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Comment by geocrasher | Hacker News Reader

I work in hosting. A large number of DMCA requests that I've seen are very nearly scams. All somebody has to do is not like content that you host, claim copyright, and issue a DMCA takedown request. The onus is on the site owner to prove that they own the material and file a counterclaim. It's often easier for them to just take the content down, sadly.

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I've wondered why there isn't a potential cost to false claims to disincentive them. It costs time for someone to respond, so to file a claim there should be a deposit put in escrow, where if the takedown fails then the money is given to who was claimed against - else it goes back to copyright holder who made the claim.

Yes, the DMCA has received criticism for this lack of balance since it was proposed in the 90’s. It’s a very valid point that neither of the US political parties seems willing to reform around.

I wonder how people make money off of this (if they do)

Pay to remove negative SEO crap maybe?

And pay to remove/deindex pages that rank higher than yours.

Maybe it's about power. Censorship is a form of power.

It's about SEO. Taking down competing content.

Charging money to submit free removal requests has been a thriving business since at least the early days of Web 2.0.

They can just counter claim and the hoster has to put it back up, they don't need to prove anything

https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/responding-dmca-takedown-no...

Are you referring to scams where they don’t hold copywrite?

Not true. There is no onus on the site owner or anyone else to prove they own the material before filing a counterclaim.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/responding-dmca-take...

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