copyright is literally defined as monopoly. --- If we did not have copyright, people would still be free to financially support artists. There would only be two major differences: 1. Artists would not be able to compel people to financially support them. 2. Giant corporations would not be able to compel artists to give them monopoly over their art. Artists would be entirely free to create new art, and to seek direct financial benefit from that art. I argue that the second effect is by far the greater of the two, particularly in respect to artists who need a living wage.

muttled 3y ago

> they risk the possibility of legal liability if they do 2 Have any companies been successfully sued for attempting to police DMCA fraud on their platform? Be interesting to know how courts treat good-faith efforts and if there have been instances where a company just phoned it in and got in trouble for half-measures.

ensignavenger 3y ago
As far as I am aware, companies are largely very risk averse to this sort of thing and no e have yet made any effort to combat fraud. In fact, I am pretty surprised to hear about Shopify even taking this step.