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Comment by wtracy | Hacker News Reader

It's time for penalties for false DMCA takedown notices.

If it was a content id takedown (which it sounds like it was, and Ars thinks so too), the DMCA is not involved at all; Google's content id system allows takedowns that do not use the DMCA system and thus do not expose the filer to a perjury charge. Google might penalize the company some other way, but it doesn't seem like it from the outside.

Well, I'm not sure I condone this behavior, but the Fox News thing to do here is for NASA to blackball Scripps, and to refuse to grant them interviews or access to their events.

Isn't Content ID automatic? Could be Scrips just says yes automatically to every hit generated by Content ID.

That doesn't absolve Scripps of their responsibility to make sure that the content going into their system isn't owned by someone else.

If one were the sort to blackball others, the fact that an algorithm did it for them, on the basis of data that they fed in is essentially no excuse for me.

> that the content going into their system

I thought it was a mistaken identification? I.e. it was youtube's fault, not Scripps.

“We apologize for the temporary inconvenience experienced when trying to upload and view a NASA clip early Monday morning," a Scripps spokesman told Motherboard. "We made a mistake. We reacted as quickly as possible to make the video viewable again, and we’ve adjusted our workflow processes to remedy the situation in future.”

I repeat myself: "Could be Scrips just says yes automatically to every hit generated by Content ID."

So they have some responsibility for saying yes (i.e. their workflow was select all, yes), but it was youtube that misidentified the video, not that Scrips uploaded a video from NASA into content ID as you wrote.

If NASA is putting info up freely, couldn't Scripps just incorporate that into its media regardless?

If they are not guilty of perjury, then surely they are guilty of some kind of commercial fraud. Could action be taken from that angle?

Google are free to take down any video they like for any reason, including "this other company asked us to". It's entirely up to the contract between them and Google (which I haven't read) whether they're subject to any penalties for asking Google to take down something they didn't actually own.

They already exist, problem is the penalties don't kick in unless you counterfile to restore your content, and then take the original requestor to court for filing notices in bad faith, something that requires one hell of a case to prove.

I'd be perfectly fine with lobbying for penalties for accidental takedowns, though. You have the power to take down anything anywhere in the USA, fine. You should be forced to take responsibility for that. As it stands, they can shrug and say "oops" and leave a trail of damage in their wake.

>They already exist, problem is the penalties don't kick in unless you counterfile to restore your content, and then take the original requestor to court for filing notices in bad faith, something that requires one hell of a case to prove.

I have long wondered... if I remember correctly, when you file a DMCA counter notice, you have to say under penalty of perjury that you believe that the original notice was filed "in error". Would that potentially interfere with a later claim that the notice was filed in bad faith?

Why would "in error" and "in bad faith" be mutually exclusive?

In error means they screwed up innocently. In bad faith means they screwed up willfully.

Or maybe, three strikes, then you lose your right to file free/automated takedowns.

Yup. And for takedowns, legitimate or not, that takedown other non-infringing content.

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