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'United Healthcare' using DMCA against Luigi Mangione images
- lolinder 2y ago[flagged]
- whycome 2y agoHas a UHC public channel come out refuting it?
- lolinder 2y agoTheir CEO was just murdered in cold blood and social media rejoiced. I don't think there's anything for them to gain by speaking up about any of this in public right now. Sometimes the best thing to do is shut up and let things settle down.
- schmidtleonard 2y agoThere's nothing to gain by trying to suppress the reaction they don't like?
- lolinder 2y ago[flagged]
- brundolf 2y agoI have no horse in this race, but there's a long history of corporations egregiously abusing DMCA, so it feels within the realm of possibility unless you have specific evidence to the contrary
- lolinder 2y agoThere's also a long history of people abusing the fact that DMCA notices essentially require the provider to not verify anything—filing fake reports for various motivations that can't be readily traced. Given that both have a history here, the big question is who benefits. I can think of a very likely motive for an internet vigilante to try to smear United Healthcare by making them look even worse. I can't think of a great motive for United Healthcare to try (and completely predictably fail) to suppress the story.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Glyptodon 2y agoI mean the original sourcing (404 media) is not without reputation and you'd hope they're trying to do some basic checking, but there's probably also a reason they say "an entity claiming to be United Healthcare Inc" at this point. That said, I'd argue even if these are falsified reports (I don't personally have a strong opinion on this - I could see this going either way) it seems very much of interest to this community. It's also interesting - it doesn't seem like there can be copyright on security camera footage (just like there isn't/shouldn't be on AI output) so even if the claim were brought by a different party it seems questionable.
- re 2y ago> But this is so obviously someone falsifying these reports—to be a troll or to make United Healthcare look bad or whatever It is entirely believable that UHC is working with some crisis management firm to try to manage public perception, and that part of their strategy is to try to get media portraying Mangione positively taken off the internet, whether or not they have legal grounds to do so. There have been so many past stories about companies using illegitimate DMCA claims that I'm surprised you consider it obviously not UHC or someone working with them. It is possible, but I don't think it's a forgone conclusion.
- lolinder 2y agoMany on the internet are currently in the middle of celebrating the vigilante who murdered their CEO. I find it to be far more likely that one of those people decided to fan the flames and play vigilante than that someone in their PR team got it into their heads that trying to suppress images of the murderer-hero of the year would do any good.
- rolph 2y ago"It is illegal to file DMCA notices if you don’t own the copyright (or at least have a good faith belief that you do). The idea that UHC now owns every depiction of the guy accused of killing their employee is laughably frivolous and one hopes that its legal department understands this and these requests are coming from a third party troll impersonating the carrier."
- plagiarist 2y agoWasn't UHC the company that decided to deny claims with an AI that was wrong 90% of the time? I assume they did do this. False DMCA claims are nothing to them. Yet another egregious abuse of a law that has zero real consequences for a false report. I wonder why this happens so often?
- smolder 2y agoInsurance company employees have among the lowest productivity to pay ratios of nearly any industry. They harbor a workforce that is low skill, low effort, and high profit, largely via nepotistic hiring.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoInsurance companies have low profit margins, 2% to 3% in most cases. UNH is worth more than 5x its nearest insurance competitor (Elevance) because of its large healthcare provider arm, not because of its insurance business. Otherwise, they are all sub $100B businesses, which indicate not a lot of juice to squeeze.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoI agree they’re not especially big in terms of profit. However, that doesn’t mean they are not evil. These companies increase profit margin by denying coverage. They try really hard to pretend like they are providing a particular service level and will happily collect your money with that expectation. And then, at a later point, they deny coverage, often in a fraudulent way, in order to create their higher margin. To me the low profit margin is therefore not really relevant. If they provided the product that everyone expects that they are paying for, their margin would be lower and that is exactly what should happen.
- GiorgioG 2y agoMaybe they should hurry up and approve more claims. Seriously, my son’s insulin pump is sitting in “prior authorization” just so they can fuck me into paying the full deductible come Jan 1. Fuck United Healthcare.
- mattgreenrocks 2y agoDude, that’s horrible. I’m sorry you have to deal with that.
- BadCookie 2y agoIt ought to be the law that approved claims should be backdated to when the initial claim was made. UHC pulled this exact trick on me, denying something that ought to have been approved in order to push the date into the new plan year with a reset deductible.
- mindslight 2y agoIt ought to be the law that every in-network claim must be automatically approved. In network providers have already jumped through hoops to have that contract with the "insurance" company, including the creation of documentation to satisfy the "insurance" company of their judgement. It's disingenuous for an "insurance" company to then claim to be second guessing the very professionals' judgement they've already examined and approved of.
- tptacek 2y agoRo Khanna said something similar a week or so ago. You all get that this would basically be the biggest corporate giveaway in the history of American politics, right? The reason you're getting health care denials is that providers are trying to rip your face off. I'm pleading with people on this site to go look at where the dollars in health care spending actually go. CMS, the government organization that manages Medicare (and somehow got vilified a few weeks ago when Blue Cross tried to adopt Medicare's anesthesia billing rules), tracks this stuff in a set of documents called the National Health Expenditures. They're spreadsheets, they're easy to go read, please, for the love of all that is holy, go look at them before designing policy.
- triyambakam 2y agoStreisand effect comes to mind. Also it seems too late to try to stop it now.
- jmclnx 2y agoScrub the internet ? Good luck with that. Streisand joined the chat.
- kyledrake 2y agoIt's also quite possible that someone falsely claiming to be UHC is doing this. This is a major loophole with the DMCA, there's very little vetting of takedown notices.
- Dwedit 2y agoIf you misrepresent that you are authorized by the company making the takedown request, that's literally the only thing that the DMCA considers to be perjury. So weirdly enough: * Not owning the copyrighted work and claiming you own it = Okay * The work you're taking down not even being the claimed copyrighted work = Okay * Saying you're authorized by the company to file the notice, and you're not = PERJURY
- dcrazy 2y agoIt’s not that crazy when you consider that someone might be wrong about whether their work is even copyrightable, but they can’t realistically be mistaken about whether they are acting as someone’s authorized agent. That’s the kind of relationship that lawyers know very well how to make explicit.
- mithametacs 2y agoBut they should also have foreseen the routes for abuse. That's also their job. The DMCA is a disaster.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y agoThey did foresee the routes for abuse and set up a formal counterclaim process. Neither the source article nor the original reporting really explain why the targets of these takedown orders didn't want to file a counterclaim - in some cases there can be privacy concerns, but the T-shirt artist at least has already publicly identified herself.
- thayne 2y ago
- Kenji 2y ago[flagged]
- AceyMan 2y agoI love the 'nick handle' I've seen used on some of the socials discussing these events over the past two or three days: The Adjuster. It's just so ... right.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jazzyjackson 2y agoThis did bring up a copyright question I haven't been able to resolve - is footage from a private security camera somehow owned by the owner of the camera? AFAIK copyright is reserved for works of creative expression, so footage taken for non-creative purposes shouldn't be protected - is there some other mechanism to demand someone cease and desist sharing a video or an image once the cats out of the bag? IMO we could use something more flexible than revenge porn laws, that prevent noncensual use of your likeness, inc. impersonations of your face and voice. Fair use exceptions would obviously have to apply for newsworthy events otherwise Luigi could demand the cops take down his image during the manhunt :) (Similar question for Internet comments , since the bluesky-huggingface-kerfuffle I haven't been able to find a definitive answer if internet commentary is copyrighted creative expression or some other public domain shaped thing)
- hsbauauvhabzb 2y agoIs ‘creative expression’ somehow defined? I could creatively express myself by wiring up a camera and filming a public place, no? Edit: I do think it would be good taste to censor death/murder footage in some cases such as this, I’ve not thought about it a tonne because I assume there’s a legitimate public interest case in some scenarios (political oppression footage, etc)
- jazzyjackson 2y ago> I could creatively express myself by wiring up a camera and filming a public place, no? Certainly. My layperson view is it would depend on intent. If you were to use trafficcamphotobooth.com to take a selfie on 14th Street, I think the fact that you went out in front of a particular surveillance cam and hit the save button would count as a copyrighted photo even tho the camera belongs to some other entity and was going to take the photo with or without you. (Edited) Edit: going back to remind myself of the basics, creative expression is not the basis for copyright, but "original works of authorsbip', although '''The Supreme Court has said that, to be creative, a work must have a “spark” and “modicum” of creativity.''' - this in the case determining that phonebooks are merely collections of facts and therefore not protected works. https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright/ https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright/
- kidneystereotyp 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoSeems consistent with what I would expect. Trying to memory hole all of this bad PR is very much how they normally operate. For example United has tried really hard to bury all mention of the incredibly damaging breach of change healthcare, which is a subsidiary. Over 100 million Americans had their private medical details leaked. All united has done is offer some basic credit monitoring. They won’t even tell you what data specifically got leaked and refuse to cooperate with such requests.
- EdwardDiego 2y agoYeah that ChangeMD ransomware kinda broke healthcare in the US for a week or so.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoA lot longer than that. Many pharmacies and affected healthcare providers were not able to get back to a functioning state for several weeks. The result of canceled and delayed procedures created impact that still continues. Some businesses literally ran out of cash. And of course, everyone has suffered severe damage and harm from the data that was exposed.
- maeil 2y agoThere's no way there aren't at least a dozen of deaths attributable to that, but of course zero consequences for anyone responsible. Luigi proven right once again.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> zero consequences for anyone responsible Who is responsible? With Mangione, there is one person singularly and unambiguously responsible. That makes meting out punishment easy. With a hack, the hackers are obviously responsible. But we haven’t found them. After that, IT at UHC? Who? Are they civilly liable, or criminally?
- jjguy 2y agoHey look on the bright side. If this is legit, then it will inevitably become a reference in the bill to overhaul the DMCA when it (finally) gets introduced! The beginning of the end, the moment when thr DMCA jumped the shark (for the broader world, not us tech geeks)
- thewayitwas 2y ago[flagged]
- saturn8601 2y agoGen X is not all roses: See Elon Musk and all his 'friends'. Oh how bout their kids, they started off as rockstars really taking the reins in 2016 and 2020 (see the Bernie movement). Now a noticeable % have gone far right. :/
- hedora 2y agoI guess they’re claiming it was an inside job? So did Mangione, etc. pierce the corporate veil, or does limited liability apply like it usually does when United Healthcare kills someone?
- downrightmike 2y agoI don't think he did it. The guy on the camera in NYC didn't have a unibrow and Luigi clearly does. I think they have a scapegoat that they are trying to pin it on.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> guy on the camera in NYC didn't have a unibrow and Luigi clearly does Wat. Mangione has a light unibrow. That will obviously show up more clearly head on (as it does in the taxi photo) than from above looking at the tippy tops of the hair.
- avidiax 2y agoNot saying that's impossible. Certainly a ghost gun has an advantage to corrupt government agents just as it does to criminals. But it's going to be difficult to make it stick against a patsy. What will be very suspicious is if he dies in custody before trial. Otherwise, at trial, I expect: * He has no alibi * The ballistic evidence matches the gun. * He has possession of additional ammunition from the same lot. * He was in fact a client of UHC with a substantial claim denial history * His computers/phone show that he was cyber-stalking If they have all that, I don't think a reasonable person could believe that the FBI crime lab and Google can be coerced in a grand conspiracy into fabricating evidence. If it turns out that the gun is a "2nd ghost gun", and the prosecution claims that he ditched the 1st gun and the ammo, and his alibi is "weak", and he cleared his digital history, that would be a much weaker more suspicious case.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> he was in fact a client of UHC with a substantial claim denial history It doesn't appear he was [1]. [1] https://apnews.com/article/luigi-mangione-united-healthcare-ceo-d148fbdde498c3ea4cf768945889d7e7 https://apnews.com/article/luigi-mangione-united-healthcare-...
- whamlastxmas 2y agoThis is really peak capitalism and peak class warfare
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoThe previous peak in class warfare involved guillotines. I don't think we've surpassed that one just yet.
- int_19h 2y agoNot yet, but when CEOs are getting shot and people cheer the shooter, I think it's not that far off.
- qingcharles 2y agoA lot of providers don't even require it to be a statutory DMCA complaint. Just a simple "I own the copyright, please remove it." These are private sites and can remove material on a whim with no legal recourse. That's why it sucks to have to rely on hosting your content on other people's territory.
- m3kw9 2y agoYeah f that
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoCopyright has always been a cover story for legitimizing censorship, ever since it was about preventing people from printing the wrong kind of bible. Of course they're using it that way.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Copyright has always been a cover story for legitimizing censorship, ever since it was about preventing people from printing the wrong kind of bible Source?
- esperent 2y agohttps://wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_the_Bible https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_the_Bible Plenty of info here starting from the section From the Printing Press until the Revelation.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright > The origin of copyright law in most European countries lies in efforts by the church and governments to regulate and control the output of printers. I'll confess to assuming that that's why they wanted to regulate the output of printers. But what non-cenaorship reason could they possibly have had for wanting to do so?
- strathmeyer 2y agoWhen someone tells you something, they're they source.
- calmbonsai 2y ago[flagged]
- daft_pink 2y agoBill Burr is right. https://youtu.be/OILUHHtZt4c?si=TS159SY_VVAHrGnN https://youtu.be/OILUHHtZt4c?si=TS159SY_VVAHrGnN
- ashoeafoot 2y agoIts already memefied as Nintendo Luigi, so taking it down is futile. People will just wear Luigi TM shirts and there is nothing all the PR might of cooperate wealth can do. Reality be a hard wall and reality is the masses loath their overlords.
- psadauskas 2y agoOriginal source was from 404 media: https://www.404media.co/copyright-abuse-is-getting-luigi-mangione-merch-removed-from-the-internet/ https://www.404media.co/copyright-abuse-is-getting-luigi-man...