6 ms·

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 t

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.

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.