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Comment by cesarb | Hacker News Reader

> This procedure will also happen with youtube-dl if they decide to counter-notice.

They might decide not to counter-notice, because there's a big trap in the DMCA counter-notice: as far as I know, for a DMCA counter-notice to be valid, the one doing the counter-notice must agree to be bound to the jurisdiction of an USA court. If the youtube-dl author is not from the USA (I think he's from the EU), that would expose him to legal risk.

(As a non-USA person, to me this is the most evil part of the DMCA take-down system: even a defective DMCA notice leads to a dilemma, either you keep the content offline, or you risk being sued in a foreign jurisdiction you have no control over. This is also why I believe one should always prefer to host in one's own country, so that any dispute can be resolved by the local courts.)

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Since the code is in the public domain, I was wondering if I could fill a counter-notice myself claiming ownership of the code. If several people residing out of the US filled counter-notices, it would make it really hard for the RIAA to do anything.

No! Don't do that. You'll just make yourself a target. The "Spartacus" defense doesn't actually work in real life.

The RIAA is the industry licensing group for a multi-billion dollar industry. They have the resources to go after everyone who claims ownership of the code, and copyright damages under the DMCA are no laughing matter: they could drive you into bankruptcy or saddle you with debts for the rest of your life, precluding home ownership, paying for your children to go to college, retirement, etc.

Sounds like terrorism

They're quite close to the IRA in name ...

FWIW, there are some people who laugh joyously at matters that you don't laugh at.

I'm curious... what if the author created an LLC in their home country, and assigned IP to that?

Is there any reason why that wouldn't fully protect them from legal risk if they wanted to visit the US personally?

(Though I would guess you probably can't do that retroactively.)

Ask Dmitry Sklyarov[0].

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Elcom_Ltd.

Just never leave your country of citizenship. It should be easy with the current Covid-19 situation.

Looks like even the knight in shining armor Robert Mueller has dirty hands. Can’t imagine what his motivations could have been other than to do Adobe and US software makers a favor by stripping a guy of his rights for 6 months and sending a message to other programmers.

The DoJ and its prosecutors do not write the laws they enforce. While they do have some leeway in deciding to prosecute or not, a far larger part of blame lies in the place these laws originated: Congress.

Considering the man and his employer were acquitted of all charges, the prosecutor could have easily used his leeway to not prosecute. This has nothing to do with congress, the guy clearly did not break any laws.

That wouldn't help with filing a counter-notice, as the LLC would then have to accept the jurisdiction of the US.

And US courts do "veil-pierce" through entities set up for the sole purposes of evading investor liability. (It's complicated to explain, but in a very simplified nutshell if an entity is set up for the sole purpose of evading liability for criminal acts, regulatory violations, civil torts, or responsibility for financial losses, then the courts will disregard the legal entity and just go straight to the owner(s).)

if he would live in germany and stayed in germany, he would never go into a jail in america. (at least if he never leaves germany) since germany does not extradict germans, unfortunatly besides that most european countries have something like that in place as soon as you go into another european country you can be extradicted if your member country does not take your case.

I thought the whole purpose of incorporating was to avoid responsibility for financial losses.

IANAL, but I suspect that if this were ever tested in court, the court would instead find that the DMCA counter-claim functionality isn't available to non-citizens, which may actually be worse.

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