Right, and the counter to that is "I tried to prove I was the copyright owner and they refused to comply".

In this case, it isn’t a false claim.

The author only needs to show up to court with a driver’s license to prove their identity. The judge would rule in favor of the author the same day if someone from Google actually bothered to show up.

A scammer isn’t going to court. Don’t try to solve for that.

OP got in touch with one (or many) humans on Google. Humans then decided not to act on the DCMA request.

No need for the "doesn't scale" argument, whatever system they have in place is already good enough to process OP's inquire. The problematic bit is what they decided to do once they had all the information in their hands.

I do, however, think this is just a mishandled situation and Google will correct, particularly after being featured on the HN wall of shame.

> Anyone who understands how easy it is to copy bits should know that the original intent of copyright can't work anymore.

AI makes this even more stringent. You cannot protect the "vibe" of your works, AI can replicate it in seconds. If you make "vibe infringement" the new rule, then creativity becomes legally risky. A catch 22.

In 1930 judge Hand said in relation to Nichols v. Universal Pictures:

> Upon any work...a great number of patterns of increasing generality will fit equally well. At the one end is the most concrete possible expression...at the other, a title...Nobody has ever been able to fix that boundary, and nobody ever can...As respects play, plagiarism may be found in the 'sequence of events'...this trivial points of expression come to be included.

And since then a litany of judges and tests expanded the notion of infringement towards vibes and away from expression:

- Hand's Abstractions / The "Patterns" Test (Nichols v. Universal Pictures)

- Total Concept and Feel (Roth Greeting Cards v. United Card Co.)

- The Krofft Test / Extrinsic and Intrinsic Analysis

- Sequence, Structure, and Organization (Whelan Associates v. Jaslow Dental Laboratory)

- Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison (AFC) Test (Computer Associates v. Altai)

The trend has been to make infringement more and more abstract over time, but this makes testing it an impossible burden. How do you ensure you are not infringing any protected abstraction on any level in any prior work? Due diligence has become too difficult now.

It’s certainly due for an update, but it isn’t doing nothing at all. The friction it creates for unlicensed use at scale is enough to keep all the streaming services etc. afloat, which in turn are still funding the production of content. Maybe the anarchy that would follow its abolition would be superior to the old system creaking along, but that remains to be seen (and would be silly to accept on faith).

I don't know, how did the world manage to work before the internet?

You call someone, you send a letter, something. It's not rocket science.

It's not automated, sure, but somethings will never be automated, just by their nature. That doesn't mean it doesn't scale. Well, sure it does. You just hire more staff.

For Christ's sake, it used to be that phone calls required physical action from an operator to get connected. And now we can't do shit if there isn't an API for it or some bullshit.

Before we can assume this is impossible for Google, let's look at their revenue: Is it greater than the salary of 1 person, which is all that's required to comply with OP's request? If so, then it isn't impossible.

To judge the claim of unscalability true, we would first need to know the rate of DMCA takedown requests, the number 1 person can investigate in a day, and then we can do the math of whether total revenue can pay for those employees.

Even if not, it's not an excuse. The only legal venue google has to complain about this, is getting the law changed.

As far as I can tell, requiring valid ID would lose a provider safe harbor protection as it is not one of the required elements:

(3) Elements of notification.-

(A) To be effective under this subsection, a notification of claimed infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated agent of a service provider that includes substantially the following:

(i) A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

(ii) Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site.

(iii) Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.

(iv) Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted.

(v) A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

(vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

I'll be the first to shout from the rooftops that the DMCA is in general a bad law, but according to that law, if the takedown notice contains the required verbiage, then they are required by law to give it the benefit of the doubt (that is, if they want to keep their lack of liability).

> Not unless you want internet randos to be able to take down any YouTube channel they want for “copyright infringement.”

This is why it's a bad law! But it is the law.

So why does Google receive and (sometimes) act on DMCA requests?