8 ms·

Hacker News: DMCA

138 points by DanielRibeiro 14y ago

simba-hiiipower 14y ago
You may not communicate the information specified below by email. haven't really read through a dmca policy notice (or whatever you call this) before, but is this standard practice? i think it’s a good policy as it (somewhat) raises the cost of submitting a notice, which would presumably deter overzealous lawyers and prevent some false takedowns, but given how quickly i've seen things get pulled i'd never have imagined that notices would have to be sent by any means but email..
- drchaos 14y ago
  The idea behind that is probably that a fax or written message is "less anonymous" than an email.
  - Firehed 14y ago
    It's also a (moderately) higher barrier to entry, so it's less likely to be aggressively used by heavy-handed copyright holders. Though in practice, fax has turned into this bastard child of excessive analog-to-digital conversion, at least among newer companies. Senders email their attachment to an email-to-fax service, which sends it over POTS to a fax-to-email service converting it back into a PDF and emailed as an attachment to the recipient.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      If a company sells both services (hardly unusual) and a client of theirs sends a fax to another, I wonder if the system calls itself... ;)
      - Firehed 14y ago
        Based on my own experience... yes, at least to start. Depends how easy (and fast) it is to detect that both parties exist within the network.
        icebraining 14y ago
        Really? I can't say I have experience building such a system, but to me it seems the solution has already been built: fast off-the-shelf DNS servers, using phone numbers as virtual (sub)domains.
        Firehed 14y ago
        My experience is in the context of payments - when charging someone's payment card, check whether it's one we've issued and just run it as an internal balance transfer rather than run it through Visa (read: free). When doing the whole "build fast, iterate quickly" thing, it's easy to forget about such optimizations, especially when it's a relative edge case and works just as well if you leave it alone (arguably better, since there's less conditional logic in the code) So by "network" I more meant database (i.e., network of users).
  - sp332 14y ago
    Also, there's one workflow which is still easier by fax than email: receive it, physically sign it with a pen, send it back with the signature.
    - nnnnni 14y ago
      Have you ever used Preview that ships with OS X? There's a signature button in it... It's ridiculously simply!
    - sophacles 14y ago
      I recently refinanced my house, and realized that there was a potential for a LOT of this sort of thing. So I paid the app store a few dollars for a PDF modification program, and just put a shortcut to a scanned signature of mine, and added that in the right places. Requested the documents as email instead of fax, and emailed them back. Totally acceptable and saved a bunch of time (in waiting for the printer and scanner) and money (in paper and ink).
      - dpe82 14y ago
        HelloFax is great for this as well.
- DannyBee 14y ago
  They aren't emailing them, they are faxing them. This won't raise the cost since they accept faxes.
  - simba-hiiipower 14y ago
    oh, haha. well that makes sense.. seems i've shown my age.. though i definitely read that, my mind seems conditioned to totally ignore the notion of faxing something. not discounting anything here, but just find it kind of funny. given my perception of fax machines, it could very well have said send notice via telegraph.. that aside, i can see how as a technology it stills has practical applications, especially in the legal field where paper records are heavily relied upon.
  - jkaljundi 14y ago
    People in US still use faxes? Funny!
    - ghshephard 14y ago
      Fax usage in the United States is a small fraction of what it is in Japan. I haven't received (or sent) a fax in 2+ years, and I used to deal with them (multiple times) every day in 2003.
    - mibbitier 14y ago
      They also use pagers. Crazy.
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        Pagers, in their niche, are better than any other technology available. Considering how often my phone battery runs dead by accident, I feel a lot more comfortable with surgeons having pagers that run for months off a single AAA battery. http://mobihealthnews.com/12503/why-doctors-pagers-still-trump-smartphones/ http://mobihealthnews.com/12503/why-doctors-pagers-still-tru...
        14y ago
- nnnnni 14y ago
  The best part is that it SLOWS DOWN the request process.
- Silhouette 14y ago
  IANAL, but I did just look up what looks like the current version of the relevant part of the DMCA[1]. Unless there's one of those funny legal things I don't understand going on, it appears fairly black and white that failing to provide an e-mail address for the designated agent basically nullifies the entire safe harbor provision (see (c)(2)(A)). Whether that is actually what Y Combinator are worried about we don't know, of course; I can't be the only person wondering what prompted this change on a site like HN where DMCA notices/abuse don't seem likely problems under normal circumstances. Or maybe YC's lawyers just know more about the law than I do. :-) [1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512
- fab13n 14y ago
  I guess the point is to make DMCA claims more annoying to file, or at least to automate. I'd also hope that in true HN spirit, this is intended to be portable, so that if enough web sites replicated this policy, it would seriously handicap DMCA claimants. Of course, this only works if the "not by email" requirement is legal. IANAL, let alone an American one, but I'd love to read informed opinions about the legal validity of this point.
cduan 14y ago
Is this new? Because I can't find a corresponding listing in the Copyright Office's list of service provider agents (http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/a_agents.html http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/a_agents.html). The reason I'm wondering is that the Copyright Office does require you to provide an email address for your designated DMCA agent, and I'd like to know how they got around that. (The requirement for registering an agent, by the way, is 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(2).)
- d503 14y ago
  There's one here: http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agents/n/news_ycomb.pdf http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agents/n/news_ycomb.pdf
  - jammmuel 14y ago
    Is that a childs' handwriting?
    - m0nastic 14y ago
      It might have just been filled out on a tablet. When I had to fill out all my job paperwork for my new job, I used pdfpen on my iPad for everything, and it looks like it was written by a toddler in crayon.
      - anigbrowl 14y ago
        Why would you do that? I would bin any application that looked that way automatically.
        gaustin 14y ago
        It doesn't sound like he was filling out an application. It sounds like he had the job and was just filling out HR paperwork for benefits and taxes and such.
        m0nastic 14y ago
vegashacker 14y ago
Times have sure changed: http://web.archive.org/web/20050331050049/http://ycombinator.com/legal.html http://web.archive.org/web/20050331050049/http://ycombinator...
- levesque 14y ago
  Not that much: http://ycombinator.com/legal.html http://ycombinator.com/legal.html
  - vegashacker 14y ago
    Interesting. From today's page source: 
  - eze 14y ago
    Does this mean that YC holds the copyright on HN comments?
cbhl 14y ago
Are we allowed to submit DMCA Counter-Notifications by email, or do we still need to use (fax or regular mail) to do so?
- tnuc 14y ago
  in bold 6 lines down. http://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html http://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html try faxzero, works for me. http://faxzero.com/ http://faxzero.com/ I have never sent a dmca request to ycombinator.
larrys 14y ago
Link should also appear on this page: http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
andrewljohnson 14y ago
I think it's just lame that a site like this could be accused of copyright infringement, unless it's a text-only post or a comment. Linking to copyrighted material should not be illegal - the DMCA takedown notice should have to be directed at the linked site, not the linking site. It's not YC's job (or Google's job) to fight copyright infringement by policing their indexes. But more importantly, it shouldn't be the job of small organizations with few resources to have to create a DMCA policy like this, much less enforce it.
- dpe82 14y ago
  Anyone could copy-paste a news article verbatim. That's a copyright violation, and without a DMCA policy like this Y Combinator is by default liable for the infringement. The DMCA policy and registered agent gives a content creator a method to notify Y Combinator of the violation so YC can take it down. How else would they know who to contact or how to protect their rights? If a site has a proper policy and agent (and abides by the policy) it gets safe harbor - it's not liable for the infringement. It's not an unreasonable amount of effort, and the scheme is a pretty decent compromise between protecting copyright holders rights and allowing user generated content.
  - devcpp 14y ago
    >Anyone could copy-paste a news article verbatim. Yes, andrewljohnson agrees about that. However, his point is: >Linking to copyrighted material should not be illegal And I have to concur. This should not be a copyright violation.
    - frio 14y ago
      So... what of TPB? All they do is link to copyright material; none if it's hosted there.
      - BCM43 14y ago
        TPB is legal. And they don't even link to copyrighted material, they link to a swarm from which you can git information on where to download copyrighted material.
ww520 14y ago
Usually procedures and policies are put in place because of out of ordinary incidents. Haven't seen DMCA notice from HN for the longest time and it pops up now. Can we assume someone actually tried to sue HN for copyright infringement on the user-submitted content?
jval 14y ago
I sincerely hope the YC team has made sure the HN entity is legally separate from any asset-bearing entities they might have. Last thing anyone wants to happen is for you guys to get sued by some sort of errant copyright or defamation BS and have them get at any other assets you have. DISCLAIMER: This is not legal advice. I am not a lawyer. Do not use this as legal advice. I am just a dude.

138 points by DanielRibeiro 14y ago

You may not communicate the information specified below by email. haven't really read through a dmca policy notice (or whatever you call this) before, but is this standard practice? i think it’s a good policy as it (somewhat) raises the cost of submitting a notice, which would presumably deter overzealous lawyers and prevent some false takedowns, but given how quickly i've seen things get pulled i'd never have imagined that notices would have to be sent by any means but email..

drchaos 14y ago
The idea behind that is probably that a fax or written message is "less anonymous" than an email.
- Firehed 14y ago
  It's also a (moderately) higher barrier to entry, so it's less likely to be aggressively used by heavy-handed copyright holders. Though in practice, fax has turned into this bastard child of excessive analog-to-digital conversion, at least among newer companies. Senders email their attachment to an email-to-fax service, which sends it over POTS to a fax-to-email service converting it back into a PDF and emailed as an attachment to the recipient.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    If a company sells both services (hardly unusual) and a client of theirs sends a fax to another, I wonder if the system calls itself... ;)
    - Firehed 14y ago
      Based on my own experience... yes, at least to start. Depends how easy (and fast) it is to detect that both parties exist within the network.
      - icebraining 14y ago
        Really? I can't say I have experience building such a system, but to me it seems the solution has already been built: fast off-the-shelf DNS servers, using phone numbers as virtual (sub)domains.
        Firehed 14y ago
        My experience is in the context of payments - when charging someone's payment card, check whether it's one we've issued and just run it as an internal balance transfer rather than run it through Visa (read: free). When doing the whole "build fast, iterate quickly" thing, it's easy to forget about such optimizations, especially when it's a relative edge case and works just as well if you leave it alone (arguably better, since there's less conditional logic in the code) So by "network" I more meant database (i.e., network of users).
- sp332 14y ago
  Also, there's one workflow which is still easier by fax than email: receive it, physically sign it with a pen, send it back with the signature.
  - nnnnni 14y ago
    Have you ever used Preview that ships with OS X? There's a signature button in it... It's ridiculously simply!
  - sophacles 14y ago
    I recently refinanced my house, and realized that there was a potential for a LOT of this sort of thing. So I paid the app store a few dollars for a PDF modification program, and just put a shortcut to a scanned signature of mine, and added that in the right places. Requested the documents as email instead of fax, and emailed them back. Totally acceptable and saved a bunch of time (in waiting for the printer and scanner) and money (in paper and ink).
    - dpe82 14y ago
      HelloFax is great for this as well.
DannyBee 14y ago
They aren't emailing them, they are faxing them. This won't raise the cost since they accept faxes.
- simba-hiiipower 14y ago
  oh, haha. well that makes sense.. seems i've shown my age.. though i definitely read that, my mind seems conditioned to totally ignore the notion of faxing something. not discounting anything here, but just find it kind of funny. given my perception of fax machines, it could very well have said send notice via telegraph.. that aside, i can see how as a technology it stills has practical applications, especially in the legal field where paper records are heavily relied upon.
- jkaljundi 14y ago
  People in US still use faxes? Funny!
  - ghshephard 14y ago
    Fax usage in the United States is a small fraction of what it is in Japan. I haven't received (or sent) a fax in 2+ years, and I used to deal with them (multiple times) every day in 2003.
  - mibbitier 14y ago
    They also use pagers. Crazy.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      Pagers, in their niche, are better than any other technology available. Considering how often my phone battery runs dead by accident, I feel a lot more comfortable with surgeons having pagers that run for months off a single AAA battery. http://mobihealthnews.com/12503/why-doctors-pagers-still-trump-smartphones/ http://mobihealthnews.com/12503/why-doctors-pagers-still-tru...
      - 14y ago
nnnnni 14y ago
The best part is that it SLOWS DOWN the request process.
Silhouette 14y ago
IANAL, but I did just look up what looks like the current version of the relevant part of the DMCA[1]. Unless there's one of those funny legal things I don't understand going on, it appears fairly black and white that failing to provide an e-mail address for the designated agent basically nullifies the entire safe harbor provision (see (c)(2)(A)). Whether that is actually what Y Combinator are worried about we don't know, of course; I can't be the only person wondering what prompted this change on a site like HN where DMCA notices/abuse don't seem likely problems under normal circumstances. Or maybe YC's lawyers just know more about the law than I do. :-) [1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512
fab13n 14y ago
I guess the point is to make DMCA claims more annoying to file, or at least to automate. I'd also hope that in true HN spirit, this is intended to be portable, so that if enough web sites replicated this policy, it would seriously handicap DMCA claimants. Of course, this only works if the "not by email" requirement is legal. IANAL, let alone an American one, but I'd love to read informed opinions about the legal validity of this point.

cduan 14y ago

Is this new? Because I can't find a corresponding listing in the Copyright Office's list of service provider agents (http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/a_agents.html http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/a_agents.html). The reason I'm wondering is that the Copyright Office does require you to provide an email address for your designated DMCA agent, and I'd like to know how they got around that. (The requirement for registering an agent, by the way, is 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(2).)

d503 14y ago
There's one here: http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agents/n/news_ycomb.pdf http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agents/n/news_ycomb.pdf
- jammmuel 14y ago
  Is that a childs' handwriting?
  - m0nastic 14y ago
    It might have just been filled out on a tablet. When I had to fill out all my job paperwork for my new job, I used pdfpen on my iPad for everything, and it looks like it was written by a toddler in crayon.
    - anigbrowl 14y ago
      Why would you do that? I would bin any application that looked that way automatically.
      - gaustin 14y ago
        It doesn't sound like he was filling out an application. It sounds like he had the job and was just filling out HR paperwork for benefits and taxes and such.
      - m0nastic 14y ago

vegashacker 14y ago

Times have sure changed: http://web.archive.org/web/20050331050049/http://ycombinator.com/legal.html http://web.archive.org/web/20050331050049/http://ycombinator...

levesque 14y ago
Not that much: http://ycombinator.com/legal.html http://ycombinator.com/legal.html
- vegashacker 14y ago
  Interesting. From today's page source: 
- eze 14y ago
  Does this mean that YC holds the copyright on HN comments?

cbhl 14y ago

Are we allowed to submit DMCA Counter-Notifications by email, or do we still need to use (fax or regular mail) to do so?

tnuc 14y ago
in bold 6 lines down. http://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html http://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html try faxzero, works for me. http://faxzero.com/ http://faxzero.com/ I have never sent a dmca request to ycombinator.

larrys 14y ago

Link should also appear on this page: http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

andrewljohnson 14y ago

I think it's just lame that a site like this could be accused of copyright infringement, unless it's a text-only post or a comment. Linking to copyrighted material should not be illegal - the DMCA takedown notice should have to be directed at the linked site, not the linking site. It's not YC's job (or Google's job) to fight copyright infringement by policing their indexes. But more importantly, it shouldn't be the job of small organizations with few resources to have to create a DMCA policy like this, much less enforce it.

dpe82 14y ago
Anyone could copy-paste a news article verbatim. That's a copyright violation, and without a DMCA policy like this Y Combinator is by default liable for the infringement. The DMCA policy and registered agent gives a content creator a method to notify Y Combinator of the violation so YC can take it down. How else would they know who to contact or how to protect their rights? If a site has a proper policy and agent (and abides by the policy) it gets safe harbor - it's not liable for the infringement. It's not an unreasonable amount of effort, and the scheme is a pretty decent compromise between protecting copyright holders rights and allowing user generated content.
- devcpp 14y ago
  >Anyone could copy-paste a news article verbatim. Yes, andrewljohnson agrees about that. However, his point is: >Linking to copyrighted material should not be illegal And I have to concur. This should not be a copyright violation.
  - frio 14y ago
    So... what of TPB? All they do is link to copyright material; none if it's hosted there.
    - BCM43 14y ago
      TPB is legal. And they don't even link to copyrighted material, they link to a swarm from which you can git information on where to download copyrighted material.

ww520 14y ago

Usually procedures and policies are put in place because of out of ordinary incidents. Haven't seen DMCA notice from HN for the longest time and it pops up now. Can we assume someone actually tried to sue HN for copyright infringement on the user-submitted content?

jval 14y ago

I sincerely hope the YC team has made sure the HN entity is legally separate from any asset-bearing entities they might have. Last thing anyone wants to happen is for you guys to get sued by some sort of errant copyright or defamation BS and have them get at any other assets you have. DISCLAIMER: This is not legal advice. I am not a lawyer. Do not use this as legal advice. I am just a dude.