This youtuber got a fraudulent DMCA notice, and his counter-notice got automatically rejected. The person who sent the notice isn't associated with the devs, and is asking for a $100 ransom to get the channel reinstated. How could this be fixed?
Proof that the person sending the notice isn't "authorized on behalf of the copyright holder": https://twitter.com/Lionheart/status/1671349063931838464
Tweet about the automatic rejection of the counter-notice: https://twitter.com/Azrial_Vanity/status/1671696220190810113
Tweet about the initial DMCA takedown: https://twitter.com/Azrial_Vanity/status/1671323777978736643
Mention of the $100 ransom: https://twitter.com/Azrial_Vanity/status/1671332970836140032
Any youtube people on here can help? Or anyone else have any advice?
If you send a counter-notice it is not supposed to be auto-rejected, it is supposed to go to court.
This monster is created by Youtube, they are not using the DMCA process(as flawed and terrible as it is) but instead created something worse.
The best way to get attention? Maybe sue Youtube?
But in this case, we're talking about notice being served via service providers for hosting and domains. They have the choice to take immediate action or ask you (TFA was lucky) and let you have a period to refute or comply. At which point the complainant can take you to court and get a real order to remove the material. The service providers need to follow this formula to preserve "safe harbor"; otherwise they're seen as picking a side and would become liable.
If you ignore the DMCA takedown process from a service provider, you lose service.
That is to say, a real DMCA takedown involves no papers, no notaries, no being served or court summons. It's a quick and digital way to take something offline. If you ignore it, you'll learn that the hard way.
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That all said, there are plenty of people who use real lawyers to send "I don't like what you're doing, [stop it, pay me]" demands. I still wouldn't ignore these. Some might have merit, you might have overlooked something and early compliance is often cheapest.
They usually forward the takedowns to me, I take a look at them, let Hetzner know they're bogus claims and that I'm not planning on taking action, and that's where the story ends.
I followed the DMCA process, added nginx block rules to make all the content mentioned in the DMCA notices impossible to access, and even submitted "statements" to Hetzner for each DMCA notice they got. None of that saved me.
It’s not whether the complaints are real; it’s whether the recipient has some policy that says “X number of complaints and we show you the door.”
This statutory and perfunctory hence effectively attorney free process would have relieved the beleaguered BIOS developer's concerns discussed here the other day and this is a and usually effective right of protection that's rare in its accessibility to the common man instead of the largest businesses.
This is a sufficiently niche field of even criminal law that would require you to hire a lawyer to handle anyway. And usually there's some statutory limitation on what sort of prosecution a private individual can initiate. It's generally just not worth the trouble.
The DMCA does allow for a separate, federal, and civil cause of action to recover damages if the filer of the takedown notice knowingly and materially misrepresented the operative parts of the notice. 17 U.S.C. § 512(f) is where this cause of action resides. However, to prove "knowingly" and "materially" at the same time is a pretty high bar, although it might be possible to get a default judgment if they simply don't respond. Still, this is a limited remedy that most people won't be able to take advantage of since it involves potentially costly litigation and no punitive damages. It's not a prosecution of any sort, but it's sadly the best (only) option on the books that counts as relief, however limited it is.
It’s like stealing from the candy shop and if you’re caught, you just put back the candies you took that time. Not a deterrent for those who don’t care about how it makes them look.
Google takes the ”I trust you bro” stance and delists your URL until (if ever) you file a DMCA counter notification which can be done through Google (can look up the link if you need it).
But I'm not a lawyer. Just listened and read a lot about this kind of content.