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Comment by duke_sam | Hacker News Reader

Can she not use the DMCA to request that any offending online copies be removed and then sue in small claims court?

I'm always amazed at how any copyright law doesn't make it any easier to seek compensation if you are an individual. To the point where copyright only seems to have meaning if you have a team of lawyers on staff.

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DMCA is really, really easy to do. If you can read and follow directions, you can DMCA someone's hosting provider for less than $6 and ten minutes of work or less. (I prefer doing it by certified mail, return receipt requested, which is the polite businessman's way to say This Is About To Become Serious Business For Your Attorney If You Don't Give Me What I Want.)

Save yourself $6 and do it by e-mail. Just find the abuse e-mail listed for the IP/Host and 99.9% of the time they'll take care of it in 24 hours or less.

Registered post is much muc less ignorable than email. "I didn't get that email" is an excuse they might give, but you can't say that with registered post. For the sake of $6 it's worth it.

I've had someone try (For a $1000 insurance claim against their business). I didn't mention it was registered post until they claimed they didn't get it.

"Oh, really? Well the registered post office said that there's a signature on this from you, and it was definately hand delivered."

Exactly my point. If you had sent them an email, then they could keep claiming they never got it. Registered post is an ace up your sleeve that you can pull out when you want to catch them with their pants down. You now have record of them misleading you. If this goes before a judge, that counts against them, since they are playing dirty. Registered Post saved the day, all for $6.

> you can DMCA someone's hosting provider for less than $6 and ten minutes of work or less.

Please, nobody tell /b/...

Why not? There are hefty penalties for abuse of process. If the copyrights of a /b/ denizen are indeed being infringed, then they should have just as much recourse to defend them.

No, I mean like "Instead of pizzas, let's send this guy over 9000 DMCA takedown requests."

Hence the comment about penalties for abuse of process. You can't send a DMCA takedown notice anonymously, and I suspect most people on /b/ won't want to sign their name to something which could land them in court.

> You can't send a DMCA takedown notice anonymously

Depends on your definition of "anonymous"; I don't imagine most potential recipients would require you to get the form notarized when you sign it (especially if they accept notices by email).

Sure it's be hugely illegal, but /b/ seems to have people who don't particularly care about that...

Is it illegal to send a false DMCA if you aren't an American citizen (and aren't living in the US)? I'm not sure what's involved, so maybe that's not possible, but still...

>Is it illegal to send a false DMCA if you aren't an American citizen (and aren't living in the US)?

IANACopyrightL but I suspect that it's fine as long as you don't send it to the US! If you send it to the US then you've caused an illegal action in that jurisdiction and would be liable. You're probably not going to be extradited though (unless you're in the UK [kinda joking]).

So, maybe if the recipient's mail server is outside the USA then you'd be fine.

I was half joking in the first place, but I wouldn't put it past them to try to spoof them anyway.

Hence the aforementioned hefty penalties for abuse of process.

There are also penalties for most other things /b/ does, but that doesn't stop them... they _are_ DDOS-ing a government office right now, after all.

My guess is, they will verify the identification information on the application before sending a volley of requests at a single target.

"and then sue in small claims court"

AFAIK there are no federal small claims courts in the United States, only state ones. The DMCA is federal legislation, and from 28USC85§1338, "(a) The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action arising under any Act of Congress relating to patents, plant variety protection, copyrights and trademarks. Such jurisdiction shall be exclusive of the courts of the states in patent, plant variety protection and copyright cases."

As I understand US law (IANAL), it costs $350 to file a case in the federal District Court, but the statutory damages you will be awarded if you win range from $750-$30,000 (depending on what the court).

the sponsors of these laws were businesses, so it makes sense and isn't necessarily even bad for the law to be written for the common cases.

If you want to sue over an alleged copyright infringement, you have to use Federal court.

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