8 ms·

It'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

It'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 ago
If 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 ago
  It’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 ago
    But they should also have foreseen the routes for abuse. That's also their job. The DMCA is a disaster.
    - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
      They 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
        The process is extremely assymmetric, the counterclaim process has much higher requirements than a takedown notice. Like having to actually provide evidence you aren't infringing, provide your real identity, and often convince an AI that your content shouldn't be taken down or least get it seen by a real person. And if you succeed, you just get your content back up. No compensation for any damage caused by your content being down for a while.
        dcrazy 2y ago
        Maybe you’re describing YouTube’s DMCA process? The actual law doesn’t specify any of that [1]: > If the user believes that the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material, the user may submit a counter-notice requesting the reinstatement of the material. To be effective, a counter-notice must contain substantially the following information: > (i) a physical or electronic signature of the user; > (ii) identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled; > (iii) a statement under penalty of perjury that the user has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled; > (iv) the user’s name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that the subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if the subscriber’s address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which the service provider may be found, and that the subscriber will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person. 1: https://www.copyright.gov/512/ https://www.copyright.gov/512/
        thayne 2y ago
        (iv) sure sounds like giving them your true identity to me. You have to give them information to sue you (or do other nefarious things), but they don't have to provide you with information that say, you could use to sue them for perjury or try to recover damages from the time it was taken down.
    - matheusmoreira 2y ago
      These laws are bought and paid for by corporations of the trillion dollar copyright industry. They hire expensive lobbyists to get these laws passed. It's no surprise that the laws only foresee the abuse that could hurt their bottom lines. The better question is: why have the people's representatives failed to protect their interests? Why didn't they foresee the abuses that hurt us all?
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > why have the people's representatives failed to protect their interests? Nobody cares about copyright. There is a vocal minority of us who do. But we're only slightly more useful on it than the privacy advocates, both sharing a good chunk of people who are lazy or nihlistic about the political process to the point of being politically irrelevant. As a result, a representative who brings up copyright reform gets like one call in support and zero net new votes. Meanwhile, they get powerful and patient adversaries from the Big Tech to the record companies and their billionaire artists.
        int_19h 2y ago
        It really depends on how you phrase it. If you talk about copyright in the abstract, then yes, few people will care. But ask them how they feel about stuff like this specifically, and it'll be rather different.
      - mithametacs 2y ago
        The Senate is quite deliberately there to protect the interests of the wealthy and powerful.
      - jgerrish 2y ago
        It's unfortunate that the UnitedHealth Group death has fanned the flames of this hatred of corporations. Artificial Intelligence is going to change how we work. Many top software engineers on Hacker News may be ok for a while. Although everyone could use help. But already many artists and junior engineers feel pressure. Lack of copyright protection can make that even worse for many. These are allies and people who we mentor. Just brainstorming, Social Purpose Corporations could provide innovative co-op opportunities for artists and engineers. That's just one example. I don't see the management class failing to forsee the financial reality in the global workplace. But I do worry about dependents facing division and hate. Bully that, right? I can't fucking forsee every possibility, traps and all, though. Maybe not social purpose corporations but just hyper-incubators that enable a million small indy corps. Man, I'm imagining Jar Jar binks manning the hyperspace lychgates across from the content generators. Sorry, stupid digression. I'm sorry for wasting cycles on that.
- Underpass9041 2y ago
  As someone receiving a notice you have no idea if it's legitimate or from a AOL account someone made 15 minutes ago, the threat of it being perjury doesn't work when there's no authentication whatsoever of who sent it. Unless the DMCA is signed by Zaphod Beeblebrox the receiver has no choice but to assume it's legitimate.
  - SteveNuts 2y ago
    What happens if you ignore it?
    - gruez 2y ago
      You lose safe harbor protections, which means if the notice was legitimate, you could be on the hook for copyright infringement as well.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - bombcar 2y ago
      You can respond and refuse, but you have to authenticately dox yourself to do so, and you assume liabilities.
      - eurleif 2y ago
        You're conflating two things: a DMCA counter-notice by an alleged infringer, and the refusal of an intermediary to honor a DMCA takedown notice. Your statement is a mixture of claims that are true about one or the other of those separate things. DMCA counter-notice: * Sent by an alleged infringer (in this case, that would be the artist) to an intermediary (in this case, TeePublic) asserting that a takedown notice the intermediary received was invalid. * Requires the alleged infringer to provide information about themself ("authentically dox"). * Can enable the intermediary to restore access to the material without losing their liability shield. * Doesn't affect the alleged infringer's copyright infringement liability in any direction (though as with takedown notices, there's the potential for perjury). If the alleged infringer committed copyright infringement, they were already liable for it, and remain so; if they didn't, then they never were liable and still aren't. Intermediary refusal: * Simply a lack of action on a takedown notice by the intermediary to whom it was sent. * Doesn't require anyone to dox themselves, or to do anything in particular. The intermediary can throw the takedown notice in the garbage and go about their day. * Removes the intermediary's liability shield; the intermediary can potentially be liable for infringement, when they would otherwise would have been immune.
- willis936 2y ago
  I'm not sure how DMCA enforcement isn't a clear violation of the 1st amendment. If you are connected you can use the government to stop speech? Isn't this the kind of thing that US feels very strongly is not okay?
  - cratermoon 2y ago
    When the government does it, it's bad. When the Free Market™ does it, that's innovation.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 2y ago
    The 1st amendment applies to the government, so it wouldn't apply unless the DMCA request is to a government website.
    - foota 2y ago
      The DMCA is a law that restricts the ability of people to make speech. The government is the one doing the restricting, even if the place the speech is being done isn't controlled by the government. The argument you're making is applicable when a website decides not to publish your speech (they're not the government, so the 1st amendment is irrelevant), but the DMCA is different.
      - omgwtfbyobbq 2y ago
        The 1st amendment only applies to freedom of speech that the government can control/affect directly. Using the DMCA like this is censorship by copywrite, and it does go against freedom of speech in society at large, but it's not a 1st amendment issue. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_copyright https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_copyright
        JoeAltmaier 2y ago
        Lots of arguing around the point, perhaps. Freedom of speech is an American ideal. It's in the Bill of Rights because it was so important. Not as a tool to restrict this right to just government infringements. It is supposed to be a universal right. I often wonder at those arguing that it's 'ok' somehow in some circumstances because, not protected except for the govt! Somehow they've lost sight of the ideal.
Trasmatta 2y ago
I worked front line technical support at a web hosting company in the early 2010s. We were told to just immediately shut down any site when receiving a DMCA takedown request. We were barely paid above minimum wage, and received no training on how to handle legal requests like this - the rule was just "shut the site down".
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  Before anyone reacts negatively to this - you’ve never seen how much spam, and how many DMCA requests, are completely real. I would personally estimate 90%+.
  - matheusmoreira 2y ago
    It doesn't matter. A 10% false positive rate means grave injustices are being inflicted on people on a daily basis. They are being censored by the government at a corporation's whim for bogus reasons. The corporations exploit the fact people will not fight their claims because it costs time and a small fortune to do so. Spam? Infringement? Irrelevant. Small issues compared to corporate censorship. Let it happen. Not a single person should be censored over it.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > you’ve never seen how much spam, and how many DMCA requests, are completely real. I would personally estimate 90%+ Source? There are abundant claims to the contrary [1][2]. (I can't find any quality data either way.) [1] https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2019/01/10/youtubes-copyright-insanity/ https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2019/01/10/youtubes-copyrigh... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/youtubers-channels-are-being-held-hostage-with-fake-copyright-claims-2020-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/youtubers-channels-are-being...
- kyledrake 2y ago
  Years ago we had an opsec competition called "Karmageddon". The goal was to get as many upvotes on Reddit on an account in one day, with absolutely no ethical limitations to achieving that. I was winning against 10-20 people by posting a lot of random "f this politician" garbage in the political subreddits (this was in late 2016 and it was a feeding frenzy), until someone posted a "check out this picture of me and my brother I haven't seen in 10 years wearing the same Ghostbusters shirt!" post. It wasn't his brother, he found it somewhere, but it was going viral and I was about to lose. So I filed a DMCA takedown request with Reddit, and they deleted the post and the picture very quickly after, no questions asked. I ended up winning the competition, but I think we ended up giving the prize to the Ghostbusters guy anyways. The DMCA is 100% an attack strategy, it works.
voidfunc 2y ago
I know someone working for UHC legal.. they're in a vendetta mode over there from what I've been told.
- EE84M3i 2y ago
  You mean a vendetta against the murder suspect, or an actor impersonating UHC sending DMCAs?
- rblatz 2y ago
  Are they concerned that after their CEO was gunned down in broad daylight over his supposed unethical behavior, and the killer is being celebrated as a folk hero. That by doubling down and doing unethical things they may be putting targets on their own back? I know if I were at UHC I’d be looking to leave before I ended up on a hit list.
  - Aurornis 2y ago
    > I know if I were at UHC I’d be looking to leave before I ended up on a hit list. UnitedHealth has half a million employees. If you think individual employees are at risk of getting on a hit list then you don’t really understand the scale of the company. I’m constantly amazed by how some people adopt the uninformed narratives that sprang up in the wake of this murder. I’ve asked multiple people to guess how much cheaper our healthcare would get if we forced insurance company profits to zero and redistributed their C-suite’s compensation to their covered patients. The answer is always off by orders of magnitude. It’s all very strange. The narratives around this murder and, by extension, the health care system are being invented by people informed about both yet widely accepted as fact. Even details about the scale of UnitedHealth seem lost on people. This is a very large publicly traded company with scores of employees.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > asked multiple people to guess how much cheaper our healthcare would get if we forced insurance company profits to zero and redistributed their C-suite’s compensation to their covered patients. The answer is always off by orders of magnitude The media is conflating the far-right and -left wing fringes who are celbrating Mangione as a person and his literal crime with those holding him as a symbol for their frustrations with our healthcare system. If you're celebrating the person and the crime, you need to speak to a professional. (You're also in a minority. No, your subreddit isn't the world.) If you're upset about the system, it's reasonable to not care if you're being fucked by Bob or Alice.
superkuh 2y ago
Indeed. Claiming DMCA on something should require KYC for the claimant. If KYC is so easy and un-burdensome that it's being applied everywhere else in our lives surely in such a legal context where 2-parties are central to the dogma the initiating party in a legal case should have to prove it is who it says it is. Of course this will not happen because the DMCA as used in practice has nothing to do with law or justice and is just a mechanism for corporations to attack humans. That's not to say there's nothing good in the DMCA as written. The safe harbor provisions are now vital to the continued existence of independent communities on the internet. But in practice safe harbor is often ignored too.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  I'm really not sure what you mean. Nobody argues that KYC is easy or non-burdensome, which is why it's not being applied everywhere else in our lives. A company like "Print-on-demand merch retailer TeePublic" would find it procedurally difficult and probably economically infeasible to rigorously verify the identity of everyone who sends it a notice of copyright infringement. It sounds like you may be envisioning a system where the burden is offloaded onto the people sending a notice, but that's just not possible. If you get an email from some person Alice you've never heard of before, you fundamentally cannot know just from reading the email whether it was sent by the actual Alice, or someone pretending to be Alice, or whether there's even such a person as Alice in the first place. To tell the difference, you would have to research Alice and find some independent way to corroborate her identity.
  - superkuh 2y ago
    If we fundementally cannot know then why are we believing these claimant "persons" at all? These days it's more likely than not that a DMCA claim is not from the copyright owner (or anyone associated with the owner) of what is claimed. It seems like DMCA is broken in practice and no longer operates in the spirit of the law. I'm envisioning a system where someone has to prove they actually own the thing before they can claim it, yes. And if proving identity is so hard then maybe there shouldn't be take-downs at all. Let the legal system where identification is required take over. Stop the hundreds of millions of automated para-legal attacks and make it a more managable flood of hundreds of thousands of actual legal actions. And yes, KYC is extremely burdensome. I suppose when a DMCA claim arrives the recipient should then send back an email with a link to some third party corporation dedicated to KYC (out of a set of government approved companies) which the DMCA claimant will sign up with and pay a small fee to. Most likely the claimaint will have to have a webcam conversation with the KYC company and upload their identifying documents. The result of the identity and ownership check would then be sent to both parties and the process could proceed as per normal. This would strongly discourage illegal false claims which currently have no mitigation and make up the majority of DMCA actions.
Aurornis 2y ago
The article puts ‘United Healthcare’ in quotes and opens with a statement mirroring this same possibility, because the first-pass response to DMCA requests is as you describe: An assumption that it’s legitimate until proven otherwise. This is very well known and the technique is often abused. Even the source article is presenting this information with a huge grain of salt.

It'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 ago

If 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 ago
It’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 ago
  But they should also have foreseen the routes for abuse. That's also their job. The DMCA is a disaster.
  - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    They 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
      The process is extremely assymmetric, the counterclaim process has much higher requirements than a takedown notice. Like having to actually provide evidence you aren't infringing, provide your real identity, and often convince an AI that your content shouldn't be taken down or least get it seen by a real person. And if you succeed, you just get your content back up. No compensation for any damage caused by your content being down for a while.
      - dcrazy 2y ago
        Maybe you’re describing YouTube’s DMCA process? The actual law doesn’t specify any of that [1]: > If the user believes that the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material, the user may submit a counter-notice requesting the reinstatement of the material. To be effective, a counter-notice must contain substantially the following information: > (i) a physical or electronic signature of the user; > (ii) identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled; > (iii) a statement under penalty of perjury that the user has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled; > (iv) the user’s name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that the subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if the subscriber’s address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which the service provider may be found, and that the subscriber will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person. 1: https://www.copyright.gov/512/ https://www.copyright.gov/512/
        thayne 2y ago
        (iv) sure sounds like giving them your true identity to me. You have to give them information to sue you (or do other nefarious things), but they don't have to provide you with information that say, you could use to sue them for perjury or try to recover damages from the time it was taken down.
  - matheusmoreira 2y ago
    These laws are bought and paid for by corporations of the trillion dollar copyright industry. They hire expensive lobbyists to get these laws passed. It's no surprise that the laws only foresee the abuse that could hurt their bottom lines. The better question is: why have the people's representatives failed to protect their interests? Why didn't they foresee the abuses that hurt us all?
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > why have the people's representatives failed to protect their interests? Nobody cares about copyright. There is a vocal minority of us who do. But we're only slightly more useful on it than the privacy advocates, both sharing a good chunk of people who are lazy or nihlistic about the political process to the point of being politically irrelevant. As a result, a representative who brings up copyright reform gets like one call in support and zero net new votes. Meanwhile, they get powerful and patient adversaries from the Big Tech to the record companies and their billionaire artists.
      - int_19h 2y ago
        It really depends on how you phrase it. If you talk about copyright in the abstract, then yes, few people will care. But ask them how they feel about stuff like this specifically, and it'll be rather different.
    - mithametacs 2y ago
      The Senate is quite deliberately there to protect the interests of the wealthy and powerful.
    - jgerrish 2y ago
      It's unfortunate that the UnitedHealth Group death has fanned the flames of this hatred of corporations. Artificial Intelligence is going to change how we work. Many top software engineers on Hacker News may be ok for a while. Although everyone could use help. But already many artists and junior engineers feel pressure. Lack of copyright protection can make that even worse for many. These are allies and people who we mentor. Just brainstorming, Social Purpose Corporations could provide innovative co-op opportunities for artists and engineers. That's just one example. I don't see the management class failing to forsee the financial reality in the global workplace. But I do worry about dependents facing division and hate. Bully that, right? I can't fucking forsee every possibility, traps and all, though. Maybe not social purpose corporations but just hyper-incubators that enable a million small indy corps. Man, I'm imagining Jar Jar binks manning the hyperspace lychgates across from the content generators. Sorry, stupid digression. I'm sorry for wasting cycles on that.
Underpass9041 2y ago
As someone receiving a notice you have no idea if it's legitimate or from a AOL account someone made 15 minutes ago, the threat of it being perjury doesn't work when there's no authentication whatsoever of who sent it. Unless the DMCA is signed by Zaphod Beeblebrox the receiver has no choice but to assume it's legitimate.
- SteveNuts 2y ago
  What happens if you ignore it?
  - gruez 2y ago
    You lose safe harbor protections, which means if the notice was legitimate, you could be on the hook for copyright infringement as well.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - bombcar 2y ago
    You can respond and refuse, but you have to authenticately dox yourself to do so, and you assume liabilities.
    - eurleif 2y ago
      You're conflating two things: a DMCA counter-notice by an alleged infringer, and the refusal of an intermediary to honor a DMCA takedown notice. Your statement is a mixture of claims that are true about one or the other of those separate things. DMCA counter-notice: * Sent by an alleged infringer (in this case, that would be the artist) to an intermediary (in this case, TeePublic) asserting that a takedown notice the intermediary received was invalid. * Requires the alleged infringer to provide information about themself ("authentically dox"). * Can enable the intermediary to restore access to the material without losing their liability shield. * Doesn't affect the alleged infringer's copyright infringement liability in any direction (though as with takedown notices, there's the potential for perjury). If the alleged infringer committed copyright infringement, they were already liable for it, and remain so; if they didn't, then they never were liable and still aren't. Intermediary refusal: * Simply a lack of action on a takedown notice by the intermediary to whom it was sent. * Doesn't require anyone to dox themselves, or to do anything in particular. The intermediary can throw the takedown notice in the garbage and go about their day. * Removes the intermediary's liability shield; the intermediary can potentially be liable for infringement, when they would otherwise would have been immune.
willis936 2y ago
I'm not sure how DMCA enforcement isn't a clear violation of the 1st amendment. If you are connected you can use the government to stop speech? Isn't this the kind of thing that US feels very strongly is not okay?
- cratermoon 2y ago
  When the government does it, it's bad. When the Free Market™ does it, that's innovation.
- omgwtfbyobbq 2y ago
  The 1st amendment applies to the government, so it wouldn't apply unless the DMCA request is to a government website.
  - foota 2y ago
    The DMCA is a law that restricts the ability of people to make speech. The government is the one doing the restricting, even if the place the speech is being done isn't controlled by the government. The argument you're making is applicable when a website decides not to publish your speech (they're not the government, so the 1st amendment is irrelevant), but the DMCA is different.
    - omgwtfbyobbq 2y ago
      The 1st amendment only applies to freedom of speech that the government can control/affect directly. Using the DMCA like this is censorship by copywrite, and it does go against freedom of speech in society at large, but it's not a 1st amendment issue. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_copyright https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_copyright
      - JoeAltmaier 2y ago
        Lots of arguing around the point, perhaps. Freedom of speech is an American ideal. It's in the Bill of Rights because it was so important. Not as a tool to restrict this right to just government infringements. It is supposed to be a universal right. I often wonder at those arguing that it's 'ok' somehow in some circumstances because, not protected except for the govt! Somehow they've lost sight of the ideal.

Trasmatta 2y ago

I worked front line technical support at a web hosting company in the early 2010s. We were told to just immediately shut down any site when receiving a DMCA takedown request. We were barely paid above minimum wage, and received no training on how to handle legal requests like this - the rule was just "shut the site down".

gjsman-1000 2y ago
Before anyone reacts negatively to this - you’ve never seen how much spam, and how many DMCA requests, are completely real. I would personally estimate 90%+.
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  It doesn't matter. A 10% false positive rate means grave injustices are being inflicted on people on a daily basis. They are being censored by the government at a corporation's whim for bogus reasons. The corporations exploit the fact people will not fight their claims because it costs time and a small fortune to do so. Spam? Infringement? Irrelevant. Small issues compared to corporate censorship. Let it happen. Not a single person should be censored over it.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > you’ve never seen how much spam, and how many DMCA requests, are completely real. I would personally estimate 90%+ Source? There are abundant claims to the contrary [1][2]. (I can't find any quality data either way.) [1] https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2019/01/10/youtubes-copyright-insanity/ https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2019/01/10/youtubes-copyrigh... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/youtubers-channels-are-being-held-hostage-with-fake-copyright-claims-2020-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/youtubers-channels-are-being...
kyledrake 2y ago
Years ago we had an opsec competition called "Karmageddon". The goal was to get as many upvotes on Reddit on an account in one day, with absolutely no ethical limitations to achieving that. I was winning against 10-20 people by posting a lot of random "f this politician" garbage in the political subreddits (this was in late 2016 and it was a feeding frenzy), until someone posted a "check out this picture of me and my brother I haven't seen in 10 years wearing the same Ghostbusters shirt!" post. It wasn't his brother, he found it somewhere, but it was going viral and I was about to lose. So I filed a DMCA takedown request with Reddit, and they deleted the post and the picture very quickly after, no questions asked. I ended up winning the competition, but I think we ended up giving the prize to the Ghostbusters guy anyways. The DMCA is 100% an attack strategy, it works.

voidfunc 2y ago

I know someone working for UHC legal.. they're in a vendetta mode over there from what I've been told.

EE84M3i 2y ago
You mean a vendetta against the murder suspect, or an actor impersonating UHC sending DMCAs?
rblatz 2y ago
Are they concerned that after their CEO was gunned down in broad daylight over his supposed unethical behavior, and the killer is being celebrated as a folk hero. That by doubling down and doing unethical things they may be putting targets on their own back? I know if I were at UHC I’d be looking to leave before I ended up on a hit list.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > I know if I were at UHC I’d be looking to leave before I ended up on a hit list. UnitedHealth has half a million employees. If you think individual employees are at risk of getting on a hit list then you don’t really understand the scale of the company. I’m constantly amazed by how some people adopt the uninformed narratives that sprang up in the wake of this murder. I’ve asked multiple people to guess how much cheaper our healthcare would get if we forced insurance company profits to zero and redistributed their C-suite’s compensation to their covered patients. The answer is always off by orders of magnitude. It’s all very strange. The narratives around this murder and, by extension, the health care system are being invented by people informed about both yet widely accepted as fact. Even details about the scale of UnitedHealth seem lost on people. This is a very large publicly traded company with scores of employees.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > asked multiple people to guess how much cheaper our healthcare would get if we forced insurance company profits to zero and redistributed their C-suite’s compensation to their covered patients. The answer is always off by orders of magnitude The media is conflating the far-right and -left wing fringes who are celbrating Mangione as a person and his literal crime with those holding him as a symbol for their frustrations with our healthcare system. If you're celebrating the person and the crime, you need to speak to a professional. (You're also in a minority. No, your subreddit isn't the world.) If you're upset about the system, it's reasonable to not care if you're being fucked by Bob or Alice.

superkuh 2y ago

Indeed. Claiming DMCA on something should require KYC for the claimant. If KYC is so easy and un-burdensome that it's being applied everywhere else in our lives surely in such a legal context where 2-parties are central to the dogma the initiating party in a legal case should have to prove it is who it says it is. Of course this will not happen because the DMCA as used in practice has nothing to do with law or justice and is just a mechanism for corporations to attack humans. That's not to say there's nothing good in the DMCA as written. The safe harbor provisions are now vital to the continued existence of independent communities on the internet. But in practice safe harbor is often ignored too.

SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
I'm really not sure what you mean. Nobody argues that KYC is easy or non-burdensome, which is why it's not being applied everywhere else in our lives. A company like "Print-on-demand merch retailer TeePublic" would find it procedurally difficult and probably economically infeasible to rigorously verify the identity of everyone who sends it a notice of copyright infringement. It sounds like you may be envisioning a system where the burden is offloaded onto the people sending a notice, but that's just not possible. If you get an email from some person Alice you've never heard of before, you fundamentally cannot know just from reading the email whether it was sent by the actual Alice, or someone pretending to be Alice, or whether there's even such a person as Alice in the first place. To tell the difference, you would have to research Alice and find some independent way to corroborate her identity.
- superkuh 2y ago
  If we fundementally cannot know then why are we believing these claimant "persons" at all? These days it's more likely than not that a DMCA claim is not from the copyright owner (or anyone associated with the owner) of what is claimed. It seems like DMCA is broken in practice and no longer operates in the spirit of the law. I'm envisioning a system where someone has to prove they actually own the thing before they can claim it, yes. And if proving identity is so hard then maybe there shouldn't be take-downs at all. Let the legal system where identification is required take over. Stop the hundreds of millions of automated para-legal attacks and make it a more managable flood of hundreds of thousands of actual legal actions. And yes, KYC is extremely burdensome. I suppose when a DMCA claim arrives the recipient should then send back an email with a link to some third party corporation dedicated to KYC (out of a set of government approved companies) which the DMCA claimant will sign up with and pay a small fee to. Most likely the claimaint will have to have a webcam conversation with the KYC company and upload their identifying documents. The result of the identity and ownership check would then be sent to both parties and the process could proceed as per normal. This would strongly discourage illegal false claims which currently have no mitigation and make up the majority of DMCA actions.

Aurornis 2y ago

The article puts ‘United Healthcare’ in quotes and opens with a statement mirroring this same possibility, because the first-pass response to DMCA requests is as you describe: An assumption that it’s legitimate until proven otherwise. This is very well known and the technique is often abused. Even the source article is presenting this information with a huge grain of salt.