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Comment by blueflow | Hacker News Reader

I wish some people from non-western countries would step up and file more fraudulent DMCA notices. Preferably from Russia or China, where they are out of reach for a western court. The current DMCA system needs to learn some defenses against misuse.

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The current system is incredibly one-sided. I had a company remove a video that was saying negative things about it with a fraudulent takedown. It eventually went back up, but they were able to keep it offline for 10+ days and I had no recourse.

I wish the free speech caucus realized how it can be weaponized to suppress speech. Sometimes I wish someone would DMCA a bunch of congressional campaign ads, because if pols realized how one-sided and ripe for abuse the system is they might actually fix it.

> Sometimes I wish someone would DMCA a bunch of congressional campaign ads, because if pols realized how one-sided and ripe for abuse the system is they might actually fix it.

By giving themselves an exemption, like the anti-telemarketer laws.

Importantly, I think there is a useful parallel here with the behavior that led to SLAPP laws which now exist in most states.

I was working for a start up company that had internal documents leak and got published by the media. The DMCA takedown requests were ignored by the big tech companies hosting the documents.

If the big tech companies apply human review to takedown requests against major media clients - I have no idea if they do despite having previously worked for one of them in an entirely unrelated role - they may have concluded that the posted leaked document was non-infringing fair use under the law.

Of course, they could be right or wrong, but you’re allowed to sue them in order for a court to decide that question if they decline to take it down. The takedown procedure is not legally mandatory, although the DMCA safe harbor limiting service provider liability does not apply without it.

I’m not a lawyer and am just discussing here for general information purposes rather than legal advice, so double check this with your own lawyer before filing any such lawsuit. But I am far more familiar with this area of law than most non-lawyers, for various reasons.

From what I see in the news from the US the free speech cause is basically about freedom to harass, so DMCA notices fit well into this narrative.

That is because good uses of free speech don't make the news. Anytime you see the news remember if it is common or good it isn't news.

Your news is biased and your intellectual discernment of motivation for free speech is that of a child (or slave, or wannabe tyrant).

You should reevaluate where you source your news from because that blatantly false. One of the biggest defenders of free speech in the US is the ACLU and that is a categorically incorrect assessment of their motivations and activities.

Solution: use fraudulent DMCA takedowns to take down harassers.

Your news sound quite biased.

The defective system is the legal invention of "copyright".

Get rid of the nonsense that "stop copying me!" should be raised to a cause of action, and we're good.

The world can survive if the top few percent of musicians, writers, and actors make a little less money, that they were receiving based on that fictitious tort.

Would you even have heard of those "top few percent" of musicians if there wasn't some way for them the capture some of the value they create, both for themselves, and to pay for marketing etc? Or would they just play for fun for a few friends? Why bother?

Actors and musicians used to basically be hobos wandering from town to town, because their art was not essential. Copyright made them kings, yet their usefulness hasn’t evolved. But don’t get me wrong, I love music. It’s just that essential activities like farming didn’t receive the same treatment.

The best musicians are playing for fun anyway. Some latter make it big, but most don't

Concerts. Music's version of the freemium model.

They have defenses. I invite you to go and try to send a DMCA takedown request for any of the videos on this channel https://youtube.com/@therecordingindustryassoci7122 and tell me if your request gets denied or if the video actually goes down for a few hours. Reverse the roles and you get an insta-takedown.

I would imagine the music industry largely doesn't file DMCA notices on YouTube.

YouTube has an additional layer on top (Content ID), through agreements with music, tv, and movie industry, to automatically flag supposedly offending material so it can be 'acted on' without anyone needing to file a DMCA notice (or Youtube get sued even more).

That's an incorrect assumption. There's large volumes of music content that slips through content-id regularly that is then manually flagged (sometimes years after uploading). However the quantity is overall less for music than it is for protected video content takedowns.

OP is having problems because he is a "random" Shopify customer.

If non-Western actors targeted the top 1,000 Shopify stores with an automated system --> I imagine it would get fixed sooner.

notices, even legit ones, get ignored when against powerful parties that could change the law. So (ab)use won't work to change the law.

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