Microsoft Accidentally Asks Google to Censor News Sites, US Government

It was my understanding that there are intended to be severe repercussions involved for filing a false DMCA takedown request, and that part of the filing process involves someone signing off that it has been personally reviewed and thus is believed to be accurate.

Those checks are supposed to be in place to prevent exactly this, spidering the web for any hint of infringement and firing off a DMCA without even looking at the target first. Clearly that is exactly what has happened here, and the legal response should be swift and uncompromising.

I don't believe anyone has ever been punished for misfiling. Part of the problem is that you have to show that it was not filed by mistake, which is pretty hard to prove.

That would seem to make it a very bad idea to do any double-checking before sending one out, since the more checks you do, the easier someone could argue that you didn't screw up.

I'd like to see a fine issued for each mistaken DMCA takedown. Currently there's no incentive for IP owners not to carpet bomb the web with frequently-erroneous takedowns.

The Bing example linked inside is even funnier.