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Victims Fight Back Against DMCA Abuse
Cadence writes "The DMCA is being used a lot recently to demand takedowns of all sorts of content on the Internet. But how many of those DMCA-fueled demands are abusive? Lately, some victims of takedown demands have begun to fight back with the help of the EFF, including some against Viacom: 'Finally, a Viacom executive admitted last month that less than 60 of his company's 100,000 takedown requests to YouTube were invalid. John Palfrey of Harvard's Berkman Center wonders what rights those 60 people have? We may find out. The EFF called for people who had videos pulled inappropriately to contact the group, though the EFF tells The National Law Journal that it cannot comment on its future legal plans. One of the reasons companies misuse the DMCA and cease-and-desist copyright letters is that the tools can quickly accomplish what they want to have happen; stuff they don't like goes bye-bye in a hurry. When the alternative is moving slowly through the court system, letters look like an excellent alternative.'"
Since Viacom can sue Google for 1,000,000,000. Then each of those 60 people should be able to sue Viacom for 1,000,000,000. That'll show them.
Bite my shiny metal ass.
He says they made fewer than 60 mistakes out of 100,000 notices? I'd say that's pretty good... it's a 0.06% error. Any system is going to have mistakes, but it seems like they've worked out bugs and they're doing a good job.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What kind of user uses Mac anyway? Maybe the BeOS people will tolerate them.
Here's One video that was improperly pulled (it was a parody, not a copy, and most definitely not someone rebroadcasting a Viacom segment without permission).
And, yes, I do think Viacom has a right to defend their copyrights, but pulling parodys is clearing going too far.
"less than 60 of his company's 100,000 takedown requests to YouTube were invalid."
I think you mean VALID rather than invalid if you're trying to make a point against DCMA.
If Viacom admits to 60 out of 100,000 blatantly obvious misuses of the takedown notice, I wonder how many could be considered questionable by society at large. It would interesting metric to see how far from the center Viacom thinks.
Who found these 100,000 videos? Do they have people watching videos on youtube full time?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
"I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner of an exclusive right that is infringed."
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
Actually, the user should probably sue Google in this case. Viacom is only liable if it's a bad-faith notice or improperly field; an honest mistake where they actually believed that it was infringing on their IP rights is permissible.
*Google/YouTube*, on the other hand, is only shielded from a lawsuit by the uploader if the takedown procedure was followed and Google/YouTube notifies the uploader in a timely fashion and accepts and properly handles any valid counter-notification letter provided by the uploader before the deadline expires. If they didn't notify the uploader, their bad -- not Viacom's. If the subscriber was notified but failed to send a proper counter-notification letter, no lawsuit. Well, one more case -- if the subscriber was notified, sent a valid letter, and Viacom followed up with a lawsuit against the individual -- OK, then Google/YouTube is shielded from subscriber suits.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
less than 60/100,000 = .0006 x 100 = .06%. (Cross fingers. Beware of public math.)
But oh, NO! These sixty precious individuals have been harmed for life! Post traumatic stress! An early death! Liability! Liability! Liability! PROOF the DMCA is FLAWED! 60 people GOT A LETTER, and they subsequently transformed themselves into a pool of shaking jello on the floor unable of even the faintest response. Get a lawyer. Sue! Sue! Sue!
On the other hand, you could get a life. Can you point to anything else with a lower error rate? The police? The military? Your code? Your 'hit rate?' Your life?
No.
One of the reasons companies misuse the DMCA and cease-and-desist copyright letters is ...
First you have to prove that the DMCA is being "misused", and wasn't intended for this purpose since day 1.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It'd be interesting to know just what kind of search method was used to issue these takedown notices. Does a GREP search script have the legal authority to send a cease & desist order without human intervention? It's hard to imagine all 100,000 cases were human reviewed...
8==8 Bones 8==8
i wanna kick them all in the nuts! ;)
no seriously, anyone realized that cyberpunk is already among us? we got to fight back!
Says Michael Fricklas:
... we're achieving an error rate ofWhat about that was Google/YouTube's fault? If they are served with a take down notice, they have to take it down. If they delay they can face huge lawsuits for not acting in a timely manner. All YouTube did was obey the law, a law that is being abused far to often and abused in this instance. If my content was taken down, I would go after Viacom for filing an unlawful take down, since they have to claim ownership of my material to use the take down. There are two fronts here, on one side Viacom violated the law by using the DMCA on material that was not their own, and on the other, they infringed on the rights and free will of the people who's material they had taken down. They are just trying to use the same tactics the RIAA uses when they attack a massive group of individuals and don't care about collateral damage. In this case, just like the fail RIAA lawsuits, the collateral damage has a chance to fight back.
There is another side of the story. I have personally found the DMCA to be invaluable in protecting my interests against greedy, unscrupulous corporations. The little guy (like me) has so few tools to protect his rights, the DMCA allowed me to stop a corporation from misappropriating my works, without having to resort to expensive litigation. All I had to do was file a few letters, I even copied the text from sample DMCA letters in the archives at Berkman. It was easy, and a hell of a lot cheaper than hiring a lawyer. Result: total victory against the infringer.
Since the DMCA is a form of abuse.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
a Viacom executive admitted last month that less than 60 of his company's 100,000 takedown requests to YouTube were invalid
/. janitors not proofreading properly *again*?
Less than 60 were invalid? So most of the 100,000 *were* valid?
Or is this just another case of the
.. you give it to them. Solution, dont give it to them.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
The statute also establishes procedures for proper notification, and rules as to its effect. (Section 512(c)(3)). Under the notice and takedown procedure, a copyright owner submits a notification under penalty of perjury, including a list of specified elements, to the service provider's designated agent.
DMCA Text
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
If the DMCA "safe harbour" takedown procedures did not exist, then service providers might be liable for monetary damages for hosting infringing works after something as simple as one of those "random emails." The service provider would have knowledge of the potentially infringing material and potentially be liable for some form of secondary infringement (that's the theory that killed old-Napster).
The takedown procedure does not require that a service provider take down material. A service provider can ignore the takedown notice, or never even register to receive such notices. In that case, the service provider would act in the same legal world that existed before the DMCA.
A service provider in such a situation might respond much more drastically to informal, "random emails" than a service provider who is open to takedown notices. Such a service provider might police its users much more actively, possibly removing materials without even an allegation of infringement being raised.
The DMCA takedown provision just provides an option that enables service providers to be much more hands-off when it comes to user content. Service providers who use this provision can let copyright owners do their own policing (and is actually required to re-post borderline works if the users posting the material is willing to dispute the infringement claim).
Maybe I'm just stupid, but there has ALWAYS been a way to reverse a DMCA takedown notice, in fact the DMCA tells you how to do it as it's included in the act. The ISP isn't liable and can repost the stuff if you follow that procedure. It's along the lines of a letter back to the ISP saying that in fact the item is under YOUR copyright and you swear under penalty of perjury that it's true and you accept full liability, you also have to include all your contact information so that the organization that sent the original notice can sue you if you lied in your reply. After 15 days of receiving the second letter from you which the ISP is obligated to send back to the original complaint the ISP is free to post the information. The 15 day window allows the originator to open a court case and seek an injunction.
Come now why is this anecdotal evidence relevant to the conversation at hand?
The above comment might lead to a lot more little guys zorching big corporations in the pocket book when said big corporations have used copyrighted works without permission.
For instance: FOSS authors might find circumstances where they could invoke the DMCA against a company that incorporated their work in a product distributed without source code by a company that refuses to come clean.
Make enough pain for companies with bucks on the line and you may find more lobbying against DMCA. Meanwhile, guys with big money for big lawyers will be fighting back - and anything THEY come up with can be cloned for use against the MAFIAA.
Since the real point of going against DMCA abusers is to eliminate (at least) the abuse potential of DMCA, getting more big guns fighting on that side of the battle is on-topic.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
... there has ALWAYS been a way to reverse a DMCA takedown notice, in fact the DMCA tells you how to do it as it's included in the act. [recipe deleted]
Seems to me that an ISP that takes down a customer's content in response to a DMCA takedown notice should provide a notice to the customer that includes (in addition to the complainant's identity and address so customer can sue HIM) a recipe for making the response required to let the ISP put the content back up.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
There were a quite a few cases of that from viacom taken down Open Source projects Demo videos placed on googles site to save on there own downloads. That is the clear 60. Some of these project have over 1000000 members. So finding 100000 would be a small number. Most posted in there mailing list did anyone know of any other cases. The class action effect. Open Source projects love that method.
If you are going to screw up don't screw up with Open Source projects. Very quickly do you get millions of hunters looking for more defects. And they were lucky it could have been billions.
Aw, c'mon, it's just a little stink-finger from your girlfriend. Although she did call me a dirty, dirty boy, so maybe, I guess.
I've used some of the words in that article previously and I'm going to sue you for $100,000,000,000 unless you remove it within 30 seconds.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
Viacom should be the one required to review them, and the little guys (and Google) should be able to sue Viacom for these mistakes.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
We will create a committee. Whenever an ISP or website will recieve such a letter, it will be forwarded to the committee that will check whether it is an infringement. Not realistic eh?
I got a DMCA take-down notice from youtube about 2 videos I posted, claiming copyright infringement. The problem? I shot those videos myself, and they were just a pair of F/A-18 fly-bys with no added music or other sounds.
Now, after receiving the notice I felt aggrieved, then pissed off, and then discouraged when I discovered the hoops I'd have to clamber through to get my vids reinstated. It just wasn't worth it, so I deleted the emails and have sworn off posting anything else to Youtube.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
An appropriate punishment for DMCA (and related) abuse should be the immediate surrender of the IP in question into the public domain (in addition to a large fine and compensation paid to the victim, of course). Let's start punishing corporations for abusing the law
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.