9 ms·

All DMCA Notices Filed Against TorrentFreak in 2023 Were Bogus

elmerfud 3y ago
The DMCA is complete and utter garbage from its inception to its execution. The fact is that most of the time it seems to be used in a weaponized form because there are zero repercussions for being incorrect or failing to do due diligence before sending one off makes this total garbage. I am not unsympathetic to copyright holders but I have no love for this 100 plus year copyright nonsense. There needs to be teeth behind it when a false DMCA is sent because without that places are simply wasting money and draining resources from places they don't like. It's great and all that Google has deep pockets and can afford to review these things but it's still a waste of their time and a waste of their money and since Google doesn't print money out of thin air that comes from their customers. The way to fix the DMCA is to actually make this a document that must be filed with the courts. Require a lawyer to sign off on these documents file them with the courts and when they are false documents we're due diligence has not been done to ascertain if there was a true copyright violation or not we can start despairing lawyers and having them held in contempt of court. Eventually lawyers will stop doing this nonsense.
- yummypaint 3y ago
  I have always said a fraudulent DMCA claim should be treated the same a show the FCC treats a radio station fraudulently broadcasting someone else's call sign. The fine should be $10k minimum, especially when the strike attempt is against something in the public domain.
  - neodymiumphish 3y ago
    And a good portion of that fine should be sent to the targeted party.
    - drdaeman 3y ago
      That could create some wrong incentives. But the targeted party must have an easy way to painlessly dismiss a notice.
      - neodymiumphish 3y ago
        I agree that incentives would need to be addressed, but it's unfair to impose costs on a party without any reasonable claim. Maybe future claims by the same claimant result in payments to the "defendant".
- sdenton4 3y ago
  Start spamming senators with dmca takedowns for funding pitch videos?
  - ProjectArcturis 3y ago
    This will produce rapid action though unfortunately not the kind you're aiming for.
    - chris_wot 3y ago
      If it starts a precedent, and someone was willing to take the hit, then this could be a way of getting back at fraudulent DMCA takedowns.
- loeg 3y ago
  > The DMCA is complete and utter garbage from its inception to its execution. The safe harbor provisions for providers hosting user-created content are great, IMO. People forget that is also part of the DMCA.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bluish29 3y ago
I really hope that DMCA at least be modified to add a requirement to submit a fee that can be recovered in case of success. Or maybe not recovered at all and cover the cost of investigation. It might help combat the bogus claims. As for the real ones, that's should be part of the cost of doing business. But the current situation that it is almost zero cost will only encourage more bogus and vague claims.
- bradley13 3y ago
  The fee should be enough to be meaningful - say, $100 or so. If the claim turns out to be wrong, the fee should go to the accused party. If an organization files many claims that turn out to be false, they should be forbidden from filing further claims for a year, or face massive fines.
  - WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
    If each one is $100 upfront for them and in my pocket whenever I prove them bogus, all I can say is, Bring it on!!!
- ZoomerCretin 3y ago
  The law is working exactly as intended. The copyright lobby is very powerful. If you look at the legislation being proposed since 2010, it has primarily been to strengthen the DMCA. Though Google, Reddit, Meta, Wikipedia, etc. were successful in organizing opposition to these bills, they have no incentive to lobby for the repeal of the DMCA.
- zamadatix 3y ago
  I'm not sure there is a fee which is both large enough it significantly deters bad claims while also being small enough to be different than saying nobody can afford to defend their works on the internet via DMCA given the scale. Even if you have 90% accuracy in claims if you have to put out 10,000 claims in a year that's 1 million you have to escrow with the expected loss of 100,000 despite rarely being wrong. And you may well need to do significantly more than 10,000 claims per year given the number of sites and users uploading and re-sharing content. If it were just a token value of 1 dollar or something then you're back to the largest corporations being able to file a million bogus complaints as the cost of doing business. Absent a balanced number this would ultimately turn into another debate about the place of the DMCA itself.
nadermx 3y ago
If anyone is curious, currently Yout v RIAA[0] is awaiting oral arguments in the US 2nd circuit court of appeals, Yout having lost in district court. This case centers around the DMCA circumvention notice's sent by the RIAA [0] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66697744/yout-llc-v-recording-industry-association-of-america-inc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66697744/yout-llc-v-rec...
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  a related link that covers why they're fighting: https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3344&context=historical https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
kayson 3y ago
Does torrentfreak have any legal recourse? If the notices keep saying the information is accurate under penalty of perjury, when clearly its not, it seems like they should be able to do something...
- cesarb 3y ago
  > the notices keep saying the information is accurate under penalty of perjury, when clearly its not The part which is "accurate under penalty of perjury" is only that "the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner [...]"; it excludes the part which says "the information in the notification is accurate" from that. Yes, it means that they can lie as much as they want on the "you are violating my copyright" part as long as they are truthful when saying "this copyright is mine".
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    Without getting the copyright is mine part how can they claim authorized or ownership?
    - andrewaylett 3y ago
      They're claiming a specific right is infringed, and although they are frequently completely incorrect about the infringement, they still need to be correct about the right they're claiming about. Chewbacca is a Wookie, and the claimant is authorised to submit infringement notifications. Neither fact is necessarily relevant to the target of the notification.
    - notatoad 3y ago
      there's two independent statements: - i am authorized by the owner of this piece of copyrighted work - this copyrighted work appears at this url. the first needs to be true under penalty of perjury. the second can be as false as you want with no repercussions.
      - Aerroon 3y ago
sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
I may sound like a broken record but copyright needs reform. It does not fulfill its purpose and DMCA is just one symptom of many other issues that stem from the steaming pile of garbage that is copyright in the 21st century. edit: typo
- Lvl999Noob 3y ago
  Someone needs to file DMCA notices for the big corpo stuff. Do it as a big swarm and get the whole websites down. Only then will there be actual action to reforming it.
- Nifty3929 3y ago
  What do you believe is the purpose of copyright law? Genuine question, I’m curious to hear your take.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    > Genuine question, I’m curious to hear your take. In my experience, when users say this they're neither genuine nor curious but I'll bite. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri... > The Congress shall have Power To...promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; I believe it is to promote the progress of science and useful arts and I think that the way modern copyright works runs counter to this foundational goal.
    - Nifty3929 3y ago
      "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" - Not sure if this the the parent's view of the purpose of copyright, but seems to have been what the original constitution writers had in mind. By that measure though, it seems the US has had pretty good results. We have a flourishing scientific research and arts community regularly producing amazing things. Certainly at least as good as anywhere else. And the other countries that also do well in these areas have similar copyright systems for similar reasons. I don't know of other countries with substantially different copyright laws/systems that produce similar quantity/quality of science and art. I'm not saying it's perfect, just that before we so roundly criticize something we should at least have in mind what we are trying to achieve, and some reasonable idea of an alternative that would achieve it. Do you have some ideas of how the US copyright system has failed at the stated purpose, and how something else might work better?

The DMCA is complete and utter garbage from its inception to its execution. The fact is that most of the time it seems to be used in a weaponized form because there are zero repercussions for being incorrect or failing to do due diligence before sending one off makes this total garbage. I am not unsympathetic to copyright holders but I have no love for this 100 plus year copyright nonsense. There needs to be teeth behind it when a false DMCA is sent because without that places are simply wasting money and draining resources from places they don't like. It's great and all that Google has deep pockets and can afford to review these things but it's still a waste of their time and a waste of their money and since Google doesn't print money out of thin air that comes from their customers. The way to fix the DMCA is to actually make this a document that must be filed with the courts. Require a lawyer to sign off on these documents file them with the courts and when they are false documents we're due diligence has not been done to ascertain if there was a true copyright violation or not we can start despairing lawyers and having them held in contempt of court. Eventually lawyers will stop doing this nonsense.

yummypaint 3y ago
I have always said a fraudulent DMCA claim should be treated the same a show the FCC treats a radio station fraudulently broadcasting someone else's call sign. The fine should be $10k minimum, especially when the strike attempt is against something in the public domain.
- neodymiumphish 3y ago
  And a good portion of that fine should be sent to the targeted party.
  - drdaeman 3y ago
    That could create some wrong incentives. But the targeted party must have an easy way to painlessly dismiss a notice.
    - neodymiumphish 3y ago
      I agree that incentives would need to be addressed, but it's unfair to impose costs on a party without any reasonable claim. Maybe future claims by the same claimant result in payments to the "defendant".
sdenton4 3y ago
Start spamming senators with dmca takedowns for funding pitch videos?
- ProjectArcturis 3y ago
  This will produce rapid action though unfortunately not the kind you're aiming for.
  - chris_wot 3y ago
    If it starts a precedent, and someone was willing to take the hit, then this could be a way of getting back at fraudulent DMCA takedowns.
loeg 3y ago
> The DMCA is complete and utter garbage from its inception to its execution. The safe harbor provisions for providers hosting user-created content are great, IMO. People forget that is also part of the DMCA.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

bluish29 3y ago

I really hope that DMCA at least be modified to add a requirement to submit a fee that can be recovered in case of success. Or maybe not recovered at all and cover the cost of investigation. It might help combat the bogus claims. As for the real ones, that's should be part of the cost of doing business. But the current situation that it is almost zero cost will only encourage more bogus and vague claims.

bradley13 3y ago
The fee should be enough to be meaningful - say, $100 or so. If the claim turns out to be wrong, the fee should go to the accused party. If an organization files many claims that turn out to be false, they should be forbidden from filing further claims for a year, or face massive fines.
- WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
  If each one is $100 upfront for them and in my pocket whenever I prove them bogus, all I can say is, Bring it on!!!
ZoomerCretin 3y ago
The law is working exactly as intended. The copyright lobby is very powerful. If you look at the legislation being proposed since 2010, it has primarily been to strengthen the DMCA. Though Google, Reddit, Meta, Wikipedia, etc. were successful in organizing opposition to these bills, they have no incentive to lobby for the repeal of the DMCA.
zamadatix 3y ago
I'm not sure there is a fee which is both large enough it significantly deters bad claims while also being small enough to be different than saying nobody can afford to defend their works on the internet via DMCA given the scale. Even if you have 90% accuracy in claims if you have to put out 10,000 claims in a year that's 1 million you have to escrow with the expected loss of 100,000 despite rarely being wrong. And you may well need to do significantly more than 10,000 claims per year given the number of sites and users uploading and re-sharing content. If it were just a token value of 1 dollar or something then you're back to the largest corporations being able to file a million bogus complaints as the cost of doing business. Absent a balanced number this would ultimately turn into another debate about the place of the DMCA itself.

nadermx 3y ago

If anyone is curious, currently Yout v RIAA[0] is awaiting oral arguments in the US 2nd circuit court of appeals, Yout having lost in district court. This case centers around the DMCA circumvention notice's sent by the RIAA [0] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66697744/yout-llc-v-recording-industry-association-of-america-inc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66697744/yout-llc-v-rec...

red-iron-pine 3y ago
a related link that covers why they're fighting: https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3344&context=historical https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

kayson 3y ago

Does torrentfreak have any legal recourse? If the notices keep saying the information is accurate under penalty of perjury, when clearly its not, it seems like they should be able to do something...

cesarb 3y ago
> the notices keep saying the information is accurate under penalty of perjury, when clearly its not The part which is "accurate under penalty of perjury" is only that "the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner [...]"; it excludes the part which says "the information in the notification is accurate" from that. Yes, it means that they can lie as much as they want on the "you are violating my copyright" part as long as they are truthful when saying "this copyright is mine".
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Without getting the copyright is mine part how can they claim authorized or ownership?
  - andrewaylett 3y ago
    They're claiming a specific right is infringed, and although they are frequently completely incorrect about the infringement, they still need to be correct about the right they're claiming about. Chewbacca is a Wookie, and the claimant is authorised to submit infringement notifications. Neither fact is necessarily relevant to the target of the notification.
  - notatoad 3y ago
    there's two independent statements: - i am authorized by the owner of this piece of copyrighted work - this copyrighted work appears at this url. the first needs to be true under penalty of perjury. the second can be as false as you want with no repercussions.
    - Aerroon 3y ago

sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago

I may sound like a broken record but copyright needs reform. It does not fulfill its purpose and DMCA is just one symptom of many other issues that stem from the steaming pile of garbage that is copyright in the 21st century. edit: typo

Lvl999Noob 3y ago
Someone needs to file DMCA notices for the big corpo stuff. Do it as a big swarm and get the whole websites down. Only then will there be actual action to reforming it.
Nifty3929 3y ago
What do you believe is the purpose of copyright law? Genuine question, I’m curious to hear your take.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  > Genuine question, I’m curious to hear your take. In my experience, when users say this they're neither genuine nor curious but I'll bite. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri... > The Congress shall have Power To...promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; I believe it is to promote the progress of science and useful arts and I think that the way modern copyright works runs counter to this foundational goal.
  - Nifty3929 3y ago
    "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" - Not sure if this the the parent's view of the purpose of copyright, but seems to have been what the original constitution writers had in mind. By that measure though, it seems the US has had pretty good results. We have a flourishing scientific research and arts community regularly producing amazing things. Certainly at least as good as anywhere else. And the other countries that also do well in these areas have similar copyright systems for similar reasons. I don't know of other countries with substantially different copyright laws/systems that produce similar quantity/quality of science and art. I'm not saying it's perfect, just that before we so roundly criticize something we should at least have in mind what we are trying to achieve, and some reasonable idea of an alternative that would achieve it. Do you have some ideas of how the US copyright system has failed at the stated purpose, and how something else might work better?