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Google's Information On DMCA Takedown Abuse

Posted by samzenpus on from the hassle-your-way-to-the-top dept.

Binestar writes "According to a PC World article, Google has submitted a brief to New Zealand about its proposed copyright law (section 92A). "In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.""

10 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Well DUH!!! by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Well DUH!!!

    In a world where executives of companies that lose money expect as a matter of course to be paid millions of dollars of bonuses, it is a given that a tool such as the DMCA **WILL** be abused to silence opposition or competition...

  2. Are those overlapping percentages? by JeanPaulBob · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I didn't see any more detail in TFA than this:

    "In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.""

    57% are from businesses targeting competitors, and only 37% are invalid? What does that mean? 1.) That up to 20% of notices are from businesses who are catching their competitors in the act? 2.) Or is it not 37% of total notices? 3.) Or am I getting mixed up on something?

    1. Re:Are those overlapping percentages? by JeanPaulBob · · Score: 5, Informative
      Aha! I found the info here, through a link provided in someone else's comment. TFA is a bit off, it seems to me. The 37% figure is notices about sites outside America. And there were three other types of "flaws":

      In this study, we traced the use of the Section 512 takedown process and considered how the usage patterns we found were likely to affect expression or other activities on the Internet. The second level of analysis grew out of the fact that we observed a surprisingly high incidence of flawed takedowns:

      • Thirty percent of notices demanded takedown for claims that presented an obvious question for a court (a clear fair use argument, complaints about uncopyrightable material, and the like);
      • Notices to traditional ISP's included a substantial number of demands to remove files from peer-to-peer networks (which are not actually covered under the takedown statute, and which an OSP can only honor by terminating the target's Internet access entirely); and
      • One out of 11 included significant statutory flaws that render the notice unusable (for example, failing to adequately identify infringing material).

      In addition, we found some interesting patterns that do not, by themselves, indicate concern, but which are of concern when combined with the fact that one third of the notices depended on questionable claims:

      • Over half--57%--of notices sent to Google to demand removal of links in the index were sent by businesses targeting apparent competitors;
      • Over a third--37%--of the notices sent to Google targeted sites apparently outside the United States.

      [bold added]

  3. So... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    DMCA notices are filed under penalty of perjury. Has anybody, ever, even a single case, been punished for filing a false takedown?

    *crickets*

  4. Re:In Ancient Times by cperciva · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There was a time when music was sold as sheet music. Somehow Joplin was making a $100,000 a week in the 1920's, even though it's fairly trivial to simply hand-copy someone-else's work.

    Sheet music is cheaper than the cost of copying by hand. This doesn't mean that copyright laws were useless though -- without them, someone else could have set up their own printing press and started (cheaply) printing their own copies of Joplin's work.

    Until recently, the only marginally profitable (in the economic sense) form of copyright violation was mass reproduction, requiring extensive capital costs. This made it easy to enforce copyright laws: You can't sell many thousands of copies of anything without attracting attention.

    Everything changed when it became possible to make a profit by making a single illegal copy of something.

    --
    Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
  5. Re:Note to summary writer... by michaeldot · · Score: 5, Funny

    U r right, it really dusnt matter how u spell. Its not like their are standards to maintain. Or that its just plane irritating to sea.

    (Pedants aside, a large proportion of Slashdot readers are programmers whose brains sound an alarm bell when a sentence doesn't parse correctly.)

  6. Re:Note to summary writer... by owlnation · · Score: 5, Insightful

    they really oughta have a preview button or something.

    Hoist by thine own petard. By the way it's "ought to". See, we can all be pedantic grammar nazis too.

    It's easy. And yet... so pointless. Language is a means of communication. For millennia, it had no agreed, defined structure. Then along comes Dr Johnson, the world's first grammar nazi, and spoiled things for everyone by stifling creativity. Shakespeare, a man who -- you know -- was and is, widely renowned for being quite good at English, used to make words up all the time, and bend others to his will. You'd have him shot, no doubt. Or his books burned for grammar crimes.

    Did you understand what the summary meant? Yes, you did. So... shut up.

  7. Content of Submission by Rangataua · · Score: 5, Informative

    The content of the Google submission to TCF can be found here. Some of the other submission (including the Auckland District Law Society and the Radio New Zealand submissions) are worth a read.

  8. Re:Note to summary writer... by StarsAreAlsoFire · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now show me one sentence where the meaning becomes different depending on which way you spell it(')s. Any sentence. Don't have one? Still feel like you know something important?

    I feel it's nuts.

  9. Re:DMCA Thoughts by russotto · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's a good question. I think the penalty of perjury clause serves as a mild deterrent, and I think to an extent it does work. It takes a pretty dishonest person to sign on the dotted line, under the penalty of perjury, things to which the person is attesting falsely.

    The perjury clause is so useless as to be limited. I could send a DMCA request to anyone's provider, claiming that file X on their website infringed my copyright on work Y, and as long as I actually owned work Y, I would not have committed perjury -- even if I knew damn well file X had nothing to do with it.

    Every once in a while my organization has to send out a DMCA take down notice against those who are using our trademarks to sell counterfeit merchandise.

    Congratulations, your organization is a DMCA abuser. DMCA takedowns are for copyright violation, not trademark violation.

    it is very helpful to have a method within the law for protecting ownership rights short of always involving lawyers at substantial and on-going costs

    Indeed, it is helpful -- for abusers. The people abused, on the other hand, are shut down with no recourse other than to involve lawyers at substantial cost; the counternotice basically says "Meet me at high noon in Federal Court". Furthermore, if the abuser does sue, the DMCA provides the equivalent of an automatic restraining order, which, given the length of court cases, means the abuser essentially wins regardless of the outcome.