10 ms·

Google broke my heart

542 points by ingve 10mo ago

jmholla 10mo ago
Sadly, I think your only option is to follow up with legal action against Google. On the positive side, I expect Google will react quickly to any legal action as this puts them at risk of losing safe harbor protections.
- mlyle 10mo ago
  They already lost safe harbor by declining to remove the content.
  - riskable 10mo ago
    The problem is that Google isn't hosting the content. They're merely linking to it. There's no content to "take down." I don't think there's standing to sue. Linking to pirated content isn't illegal. They could be found guilty of contributory infringement but that's a tough case since the legal requirement is that Google needs to know for sure that it's pirated (which is impossible at scale).
    - cogman10 10mo ago
      > Google needs to know for sure that it's pirated (which is impossible at scale). Google being informed by the copyright holder that it's for sure pirated is pretty good evidence that they know it's pirated. The fact that this doesn't scale isn't really a legal defense.
      - jonny_eh 10mo ago
        And they certainly have such a mechanism in place, indicating that they intend to take this kind of action. They're just failing to.
      - johncolanduoni 10mo ago
        It’s not good evidence, because people issue false DMCA takedowns all the time. Which I presume they would point out in court.
        cogman10 10mo ago
        Right, and the counter to that is "I tried to prove I was the copyright owner and they refused to comply".
        josh_p 10mo ago
        In this case, it isn’t a false claim. The author only needs to show up to court with a driver’s license to prove their identity. The judge would rule in favor of the author the same day if someone from Google actually bothered to show up. A scammer isn’t going to court. Don’t try to solve for that.
    - moralestapia 10mo ago
      >which is impossible at scale Lol, hail corporate! It's definitely possible, you just got hand-waved on that.
      - riskable 10mo ago
        Until there's a database of all the copyrighted works in the world that anyone can access—along with their licenses—it is absolutely not possible to know for certain if something is violating copyright. Simple example: Disney opens up a new website that has some of their obvious content on it. How does Google know that Disney owns that website and has authorized its use? If they get a takedown notice, how do they know the sender owns the content? There's no formal verification system that exists for such things. It's all based on an honor system that is easy for bad actors to abuse (which is probably why Google changed how they do things). The entirety of copyrighted law has failed. It isn't working as intended and hasn't for a long time now. Anyone who understands how easy it is to copy bits should know that the original intent of copyright can't work anymore. We need something new to replace it.
        moralestapia 10mo ago
        OP got in touch with one (or many) humans on Google. Humans then decided not to act on the DCMA request. No need for the "doesn't scale" argument, whatever system they have in place is already good enough to process OP's inquire. The problematic bit is what they decided to do once they had all the information in their hands. I do, however, think this is just a mishandled situation and Google will correct, particularly after being featured on the HN wall of shame.
        visarga 10mo ago
        > Anyone who understands how easy it is to copy bits should know that the original intent of copyright can't work anymore. AI makes this even more stringent. You cannot protect the "vibe" of your works, AI can replicate it in seconds. If you make "vibe infringement" the new rule, then creativity becomes legally risky. A catch 22. In 1930 judge Hand said in relation to Nichols v. Universal Pictures: > Upon any work...a great number of patterns of increasing generality will fit equally well. At the one end is the most concrete possible expression...at the other, a title...Nobody has ever been able to fix that boundary, and nobody ever can...As respects play, plagiarism may be found in the 'sequence of events'...this trivial points of expression come to be included. And since then a litany of judges and tests expanded the notion of infringement towards vibes and away from expression: - Hand's Abstractions / The "Patterns" Test (Nichols v. Universal Pictures) - Total Concept and Feel (Roth Greeting Cards v. United Card Co.) - The Krofft Test / Extrinsic and Intrinsic Analysis - Sequence, Structure, and Organization (Whelan Associates v. Jaslow Dental Laboratory) - Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison (AFC) Test (Computer Associates v. Altai) The trend has been to make infringement more and more abstract over time, but this makes testing it an impossible burden. How do you ensure you are not infringing any protected abstraction on any level in any prior work? Due diligence has become too difficult now.
    - tjpnz 10mo ago
      >which is impossible at scale Either they solve it or they should give op the benefit of the doubt. Arguing that x or y isn't possible at scale doesn't mean you get to break the law.
      - jtbayly 10mo ago
        No they shouldn’t give anybody the benefit of the doubt when that person claims copyright infringement! Not unless you want internet randos to be able to take down any YouTube channel they want for “copyright infringement.”
        alright2565 10mo ago
        As far as I can tell, requiring valid ID would lose a provider safe harbor protection as it is not one of the required elements: (3) Elements of notification.- (A) To be effective under this subsection, a notification of claimed infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated agent of a service provider that includes substantially the following: (i) A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. (ii) Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site. (iii) Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material. (iv) Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted. (v) A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. (vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
        kelnos 10mo ago
        I'll be the first to shout from the rooftops that the DMCA is in general a bad law, but according to that law, if the takedown notice contains the required verbiage, then they are required by law to give it the benefit of the doubt (that is, if they want to keep their lack of liability). > Not unless you want internet randos to be able to take down any YouTube channel they want for “copyright infringement.” This is why it's a bad law! But it is the law.
    - ipython 10mo ago
      > which is impossible at scale I love how this is the defense of all these tech companies. "I'm sorry, your honor, we are just a poor multi-trillion dollar company... there's just no way for us to control anything, because we're just too big..."
mlyle 10mo ago
I've got mixed feelings about the DMCA, but its one redeeming value is that it's available to everyone. Deciding to make it readily accessible to large publishing interests but giving a random author the side-eye is not so great.
- shevy-java 10mo ago
  > but its one redeeming value is that it's available to everyone Well - the legal system favours those with more money, so basically it is corporate-law that is in effect there. And Google has enough money to burn and protect against small authors.
lenerdenator 10mo ago
My guess is, there were once more humans in the loop for the thing that the author is referring to. Since humans cost more than GenAI, GenAI replaced some or all of those humans. Never think of any sort of for-profit enterprise as anything other than a for-profit enterprise, and you'll never be heartbroken by one. Angered? Made to think you're living in a dystopia? Enticed into an absurdist world view? Absolutely. But you won't be heartbroken.
- ajaimk 10mo ago
  Feel like it went the opposite direction. Used to be automated before and now a support agent (low skilled) is handling it
ladidahh 10mo ago
My immediate guess after reading this was that this isn't a change at Google but a name issue. Jeff Star getting confused with Jeffree Star (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffree_Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffree_Star). He's a lightening rod for controversy, and has been in the middle of a controversial public persona shift that probably has caused an uptick in all kinds of requests to google.
- junon 10mo ago
  Jeffree Star hasn't been relevant for a while, I'd imagine this isn't it, but something else entirely changing at Google, as the author claims.
  - michaelbuckbee 10mo ago
    I had an odd experience that rhymes with this, where I was trying to figure out where I had seen the actress Julie Dreyfus (from Kill Bill), whose Google results are utterly crushed by Julia Dreyfus (of Seinfeld and Veep fame) despite having demonstrably different spellings to their names...maybe it was that simple.
  - ladidahh 10mo ago
    he has recently been clawing at relevancy with anti-trans talking points, which is specifically why I think his name would be something google would want to stay away
amelius 10mo ago
Adding a PGP signature when releasing content prevents situations like this.
- throwaway150 10mo ago
  With the way these multi-trillion dollar companies operate today and how the support staff act like corporate drones, I have no hope that attaching PGP signatures would lead to any different outcome. The response from the support would probably be going to like, "PGP what?"
- paxys 10mo ago
  How does a PGP signature help? The person who stole your work can trivially strip your signature and add their own.
  - amelius 10mo ago
    If every copy in circulation has your signature on the copyright page ... (This proves that you, the holder of the private key, are the author, not someone who goes by the same name) Anyway, if you still think this won't help you can use a notary service, yes.
- recursivecaveat 10mo ago
  I don't think any more human interaction was involved than a very bored and harried call center employee clicking 'confirm' on a bot-generated response here. You can have all the cryptographic proof you want, but you're screaming into the void.
dekhn 10mo ago
hire a lawyer, they know how to communicate with these teams. Trying to deal with Google Customer service when you are a technologically savvy and logical individual won't get far: GOogle's default attitude towards anybody who contacts them is that they are a scammer.
- QuercusMax 10mo ago
  Even lawyers who own YouTube channels have problems. LegalEagle talked about their bad experience here: https://youtu.be/PEA0JzhpzPU https://youtu.be/PEA0JzhpzPU
  - dekhn 10mo ago
    It looks like he got the problem resolved by providing a spreadsheet with copyright violations and his original sources. THink of Google like how Cantrill described Ellison: You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.
    - faidit 10mo ago
      Good analogy, I would go further and say a lawnmower has more humanity than an Ellison.
paxys 10mo ago
False DMCA takedown requests have always been a problem, and have massively surged in the last few years when more of the general public figured out the mechanics and started treating it as a big downvote button for the internet. This is also being done adversarially at a large scale, for example to suppress websites or YouTube videos containing certain viewpoints or to remove competition. So regardless of how Google has treated these requests in the past, they are absolutely right to want to verify that you actually are the content owner before taking further action. As for how to do it - I don't see why it is hard for you to come up with something that proves ownership. Do your books have a publisher? Do you have a contract with the publisher? Or just a letter from someone at the firm confirming your work? Have you registered the work with the copyright office? Do you have proof of publishing on online portals? You aren't helping yourself or anyone else by anthropomorphising Google. It is not your friend who can "break your heart", or a "trustworthy helper on the Web", or a "trusted ally", but a large bureaucratic corporation. Treat it like the machine it is and you will get the results you want.
- bigstrat2003 10mo ago
  > As for how to do it - I don't see why it is hard for you to come up with something that proves ownership. It is pretty hard to come up with proof of ownership when Google refuses to tell you what forms of proof they will find acceptable. When I go to the DMV and need to prove my residence, the DMV clearly states what forms are acceptable proof. Google should do the same, especially when they are asked what forms of proof are acceptable. Instead they gave this guy the runaround and ignored his question on how to prove ownership.
  - paxys 10mo ago
    There is no passport or social security number or mailing address for the internet. Google can't tell you a definite proof they will accept because none exists, especially since copyright can be claimed on something as trivial as a line of text or a certain combination of bytes. It'll always be a judgement call on Google's part, and such a system will never be 100% accurate in either direction. If you want immediate and effective results then pay a lawyer.
Analemma_ 10mo ago
Isn't this what people are constantly asking for? Every time the topic of YouTube copyright strikes comes up, people angrily demand that Google verify that the person making the request actually has the right to do so. There's no way to design such a system that has zero false positives and zero false negatives; if you do no verification whatsoever you'll get tons of false positives, now it seems like Google has added a small amount of verification, at least sometimes, so now there are some false negatives.
- junon 10mo ago
  No, this isn't what anyone is asking for. Also, point to where Google did any verification? This seems like more than a false negative. Author clearly stated they were willing to jump through whatever necessary hoops. Google didn't seem to have the hoops to jump through.
- wvenable 10mo ago
  One can probably assume that this is the result of far too many illegitimate take down requests. Google almost certainly doesn't want to be in the business of arbitrating link take down requests.
  - pamcake 10mo ago
    They have persistently architected and engineered the system to put and keep themselves in that position.
    - wvenable 10mo ago
      They have links to things, they did take down requests, take down requests got abused, now they don't do take down requests (as much). What does engineering have to do with that?
QuercusMax 10mo ago
The LegalEagle channel on YouTube had a similarly bad interaction when trying to get channels copying their videos taken down: https://youtu.be/PEA0JzhpzPU https://youtu.be/PEA0JzhpzPU Google needs to fix this, it's really bad.
- verdverm 10mo ago
  Not bad enough for the profits and investors to care, perhaps even work against
- lifetimerubyist 10mo ago
  they won't, they don't care in the slightest
  - baby_souffle 10mo ago
    At least legal eagle has nebula as a fall back. Many other creators don't have a platform with any word near the reach YouTube has... And until that changes, there's almost no incentive for YouTube to change.
- maximinus_thrax 10mo ago
  > Google needs to fix this, it's really bad. Do they really? It seems the incentives are aligned so that they continue making the big bucks regardless of 'petty grievances' such as these..
gowld 10mo ago
Is the copyright registered? https://www.copyright.gov/registration https://www.copyright.gov/registration While copyright registration is not legally required for copyright protection, it is the practical way to create usable evidence that the work is coprighted by you. Without it, challenging a copyright infringer is a more arduous legal process. Also, the author's website, and the books themselves claims that "Perishable Press" is the copyright holder, not "Jeff Starr". (Excepting the ones that don't state any copyright holder.) https://books.perishablepress.com/downloads/digging-into-wordpress/ https://books.perishablepress.com/downloads/digging-into-wor... In legal matters, clear and accurate communication is essential.
pryelluw 10mo ago
Sounds like LLM powered support. This is the sort of run around you can program into such systems.
- Alex_L_Wood 10mo ago
  I am also betting on this. Google used their dumb bots in support since time immemorial, but now these dumb bots are supercharged by LLMs. Except they are still as dumb as before. I still remember trying to get my Google Play account unbanned in 2014 after I clicked on my own ad in the app once to test that it’s working. Lovely times. Got the account back, but not due to my actions - their dumb bots masquerading as humans were giving me the runaround, and then I just randomly got my account back.
truelson 10mo ago
I'm going to channel a little bit of @patio11 . First, worth reading this on how he deals with credit agencies and debt collectors: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-reports/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r... . There's gold in here for dealing with big globo-corp and how to get their attention. Ask Google for a certified mail address so you can send them the timeline of events that occurred. This is the shibboleth that lets them know you mean business and that by not responding, they may be facing legal action. DO NOT THREATEN or mention legal action. The managerial class doesn't act that way. Just signal you are building a case against them. Start with getting that certified mailing address... you may be surprised how they respond after just that request. If they don't respond, keep following up. Send them a timeline of events, proof of ownership even if they do not ask you what you need to prove ownership. Make it clear what this is costing you. But here's the thing, EVERY TIME I HAVE ASKED FOR A CERTIFIED MAIL ADDRESS, the globocorp gave me what i wanted, and I never had to follow up. Every time. They don't want to deal with actual legal action from "people who know what they are doing." It's a shibboleth. Like "Baa-ram-ewe." Use it wisely and honestly.
- shermantanktop 10mo ago
  Wow, that's a great read. Bookmarking and sending to others. He points out how expressing all the natural human reactions - anger, fear, supplication, bargaining - tell the institution that you are a vulnerable, manipulable moron. The implacable robot that knows the process but doesn't care is what gets results.
- lelanthran 10mo ago
  Okay, what is the next step if you ask for a certified mailing address/summons delivery and they repeatedly ignore you? It seems to me that without know that, you're still making empty threats, only doing it passive aggressively.
  - kelnos 10mo ago
    You sue them. Depending on the circumstances, you may be able to do so in small claims court, which is pretty inexpensive to do. Google cannot bring their usual insane level of legal resources to bear in this environment, and you will most likely win.
Hnrobert42 10mo ago
Who is this friendly corporate giant the author keeps referring to? He uses that phrase multiple times. Is he sucking up? Is it a reference to something?
- tomcam 10mo ago
  Because of this I read the article twice and can't determine whether it's some kind of troll. Can anyone possibly think of Google this way in 2026? Asking sincerely.
- ajkjk 10mo ago
  the whole thing is written very bizarrely, even the title
- j1elo 10mo ago
  He's applying kind emotions to his customer relationship with a company, because that gives him an emotional leverage from which to feel attacked and be right in the mind of the reader. Not that he needed to do any of this. He wouldn't be a tiny bit less right if the text was a sterile and objetive list of facts about what happened.
  - golly_ned 10mo ago
    He's contrasting Google's childishly 'friendly' image with its reality. It's rhetoric. You're making it about manipulation. Should the world consist of bloodless lists of facts without significance or commentary?
    - j1elo 10mo ago
      Oh, not at all. I appreciate the rethoric, although it didn't work with me because I've never experienced Google as childish or even amicable. So the author's excessive predisposition to think of Google as a marvelous friend was a bit jarring for me (and that's why I personally felt the tone a bit on the side of emotional manipulation). But, to each their own. Expressing commentary and emotions is good, I do prefer it to cold facts all the time :-)
WesolyKubeczek 10mo ago
Note that if the claimant is a big player, Google is happy to only clarify how high is it supposed to jump. If they file a claim usurping your copyright, you can do diddly about it most of the time. But if little people are trying to assert their rights, no, no can do, you can't prove that you are you. And why should you, one of the little people, be able to prove anything at all? If a big player sues, Google is going to have to pay a staggering amount of money, thus they obey. If you sue, its lawyers will drain you financially by protracting everything they can, so you don't actually sue. If they take your claim, the content they take down stops bringing the sweet advertising revenue. And thus the computer sayeth Nay.
charcircuit 10mo ago
>simply check my account via Google Search Console, where I have verified that I am the owner for each of the above sites I doubt this is possible for the support agent to do.
- arcfour 10mo ago
  Well then perhaps they could respond with details on what they would like him to do instead.
  - FridgeSeal 10mo ago
    Thy need him to prove he’s the rights holder, what’s not clear about that?? /s
drnick1 10mo ago
> Especially where it mattered most, removing pirated copies of my books from Google search results. Make your books available for free, and you won't have this problem. You can't expect people to pay for something that literally costs nothing once it has been created. You may also sell paper versions. Some people like myself enjoy reading paper better and will pay for hard copy if they like the book enough or expect to refer to it often.
- bryanrasmussen 10mo ago
  >You can't expect people to pay for something that literally costs nothing once it has been created. See these carrots! it doesn't cost anything to create them now, because they've already been created haven't they! Once the oil has been extracted from the ground, and transported to the gas station and put in the tank, it doesn't cost anything to pump it!! Why are we paying for this stuff again!?!? You can't expect people to pay for code you know, it doesn't cost anything!
  - Kon5ole 10mo ago
    I get your reaction, authors should of course be paid, but GP has a point. If the same payment model that is applied to books and music were applied to carrots, it would be illegal to plant carrots. If you think about it like that it's obviously wrong. The carrots in your example would be similar to the printed books the GP mentioned, not the text itself.
    - bryanrasmussen 10mo ago
      either that or it would be illegal to pick carrots from farms you didn't own, depending on how you wanted to construct the analogy. Of course I can agree that there are differences between these things, but the average writer earns less than the average programmer, and for this reason I often feel it is somewhat gauche that many programmers seem offended by how writers earn money and want it stopped, without any good suggestion as to how they should earn money otherwise. It's like when rich people complain that janitors get food stamps to survive, it motivates my sarcasm gland.
phoronixrly 10mo ago
Does this mean an end to DMCA abuse? If I had to choose I would prefer to have the odd unprotected copyright than having fair use disregarded on the regular.
- IsTom 10mo ago
  Only for the small guy. Big guys always get their copyrights protected.
gorbachev 10mo ago
So not only do they process illegitimate copyright strikes / DMCA takedowns, but they also don't process legitimate ones. Google is broken to the very core. This is what happens with a company that tries to minimize costs of support to zero.
- hsuduebc2 10mo ago
  The times when google was the good guy of the internet is over. Now it's basically Microsoft with much higher product qualities.
  - bschwindHN 10mo ago
    > Now it's basically Microsoft with much higher product qualities. At first I thought you meant "Now, [the good guy of the internet] is basically Microsoft with much higher product qualities." I see what you meant now, in that google is reaching microslop levels of shittiness with slightly shinier shit.
    - hsuduebc2 10mo ago
      Oh, damn. That’s the last way I’d want it to be interpreted. :D
- reactordev 10mo ago
  Google has only cared about one thing for the last decade, being number 1. They were willing to sell their soul to beat meta and they’ll sell their skin to beat OpenAI.
- ycombinary 10mo ago
  [dead]
- jonas21 10mo ago
  You're getting at the crux of the issue: it's very hard to distinguish legitimate DMCA takedown requests submitted by individuals from illegitimate ones, and occasionally, they're going to make mistakes. Anything that the author said in his emails could have just as easily been said by someone else who was trying to take down the content illegitimately. At the end of the day, the best option is to use an attorney who knows the right procedures and would also run the risk of professional consequences if they submitted false claims.
aucisson_masque 10mo ago
Google support is a mess. This company should not exist in its current state, I can’t believe how the competition hasn’t already catch up with their indexing solution.
renewiltord 10mo ago
Every system at scale has some error rate.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
fenwick67 10mo ago
So, what recourse do you have if they fail to act on a DMCA request? Does a C&D get their attention?
reactordev 10mo ago
Welcome to YouTube and Musicians… This has been going on for decades on YouTube. Fair use? DMCA. Cover song? DMCA. 3 second clip of the intro drone? DMCA. You playing it live on an instrument, DMCA. Their copyright system is only there to do one thing, enrich the corporations they work with.
luqtas 10mo ago
after reading the very first thing i thought was: would be comical if the OP's blog were about AI i was wrong but i could find on the 1° page this [0]... which seem a pretty hypocrite act to consider a technology that violates copyright at its core. "you eat what you plant" [0] https://perishablepress.com/diving-into-ai/ https://perishablepress.com/diving-into-ai/
analogpixel 10mo ago
Processing DMCA take down requests isn't interesting work, thus no one at google does it.
spankibalt 10mo ago
> "Immediately my heart sank. And I knew that something had changed at Google’s core. The friendly corporate giant no longer would even deign to consider cries for help from the little guy." I read that in the voice of the talking anus-mouthed beetle from Naked Lunch.
AmbroseBierce 10mo ago
Google bots decided that my parody website[0] that very clearly says "Foogle" instead of "Google" constitutes phishing and is now automatically blocked in Chrome and Firefox, despite not asking for any user input like email or password or name or anything that could slightly make it suspicious of being a phishing website, plus the sites uses unserious language like "Disunited States", it's a sad statement of their AI capabilities if a site like this gets automatically marked as "phishing", and the overall trend of abusing their power in the name of safety, a tale as old as time. [0] https://www.forbiddensearchdetected.com https://www.forbiddensearchdetected.com
- 0x073 10mo ago
  I think it's ok, that there is a warning on a parody site than looks like Google.
  - AmbroseBierce 10mo ago
    This is a full block not a warning in any conventional sense of the word, and it resembles Google but it very clearly says "Foogle" so it's not pretending to be Google, and no email or anything at all is asked from the user, so yeah it's just plain abuse of their power and very little space to argument that they are just being "overly cautious", but just like abuses by the state or the police there is always people in favor of such abuses in the name of safety.
- shakna 10mo ago
  Huh. And I can't even report a false detection. The form just errors out, in Google, Firefox. Privacy things disabled. > Something went wrong there. Try again. [0] https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_error/?tpl=mozilla&url=https:%2F%2Fwww.forbiddensearchdetected.com%2F https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_error/?t...
  - DDR0 10mo ago
    Odd, I couldn't report it as a false positive the first time either, but then I tried again with dev tools open and it worked.
qiqitori 10mo ago
IMO, file another report and if you're asked to prove your identity again, a good way to prove it would be to put a text file somewhere under your domain that re-states your claim, adding the date and time.
pseudosavant 10mo ago
I think I can speak for many who used to love Google, that they have broken our hearts many times. It went downhill after they decided that "don't be evil" was too aspirational of an ideal.
theLegionWithin 10mo ago
lol there is a very simple solution: sue them.
indymike 10mo ago
Takedown notices need to have a refundable processing fee. The fee should be refunded if the targeted publisher agrees the content shouldn't be online. If the takedown notice gets a counter notice, then the hosting provider/platform should split the fee with the targeted publisher. The problem with DMCA notices is that the party trying to takedown content has zero incentive to behave in good faith. A $10-$30 fee would provide an incredible disincentive for the worst sort of trolling and over-broad shotgun takedown notices while protecting legitimate IP holders (who would see their fee refunded almost every time)
- cortesoft 10mo ago
  > If the takedown notice gets a counter notice, then the hosting provider/platform should split the fee with the targeted publisher. A counter notice could also be faked, though. What’s to stop people pirating content to just file a counter notice?
  - indymike 10mo ago
    Counter notice means I'm ok with defending a lawsuit. There are some big costs there. The problem with the current system is there's no protection for false/bogus DMCA takedowns and those do real economic damage to legitimate content owners and creators. I've had IP protection companies file takedowns on my own code and my own artwork and that was highly disruptive to my business.
- kg 10mo ago
  This doesn't make a lot of sense. It would make the DMCA completely useless if enough people decide to pirate your work because you wouldn't be able to afford to issue the takedowns.
lovich 10mo ago
I am having a hard time emphasizing with the author when they open up with this paragraph > For years, I thought of Google as a trustworthy helper on the Web. Especially where it mattered most, removing pirated copies of my books from Google search results. After publishing a new book, I would monitor the search results and file a DMCA notice with Google whenever the inevitable pirated copies of my book were listed. Google always was very helpful in this regard, swiftly removing any pirated books asap. No hassle, no hoops, just immediate and direct relief from Google. Maybe I am in a bubble but since at least pre covid era I remember the consensus being that Google had zero support and unless you were famous or went viral with your problem on the internet, you would never get human intervention. That combined with the rest of the paragraph which seems to me like it could be summarized as "Google is trustworthy as long as my personal wallet gets fatter, and not that it hasn't, they aren't trustworthy" makes me not really care about either side in this story
cryptica 10mo ago
I keep having to repeat this. The problem is systemic. The legal concepts of 'Corporate personhood' and 'Limited liability' don't make sense. Just think about what those terms mean. Of course you cannot expect accountability in the long run. Is a corporation really a legal person? Can it go to jail as a person might? Does it need a visa to operate in a country as a person might? Will a corporation die as a person will? Sounds like it's getting all the benefits of personhood and none of the drawbacks... Our legal system literally gives more rights to non-sentient entities than it does to us humans! No wonder things are getting out of hand! What does 'Limited liability' mean? Who has to deal with the repercussions for the excess liability which may exceed beyond the limit? It's deep corruption, codified into law. Of course these corporations will get worse. They will get satanically worse. Just watch what happens internally; a decade from now, the current CEOs will look morally responsible by comparison. It's a systemic issue. Total violation of the social contract at a deep human level. Why don't we say weapons are legal persons and provide limited liability protection to the person wielding it? Then criminals could kill people and the court could pass judgement that the gun must serve 20 years in its holster while the criminal walks free... That's about as fair as what we have now. If you conceive of a corporation as a weapon. There is nothing in the law to explicitly prevent this exact scenario. The corporation could theoretically use up CEOs as a gun might use up bullets... The investors would bear no liability. There are many people in this depraved world of ours who would be willing to be a corporate bullet. People will go to jail to provide for their family. With corporations sucking the wealth out of society, it will create new levels of desperation, this will surely happen.
- pluralmonad 10mo ago
  Limiting human liability through coercion has always been the problem. I signed no contract with any LLC founder to limit their personally liability. Yet somehow some bureaucrat hundreds of miles away signed for me and now none of us can hold people accountable for their actions without armed men preventing it. Just look at what companies like Dupont, Monsanto, Bayer have done to entire towns. Limited liability is the problem. Uncle Sam is the worst uncle.
shevy-java 10mo ago
> For years, I thought of Google as a trustworthy helper on the Web. Thankfully I found out that Google has not been trustworthy for many years, even before they removed their old corporate motto "don't do evil" and transitioned into pure Evilness. People need to realise that what is today called Google, has absolutely nothing to do with the initial stage when Google grew, from small to medium sized company. Now it is a mega-mega corporation and got not only lazy, but is no longer a tech-company. It is an ad-company now and this shows everywhere. For instance, when it decided to ruin google search - that makes sense when you control the evolution of the web e. g. with the chromium ad-code base. And now AI further ruining the very little that is still left of the search engine (oddly enough, the alternative search engines also suck a LOT, so it is not only Google; the whole world wide web has gotten worse in the last ~10 years or so). > Google always was very helpful in this regard, swiftly removing any pirated books asap. No hassle, no hoops, just immediate and direct relief from Google. Now, I think Google has to be removed from this planet - however had, at the same time I also believe in universal access to information for every individual on this planet, at all times, without any restriction. I absolutely understand that this opinion puts me at odds with the "we must control what others can do digitally" but I also could not care any less. So I actually have an orthogonal opinion here - there should not be any censorship or restriction in this regard. Again, I absolutely understand the other side of the argument; I just do not share it in any way. And as a consequence, I actually think search engines should give all humans access to such information at all times. You can see this philosophy elsewhere too - wikipedia, for instance, open access in science rather than Elsevier forcing people to pay twice for publicly funded research data or the internet digital archive preserving data. And many more examples. Or the right to repair movement. Or the core idea of the GPL (I personally prefer BSD/MIT style, but I absolutely understand why e. g. the linux kernel has been a better success model due to the GPL primarily). > Instead of simply de-indexing the search result, like they do for so many other items, Google refused to acknowledge that I was the author of the book. That is unfortunate - but I still think the public has a right to digital data. I assume his primary concern is renumeration; I am absolutely not at all saying that renumeration should not happen, mind you. We could consider this globally in a different way. States could help enable fair renumeration, for instance. Open source should also be co-funded by states (again, I leave the details here; my point is that I pursue a different philosophy model here). The renumeration discussion is separate here from the author's wish that Google should censor information. I believe search engines should NOT censor information. I actually call it betrayal when search engines censor information. Google here, by censoring, creates a fake-world wide web, an illusion. I am not interested in lies told by Google; I want uncensored information and uncensored results. Again, it is a different philosophy. Having said that, the Google responds reads like pure automation, probably via crap AI. But just as I wrote before - I believe Google needs to be retired from this planet. It does too much Evil and causes too much frustration among people in general. > Where was the friendly Google from days past? Well - we could debate whether Google was ever friendly. But, totally aside from this, the Google today is not the Google that used to exist. It has changed dramatically. It is no longer Google. > At this point, I was feeling ignored and betrayed by Google, who for many years proved a trusted ally. I hope he learned a lesson there. Do not trust Google or Amazon or Apple etc... > Immediately my heart sank. And I knew that something had changed at Google’s core. The friendly corporate giant no longer would even deign to consider cries for help from the little guy. The little guy being me, the little guy with a broken heart. I am glad he learned the lesson: do not trust Google. And help all people who want to see real change. The biggest issue I have with Google is that they control the world wide web via chrome. Almost all browser in use depend on Google here. That is very bad.
zaps 10mo ago
I knew it was you, Google
glenstein 10mo ago
Google's final email seems to abandon any reference to a dispute of identity. Which is interesting since they are comfortable volunteering that as the relevant issue for the first two emails. By omitting reference to the issue they raised previously, they don't hang the procedural legitimacy on that question. If they were going to stick with their choice regardless of whether they were satisfied on the question of identity, it's puzzling why they volunteered it.
- esrauch 10mo ago
  I feel like every single reply from them was about whether he held the copyright rather than whether he had the identity he claimed, and part of what went wrong is he kept asking about how to prove his identity in the replies. I suspect what happened is they had some tag for what the content at that URL was and it wrongly was some other book, so the question wasn't his identity but the content's identity that had to be addressed. Their replies all look consistent with "the book at that URL is not the book you are claiming you own" Not that their handling was good or clear, but to my eyes both sides were talking past eachother since he kept talking about his identity and the Google side wasn't disputing his identity.
  - glenstein 10mo ago
    >I feel like every single reply from them was about whether he held the copyright rather than whether he had the identity he claimed, and part of what went wrong is he kept asking about how to prove his identity in the replies. On one level I would say that simply flatly untrue given the phrasing of the emails from Google. But on another level, there's an integral relation between the question of identity and copyright ownership anyway, which I think makes that distinction moot in this case. Regardless of what you call it, they abandon the topic by the third email. I think one of the things that makes factual issues difficult to accurately process is there's a lot of tempting paths towards minimizing cognitive dissonance by taking a both sides approach, and has the satisfying psychological effect of relieving tension while freeing one from the burden close comparisons of factual details and not feeling ugly by taking sides. There's obviously a lot of powerful psychology pulling us towards rationalizing an equilibrium. It's what makes fact-checking hard, because if you confront an asymmetry, it doesn't have the convenient relief from psychological dissonance that the brain is searching for.
nickphx 10mo ago
send them a notorized dmca claim to their legal service mailing address...?
calmbonsai 10mo ago
Yep. Anymore when dealing with any corp of <pick your threshold> size on a "legal" dispute, do not engage directly. Hire an attorney, draft a limited POA, and let them handle it. If it's not worth <pick your threshold> kilo-USD, then at least have the attorney document everything and write it off until the (remote) possibility of a class-action. Life is short. It's just not worth your time.
sharts 10mo ago
Legitimately wondering why anybody looks at working for FANGs as something to be proud of these days. All of these companies went from kinda being on the right track w/ customers to becoming completely enshittified.
worik 10mo ago
Google these days are a collection of monopolies. There are no incentives, beyond law, for them to "Do the right thing" And the law is in the hands of literal bandits in the USA right now
bitfilped 10mo ago
Welcome to be bright new future of "AI."
JuniperMesos 10mo ago
A nerdcore hip hop song I listened to when I was a teenager went: Fuck the MP-double-A Fuck the RI-double-A Fuck the suits behind the PSAs And fuck 'em all for the DMCA ("Fuck the MPAA" by Futuristic Sex Robotz, which is still online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv3GihnduUw&list=PL1CD8E178A7D3819E&index=5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv3GihnduUw&list=PL1CD8E178A...) I don't particularly like or trust Google, but I can't say I'm broken up about the fact that they refused to de-list a website who someone claimed was hosting pirated content, and told them to go after the website owner directly. False and malicious DMCA takedown requests absolutely happen, and in any case I don't think it should be the responsibility of a search engine to remove links to websites hosting content that is illegal in some jurisdiction.
- protocolture 10mo ago
  100%
IlikeKitties 10mo ago
Ha! What an Idiot! He thought he could use the channels reserved for Real^TM People^(R) with actual RIGHTS. Those Channels are for corporate use only, how dare you bother the Gigacorporation with you petty copyright request?? Cease this behavior immediately or face repercussions.
protocolture 10mo ago
This is great. They should require more evidence before processing a DMCA. Also I hope you never succeed, all information should be free. I really do hope that any index containing your books is available for all time.
Andrex 10mo ago
"Damned if you do, damned if you don't."
RagnarD 10mo ago
I guess I've seen enough over the years that my thought is: It's Google - of course they suck. It's practically their definining characteristic. This is no surprise.
CobrastanJorji 10mo ago
Seems odd that Google would straight up ignore a legitimate-looking DMCA takedown request. The reason these companies are so takedown-happy is that there are potentially significant consequences to ignoring them. Ignoring a takedown request potentially means that Google loses its safe harbor protection for your content: you could potentially sue Google instead of the pirates for copyright violation. That doesn't mean you have a GOOD case, but it's certainly a bad standard plan for Google. That makes me think they're doing something stupid by accident and/or via machine learning instead, presumably because they need to filter through a massive pile of completely fake DMCA takedown requests.
kazinator 10mo ago
> For years, I thought of Google as a trustworthy helper on the Web. Me too! Specifically the years, oh, maybe 1998 to 2005? Ish?
BrenBarn 10mo ago
Large for-profit corporations will never be the friend of any human being.
- burnt-resistor 10mo ago
  Worker-owned co-ops are more stable, fairer arrangements for workers and users.
donkeylazy456 10mo ago
unfiltered NSFW ads, false game ads and false DMCA takedowns but legitimate DMCA inquery rejected. just lol.
zobzu 10mo ago
google has changed when they started firing everyone to replace them by "offshore", around 2022. you're getting human replies from people who do not give a crap. culture isnt equal.
- laughing_snyder 10mo ago
  I would be surprised if any human at Google had anything to do with handling this case. This entire conversation was with an AI bot.
osakasake 10mo ago
Google’s lack of support is a directly correlated to their monopoly. They are able to not pay for proper support staff because they don’t have any competition. They should be regulated to spend a certain portion of their revenues on support given how critical they are to people’s lives. You can’t rake in hundreds of billions while being a monopoly and then claim you can’t afford proper amount of support staff.
- littlestymaar 10mo ago
  Stop obsessing about the illusory magical power of competition, many companies operating on very competitive markets have the same kind of practices. It doesn't matter if there's competition at the customer acquisition stage, as long as there's some form of customer lock-in the corporation is going to abuse them somehow. More most markets have some kind of natural lock-in, and even in markets that don't companies without some kind of barrier to exit never scale in the first place, and that's why we must face this kind of bullshit pretty much everywhere even from companies operating in competitive markets.
CalChris 10mo ago
I think the author was dealing with an AI agent. That’s not absolving Google, far from it. But from the first response to the last, there was no indication a human was involved. Moreover, like Facebook Marketplace and fraud, this is the future of corporate managed markets.
emsign 10mo ago
"Stop there, human! Proof you are human, human!"
tsoukase 10mo ago
I would immediately file a lawsuit against Google. You have all the documents and will win. Before anything is processed they will return to you with a big sorry/compensation. They are the thiefs.
chakintosh 10mo ago
The author is a bit naive for thinking Google even cares. It's the same company (among others) who used copyrighted material to train their LLM.
- alex_duf 10mo ago
  Starting his post by "I hate corporations and Google is yet another disgusting example of it" is a great way to have no issue resolution. Assuming good intention (at least in writing) may help if this post gets traction.
RobotToaster 10mo ago
DMCAing Google has always seemed a bit pointless. If I'm ever looking for a pirate copy of something I automatically scroll to the bottom of the page where you can read the DMCA complaints that helpfully compile a list of pirate copies.
- noname120 10mo ago
  Everything is redacted by default. You can obtain the full DMCA reports but it requires you to fill in your email on each of them and request them. It’s not impossible but definitely a little more involved than just “read[ing] the DMCA complaints”
  - RobotToaster 10mo ago
    Only the exact URI is redacted, the domain isn't. Knowing that a book is on a specific site usually makes locating it trivial.
dvfjsdhgfv 10mo ago
Google aside, it's one of the reasons some publishers don't publish digital versions at all. Because once the cat is out of the bag, the damage is done, basically impossible to undo. Whereas with a physucal copy the pirate has to take the pain to scan the book and usually they're too lazy to do that.
drdrek 10mo ago
There was never a better business than the internet tollbooth google had. The crawlers and search basically costed nothing and made billions in advertisements. Everything else was a desperate effort to use the huge amounts of money the money printer was spewing fast enough, So they had a lot of "fat" to do things that did not directly relate to the business. Now with Youtube and AI its going to be great businesses, but not 99% profitability great. Nothing is 99% profitability great like search used to be. You will see Google stock go up and down in the short term, but the fate is already sealed. Sooner or later they will be welcomed to the club of Intel and IBM.
alangibson 10mo ago
I'd look at this as a new income stream. Failing to honor a DMCA request means Google is no longer in the safe harbor. It's time to find a copyright lawyer that will work on contingency. Document your communication and take screenshots of pirate links every day.
pwdisswordfishy 10mo ago
Did this guy think corporations have feelings?
burnt-resistor 10mo ago
Google's Youtube enables lawfare as megacorps and scammers issue DMCA complaints against fair use clips and false content ID claims against truly original works. Fuck Google.
notorious_pgb 10mo ago
I don't mean to be rude, but what could possibly have given anyone with eyes and ears a positive -- friendly, even -- impression of Google?
MollyRealized 10mo ago
IANAL, IANYL, and I am not his lawyer. I did work with publishing companies to get my grandmother's books freed up for CC0/public domain, but I'm at most a talented layman (and legal administrative assistant, but not in IP). As far as I can understand from what the blog's author reproduced, it looks as if the problem was that his DMCA requests may have not been compliant. Go to [1] and do a Ctrl-F downward for "Elements of Notification." If I were filing a DMCA request with Google, I would do it as follows, matching the requirements laid out for a valid DMCA notice. The below should not be considered legal advice or the practice of law. [1] - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 ~~~~ Both via Google's webform and as an e-mail to: dmca-agent@google.com To whom it may concern: This is a notification of claimed infringement under 17 USC § 512(c)(3), for purposes of 17 USC § 512(d)(3). To maintain the limitation on liability under § 512(d), upon receipt you must respond expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the reference(s) or link(s) identified below. If you believe that the material below is insufficient for the requirements of § 512(c)(3)(A), I ask you to specify precisely what you feel is absent from this notice yet necessary to meet those requirements. REQUIREMENT PER § 512(c)(3)(A)(ii) I identify the copyrighted work as: - Title: [FULL TITLE] - Author: [AUTHOR] - Copyright owner: [YOUR NAME / ENTITY] - First publication date: [MONTH DAY, YEAR] - ISBN/ISSN (if any): [NUMBER] - U.S. Copyright Office registration no. (if any): [TX/VA/PA-…] - An authorized copy is available from [PUBLISHER] at [BOOK PAGE ON PUBLISHER WEBSITE]. - The infringing material reproduces the work in full. REQUIREMENT PER § 512(c)(3)(A)(iii) I identify both (1) the infringing material and (2) the specific reference(s)/link(s) on Google that must be removed or disabled as follows: A. Infringing material (destination URL(s)): 1. [FULL INFRINGING URL 1] 2. [FULL INFRINGING URL 2] (if the same file is reachable via more than one URL, list each exact variant you can find, including http/https, with/without "www", trailing slash, and direct PDF/EPUB links) B. Specific Google reference(s)/link(s) to remove/disable (information-location results): 1. Google Search results page URL where the reference appears: [PASTE THE FULL GOOGLE SEARCH URL SHOWING THE RESULT] (Example format: https://www.google.com/search?q=…&… https://www.google.com/search?q=…&… ) a. Google Surface: Google Search (web results) at google.com b. Locale: United States / English 2. The specific result on that page that must be removed/disabled: – Result position: [e.g., "Result #3 on the first page"] – Result title as displayed: "[TITLE SHOWN IN RESULTS]" – Displayed URL as shown: "[DISPLAYED URL]" – Snippet text (first ~15–25 words as displayed): "[SNIPPET]" – Target/destination URL that result resolves to when clicked: [INFRINGING URL] – If available, the Google redirect URL for the result (copied via "Copy link address"): [PASTE THE https://www.google.com/url?… https://www.google.com/url?… LINK] 3. Any Google-served cached/stored version of the same infringing material (if present): – Cache URL: [PASTE webcache.googleusercontent.com … URL] (or: "The ‘Cached’ link (if shown) for the above result.") 4. When observed: [DATE + TIME, TIME ZONE] 5. Screenshot attached showing the result described above (due to webform limitations, attached on e-mail message only). REQUIREMENT PER § 512(c)(3)(A)(iv) I am the complaining party. My name is [NAME]. My postal address is [POSTAL ADDRESS]. My telephone number is [TELEPHONE NUMBER]. My e-mail address is [E-MAIL ADDRESS]. [Alternately, use business contact information, or your agent's contact information.] Please redact this information in any public copy of this notice. REQUIREMENT PER § 512(c)(3)(A)(v) I have a good faith belief that use of this material in the manner I am complaining of is not authorized by the copyright owner (myself), any agent that might have the right to authorize such use (there is none), nor the law. REQUIREMENT PER § 512(c)(3)(A)(vi) By my electronic signature below (satisfying § 512(c)(3)(A)(i)), under penalty of perjury, I certify that the information I provide above is accurate, and further certify that as the owner of an exclusive right I allege is infringed, I am authorized to act on my own behalf. /s/ NAME
axiomHalo 10mo ago
Sorry to hear that might be able to help you with all that I got some pretty good evidence on on these tech companies I discovered something that nobody really has this figured out and then I believe me I've got enough evidence to shut these babies down I'm the Creator axiom Halo Crystal I created the unbreakable Master blueprint and it was launched on November 18th and 19th and ever since I got you know started it and I got it but anyway if you're interested give me you know give me a holler I'm going to probably go and explosive today and maybe we can start a class action lawsuit these companies have been we got a lot of money coming basically for what they've done you know doing the scraping algorithm scraping of and pinging of illegal pinging of everybody's and harvesting their you know trade secrets and ideas and all that yeah well I got all the evidence we need I really want to get a class action I'm talking about money like in the money that they basically doesn't even exist we could own this country hopefully maybe we could get together and start something thank you

542 points by ingve 10mo ago

Sadly, I think your only option is to follow up with legal action against Google. On the positive side, I expect Google will react quickly to any legal action as this puts them at risk of losing safe harbor protections.

mlyle 10mo ago
They already lost safe harbor by declining to remove the content.
- riskable 10mo ago
  The problem is that Google isn't hosting the content. They're merely linking to it. There's no content to "take down." I don't think there's standing to sue. Linking to pirated content isn't illegal. They could be found guilty of contributory infringement but that's a tough case since the legal requirement is that Google needs to know for sure that it's pirated (which is impossible at scale).
  - cogman10 10mo ago
    > Google needs to know for sure that it's pirated (which is impossible at scale). Google being informed by the copyright holder that it's for sure pirated is pretty good evidence that they know it's pirated. The fact that this doesn't scale isn't really a legal defense.
    - jonny_eh 10mo ago
      And they certainly have such a mechanism in place, indicating that they intend to take this kind of action. They're just failing to.
    - johncolanduoni 10mo ago
      It’s not good evidence, because people issue false DMCA takedowns all the time. Which I presume they would point out in court.
      - cogman10 10mo ago
        Right, and the counter to that is "I tried to prove I was the copyright owner and they refused to comply".
      - josh_p 10mo ago
        In this case, it isn’t a false claim. The author only needs to show up to court with a driver’s license to prove their identity. The judge would rule in favor of the author the same day if someone from Google actually bothered to show up. A scammer isn’t going to court. Don’t try to solve for that.
  - moralestapia 10mo ago
    >which is impossible at scale Lol, hail corporate! It's definitely possible, you just got hand-waved on that.
    - riskable 10mo ago
      Until there's a database of all the copyrighted works in the world that anyone can access—along with their licenses—it is absolutely not possible to know for certain if something is violating copyright. Simple example: Disney opens up a new website that has some of their obvious content on it. How does Google know that Disney owns that website and has authorized its use? If they get a takedown notice, how do they know the sender owns the content? There's no formal verification system that exists for such things. It's all based on an honor system that is easy for bad actors to abuse (which is probably why Google changed how they do things). The entirety of copyrighted law has failed. It isn't working as intended and hasn't for a long time now. Anyone who understands how easy it is to copy bits should know that the original intent of copyright can't work anymore. We need something new to replace it.
      - moralestapia 10mo ago
        OP got in touch with one (or many) humans on Google. Humans then decided not to act on the DCMA request. No need for the "doesn't scale" argument, whatever system they have in place is already good enough to process OP's inquire. The problematic bit is what they decided to do once they had all the information in their hands. I do, however, think this is just a mishandled situation and Google will correct, particularly after being featured on the HN wall of shame.
      - visarga 10mo ago
        > Anyone who understands how easy it is to copy bits should know that the original intent of copyright can't work anymore. AI makes this even more stringent. You cannot protect the "vibe" of your works, AI can replicate it in seconds. If you make "vibe infringement" the new rule, then creativity becomes legally risky. A catch 22. In 1930 judge Hand said in relation to Nichols v. Universal Pictures: > Upon any work...a great number of patterns of increasing generality will fit equally well. At the one end is the most concrete possible expression...at the other, a title...Nobody has ever been able to fix that boundary, and nobody ever can...As respects play, plagiarism may be found in the 'sequence of events'...this trivial points of expression come to be included. And since then a litany of judges and tests expanded the notion of infringement towards vibes and away from expression: - Hand's Abstractions / The "Patterns" Test (Nichols v. Universal Pictures) - Total Concept and Feel (Roth Greeting Cards v. United Card Co.) - The Krofft Test / Extrinsic and Intrinsic Analysis - Sequence, Structure, and Organization (Whelan Associates v. Jaslow Dental Laboratory) - Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison (AFC) Test (Computer Associates v. Altai) The trend has been to make infringement more and more abstract over time, but this makes testing it an impossible burden. How do you ensure you are not infringing any protected abstraction on any level in any prior work? Due diligence has become too difficult now.
  - tjpnz 10mo ago
    >which is impossible at scale Either they solve it or they should give op the benefit of the doubt. Arguing that x or y isn't possible at scale doesn't mean you get to break the law.
    - jtbayly 10mo ago
      No they shouldn’t give anybody the benefit of the doubt when that person claims copyright infringement! Not unless you want internet randos to be able to take down any YouTube channel they want for “copyright infringement.”
      - alright2565 10mo ago
        As far as I can tell, requiring valid ID would lose a provider safe harbor protection as it is not one of the required elements: (3) Elements of notification.- (A) To be effective under this subsection, a notification of claimed infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated agent of a service provider that includes substantially the following: (i) A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. (ii) Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site. (iii) Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material. (iv) Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted. (v) A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. (vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
      - kelnos 10mo ago
        I'll be the first to shout from the rooftops that the DMCA is in general a bad law, but according to that law, if the takedown notice contains the required verbiage, then they are required by law to give it the benefit of the doubt (that is, if they want to keep their lack of liability). > Not unless you want internet randos to be able to take down any YouTube channel they want for “copyright infringement.” This is why it's a bad law! But it is the law.
  - ipython 10mo ago
    > which is impossible at scale I love how this is the defense of all these tech companies. "I'm sorry, your honor, we are just a poor multi-trillion dollar company... there's just no way for us to control anything, because we're just too big..."

mlyle 10mo ago

I've got mixed feelings about the DMCA, but its one redeeming value is that it's available to everyone. Deciding to make it readily accessible to large publishing interests but giving a random author the side-eye is not so great.

shevy-java 10mo ago
> but its one redeeming value is that it's available to everyone Well - the legal system favours those with more money, so basically it is corporate-law that is in effect there. And Google has enough money to burn and protect against small authors.

lenerdenator 10mo ago

My guess is, there were once more humans in the loop for the thing that the author is referring to. Since humans cost more than GenAI, GenAI replaced some or all of those humans. Never think of any sort of for-profit enterprise as anything other than a for-profit enterprise, and you'll never be heartbroken by one. Angered? Made to think you're living in a dystopia? Enticed into an absurdist world view? Absolutely. But you won't be heartbroken.

ajaimk 10mo ago
Feel like it went the opposite direction. Used to be automated before and now a support agent (low skilled) is handling it

ladidahh 10mo ago

My immediate guess after reading this was that this isn't a change at Google but a name issue. Jeff Star getting confused with Jeffree Star (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffree_Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffree_Star). He's a lightening rod for controversy, and has been in the middle of a controversial public persona shift that probably has caused an uptick in all kinds of requests to google.

junon 10mo ago
Jeffree Star hasn't been relevant for a while, I'd imagine this isn't it, but something else entirely changing at Google, as the author claims.
- michaelbuckbee 10mo ago
  I had an odd experience that rhymes with this, where I was trying to figure out where I had seen the actress Julie Dreyfus (from Kill Bill), whose Google results are utterly crushed by Julia Dreyfus (of Seinfeld and Veep fame) despite having demonstrably different spellings to their names...maybe it was that simple.
- ladidahh 10mo ago
  he has recently been clawing at relevancy with anti-trans talking points, which is specifically why I think his name would be something google would want to stay away

amelius 10mo ago

Adding a PGP signature when releasing content prevents situations like this.

throwaway150 10mo ago
With the way these multi-trillion dollar companies operate today and how the support staff act like corporate drones, I have no hope that attaching PGP signatures would lead to any different outcome. The response from the support would probably be going to like, "PGP what?"
paxys 10mo ago
How does a PGP signature help? The person who stole your work can trivially strip your signature and add their own.
- amelius 10mo ago
  If every copy in circulation has your signature on the copyright page ... (This proves that you, the holder of the private key, are the author, not someone who goes by the same name) Anyway, if you still think this won't help you can use a notary service, yes.
recursivecaveat 10mo ago
I don't think any more human interaction was involved than a very bored and harried call center employee clicking 'confirm' on a bot-generated response here. You can have all the cryptographic proof you want, but you're screaming into the void.

dekhn 10mo ago

hire a lawyer, they know how to communicate with these teams. Trying to deal with Google Customer service when you are a technologically savvy and logical individual won't get far: GOogle's default attitude towards anybody who contacts them is that they are a scammer.

QuercusMax 10mo ago
Even lawyers who own YouTube channels have problems. LegalEagle talked about their bad experience here: https://youtu.be/PEA0JzhpzPU https://youtu.be/PEA0JzhpzPU
- dekhn 10mo ago
  It looks like he got the problem resolved by providing a spreadsheet with copyright violations and his original sources. THink of Google like how Cantrill described Ellison: You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.
  - faidit 10mo ago
    Good analogy, I would go further and say a lawnmower has more humanity than an Ellison.

paxys 10mo ago

False DMCA takedown requests have always been a problem, and have massively surged in the last few years when more of the general public figured out the mechanics and started treating it as a big downvote button for the internet. This is also being done adversarially at a large scale, for example to suppress websites or YouTube videos containing certain viewpoints or to remove competition. So regardless of how Google has treated these requests in the past, they are absolutely right to want to verify that you actually are the content owner before taking further action. As for how to do it - I don't see why it is hard for you to come up with something that proves ownership. Do your books have a publisher? Do you have a contract with the publisher? Or just a letter from someone at the firm confirming your work? Have you registered the work with the copyright office? Do you have proof of publishing on online portals? You aren't helping yourself or anyone else by anthropomorphising Google. It is not your friend who can "break your heart", or a "trustworthy helper on the Web", or a "trusted ally", but a large bureaucratic corporation. Treat it like the machine it is and you will get the results you want.

bigstrat2003 10mo ago
> As for how to do it - I don't see why it is hard for you to come up with something that proves ownership. It is pretty hard to come up with proof of ownership when Google refuses to tell you what forms of proof they will find acceptable. When I go to the DMV and need to prove my residence, the DMV clearly states what forms are acceptable proof. Google should do the same, especially when they are asked what forms of proof are acceptable. Instead they gave this guy the runaround and ignored his question on how to prove ownership.
- paxys 10mo ago
  There is no passport or social security number or mailing address for the internet. Google can't tell you a definite proof they will accept because none exists, especially since copyright can be claimed on something as trivial as a line of text or a certain combination of bytes. It'll always be a judgement call on Google's part, and such a system will never be 100% accurate in either direction. If you want immediate and effective results then pay a lawyer.

Analemma_ 10mo ago

Isn't this what people are constantly asking for? Every time the topic of YouTube copyright strikes comes up, people angrily demand that Google verify that the person making the request actually has the right to do so. There's no way to design such a system that has zero false positives and zero false negatives; if you do no verification whatsoever you'll get tons of false positives, now it seems like Google has added a small amount of verification, at least sometimes, so now there are some false negatives.

junon 10mo ago
No, this isn't what anyone is asking for. Also, point to where Google did any verification? This seems like more than a false negative. Author clearly stated they were willing to jump through whatever necessary hoops. Google didn't seem to have the hoops to jump through.
wvenable 10mo ago
One can probably assume that this is the result of far too many illegitimate take down requests. Google almost certainly doesn't want to be in the business of arbitrating link take down requests.
- pamcake 10mo ago
  They have persistently architected and engineered the system to put and keep themselves in that position.
  - wvenable 10mo ago
    They have links to things, they did take down requests, take down requests got abused, now they don't do take down requests (as much). What does engineering have to do with that?

QuercusMax 10mo ago

The LegalEagle channel on YouTube had a similarly bad interaction when trying to get channels copying their videos taken down: https://youtu.be/PEA0JzhpzPU https://youtu.be/PEA0JzhpzPU Google needs to fix this, it's really bad.

verdverm 10mo ago
Not bad enough for the profits and investors to care, perhaps even work against
lifetimerubyist 10mo ago
they won't, they don't care in the slightest
- baby_souffle 10mo ago
  At least legal eagle has nebula as a fall back. Many other creators don't have a platform with any word near the reach YouTube has... And until that changes, there's almost no incentive for YouTube to change.
maximinus_thrax 10mo ago
> Google needs to fix this, it's really bad. Do they really? It seems the incentives are aligned so that they continue making the big bucks regardless of 'petty grievances' such as these..

gowld 10mo ago

Is the copyright registered? https://www.copyright.gov/registration https://www.copyright.gov/registration While copyright registration is not legally required for copyright protection, it is the practical way to create usable evidence that the work is coprighted by you. Without it, challenging a copyright infringer is a more arduous legal process. Also, the author's website, and the books themselves claims that "Perishable Press" is the copyright holder, not "Jeff Starr". (Excepting the ones that don't state any copyright holder.) https://books.perishablepress.com/downloads/digging-into-wordpress/ https://books.perishablepress.com/downloads/digging-into-wor... In legal matters, clear and accurate communication is essential.

pryelluw 10mo ago

Sounds like LLM powered support. This is the sort of run around you can program into such systems.

Alex_L_Wood 10mo ago
I am also betting on this. Google used their dumb bots in support since time immemorial, but now these dumb bots are supercharged by LLMs. Except they are still as dumb as before. I still remember trying to get my Google Play account unbanned in 2014 after I clicked on my own ad in the app once to test that it’s working. Lovely times. Got the account back, but not due to my actions - their dumb bots masquerading as humans were giving me the runaround, and then I just randomly got my account back.

truelson 10mo ago

I'm going to channel a little bit of @patio11 . First, worth reading this on how he deals with credit agencies and debt collectors: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-reports/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r... . There's gold in here for dealing with big globo-corp and how to get their attention. Ask Google for a certified mail address so you can send them the timeline of events that occurred. This is the shibboleth that lets them know you mean business and that by not responding, they may be facing legal action. DO NOT THREATEN or mention legal action. The managerial class doesn't act that way. Just signal you are building a case against them. Start with getting that certified mailing address... you may be surprised how they respond after just that request. If they don't respond, keep following up. Send them a timeline of events, proof of ownership even if they do not ask you what you need to prove ownership. Make it clear what this is costing you. But here's the thing, EVERY TIME I HAVE ASKED FOR A CERTIFIED MAIL ADDRESS, the globocorp gave me what i wanted, and I never had to follow up. Every time. They don't want to deal with actual legal action from "people who know what they are doing." It's a shibboleth. Like "Baa-ram-ewe." Use it wisely and honestly.

shermantanktop 10mo ago
Wow, that's a great read. Bookmarking and sending to others. He points out how expressing all the natural human reactions - anger, fear, supplication, bargaining - tell the institution that you are a vulnerable, manipulable moron. The implacable robot that knows the process but doesn't care is what gets results.
lelanthran 10mo ago
Okay, what is the next step if you ask for a certified mailing address/summons delivery and they repeatedly ignore you? It seems to me that without know that, you're still making empty threats, only doing it passive aggressively.
- kelnos 10mo ago
  You sue them. Depending on the circumstances, you may be able to do so in small claims court, which is pretty inexpensive to do. Google cannot bring their usual insane level of legal resources to bear in this environment, and you will most likely win.

Hnrobert42 10mo ago

Who is this friendly corporate giant the author keeps referring to? He uses that phrase multiple times. Is he sucking up? Is it a reference to something?

tomcam 10mo ago
Because of this I read the article twice and can't determine whether it's some kind of troll. Can anyone possibly think of Google this way in 2026? Asking sincerely.
ajkjk 10mo ago
the whole thing is written very bizarrely, even the title
j1elo 10mo ago
He's applying kind emotions to his customer relationship with a company, because that gives him an emotional leverage from which to feel attacked and be right in the mind of the reader. Not that he needed to do any of this. He wouldn't be a tiny bit less right if the text was a sterile and objetive list of facts about what happened.
- golly_ned 10mo ago
  He's contrasting Google's childishly 'friendly' image with its reality. It's rhetoric. You're making it about manipulation. Should the world consist of bloodless lists of facts without significance or commentary?
  - j1elo 10mo ago
    Oh, not at all. I appreciate the rethoric, although it didn't work with me because I've never experienced Google as childish or even amicable. So the author's excessive predisposition to think of Google as a marvelous friend was a bit jarring for me (and that's why I personally felt the tone a bit on the side of emotional manipulation). But, to each their own. Expressing commentary and emotions is good, I do prefer it to cold facts all the time :-)

WesolyKubeczek 10mo ago

Note that if the claimant is a big player, Google is happy to only clarify how high is it supposed to jump. If they file a claim usurping your copyright, you can do diddly about it most of the time. But if little people are trying to assert their rights, no, no can do, you can't prove that you are you. And why should you, one of the little people, be able to prove anything at all? If a big player sues, Google is going to have to pay a staggering amount of money, thus they obey. If you sue, its lawyers will drain you financially by protracting everything they can, so you don't actually sue. If they take your claim, the content they take down stops bringing the sweet advertising revenue. And thus the computer sayeth Nay.

charcircuit 10mo ago

>simply check my account via Google Search Console, where I have verified that I am the owner for each of the above sites I doubt this is possible for the support agent to do.

arcfour 10mo ago
Well then perhaps they could respond with details on what they would like him to do instead.
- FridgeSeal 10mo ago
  Thy need him to prove he’s the rights holder, what’s not clear about that?? /s

drnick1 10mo ago

> Especially where it mattered most, removing pirated copies of my books from Google search results. Make your books available for free, and you won't have this problem. You can't expect people to pay for something that literally costs nothing once it has been created. You may also sell paper versions. Some people like myself enjoy reading paper better and will pay for hard copy if they like the book enough or expect to refer to it often.

bryanrasmussen 10mo ago
>You can't expect people to pay for something that literally costs nothing once it has been created. See these carrots! it doesn't cost anything to create them now, because they've already been created haven't they! Once the oil has been extracted from the ground, and transported to the gas station and put in the tank, it doesn't cost anything to pump it!! Why are we paying for this stuff again!?!? You can't expect people to pay for code you know, it doesn't cost anything!
- Kon5ole 10mo ago
  I get your reaction, authors should of course be paid, but GP has a point. If the same payment model that is applied to books and music were applied to carrots, it would be illegal to plant carrots. If you think about it like that it's obviously wrong. The carrots in your example would be similar to the printed books the GP mentioned, not the text itself.
  - bryanrasmussen 10mo ago
    either that or it would be illegal to pick carrots from farms you didn't own, depending on how you wanted to construct the analogy. Of course I can agree that there are differences between these things, but the average writer earns less than the average programmer, and for this reason I often feel it is somewhat gauche that many programmers seem offended by how writers earn money and want it stopped, without any good suggestion as to how they should earn money otherwise. It's like when rich people complain that janitors get food stamps to survive, it motivates my sarcasm gland.

phoronixrly 10mo ago

Does this mean an end to DMCA abuse? If I had to choose I would prefer to have the odd unprotected copyright than having fair use disregarded on the regular.

IsTom 10mo ago
Only for the small guy. Big guys always get their copyrights protected.

gorbachev 10mo ago

So not only do they process illegitimate copyright strikes / DMCA takedowns, but they also don't process legitimate ones. Google is broken to the very core. This is what happens with a company that tries to minimize costs of support to zero.

hsuduebc2 10mo ago
The times when google was the good guy of the internet is over. Now it's basically Microsoft with much higher product qualities.
- bschwindHN 10mo ago
  > Now it's basically Microsoft with much higher product qualities. At first I thought you meant "Now, [the good guy of the internet] is basically Microsoft with much higher product qualities." I see what you meant now, in that google is reaching microslop levels of shittiness with slightly shinier shit.
  - hsuduebc2 10mo ago
    Oh, damn. That’s the last way I’d want it to be interpreted. :D
reactordev 10mo ago
Google has only cared about one thing for the last decade, being number 1. They were willing to sell their soul to beat meta and they’ll sell their skin to beat OpenAI.
ycombinary 10mo ago
[dead]
jonas21 10mo ago
You're getting at the crux of the issue: it's very hard to distinguish legitimate DMCA takedown requests submitted by individuals from illegitimate ones, and occasionally, they're going to make mistakes. Anything that the author said in his emails could have just as easily been said by someone else who was trying to take down the content illegitimately. At the end of the day, the best option is to use an attorney who knows the right procedures and would also run the risk of professional consequences if they submitted false claims.

aucisson_masque 10mo ago

Google support is a mess. This company should not exist in its current state, I can’t believe how the competition hasn’t already catch up with their indexing solution.

renewiltord 10mo ago

Every system at scale has some error rate.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

fenwick67 10mo ago

So, what recourse do you have if they fail to act on a DMCA request? Does a C&D get their attention?

reactordev 10mo ago

Welcome to YouTube and Musicians… This has been going on for decades on YouTube. Fair use? DMCA. Cover song? DMCA. 3 second clip of the intro drone? DMCA. You playing it live on an instrument, DMCA. Their copyright system is only there to do one thing, enrich the corporations they work with.

luqtas 10mo ago

after reading the very first thing i thought was: would be comical if the OP's blog were about AI i was wrong but i could find on the 1° page this [0]... which seem a pretty hypocrite act to consider a technology that violates copyright at its core. "you eat what you plant" [0] https://perishablepress.com/diving-into-ai/ https://perishablepress.com/diving-into-ai/

analogpixel 10mo ago

Processing DMCA take down requests isn't interesting work, thus no one at google does it.

spankibalt 10mo ago

> "Immediately my heart sank. And I knew that something had changed at Google’s core. The friendly corporate giant no longer would even deign to consider cries for help from the little guy." I read that in the voice of the talking anus-mouthed beetle from Naked Lunch.

AmbroseBierce 10mo ago

Google bots decided that my parody website[0] that very clearly says "Foogle" instead of "Google" constitutes phishing and is now automatically blocked in Chrome and Firefox, despite not asking for any user input like email or password or name or anything that could slightly make it suspicious of being a phishing website, plus the sites uses unserious language like "Disunited States", it's a sad statement of their AI capabilities if a site like this gets automatically marked as "phishing", and the overall trend of abusing their power in the name of safety, a tale as old as time. [0] https://www.forbiddensearchdetected.com https://www.forbiddensearchdetected.com

0x073 10mo ago
I think it's ok, that there is a warning on a parody site than looks like Google.
- AmbroseBierce 10mo ago
  This is a full block not a warning in any conventional sense of the word, and it resembles Google but it very clearly says "Foogle" so it's not pretending to be Google, and no email or anything at all is asked from the user, so yeah it's just plain abuse of their power and very little space to argument that they are just being "overly cautious", but just like abuses by the state or the police there is always people in favor of such abuses in the name of safety.
shakna 10mo ago
Huh. And I can't even report a false detection. The form just errors out, in Google, Firefox. Privacy things disabled. > Something went wrong there. Try again. [0] https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_error/?tpl=mozilla&url=https:%2F%2Fwww.forbiddensearchdetected.com%2F https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_error/?t...
- DDR0 10mo ago
  Odd, I couldn't report it as a false positive the first time either, but then I tried again with dev tools open and it worked.

qiqitori 10mo ago

IMO, file another report and if you're asked to prove your identity again, a good way to prove it would be to put a text file somewhere under your domain that re-states your claim, adding the date and time.

pseudosavant 10mo ago

I think I can speak for many who used to love Google, that they have broken our hearts many times. It went downhill after they decided that "don't be evil" was too aspirational of an ideal.

theLegionWithin 10mo ago

lol there is a very simple solution: sue them.

indymike 10mo ago

Takedown notices need to have a refundable processing fee. The fee should be refunded if the targeted publisher agrees the content shouldn't be online. If the takedown notice gets a counter notice, then the hosting provider/platform should split the fee with the targeted publisher. The problem with DMCA notices is that the party trying to takedown content has zero incentive to behave in good faith. A $10-$30 fee would provide an incredible disincentive for the worst sort of trolling and over-broad shotgun takedown notices while protecting legitimate IP holders (who would see their fee refunded almost every time)

cortesoft 10mo ago
> If the takedown notice gets a counter notice, then the hosting provider/platform should split the fee with the targeted publisher. A counter notice could also be faked, though. What’s to stop people pirating content to just file a counter notice?
- indymike 10mo ago
  Counter notice means I'm ok with defending a lawsuit. There are some big costs there. The problem with the current system is there's no protection for false/bogus DMCA takedowns and those do real economic damage to legitimate content owners and creators. I've had IP protection companies file takedowns on my own code and my own artwork and that was highly disruptive to my business.
kg 10mo ago
This doesn't make a lot of sense. It would make the DMCA completely useless if enough people decide to pirate your work because you wouldn't be able to afford to issue the takedowns.

lovich 10mo ago

I am having a hard time emphasizing with the author when they open up with this paragraph > For years, I thought of Google as a trustworthy helper on the Web. Especially where it mattered most, removing pirated copies of my books from Google search results. After publishing a new book, I would monitor the search results and file a DMCA notice with Google whenever the inevitable pirated copies of my book were listed. Google always was very helpful in this regard, swiftly removing any pirated books asap. No hassle, no hoops, just immediate and direct relief from Google. Maybe I am in a bubble but since at least pre covid era I remember the consensus being that Google had zero support and unless you were famous or went viral with your problem on the internet, you would never get human intervention. That combined with the rest of the paragraph which seems to me like it could be summarized as "Google is trustworthy as long as my personal wallet gets fatter, and not that it hasn't, they aren't trustworthy" makes me not really care about either side in this story

cryptica 10mo ago

I keep having to repeat this. The problem is systemic. The legal concepts of 'Corporate personhood' and 'Limited liability' don't make sense. Just think about what those terms mean. Of course you cannot expect accountability in the long run. Is a corporation really a legal person? Can it go to jail as a person might? Does it need a visa to operate in a country as a person might? Will a corporation die as a person will? Sounds like it's getting all the benefits of personhood and none of the drawbacks... Our legal system literally gives more rights to non-sentient entities than it does to us humans! No wonder things are getting out of hand! What does 'Limited liability' mean? Who has to deal with the repercussions for the excess liability which may exceed beyond the limit? It's deep corruption, codified into law. Of course these corporations will get worse. They will get satanically worse. Just watch what happens internally; a decade from now, the current CEOs will look morally responsible by comparison. It's a systemic issue. Total violation of the social contract at a deep human level. Why don't we say weapons are legal persons and provide limited liability protection to the person wielding it? Then criminals could kill people and the court could pass judgement that the gun must serve 20 years in its holster while the criminal walks free... That's about as fair as what we have now. If you conceive of a corporation as a weapon. There is nothing in the law to explicitly prevent this exact scenario. The corporation could theoretically use up CEOs as a gun might use up bullets... The investors would bear no liability. There are many people in this depraved world of ours who would be willing to be a corporate bullet. People will go to jail to provide for their family. With corporations sucking the wealth out of society, it will create new levels of desperation, this will surely happen.

pluralmonad 10mo ago
Limiting human liability through coercion has always been the problem. I signed no contract with any LLC founder to limit their personally liability. Yet somehow some bureaucrat hundreds of miles away signed for me and now none of us can hold people accountable for their actions without armed men preventing it. Just look at what companies like Dupont, Monsanto, Bayer have done to entire towns. Limited liability is the problem. Uncle Sam is the worst uncle.

shevy-java 10mo ago

> For years, I thought of Google as a trustworthy helper on the Web. Thankfully I found out that Google has not been trustworthy for many years, even before they removed their old corporate motto "don't do evil" and transitioned into pure Evilness. People need to realise that what is today called Google, has absolutely nothing to do with the initial stage when Google grew, from small to medium sized company. Now it is a mega-mega corporation and got not only lazy, but is no longer a tech-company. It is an ad-company now and this shows everywhere. For instance, when it decided to ruin google search - that makes sense when you control the evolution of the web e. g. with the chromium ad-code base. And now AI further ruining the very little that is still left of the search engine (oddly enough, the alternative search engines also suck a LOT, so it is not only Google; the whole world wide web has gotten worse in the last ~10 years or so). > Google always was very helpful in this regard, swiftly removing any pirated books asap. No hassle, no hoops, just immediate and direct relief from Google. Now, I think Google has to be removed from this planet - however had, at the same time I also believe in universal access to information for every individual on this planet, at all times, without any restriction. I absolutely understand that this opinion puts me at odds with the "we must control what others can do digitally" but I also could not care any less. So I actually have an orthogonal opinion here - there should not be any censorship or restriction in this regard. Again, I absolutely understand the other side of the argument; I just do not share it in any way. And as a consequence, I actually think search engines should give all humans access to such information at all times. You can see this philosophy elsewhere too - wikipedia, for instance, open access in science rather than Elsevier forcing people to pay twice for publicly funded research data or the internet digital archive preserving data. And many more examples. Or the right to repair movement. Or the core idea of the GPL (I personally prefer BSD/MIT style, but I absolutely understand why e. g. the linux kernel has been a better success model due to the GPL primarily). > Instead of simply de-indexing the search result, like they do for so many other items, Google refused to acknowledge that I was the author of the book. That is unfortunate - but I still think the public has a right to digital data. I assume his primary concern is renumeration; I am absolutely not at all saying that renumeration should not happen, mind you. We could consider this globally in a different way. States could help enable fair renumeration, for instance. Open source should also be co-funded by states (again, I leave the details here; my point is that I pursue a different philosophy model here). The renumeration discussion is separate here from the author's wish that Google should censor information. I believe search engines should NOT censor information. I actually call it betrayal when search engines censor information. Google here, by censoring, creates a fake-world wide web, an illusion. I am not interested in lies told by Google; I want uncensored information and uncensored results. Again, it is a different philosophy. Having said that, the Google responds reads like pure automation, probably via crap AI. But just as I wrote before - I believe Google needs to be retired from this planet. It does too much Evil and causes too much frustration among people in general. > Where was the friendly Google from days past? Well - we could debate whether Google was ever friendly. But, totally aside from this, the Google today is not the Google that used to exist. It has changed dramatically. It is no longer Google. > At this point, I was feeling ignored and betrayed by Google, who for many years proved a trusted ally. I hope he learned a lesson there. Do not trust Google or Amazon or Apple etc... > Immediately my heart sank. And I knew that something had changed at Google’s core. The friendly corporate giant no longer would even deign to consider cries for help from the little guy. The little guy being me, the little guy with a broken heart. I am glad he learned the lesson: do not trust Google. And help all people who want to see real change. The biggest issue I have with Google is that they control the world wide web via chrome. Almost all browser in use depend on Google here. That is very bad.

zaps 10mo ago

I knew it was you, Google

glenstein 10mo ago

Google's final email seems to abandon any reference to a dispute of identity. Which is interesting since they are comfortable volunteering that as the relevant issue for the first two emails. By omitting reference to the issue they raised previously, they don't hang the procedural legitimacy on that question. If they were going to stick with their choice regardless of whether they were satisfied on the question of identity, it's puzzling why they volunteered it.

esrauch 10mo ago
I feel like every single reply from them was about whether he held the copyright rather than whether he had the identity he claimed, and part of what went wrong is he kept asking about how to prove his identity in the replies. I suspect what happened is they had some tag for what the content at that URL was and it wrongly was some other book, so the question wasn't his identity but the content's identity that had to be addressed. Their replies all look consistent with "the book at that URL is not the book you are claiming you own" Not that their handling was good or clear, but to my eyes both sides were talking past eachother since he kept talking about his identity and the Google side wasn't disputing his identity.
- glenstein 10mo ago
  >I feel like every single reply from them was about whether he held the copyright rather than whether he had the identity he claimed, and part of what went wrong is he kept asking about how to prove his identity in the replies. On one level I would say that simply flatly untrue given the phrasing of the emails from Google. But on another level, there's an integral relation between the question of identity and copyright ownership anyway, which I think makes that distinction moot in this case. Regardless of what you call it, they abandon the topic by the third email. I think one of the things that makes factual issues difficult to accurately process is there's a lot of tempting paths towards minimizing cognitive dissonance by taking a both sides approach, and has the satisfying psychological effect of relieving tension while freeing one from the burden close comparisons of factual details and not feeling ugly by taking sides. There's obviously a lot of powerful psychology pulling us towards rationalizing an equilibrium. It's what makes fact-checking hard, because if you confront an asymmetry, it doesn't have the convenient relief from psychological dissonance that the brain is searching for.

nickphx 10mo ago

send them a notorized dmca claim to their legal service mailing address...?

calmbonsai 10mo ago

Yep. Anymore when dealing with any corp of <pick your threshold> size on a "legal" dispute, do not engage directly. Hire an attorney, draft a limited POA, and let them handle it. If it's not worth <pick your threshold> kilo-USD, then at least have the attorney document everything and write it off until the (remote) possibility of a class-action. Life is short. It's just not worth your time.

sharts 10mo ago

Legitimately wondering why anybody looks at working for FANGs as something to be proud of these days. All of these companies went from kinda being on the right track w/ customers to becoming completely enshittified.

worik 10mo ago

Google these days are a collection of monopolies. There are no incentives, beyond law, for them to "Do the right thing" And the law is in the hands of literal bandits in the USA right now

bitfilped 10mo ago

Welcome to be bright new future of "AI."

JuniperMesos 10mo ago

A nerdcore hip hop song I listened to when I was a teenager went: Fuck the MP-double-A Fuck the RI-double-A Fuck the suits behind the PSAs And fuck 'em all for the DMCA ("Fuck the MPAA" by Futuristic Sex Robotz, which is still online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv3GihnduUw&list=PL1CD8E178A7D3819E&index=5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv3GihnduUw&list=PL1CD8E178A...) I don't particularly like or trust Google, but I can't say I'm broken up about the fact that they refused to de-list a website who someone claimed was hosting pirated content, and told them to go after the website owner directly. False and malicious DMCA takedown requests absolutely happen, and in any case I don't think it should be the responsibility of a search engine to remove links to websites hosting content that is illegal in some jurisdiction.

protocolture 10mo ago
100%

IlikeKitties 10mo ago

Ha! What an Idiot! He thought he could use the channels reserved for Real^TM People^(R) with actual RIGHTS. Those Channels are for corporate use only, how dare you bother the Gigacorporation with you petty copyright request?? Cease this behavior immediately or face repercussions.

protocolture 10mo ago

This is great. They should require more evidence before processing a DMCA. Also I hope you never succeed, all information should be free. I really do hope that any index containing your books is available for all time.

Andrex 10mo ago

"Damned if you do, damned if you don't."

RagnarD 10mo ago

I guess I've seen enough over the years that my thought is: It's Google - of course they suck. It's practically their definining characteristic. This is no surprise.

CobrastanJorji 10mo ago

Seems odd that Google would straight up ignore a legitimate-looking DMCA takedown request. The reason these companies are so takedown-happy is that there are potentially significant consequences to ignoring them. Ignoring a takedown request potentially means that Google loses its safe harbor protection for your content: you could potentially sue Google instead of the pirates for copyright violation. That doesn't mean you have a GOOD case, but it's certainly a bad standard plan for Google. That makes me think they're doing something stupid by accident and/or via machine learning instead, presumably because they need to filter through a massive pile of completely fake DMCA takedown requests.

kazinator 10mo ago

> For years, I thought of Google as a trustworthy helper on the Web. Me too! Specifically the years, oh, maybe 1998 to 2005? Ish?

BrenBarn 10mo ago

Large for-profit corporations will never be the friend of any human being.

burnt-resistor 10mo ago
Worker-owned co-ops are more stable, fairer arrangements for workers and users.

donkeylazy456 10mo ago

unfiltered NSFW ads, false game ads and false DMCA takedowns but legitimate DMCA inquery rejected. just lol.

zobzu 10mo ago

google has changed when they started firing everyone to replace them by "offshore", around 2022. you're getting human replies from people who do not give a crap. culture isnt equal.

laughing_snyder 10mo ago
I would be surprised if any human at Google had anything to do with handling this case. This entire conversation was with an AI bot.

osakasake 10mo ago

Google’s lack of support is a directly correlated to their monopoly. They are able to not pay for proper support staff because they don’t have any competition. They should be regulated to spend a certain portion of their revenues on support given how critical they are to people’s lives. You can’t rake in hundreds of billions while being a monopoly and then claim you can’t afford proper amount of support staff.

littlestymaar 10mo ago
Stop obsessing about the illusory magical power of competition, many companies operating on very competitive markets have the same kind of practices. It doesn't matter if there's competition at the customer acquisition stage, as long as there's some form of customer lock-in the corporation is going to abuse them somehow. More most markets have some kind of natural lock-in, and even in markets that don't companies without some kind of barrier to exit never scale in the first place, and that's why we must face this kind of bullshit pretty much everywhere even from companies operating in competitive markets.

CalChris 10mo ago

I think the author was dealing with an AI agent. That’s not absolving Google, far from it. But from the first response to the last, there was no indication a human was involved. Moreover, like Facebook Marketplace and fraud, this is the future of corporate managed markets.

emsign 10mo ago

"Stop there, human! Proof you are human, human!"

tsoukase 10mo ago

I would immediately file a lawsuit against Google. You have all the documents and will win. Before anything is processed they will return to you with a big sorry/compensation. They are the thiefs.

chakintosh 10mo ago

The author is a bit naive for thinking Google even cares. It's the same company (among others) who used copyrighted material to train their LLM.

alex_duf 10mo ago
Starting his post by "I hate corporations and Google is yet another disgusting example of it" is a great way to have no issue resolution. Assuming good intention (at least in writing) may help if this post gets traction.

RobotToaster 10mo ago

DMCAing Google has always seemed a bit pointless. If I'm ever looking for a pirate copy of something I automatically scroll to the bottom of the page where you can read the DMCA complaints that helpfully compile a list of pirate copies.

noname120 10mo ago
Everything is redacted by default. You can obtain the full DMCA reports but it requires you to fill in your email on each of them and request them. It’s not impossible but definitely a little more involved than just “read[ing] the DMCA complaints”
- RobotToaster 10mo ago
  Only the exact URI is redacted, the domain isn't. Knowing that a book is on a specific site usually makes locating it trivial.

dvfjsdhgfv 10mo ago

Google aside, it's one of the reasons some publishers don't publish digital versions at all. Because once the cat is out of the bag, the damage is done, basically impossible to undo. Whereas with a physucal copy the pirate has to take the pain to scan the book and usually they're too lazy to do that.

drdrek 10mo ago

There was never a better business than the internet tollbooth google had. The crawlers and search basically costed nothing and made billions in advertisements. Everything else was a desperate effort to use the huge amounts of money the money printer was spewing fast enough, So they had a lot of "fat" to do things that did not directly relate to the business. Now with Youtube and AI its going to be great businesses, but not 99% profitability great. Nothing is 99% profitability great like search used to be. You will see Google stock go up and down in the short term, but the fate is already sealed. Sooner or later they will be welcomed to the club of Intel and IBM.

alangibson 10mo ago

I'd look at this as a new income stream. Failing to honor a DMCA request means Google is no longer in the safe harbor. It's time to find a copyright lawyer that will work on contingency. Document your communication and take screenshots of pirate links every day.

pwdisswordfishy 10mo ago

Did this guy think corporations have feelings?

burnt-resistor 10mo ago

Google's Youtube enables lawfare as megacorps and scammers issue DMCA complaints against fair use clips and false content ID claims against truly original works. Fuck Google.

notorious_pgb 10mo ago

I don't mean to be rude, but what could possibly have given anyone with eyes and ears a positive -- friendly, even -- impression of Google?

MollyRealized 10mo ago

IANAL, IANYL, and I am not his lawyer. I did work with publishing companies to get my grandmother's books freed up for CC0/public domain, but I'm at most a talented layman (and legal administrative assistant, but not in IP). As far as I can understand from what the blog's author reproduced, it looks as if the problem was that his DMCA requests may have not been compliant. Go to [1] and do a Ctrl-F downward for "Elements of Notification." If I were filing a DMCA request with Google, I would do it as follows, matching the requirements laid out for a valid DMCA notice. The below should not be considered legal advice or the practice of law. [1] - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 ~~~~ Both via Google's webform and as an e-mail to: dmca-agent@google.com To whom it may concern: This is a notification of claimed infringement under 17 USC § 512(c)(3), for purposes of 17 USC § 512(d)(3). To maintain the limitation on liability under § 512(d), upon receipt you must respond expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the reference(s) or link(s) identified below. If you believe that the material below is insufficient for the requirements of § 512(c)(3)(A), I ask you to specify precisely what you feel is absent from this notice yet necessary to meet those requirements. REQUIREMENT PER § 512(c)(3)(A)(ii) I identify the copyrighted work as: - Title: [FULL TITLE] - Author: [AUTHOR] - Copyright owner: [YOUR NAME / ENTITY] - First publication date: [MONTH DAY, YEAR] - ISBN/ISSN (if any): [NUMBER] - U.S. Copyright Office registration no. (if any): [TX/VA/PA-…] - An authorized copy is available from [PUBLISHER] at [BOOK PAGE ON PUBLISHER WEBSITE]. - The infringing material reproduces the work in full. REQUIREMENT PER § 512(c)(3)(A)(iii) I identify both (1) the infringing material and (2) the specific reference(s)/link(s) on Google that must be removed or disabled as follows: A. Infringing material (destination URL(s)): 1. [FULL INFRINGING URL 1] 2. [FULL INFRINGING URL 2] (if the same file is reachable via more than one URL, list each exact variant you can find, including http/https, with/without "www", trailing slash, and direct PDF/EPUB links) B. Specific Google reference(s)/link(s) to remove/disable (information-location results): 1. Google Search results page URL where the reference appears: [PASTE THE FULL GOOGLE SEARCH URL SHOWING THE RESULT] (Example format: https://www.google.com/search?q=…&… https://www.google.com/search?q=…&… ) a. Google Surface: Google Search (web results) at google.com b. Locale: United States / English 2. The specific result on that page that must be removed/disabled: – Result position: [e.g., "Result #3 on the first page"] – Result title as displayed: "[TITLE SHOWN IN RESULTS]" – Displayed URL as shown: "[DISPLAYED URL]" – Snippet text (first ~15–25 words as displayed): "[SNIPPET]" – Target/destination URL that result resolves to when clicked: [INFRINGING URL] – If available, the Google redirect URL for the result (copied via "Copy link address"): [PASTE THE https://www.google.com/url?… https://www.google.com/url?… LINK] 3. Any Google-served cached/stored version of the same infringing material (if present): – Cache URL: [PASTE webcache.googleusercontent.com … URL] (or: "The ‘Cached’ link (if shown) for the above result.") 4. When observed: [DATE + TIME, TIME ZONE] 5. Screenshot attached showing the result described above (due to webform limitations, attached on e-mail message only). REQUIREMENT PER § 512(c)(3)(A)(iv) I am the complaining party. My name is [NAME]. My postal address is [POSTAL ADDRESS]. My telephone number is [TELEPHONE NUMBER]. My e-mail address is [E-MAIL ADDRESS]. [Alternately, use business contact information, or your agent's contact information.] Please redact this information in any public copy of this notice. REQUIREMENT PER § 512(c)(3)(A)(v) I have a good faith belief that use of this material in the manner I am complaining of is not authorized by the copyright owner (myself), any agent that might have the right to authorize such use (there is none), nor the law. REQUIREMENT PER § 512(c)(3)(A)(vi) By my electronic signature below (satisfying § 512(c)(3)(A)(i)), under penalty of perjury, I certify that the information I provide above is accurate, and further certify that as the owner of an exclusive right I allege is infringed, I am authorized to act on my own behalf. /s/ NAME

axiomHalo 10mo ago

Sorry to hear that might be able to help you with all that I got some pretty good evidence on on these tech companies I discovered something that nobody really has this figured out and then I believe me I've got enough evidence to shut these babies down I'm the Creator axiom Halo Crystal I created the unbreakable Master blueprint and it was launched on November 18th and 19th and ever since I got you know started it and I got it but anyway if you're interested give me you know give me a holler I'm going to probably go and explosive today and maybe we can start a class action lawsuit these companies have been we got a lot of money coming basically for what they've done you know doing the scraping algorithm scraping of and pinging of illegal pinging of everybody's and harvesting their you know trade secrets and ideas and all that yeah well I got all the evidence we need I really want to get a class action I'm talking about money like in the money that they basically doesn't even exist we could own this country hopefully maybe we could get together and start something thank you