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Comment by aww_dang | Hacker News Reader

Many of the robo-DMCA-claim firms simply search for the string of a movie title. If the page in question is determined by their poorly written software to include the content, a DMCA takedown request is spammed. No human confirmation is involved. One wonders who the abusers and spammers are in this situation.

Of course some will claim that provisions exist for damages to be claimed in the event of false takedowns, but it is hard if not impossible to collect. Typically you need to provide all of your personal data to respond.

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I wish people would find a way to monetize obviously false DMCA requests.

I know of some people who basically finance their niche bulletin boards via police requests - they get something in the range of 2-3 digits (€) for a information request. Get a few of these a year and your hosting costs are paid.

There's not a lot of money to be made but if it's your hobby anyways..

They get paid by the police? Is there a pricelist somewhere for these police requests?

18 U.S. Code CHAPTER 121—STORED WIRE AND ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS AND TRANSACTIONAL RECORDS ACCESS

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2706

"...this title shall pay to the person or entity assembling or providing such information a fee for reimbursement for such costs as are reasonably necessary and which have been directly incurred in searching for, assembling, reproducing, or otherwise providing such information."

Not your lawyer. Just providing a link to an example law describing how some ISPs can profit from data requests.

Bulletproof hosting providers are indirectly monetizing false DMCA requests.

personal story:

I remember uploading a BF3 montage on YouTube some eons ago when it was all the rage, no copyrighted music or anything. I received a DMCA claim by some spanish tv/broadcasting company or something along those lines, totally unrelated to my content.

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The fact that DMCA claims can be issued with no human interaction and no repurcussions is beyond me. If anything, the hosting company should at least issue penalties on false claims.

Filing a false DMCA claim is perjury.

> A DMCA claim (or takedown) is when a copyright holder notifies a service provider that they have infringing material on their site/service. It is also known as a “Notification of Infringement”. For example, Twitch has these guidelines for submitting DMCA claims. Essentially it boils down to send in writing who you are, who is infringing your rights, how they’re doing it, and swear under penalty of perjury that you are telling the truth.

https://blog.pretzel.rocks/lets-take-a-minute-to-talk-about-...

Has that ever been enforced, in any shape or form?

You have to counterfile, but there's a poison pill in the regulation that by doing so you agree U.S. courts have jurisdiction, thereby nullifying any protections you have from being in another countries juridiction.

I mean, there is no getting around it if you want the countersuit to work and reflect poorly on the claimant, but you are agreeing to letting the U.S. have extra-territorial jurisdiction.

If you're in the US then you're already under jurisdiction, right? Why wouldn't someone who is already under us jurisdiction try it?

Huh? If you aren't in the US you can ignore DMCA entirely.

In practice most hosting companies will suspend your server until you remove whatever was claimed against.

> If anything, the hosting company should at least issue penalties on false claims.

If penalties are issued by the hosting company, then they just won't be paid. Then you lose: there's no way to take all the non-paying offenders to court, and you can't ignore subsequent requests, so you wind up in the same situation as you're in now.

Instead, move the onus off the hosting company: if they receive from some entity a DMCA takedown that is believed to be false (according to whatever standards are applied to counterclaims), then no further takedown notices from that entity are required to be obeyed until the entity takes appropriate remedial action.

> if they receive from some entity a DMCA takedown that is believed to be false (according to whatever standards are applied to counterclaims)

There are no standards for counterclaims except format standards. All a counterclaim does is permit undoing a takedown without the provider being liable, transferring determination of who is right to litigation between the purported copyright owner and the content uploader with the host fully immunized.

> Of course some will claim that provisions exist for damages to be claimed in the event of false takedowns

If the falsity is only in regard to the not-under-perjury parts of a takedown notice (like, say, that there is infringing content!), then you maybe, in some circumstances, have a tortious interference claim, but, generally, you are screwed. If you are lucky, your host has and follows a counternotice process and you can get the material back up, but recovering any damages is unlikely.

Yes the DMCA is a terrible law that isn't based on justice, but rather was one of the first laws bought by copyright holders so they could attack the nascent Internet. This was apparent at the time, and the community tried to fight it. But as with most ratcheting authoritarianism, we lost and it's just how things are now. I feel like this has been forgotten, based on how people talk about the claim-counterclaim process expecting it to be equitable.

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