4 ms·
I think a meta point that is interesting here is that nobody could be more motivated to lobby for DMCA changes than large platforms like Google. Wrongfully targ
by viknesh 3y ago
I think a meta point that is interesting here is that nobody could be more motivated to lobby for DMCA changes than large platforms like Google. Wrongfully targeted victims take out their anger on the platform, who thus far wrings their hands and says "sorry, it's the law, file a counterclaim if you want."
If it's enough of a problem for the platform (and not the victims), they can just pay off their congresspeople to write a law allowing DMCA abuse detection systems.
- mqus 3y agoonly in this case it mostly google which makes matters worse. They don't or badly check DMCA claims, don't monitor or publish the filers that are most frequently counterfiled against and to top it off: mostly use their own contentid system anyway which heavily favors ip holders.
- rsingel 3y agoAlso the DMCA doesn't require Google to takedown sites based on obviously fraudulent DMCA notices. It's just that Google would lose its liability shield if the claim turned out to be real.
- notatoad 3y agoi thought that was the main flaw with the DMCA - it actually does require you to obey all properly formatted and submitted DMCA notices, regardless of how obviously fraudulent they are, until a court decides they're not fraudulent.
- dragonwriter 3y agoDMCA doesn't require you to do anything, because it only shields you against liability you would otherwise have to the filer (or the owner whose agent they are), and if the notice is obviously not from thr owner or agent, or obviously incorrect about the content being infringing (or even existing), then there is no source of liability. Yes, it's cheaper not to check, but its not required by the DMCA.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoHonest question, Does the DMCA allow hosts to require proof before action? If their liability isn't contingent on being provided valid evidence beyond a simple statement, then hosts don't have much of an ability to perform an assessment.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Honest question, Does the DMCA allow hosts to require proof before action? The DMCA (well, the Safe Harbor provision under discussion, the DMCA has lots of other provisions that are irrelevant to the discussion) doesn't require action in the first place, so it necessasrily allows anything before action. > If their liability isn't contingent on being provided valid evidence beyond a simple statement, then hosts don't have much of an ability to perform an assessment. The DMCA doesn't create liability in the first place.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoWhat stops the Google's of the world from simply ignoring every dmca takedown request? Alternatively what do you think prevents them from requiring rigorous proof in a machine readable format before honoring a request? What do you think the incentives at play are?
- dragonwriter 3y ago> What stops the Google's of the world from simply ignoring every dmca takedown request? The same thing that leads them to make deals with big money copyright-based industries for copyright systems that go far beyond what the DMCA safe harbor requires for situations it covers: the fact that they are deeply and actually aware of the copyright violation they facilitate (putting them outside of the DMCA safe harbor to start with), and rely almost entirely on the fact that that is hard and expensive to prove (which the DMCA negates, but which forces them to go beyond the DMCA for industries for which the cost and expense of proving actual knowledge would otherwise be worthwhile.)
- 3y ago
- withinboredom 3y agoYeah, and what is funny, is that it totally misses content on smaller artists while incorrectly IP on older, open-domain, classical music performed by smaller artists (think high-school bands performing Beethoven).
- mjevans 3y agoGoogle, nor any other corp, should be a Judge on a legal matter. That's why a Judge should be involved. The entire idea of of the DCMA is just massively flawed and biased towards a world where only big publishers and big criminal enterprises exist.
- bruce511 3y agoThere are 600 million DCMA notices to Google along every year. Let's be insanely Conservative and assume there are a billion across all platforms. Let's say a judge can review a notice every 5 minutes. 12 an hour, say 100 in a day. Say 20 000 per year. So 50 per million, 50 000 judges per billion requests. Let's say a judge costs 100k per year. With say another 100k in costs. That's a price tag of 10 billion per year. I'm guessing the real number is likely well over double that. So your plan to include humans, never mind actual judges who went to law school and so on, is, well a non-starter.
- nerdponx 3y agoFlood the system as a form of protest.
- 0xffff2 3y agoThis is an argument to re-write the DMCA to prevent frivolous claims, and thus reduce the total number of claims. It's not an argument to throw up our hands and pretend that it's unreasonable to expect human involvement.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoI don't think anyone is advocating for the status quo, but that doesn't mean human involvement is required either at an initial stage. One proposal is that you should need full legal identification to file a takedown claim, and be on the hook for damages and penalties if is malicious. This would solve 99.999 of the problem.
- devrand 3y ago
- advisedwang 3y agoThe DMCA does not give service providers leeway to check DMCA claims. Ignoring a correctly filed notification, even if it is garbage, prevents a service provider getting the relief from liability. Source: 17 USC 512(c)
- nerdponx 3y agoAnd "Big Copyright" prefers it that way. They are only interested in maximizing sensitivity (probability of taking down a true violation), they have no incentive to care about the trade-off with precision (probability that a taken-down violation is a true violation).
- kevingadd 3y agoThey process incorrectly filed notices too, for example notices that don't contain the information required. I had my content taken down once in response to a notice that just had a person's name and no other information (they were not the rightsholder)
- account42 3y agoThe service provider is only liable if an infraction has actually taken place. Checking DMCA claims means determining if that is the case. Service providers do have that leeway.
- thomastjeffery 3y agoGoogle has another set of motivation: rights-holders are its primary customers. It's pretty clear at this point which motivator has won Google's favor.
- sonicanatidae 3y agoPart of that is due to how the platform plays games with appeals. Who wouldn't be pissed off when legitimate content gets taken down, and the platform's response to evidence to the contrary is dumb looks and blank stares?