Abuse of Youtube's copyright infringement claim process for doxxing purposes
owningyourshit.blogspot.ca
owningyourshit.blogspot.ca
Also, if you're a site owner or content owner, you need to go right now to http://copyright.gov/onlinesp/ and register as a designated agent for content and notifications. Get ahead of this before it becomes a problem. It's $35.
Also, according to that page and schedule of fees, prices have been raised, and it's $105 now, plus $30 more if you have more than one domain name to register for, up to 10.
Also should note that the person in the link doesn't want to reveal his address or his legal name, and although the "Designation of Agent" form only asks for the address of the agent, the "full legal name" of the service provider, which would be him if he was self-hosting and unincorporated, is also required.
This actually seems like a great idea for a business: DMCA takedown protection. Register your works with us, and we'll take care of the disputes and counterclaims. You pay us a signup fee for each work, and a fee for each work we successfully defend. In return, you get peace of mind and an agent familiar with the system to wrestle with claimants on your behalf.
Reddit's CEO refers to Reddit as akin to a city-state and himself as mayor. Youtube has essentially the same problems in governance. They have to juggle a host of competing interests ranging from free speech rights, to copyright infringement, to the right to privacy. It has constituents large and small, individual users on up to multimillion dollar companies. Their constituents are not aligned on a host of issues, and this is clearly one of them.
So we know whose side the federal government is on, the question is, whose side is Youtube on?
The requirement to provide your name/address is so the DMCA complaints can be handled in a court, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Moral obligation? If you start saying that someone providing a service has a moral obligation to open themselves to civil suits on behalf of the people they serve then you'd see a lot fewer people offering free services.
Anyway, if she sues, won't her name be on the public records of the case?
IMHO she should just host her videos elsewhere. I can't even begin to imagine how many similar cases of internet drama goes on over at youtube every single day.
-she has no right to privacy?
-she deserves to be harassed?
-she deserves fraudulent copyright claims against her?
-or do you simply think the use of words not in your vocabulary makes her opinion irrelevant?
Doxxing is a concise term that describes a real phenomenon and it happens to be quite old in internet terms.
I would expect some informal language in a transcript to a youtube video. However, after reviewing the entire transcript again, I don't see much informal writing at all. I have no idea what you're referring to with "lulz" and I'm still looking for this "childish writing."
But at the same time: she doesn't have an inherent right to have youtube host her videos either. Using the free service means she has to abide by their rules, one of which is the (in this case, abusable) copyright counterclaim process. She doesn't have to give the claimants her info just like Google doesn't have to host her data. Stick it on Vimeo, or put it up in an S3 bucket.
And as an aside: I have to admit I had no clue what "doxxing" was either and had to look it up. I'll straight up admit that kind of jargon turned me off. Trying to communicate to the broader community using language specifci to your little enclave is just poor persuasion tactics.
Same here, but I'm thinking the "little enclave" is youtube. Several hundred videos have discussed doxing/doxxing in the past year, so it may be assumed to be common knowledge there among the more active vloggers. She makes youtube videos and she seems to be appealing solely to a youtube audience since it's a youtube specific issue (again, this is just a transcript).
I'm agreeing with you on most everything else. I don't particularly care for her legal approach here, but I don't think what she said should be ignored because of novel word usage either.
Usually they do not include whole paragraphs in capital letters, or multiple instances of words in caps for emotional affect. Perhaps less telling but still strange was the reference to a user 'ZOMGitscriss' - this, combined with the repeated 'doxx' usage, lends me to believe the writer has about the intellectual level of a script kiddie on irc, which I am extremely familiar with due to spending years wasting my life with people who say things like "oh dongues. i been doxxd by a fed. ZOMG"
Reading the whole article after I left my comment, and reading HN's subsequent comments, it became clear this was some kind of off the cuff rant about the consequences of the DMCA-related censors built into youtube, and a misunderstanding of their policy. In other words, I was right.
See how that works?
No, I don't agree. Anger at harassment and injustice isn't juvenile. Use of jargon familiar to her audience isn't juvenile either. Although I can see why others would see it that way.
apparent unwillingness to learn about them
I do agree this seems apparent.
To a point where it makes her seem unsuitable to voice an informed opinion about it
I don't know enough to judge.
1) Get the videos removed. 2) Potentially get real-life identifying information in order to enact a campaign of harassment. I would hate for GWW to be harassed. She is a breath of fresh air.
The DMCA is fine when the complaints are legit. This penalizes both YouTube and the content creator.
You put the details of your legal representative on that form.
As others have noted, this form doesn't need your personal information, so no I don't agree that this is an "exploit". You never have to give your personal information.
The situation reminds me of people who make anti-Scientology videos and then cry about freedom of speech when the cult's legal juggernaut descends. Is it fair to get a DMCA or lawsuit threat just because someone disagrees with your content? No (assuming you did not violate copyright protection laws). But getting bit by a shark because you're wading in its pool isn't fair either - just inevitable.
Is this indeed how YouTube's process works? If so, it certainly would seem to be problematic. A proxy, such as a shell company, or simply a friend, would seem to be plausible alternatives.
Essentially, Prima makes an accusation - "I swear your user is hosting my copyrighted material via your site." Host informs Secunda. Secunda has two options, either 1) Have the material removed by host or 2) submit sworn statement to host that they did not violate copyright and that Prima can come sue them at this address.
At that point the host re-instates the material in question and will remove it only upon receipt of initiation of a lawsuit.
This provision of the DMCA was created by the ISPs and specifically the cable companies because they didn't want to be liable for things their users did on their networks. This is the result.
It seems like a non-profit could handle this role where they act as a proxy where the victim of the notice asserts they have copyright, sends the information to the proxy and then the proxy acts on their behalf?
The "act on their behalf" might be considered legal representation. As I understand (IANAL), the EFF as an organization doesn't provide legal representation to others, and more commonly refer them to a lawyer or law school clinic for further assistance.
Righthaven got struck down because they were only assigned "right to sue" and not ownership or exclusive rights to the copyrighted work.
If he were to fully assign the copyrights to the EFF, they would not run into the same trouble Righthaven did.
Don't complain when people or companies abuse the control you voluntarily gave them over your content and creations. Take that control back, and own your shit.
Either way, if you're not paying for something, what do you expect.
YouTube is a free video hosting service whose use does not require you to sign up with or disclose your real identity. It is not "entitlement" to expect it to be what it is.
If you don't realize that's what you're doing when you post content on a web site you don't own, you should. The web was designed specifically so that crap like this wouldn't be a problem. But people want to give up ownership for convenience every single time.
It's easier to be an audience or a user than to take 20 dollars and 20 minutes to learn HTML, buy a domain and become a peer with equal standing on the internet. Take your website, email links to your friends, set up RSS, and you've replaced Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumbler, Youtube and Flicker with something you actually own and control. And it really isn't that hard.
Case in point, the OP loses her videos for no reason, but the Pirate Bay is still online. Guess who owns their house and who is still renting?
Being upset that the free service that you use is refusing to do stuff for you for nothing is entitlement.
One is conflating "I have a right to do this thing" with "It is right for me to do this thing". There is no such equivalence, and much of the argument seems to come from people who believe there is. There are many things we all have a right to do which are not right to do.
Second, and much more frightening, is the assumption that abuse of a person is acceptable or excusable on the grounds that a person using a free service somehow deserves such abuse for not being a paying customer, or that not being abused is some sort of special privilege of which not all people are deserving. Perhaps you'd like to step back and think a bit about your own ethical framework before continuing this discussion?
The people I know at YouTube are very nice people. They presumably didn't say, "Hey, we'd like to host video for the entire world. And also do our best to fuck them over if they're being harassed." This is a weird corner case, and I hope they'll find a way to rejig their system to prevent this sort of takedown abuse.
A. Content owners: Copyright Infringement Notification (modelled on US DMCA takedown).
- content owners fill out a form with specific pre-stated legalese expressions for specific content.
- contact: email address is preferred, no specific contact information is mandated.
- user content blocked, replaced with claim statement and Strike received on account.
B. Content owners: Copyright Verification Programme.
- this seems to be an expedited and broader version of the CIN tool for mass content removal.
- need to identify agents for your ownership. Identity process unknown.
- user content blocked, replaced with claim statement and Strike received on account.
C. Content owners: Content ID (nothing whatsoever to do with US DMCA).
- an automated or semi-automated process to flag content according to any of a number of policies that content owners decide.
- this includes deciding what is or is not "Fair Use"...
- unlike the CIN and CVP processes, accounts of matching content are not issued Strikes, which would ultimately close the account if sufficient number received, but the content is blocked.
D. Content owners: Retractions.
- process that requires specific content identification, and content owner name as signature from original claimant account.
- removes claims and restrictions of CIN and CVP. Unclear how, if at all, it interacts with Content ID.
E. Users: Copyright Counter-Notifications.
- form that, among other things, requires full address information that is always relayed to original claimant.
- note. copyright laws of user's country of residence are irrelevant. The form of allowable counter-notification is based on the "location" [2] of the original claimant.
- Youtube "may then reinstate the material in question at our discretion".
In this case, the two claimants likely used the CIN which will result in Strikes without action by the user with Copyright Counter-Notifications.
In short and in my opinion, it is clear that this process is highly asymmetrical and prone to abuse - in this case as a form of harassment, if as claimed the user had zero infringing content in her videos.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/t/copyright_owners
[2] Ambiguous if whether that could refer to jurisdiction of any of the registered agents under the CVP, for example.