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My sister’s Etsy shop (which is her family’s sole source of income) was hit by this scam last Christmas during the holiday rush. DMCA takedowns from copycat ven

by cj 3y ago

My sister’s Etsy shop (which is her family’s sole source of income) was hit by this scam last Christmas during the holiday rush. DMCA takedowns from copycat vendors to wipe away competitors to (temporarily) steal business. It’s not a problem Etsy or others take seriously, even when the attack hits stores with multi-million dollars per year in sales. It’s yet another case of a tech company refusing to staff enough workers to manually review and verify things that computers shouldn’t be doing by themselves.

nikanj 3y ago
Etsy makes the same amount of money regardless which seller you order from, so they have little motivation to prevent sabotage amongst sellers
- m4rtink 3y ago
  Well, maybe short term. But this looks like something that can very well kill them in the longer term by making their platform so toxic no one would want to touch it.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
The app we're currently releasing does not have an auto-signup. Each account signup request is reviewed manually. Needless to say, this is difficult to scale. It's fine for our app; which Serves a fairly small demographic, and does not make money, but it would be a big problem for major-league outfits. I have a feeling that one of the first commercial applications of AI, will be moderation and response to customer complaints. We'll have to see how well that works.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  > I have a feeling that one of the first commercial applications of AI, will be moderation and response to customer complaints. > We'll have to see how well that works. Worth noting that almost all of YouTube's front facing customer service is heavily, heavily automated, which is a source of constant hostility and aggrivation for YouTubers, in that they must interact with these ML agents, get a stupid, nonsensical answer, then reply again to get a human reviewer who (usually) resolves the situation that would've been faster resolved by a human in the first place and let to less frustration for all involved. I think it's a fantastic idea to not automate the process of signups for a service, and yes, it will substantially slow down the process. But I think everyone has just about had their fill of all these services that produce bad outcomes extremely quickly when a trivial amount of human involvement would've handled whatever issue better, in a perfectly acceptable time frame. If you don't want to have a customer service department that is well staffed and well paid to handle customer complaints/problems/issues/what have you, then my suggestion is do not involve yourself with or build a company that will need one. Simple as. Edit: And like, I think it's fair to extend this to all these sectors of a normal, functioning business that silicon valley companies are happy to "automate" to cut their costs: - If you don't want to provide the resources for human approval for your platform, then don't start a platform. - If you don't want a provide the humans to moderate content, do not host content. - If you don't want to handle verifying ID's and driver's licenses, running background checks, and all the rest that is Bog Fucking Standard for a cab company, then don't start a cab company. It just blows my mind how many of these business have gone into the field of X or Y and just... not done or half-assed huge aspects of those fields, and then shrug their shoulders when people get pissed that they can't get help. Do you think all these dinosaur businesses you're trying to disrupt went out of their way to find an excuse to hire on customer service agents for the hell of it? No! They needed people to solve problems for customers with the product they sell!
- cheschire 3y ago
  I'm bearish on AI/ML in the customer support space. It's been terribly easy to trick these tools. Maybe instead of moderation and response, it would function better as a blackbox middleware to the customer support onboarding process. So instead of tackling the problem at the customer level, you use AI/ML to enable your existing support staff to scale their workload. The picture I have in my mind is a pre-processor for new tickets that would add a series of tags to a support request. That would allow your support staff to be assigned to tags where they specialize. This simplistic implementation would probably integrate into existing service management platforms without having to stand up Yet Another B2B.
- pixl97 3y ago
  >but it would be a big problem for major-league outfits Not only is this a lie you've been willingly sold, it appears you've bought it and taken it home. This said I don't think you should feel too bad, we the consumer buy these same lies all over the place "If we have to follow these regulations then it's going to be a big problem for the industry". At the end of the day some of the problems do not scale easily and cheaply. In these cases business have the choice of willingly being good societal actors and taking a loss of profit in order to prevent issues, or by means of regulation be forced to behave in a fitting manner.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    > Not only is this a lie you've been willingly sold, it appears you've bought it and taken it home. That was unkind. I didn't think we behaved that way, here, but I'm often wrong... It certainly can be done, but that usually means the shareholders need to hold off on that second lambo. That doesn't often play well, in the boardroom.
    - shiroiuma 3y ago
      I don't think OP was unkind at all; maybe a bit blunt, but telling someone you think they've been lied to and duped and that they're a victim is not unkind in my opinion. Powerful entities have been lying and duping common people for... well, probably for all of human history. The OP may or may not be correct, but from my reading of their post, I don't think they intended that as an attack of any kind, but rather a commiseration.
variadix 3y ago
I agree that tech companies have nonexistent support because they refuse to hire people to do it, but the DMCA is a terrible law and enables people to do this way too easily. It should cost money (or something) to file a DMCA claim to prevent copyright trolls and people from abusing the legal system.
- olliej 3y ago
  Tech companies _cannot_ do anything. The DMCA is a terrible law, and requires that the company receiving a DMCA take down immediately take the claimed URLs down, or become liable if the claims aren't fraudulent. I recall originally it sounded like not only was an immediate take down required, but also they had to keep it down for two weeks even if the victim files a counter claim showing that it's BS. The law is designed specifically to enable this, because the recording industry bought a bunch of politicians, and said "hey we need to have a zero cost zero risk mechanism for us to remove content we believe to be pirated, without having any penalties for being wrong, but there must be penalties for the host services if they try to stop us".
- djfdat 3y ago
  If the cost to file is less than the opportunity cost, it's not a deterrence.
  - Zuiii 3y ago
    it creates a paper trail that is far more harder to obfuscate. I agree with gp, filing dmca should come with a filing fee.
    - echaozh 3y ago
      It could be a large deposit, to be returned if the case is verified, or to be rewarded to the victim if it turn out to be vicious.
      - Zuiii 3y ago
        I like this. Large deposit with some gov agency and the money gets awarded to the victim (or refunded to the claimant) when the dispute is finally resolved. You don't submit a claim unless you're really sure that you'd win. This is how the DMCA should have been designed in the first place.

by cj 3y ago

nikanj 3y ago

Etsy makes the same amount of money regardless which seller you order from, so they have little motivation to prevent sabotage amongst sellers

m4rtink 3y ago
Well, maybe short term. But this looks like something that can very well kill them in the longer term by making their platform so toxic no one would want to touch it.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

The app we're currently releasing does not have an auto-signup. Each account signup request is reviewed manually. Needless to say, this is difficult to scale. It's fine for our app; which Serves a fairly small demographic, and does not make money, but it would be a big problem for major-league outfits. I have a feeling that one of the first commercial applications of AI, will be moderation and response to customer complaints. We'll have to see how well that works.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
> I have a feeling that one of the first commercial applications of AI, will be moderation and response to customer complaints. > We'll have to see how well that works. Worth noting that almost all of YouTube's front facing customer service is heavily, heavily automated, which is a source of constant hostility and aggrivation for YouTubers, in that they must interact with these ML agents, get a stupid, nonsensical answer, then reply again to get a human reviewer who (usually) resolves the situation that would've been faster resolved by a human in the first place and let to less frustration for all involved. I think it's a fantastic idea to not automate the process of signups for a service, and yes, it will substantially slow down the process. But I think everyone has just about had their fill of all these services that produce bad outcomes extremely quickly when a trivial amount of human involvement would've handled whatever issue better, in a perfectly acceptable time frame. If you don't want to have a customer service department that is well staffed and well paid to handle customer complaints/problems/issues/what have you, then my suggestion is do not involve yourself with or build a company that will need one. Simple as. Edit: And like, I think it's fair to extend this to all these sectors of a normal, functioning business that silicon valley companies are happy to "automate" to cut their costs: - If you don't want to provide the resources for human approval for your platform, then don't start a platform. - If you don't want a provide the humans to moderate content, do not host content. - If you don't want to handle verifying ID's and driver's licenses, running background checks, and all the rest that is Bog Fucking Standard for a cab company, then don't start a cab company. It just blows my mind how many of these business have gone into the field of X or Y and just... not done or half-assed huge aspects of those fields, and then shrug their shoulders when people get pissed that they can't get help. Do you think all these dinosaur businesses you're trying to disrupt went out of their way to find an excuse to hire on customer service agents for the hell of it? No! They needed people to solve problems for customers with the product they sell!
cheschire 3y ago
I'm bearish on AI/ML in the customer support space. It's been terribly easy to trick these tools. Maybe instead of moderation and response, it would function better as a blackbox middleware to the customer support onboarding process. So instead of tackling the problem at the customer level, you use AI/ML to enable your existing support staff to scale their workload. The picture I have in my mind is a pre-processor for new tickets that would add a series of tags to a support request. That would allow your support staff to be assigned to tags where they specialize. This simplistic implementation would probably integrate into existing service management platforms without having to stand up Yet Another B2B.
pixl97 3y ago
>but it would be a big problem for major-league outfits Not only is this a lie you've been willingly sold, it appears you've bought it and taken it home. This said I don't think you should feel too bad, we the consumer buy these same lies all over the place "If we have to follow these regulations then it's going to be a big problem for the industry". At the end of the day some of the problems do not scale easily and cheaply. In these cases business have the choice of willingly being good societal actors and taking a loss of profit in order to prevent issues, or by means of regulation be forced to behave in a fitting manner.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  > Not only is this a lie you've been willingly sold, it appears you've bought it and taken it home. That was unkind. I didn't think we behaved that way, here, but I'm often wrong... It certainly can be done, but that usually means the shareholders need to hold off on that second lambo. That doesn't often play well, in the boardroom.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    I don't think OP was unkind at all; maybe a bit blunt, but telling someone you think they've been lied to and duped and that they're a victim is not unkind in my opinion. Powerful entities have been lying and duping common people for... well, probably for all of human history. The OP may or may not be correct, but from my reading of their post, I don't think they intended that as an attack of any kind, but rather a commiseration.

variadix 3y ago

I agree that tech companies have nonexistent support because they refuse to hire people to do it, but the DMCA is a terrible law and enables people to do this way too easily. It should cost money (or something) to file a DMCA claim to prevent copyright trolls and people from abusing the legal system.

olliej 3y ago
Tech companies _cannot_ do anything. The DMCA is a terrible law, and requires that the company receiving a DMCA take down immediately take the claimed URLs down, or become liable if the claims aren't fraudulent. I recall originally it sounded like not only was an immediate take down required, but also they had to keep it down for two weeks even if the victim files a counter claim showing that it's BS. The law is designed specifically to enable this, because the recording industry bought a bunch of politicians, and said "hey we need to have a zero cost zero risk mechanism for us to remove content we believe to be pirated, without having any penalties for being wrong, but there must be penalties for the host services if they try to stop us".
djfdat 3y ago
If the cost to file is less than the opportunity cost, it's not a deterrence.
- Zuiii 3y ago
  it creates a paper trail that is far more harder to obfuscate. I agree with gp, filing dmca should come with a filing fee.
  - echaozh 3y ago
    It could be a large deposit, to be returned if the case is verified, or to be rewarded to the victim if it turn out to be vicious.
    - Zuiii 3y ago
      I like this. Large deposit with some gov agency and the money gets awarded to the victim (or refunded to the claimant) when the dispute is finally resolved. You don't submit a claim unless you're really sure that you'd win. This is how the DMCA should have been designed in the first place.