Dodgey DMCA Use May Lead To 'YouTube Veto Power'

BillGatesLoveChild writes "Bob Cringely reports that an interview potentially embarrassing to Steve Jobs was taken off YouTube. The interview was from Cringely's 1990s show Triumph of the Nerds. YouTube said it responded to a DMCA complaint made by NBD Television Ltd in London. Trouble is, NBD is not the copyright holder. They have nothing at all to do with the show and don't even sell it. PBS, who made and holds the copyright said they knew nothing of the complaint. Cringely tried to contact NBD Television Ltd who wouldn't respond. Neither would Youtube, who only speaks by form letter. 'Why did NBD Television make the complaint? Why did YouTube blindly enforce it? Is Steve Jobs behind this, or is it just another media company misusing the DMCA, at that, not even with their own copyrighted material? Why should a London-based company be able to issue DMCA takedowns, yet not be liable when they abuse the law?'"

Comments

because.

[User 956]

Why did YouTube blindly enforce it?

Because they're required by law to. A DMCA takedown request is basically a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information is correct.

Re:because.

[supersat]

From what I understand, they aren't actually required to act on a takedown notice. However, if they fail to do so, they are no longer shielded from liability if the claim is valid. On the other hand, if they do act on the notice, they can't be held liable if the claim is bogus. So, most service providers will act on ANY DMCA notice, regardless of validity, just to be on the safe side.

However, I do know that some service providers have refused to act on certain DMCA notices where it's clear that issuer of the notice has no rights to the material in question.

Yeah. That's because the DMCA sucks

[91degrees]

YouTube are obliged to do this. It's unreasonable for them to track down the copyright holder.

The response is to file a DMCA counter notice, on the grounds that it doesn't infringe NBD's copyright. YouTube will put it back. NBD can then take it up withthe person who posted it.

Everyone can be a copyright holder!

[ISurfTooMuch]

I'm beginning to wonder if anyone, and I mean ANYONE, could fire off a DMCA request and get something taken down. I bet it'd be fairly easy, since many of these things would come by e-mail, and spoofing a domain in the From field is trivial. And i seriously doubt that most organizations bother to check the validity of such requests. They likely get them, read them in a cursory fashion, and then take the referenced content down.

And perhaps it's time to test the system, preferably on the content of the big media companies and politicians, especially the latter. Once those who support the DMCA find out how easily it can be misused in a way that harms them, then you'll see then have a miraculous awakening to its problems.

Re:Everyone can be a copyright holder!

[hax0r_this]

This, is brilliant.

I don't mean to suggest anything, but hypothetically, someone could go through and compile a list of politicians who support the DMCA, then find any content helpful to their campaigns on YouTube or whatever, and spoof takedown notices for that content. Then go to the politician's own website, find any videos they have, and send the politician himself takedown notices for those, preferably in the name of the politician's constituents. Then go the site of any organization which supports the politician and spoof more takedown notices in the politician's name. This way you create a huge mess for said politicians to clean up, and all as a result of their beloved DMCA.

Not to suggest anything of course.

Re:"Potentially embarrassing"

[BillGatesLoveChild]

That's not the 'Potentially embarassing' part Cringely refers to, which is Steve Job's "Good Artists Copy, but Great Artists Steal" quote. Mildly inconvenient if you're in a Patent Law suit. But there is a funny story behind the part you cite. Jobs *did* feel embarrassed about that (for different reasons), and called up Gates to apologize. It went like this:

Jobs: "Bill I'm calling to apologize. I saw the documentary and I said that you had no taste. Well I shouldn't have said that publicly. It's true, but I shouldn't have said it publicly."
Gates: "I'm glad you called to apologize, Steve, because I thought that was really an inappropriate thing to say."
Jobs: (smirking uncontrollably) "You know it's true, it's true you have no taste."

Andy Hertzfeld (Original Mac Programmer) was there when the call was made: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/transcripts/001 .html

Re:Not entirely.

[rohan972]

London is outside US jurisdiction, unless Tony Blair is off his medicines again, which raises all kinds of jurisdiction issues. The copying (not storing, copying) would have occurred in England. This is an English company. English law is the only law that can be applied to an alleged civil offense in England.

Actually, British copyrights are enforceable in the US, and vice versa. It's called the Berne Convention

Re:Not entirely.

[cpt kangarooski]

Actually, that is untrue. The Berne Convention -- which is utter crap, btw, and should be gotten rid of and not replaced -- does not claim to make a copyright granted in country A enforceable in country B. Rather, it deals with the granting of copyrights; if a work is created in country A, and is copyrightable in country B, then country B must also grant a copyright on the work. It also deals with setting a minimum for what is copyrightable, and how long those copyrights last, etc.

So if you are a British author, then you likely have a US copyright, but it is only that copyright, and not your UK copyright, that can be enforced in the US.

Indeed, you cannot make a claim in the US founded on the Berne Convention; it is not a source of US copyright law. (See 17 USC 104(c) for this)