Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it | Hacker News Reader

Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

920 pointstaubek127 comments

Ah, yes, you know someone's desperate when you see a bogus DMCA claim like this. Not the first time this happened and definitely won't be the last.

This also demonstrates why it is bad for a law to mandate private entities to do moderation, in this case taking down copyright infringement materials when reported. Google, like basically all big platforms, doesn't care if a claim is fraudulent because the parties impacted cannot hold it accountable — google will just tell you they are themselves victims of the fraudulent claim. And to be fair, they are. But it has to enforce the claims or else lose its safe harbor exemption. This practically allows bad actors to use platforms as their shields, and in the end no one but the victim suffers any consequences for their abuse of the copyright laws.

I think a more sane approach would to require every copyright takedown to require a court order. Granted, the legal system is not perfect, but judges are not incentivized to always side with the supposed copyright holder like online platforms do. They will not be letting someone claiming to be living on a deserted island to file a claim and even when fraud does occur, they will at least know where the claim is actually coming from and be able to punish the fraudster accordingly.

1)The legal system is not fast. 2) which jurisdiction should have the right to ask the judge to take down the material?

This could be like warrants and judicial overview. Warrants are not slow. This is only a gatekeep on "does this make any sense". And of course, the cost of the court system/overview/etc could be born by judgments against those found actually guilty.

And just like DMCA, warrants are already over used and can often be overly broad.

> Warrants are not slow.

Well, they would be if you needed one for every DMCA takedown.

> I think a more sane approach would to require every copyright takedown to require a court order.

In a country with an efficient legal system, maybe…

Requiring the claimant to put something at stake (make it a nominal deposit you get back in case of either no challenge or the case actually going to court) seems more realistic, but I’m not holding my breath for a reform of the law to that extent.

Claimants put something at stake: false DMCA takedowns are under prejury laws which carry prison sentences.

I doubt this is really a DMCA case though. DMCA laws exist, but to invoke them requires some specific steps which Google prefers you skip.

The fact that this probably isn't DMCA may leave Google open to being sued, but you would have to see a lawyer - be prepared to spend several million dollars to win a few thousand.

Has the US ever opened a single DMCA perjury case against anyone?

Not once, in the history of the DMCA.

If a court order was involved then the offense would be "fraud on the court" -- and much scarier for the undecided fraudster.

Why does DMCA need to be handled quickly?

Because one of the requirements the law sets out is that the content be removed "expeditiously" upon receipt of a takedown notice.

I fucking loathe the current DMCA regime with all of my being. That being said, it is currently the only chance of victims of revenge pornography getting any reprieve whatsoever. I think the solution needs to be to actually punish bad-faith actors rather than to make it more onerous to report violations. It is already illegal to file false DMCA claims, but it has literally never been enforced. Changing the laws doesn't help when the existing laws already have an answer for the problem but aren't being enforced.

> That being said, it is currently the only chance of victims of revenge pornography getting any reprieve whatsoever.

It was in many cases. But there is a federal law for this now.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAKE_IT_DOWN_Act

A good start would be to require that claimants must verify their real identity. The claim in this case was made by an apparent pseudonym and their address is fictional. Both should themselves be reason to reject the claim. The fact that anyone apparently can submit claims to Google under false names seems insane to me.

Who decides what counts as a "real identity"?

Fictional address, sure: that would, as I understand, be some kind of fraud, and can reasonably be prohibited if there's a mechanism to do so… but then you run into the problem that not everyone has an address.

Establish the identities of people is something the courts have long had to deal with and is nothing new for them.

Indeed. But it's not something that Google can do, so bolting on an identity verification requirement to the DMCA process isn't helpful. Re-routing DMCA requests through the bureaucracy of the courts might work.

If counterclaims require doxxing yourself under penalty of perjury, then I would assume that's still perjury even if the other guy started it, so just making the counterclaim process easier doesn't fix the problem.

from another perspective - who is better resourced than Google to determine if a person and place are real or fictitious? They make these decisions all the time when it suits them. And explain to me this population who is filing DMCA take-down requests that doesn't have an address? the Venn diagram seems shockingly small.

The onus is on the DMCA processor to verify the legitimacy of the claim. I don't have a real solution, but Congress created the problem and should solve it.

There's of course a whole legal system that has been dealing with this since for ever.

If I were to implement it myself, I'd use a third party service like those that can verify passports and driver's licenses and so on.

No they don't. The onus on them is to comply with the takedown request and provide for immediate restoration with a counter-notice. If the initiator is acting in bad faith it will be exposed if they attempt to litigate.

The friction free restoration flow is what Google is missing because they don't actually follow the DMCA process. Amend the law to strip safe harbor immunity in this scenario and suddenly we'd see abuse effectively combated.

Etsy seems to operate in the same way as google. I had a DMCA against a listing of mine that should have been protected as parody. Etsy immediately complied with the takedown, and then I emailed the complainant and they agreed it was a mistake from their system/consultant. But they never took the next step of contacting Etsy to say they were wrong. So I could never restore the listing.

+1 on the implementation. Passport chip validation really is the way to go …if…we must go that way.

We’re bending over backwards to accommodate a need to validate identities in a system (the internet) which in many ways started as an open/anonymous idea. I’m sceptical about most of all this. Google as a platform clearly have a responsibility for content, but are not allocating enough time/money to truely fix the problem. It’s like they have this MASSIVE problem at the very core of their product, and the only solution is spending tons of resources to truely moderate/investigate and proactively avoid incidents. But they should. SoMe/Big Tech are all cheating and their margins should be lower (and more sensible, compared to other industries..) if they had to follow common sense rules that forever applied to market places, news papers, public space - I mean, if you own a wall facing a crowded street, and someone paints a nazi symbol on your wall, then you have a problem.

I appreciate the sentiment, as someone who is sympathetic to the plight of the homeless / unhoused. But in practical terms, when it comes to aligning a system with justice, IMHO requiring DMCA plaintiffs to have a legal address seems preferable to the status quo.

> Who decides what counts as a "real identity"?

Notaries do this all the time often for free or for a fairly minimal fee.

The solution doesn't have to be perfect to be better.

You don’t have to make the quick takedown path available to everyone necessarily. If you don’t have an address it’s going to be harder to show standing to make the takedown request. The fact that makes life harder for homeless people sucks but that’s a feature not a bug. I would venture to suggest that the number of valid dmca takedowns by homeless people is close to zero whereas the number of fallacious dmca takedowns that would be prevented by insisting on identity or at least address validation would be pretty high.

This is another problem with letting private entities be the arbitrator. How is Google supposed to know if Ellie Piee is a real person? It can ask for ID verification of course, but these can be faked, and when that happens there is little Google can do to hold the claimant accountable. A court will certainly have an easier time verifying the identity of the claimant and take action when fraud occurs.

We already have private entities checking IDs everyday for all kinds of things. That is a solved problem.

How are banks supposed to know if Ellie Piee is a real person?

Actually

How is Google supposed to know if Ellie Piee is a real person when Ellie Piee pays for a Google product? Or otherwise uses a Google service that requires identity

> How is Google supposed to know if Ellie Piee is a real person?

That doesn't really matter. Anyway it's silly to question whether Google, a multi-trillion dollar company, can validate someone's ID when they already do it in many other aspects of their business.

But is Google treating some claims different from others? Are Ellie Piee's claim against Gergely Orosz's article, and the latter's appeal treated exactly the same as any other? In other words, if I use an obviously bogus identity to make DMCA claims against Google content on their own platforms, will they immediately take it down and then go through the same standard appeal process? If not, then the system isn't "abused" it's used exactly as it was designed to be used. In an asymmetrical manner to the benefit of some.

So the real question isn't "how can Google validate an identity", it's "why is Google treating some different from others"? It sure isn't an accident.

Google has no problems "verifying" me with mapping to my phone number, etc. (Actually, it does, after a long and storied startup career, I can no longer create a new Google account because my phone number "has been used too often").

There's also the asymmetry of "you don't need to supply ID to make a DMCA claim, but you will to appeal it", which people can and have used to discover identities for more harassment.

There should be verification that:

* the reporter actually exists * and is in fact who claim to be * and ALSO that they have control of the copyright in question

If any of these is not required then asymmetry is far too much.

> A good start would be to require that claimants must verify their real identity.

I GUARANTEE that if this were tried, "YOU CAN'T FILE A DMCA COMPLAINT WITHOUT A GOOGLE ACCOUNT!" would rocket to the front page here and cause a(nother) general freakout about privacy concerns.

Content hosts can't win here.

Nobody mentioned requiring a Google account. That would be an absurd solution, since Google accounts are not real identities, either.

So... your solution is that Google implements authentication for DMCA takedowns using an authentication system that isn't Google's? Whose, then? Same headline, different villain. Probably still Google's fault somehow.

No, this is dumb and won't happen, for all the reasons that we yell about in other threads.

> you know someone's desperate when you see a bogus DMCA claim like this

I don't think this means desperation, it's just these assholes weaponize the law on a regular basis.

Honestly, I usually like to give people the benefit of the doubt. But these Pollen guys seem like grade-A assholes. It is astonishing to me the gall to double charge people on the order or $3.2M and never return the money. I can't bear to not repay someone even a dollar, but intentionally doing stuff like this seems to be run of the mill for these guys. I can't even get in the headspace of people who would do this.

Agreed 100%.

Also (tangential nit for the sake of information-sharing), to "bare" oneself is to be vulnerable; you meant "bear" as in to be able to carry or support something -- and the "myself" is extraneous. So, "I can't bear to..." HTH! :)

Our courts are already packed. You'd have to fix that first.

Was this really DMCA? The article implies it is, but I don't see any evidence (maybe I missed it). There is discussion of what the DMCA says, and Google took the article down. However it is generally understood that DMCA rarely is used to take things down. Instead Google has a "I can't believe it isn't DMCA" process that looks similar, but in reality it isn't actually DMCA.

If this is really DMCA then the author should press charges - DMCA take downs are done under penalty of prejury which is a criminal act. Since author legally has copyright they have legal protections under DMCA for exactly this.

If this isn't DMCA then it is just Google decision not to index something. They have the right to not index anything they choose not to. Nothing the author can directly do about this - but indirectly they can be witness that Google isn't a "common carrier" since they choose not to index that wasn't copyright, so you just need to find some case where someone else sues google because they found something "harmful" (likely something like suicide instructions)

> but I don't see any evidence

Isn't this screenshot on the article evidence https://storage.ghost.io/c/39/f8/39f85cc7-8637-40fc-a57c-f45... ? Or could it still be the "I can't believe it's not DMCA" you've mentioned?

I don't know how to tell the difference. Google has incentive to hide this

It reads multiple times “DMCA” on that page but you’re saying it could be some unspecified other type of complaint.

If that’s really the case, isn’t Google a fraudulent party here by sending people DMCA notices that aren’t? The DMCA perjury penalty would seem to apply here as well (lying about receiving a third party notice).

Maybe. I said elsewhere "see a lawyer, be prepared to pay them millions to recover thousands".

after reading yours and themaninthedark comments I understand what you're getting at

That may be DMCA notice but I think that BluGill get to the heart of the matter in saying the Google doesn't follow the DMCA process. They have their own process that is a warped mirror of the DMCA process and they use the DMCA process as a fig leaf to hide their policies are different.

Google was notorious for not acting on counter-claims: "For anyone out there who have been DMCA'd from Google and a properly filled out counter DMCA to them was rejected with the following: "Thanks for reaching out to us. At this time, Google has decided not to take action." Please contact me immediately " https://x.com/gelbooru/status/1168036119893688320

Here is a January 2026 view for the pro-easy take down side showing that Google is now requiring identities to issue DMCA claims: >"Fast‑forward to January 2026, and the same system now questions the very identity of the complainant, demanding proof that was never required before. " https://ubos.tech/news/googles-dmca-process-leaves-creators-...

A middle ground (which wouldn't clog up an overburdened court system) would require a US attorney to draft and sign a complaint for a takedown request, putting their accreditation on the line.

You could also require a signed letter that has been properly notarized. Again, adds an independent 3rd party with a verified identity and something to loose. And falsifying is a crime.

Notaries aren't accountable for the content of the documents they notarize. They're only responsible for making sure the signatures they are witnessing come from the correct people. They'd be happy to notarize DMCA takedowns, since it's nothing more than income for them.

I understand, but then you know the real identity of the person requesting the take down, which was an issue in the story here.

That, and filing false claims should be incredibly punishable, like beyond all proportion.

One disgusting CEO landing behind the bars over frivolous DMCA takedown would improve things dramatically, like for humanity (or a hefty chunk thereof that's browsing the web, anyway).

DMCA notices are meant to be submitted "under penalty of perjury", and false notices could in theory result in civil action being taken against those who send them. In practice, neither of these occur even if the sender is a real person, like a record company lawyer lending their name to complaint that are entirely computer generated, or, in this as in so many cases, a completely fabricated identity.

Requiring verification through government ID for takedown notices should be a minimum requirement.

I'd be curious if any prosecutions are a real deterrent - it seems not. YouTube has to follow the DMCA but also enforces its stricter content ID, with popular creators getting hit (and being vocal) and YouTube seeming to "fix" the issues (until next time).

Ultimately the whole system needs reform now where it's easier than ever via LLMs to send off these notices.

AFAIU, the whole deal is that the bogus claims never actually reach the DMCA stage - big platforms implement their moderation policies and copyright claim handling specifically to avoid involving the legal system. It's that intermediate layer that incentivizes automated, bogus claims, as there's effectively zero consequences to them.

We got told by the 9th circuit that false claims submitted under penalty of perjury are actually just "opinions" not capable of being proven true or false.

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/22...

But does that apply to a lie about your identity?

Yes, it's "I swear under penalty of perjury that it's my opinion that this infringes my copyright."

Creator's rights need to be safeguarded but the DMCA gives legal weight to people without legal training and when they fuck it up (accidentally or intentionally) they get the no-consequence "but it's just, like, your opinion, man, and no-one expects you to be a lawyer".

In this case the statement they checked off said that there was an unlawful reproduction of a trademark. There was no reproduction at all, since the products were originally manufactured by the brand. Boggles my mind how that can be an opinion.

The "perjury" clause only applies to the claim to be authorised to act on behalf of the rights holder, not the claim that rights are being infringed

https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/51541/has-anyone-bee...

In this case, the perjury may apply. It seems unlikely that the person that complained is acting on behalf of whoever owns the rights to a 25 year old article.

Just as there are SEO firms that help companies ascend the rankings, there are "reputation management" firms that erase bad news by publishing new articles & by pushing takedown requests on articles they don't like. As with SEO, Google appears to tacitly encourage this.

It seems obvious that there should be a review process for takedown requests, with penalties for frivolous requests. (Up to and perhaps including lawsuits to cover costs and for the sake of deterrence.) But it's not at all obvious to Google.

DMCA notices are supposed to be filed under penalty of perjury, but I'm not aware of anyone ever being prosecuted for that.

I doubt this was a DMCA notice at all. Google has a not DMCA process that is easier to submit to.

The screenshot clearly says "NOTICE TYPE: DMCA".

Your post seems to assume anyone in power is acting in good faith and wants a fair system.

I would have never heard about Negus-Fancey and Wright, but now I have! Streisand at its finest.

The irony is that now this article and the hackers news post are the top google search results for Negus Fancey

That's beautiful irony.

I expect the documentary to get an uptick in downloads as well.

Also top for "pollen company"

> It seems that anyone can file a bogus copyright claim to get an article they don't like removed from Google's search index

This has been known for years. Copyright has been abused for many many years in this sense.

And Google is very well known for their completely absent human-in-the-loop support, so that doesn’t help either.

While that is true, and Google deserves are shaming they get for their terrible handling of DMCA, lets try to be real. Autoaccepting all DMCA takedown requests with zero verification is simplest and cheapest approach to be complaint. Failing to delete a file is tho only way to be on hook for any repercussions.

in the year of AI google could easily to a first round of review of DMCA complaints

and nonetheless, it's still on their side to act properly. it's not like they lack funds to pay people reviewing claims.

Already 12 points after just 34 minutes. As noted at the end of the article, streisand effect is alive and well and this article is on its way to the front page.

This is an extremely common technique against investigative reporting, in particular because certain social media / blogging platforms allow backdating posts [1]. So people just copy your post, claim DMCA, and then take it down quickly after.

1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39355869

It seems the BBC documentary link also returns a 404.

https://www.mailplus.co.uk/tv-guide/tv/394562/crashed-800m-f...

It's on BBC iPlayer - https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001n327/crashed-800m-...

Unfortunately BBC iPlayer is blocked in a number of regions. However, the doc appears to be available on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXJmD2XIZfQ .

"the uploader has not made this video available in your country" (socerlist republic of Germany und commernest Europe?)

That's a television guide for what's currently being broadcast, published by the Daily Mail, not the actual documentary from 2023.

I’m guessing the obvious fakeness of the request is part of it: they’re testing to see if anyone is paying attention. Maybe the author doesn’t care if it gets taken down after four years; maybe they see a super fake request and assume it won’t succeed (or read it as spam). It also costs them nothing and has zero legal liability because there’s nobody to prosecute for such a fake request.

Interestingly, the fourth highest ranking link on google for the CEOs name links to a 404: https://www.mailplus.co.uk/tv-guide/tv/394562/crashed-800m-f...

Somehow not in the wayback machine or archive.ph. Probably just coincidence.

We probably should not read too much into the fact that the Daily Mail's guide to what's currently on television no longer lists a documentary from 2023. Except, perhaps, that the Daily Mail's search engine gaming is clearly quite effective.

> Why does Google allow fraudulent DMCA notices to be filed with no penalty?

Because there is no law that requires a penalty. It's very common on YT, if you are big enough of a company you can file them willy nilly and never get any consequence

There is a law; it's perjury. But it isn't enforced, so ... it might as well not exist.

Forbes 30 under 30...

In particular, filed under 2019, Europe, Entertainment.

https://www.forbes.com/under30/list/2019/europe/entertainmen...

It’s great when someone has such a large online presence that, if they have a problem with a huge company like Google, the company ends up fixing it just for the PR. I doubt they’d respond the same way to an average person.

Does Google use GEMINI to handle these?

The thing that stands out to me isn't even the fake identity or the fake country. It's that the incentives are completely backwards.

Submitting a bogus DMCA is basically free. Google's cheapest option is to comply first and sort it out later. Meanwhile the person who did nothing wrong has to spend hours (or money) fixing it.

That's a system where every incentive points toward abuse...without knowing what and how this system works behind the scenes, makes me wonder...if it's one of those "delegated to Accenture" processes; like the Google Drive file moderation...

Funny, is recently searched “match plate in French“ the LLM went straight to match sticks and dinner plates, and the dummizer in search fixed “plate“ to “play“ and went into soccer territory.

I still have no clue how the foundry pattern is called in my native language.

> fixed “plate“ to “play“ and went into soccer territory.

Well, a soccer search lets Google make more money by showing you more-profitable ads. /only-partial-sarcasm

DMCA takedowns should not exist. If it's important, get a court judgement, where the opposing party can present a defense.

If it's not worth a court case, then it must not be very important. Or maybe they have no case.

DMCA takedowns, if they were actually followed to the letter of the law, would be much better than the current system. What's supposed to happen is Party A posts a video that Party B thinks infringes on their copyright on Platform C. B sends a DMCA claim to C. C takes down the content, and sends A a copy of the claim. A decides to fight the takedown, sends a counter claim to C. C reinstates the content, and sends the counterclaim to B.

A and B now have each other's information, and are free to sue each other.

The problem with the status quo is that the platforms are taking full advantage of the slack given between receiving notice and taking action for counterclaims, but acting immediately on claims.

A few months ago I got in touch with Google legal team to remove an ad that wasn't legal. They said that they don't moderate third party content. (???? Bro what?). Except for this bogus excuse, the ad was paid for by a foreign state trying to influence my country's opinion on some non profit organizations. The ad wasn't compliant with the European regulation on political ads (in my opinion). I thought of getting in touch with my communication authority but it's something that went on for days with Google and eventually you're left with no willpower left. Mind you I referenced the points of the law I thought they were breaching (well not just me, this thing went on an italian newspaper before I asked for removal), which is not the most interesting way to spend time

Did you try to negatively impact their profit? And you expected them to act on it? Are you crazy? /s

I help run a domain legal case search engine (UDRP.tools) and we run into this type of stuff too. Notices that results are being purged. It's bullshit. We aggregate legal case data and provide analytics about UDRP cases. These aren't private and it's not personal information. It's all coming from publicly documented arbitration decisions. Trying to hide/erase your history in (domain) court on google claiming copyright is a lie. eg. https://lumendatabase.org/notices/27934920

> The fake DMCA is made by a fake profile from a country with zero inhabitants. The removal requests by this "Ellie Piee" are made from the country called Bouvet Island, an uninhabited Norwegian dependent territory in the South Atlantic/Southern Ocean near Antarctica. It has zero inhabitants, and is referred to as the "world's most remote island."

this is the most infuriating part, you don't even have to be a person to do this?

> Negus-Fancey

I have seen that posh double-barreled surname before: Charles and Cathy Negus-Fancey were the managers of the reclusive cult musician Scott Walker and his interface to the world. Any close relation?

Probably - he got started in the music business: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/talent-20...

Charles Negus-Fancey is Callum Negus-Fancey’s father. Charles Negus-Fancey’s father was Edwin Fancey, a British film producer and distributor.

Google require ID verification for DMCA requests. That would put an end to most of the abuse.

I'm curious how Google notifies people about things like this... do they pull an email out of whois, or your DNS SOA? If there's nothing linking your website to a Google account, it seems like they could just make your website disappear.

Do they even?

> So imagine my surprise when I was notified that Google removed the article from its search results

You know you can just read the linked articles, right?

Edit: parent has edited their post, it used to say something like "google has never notified anyone about such things".

I have received notifications for stories published by the org I work at when they were delisted for certain terms. Like here, it’s people who got caught doing disreputable things and trying to cleanup their online presence.

Many sites have setup Google Search Console and so you can be notified through that.

That was what I was referring to... if you never set it up, I guess you'll never know then?

> Why does Google allow fraudulent DMCA notices to be filed with no penalty?

Because Google started the process of removing humans from every loop possible years ago, and these sorts of things are the results of those sorts of things.

Streisand effect is in effect! Nicely done Google and whoever you are Pollen.

Steal $20 from a gas station and it is jail time. Instead, steal wages from employees and double-charge customers to make it a civil case.

Pretty much this. Cashier takes $20 out of the register at a gas station and it goes on their criminal record. Gas station owner shorts the cashier $20 on their pay and there's basically no recourse.

Looks like movement of some internet crime syndicate(s) ...

I love a good Barba Streisand effect, hope this becomes one!

The article in question is now the second result I see in Google in a private browser when I search for "Callum Negus-Fancey"

This is all super interesting, but I can't decide what's the MOST interesting thing:

1. The whole Pollen case (I didn't know about)

2. That Google can be tricked so easily?

3. The whole "industry" that seems to be in place to clean the image of some scumbags in the internet (this whole Ellie Piee from Bouvet Island)

I think the most worrying part is Google's fragility to hurt itself.

How easy is it to challenge these claims?

You pay lawyer, they back off, you're now in the red for lawyer fees. I guess you could sue for damages but good fucking luck

1) Do you have to pay for the lawyer? Can't you object yourself? 2) Shouldn't offending side reimburse the expenses?

> Shouldn't offending side reimburse the expenses?

In an ideal world. They might even be legally liable in this one. But you still have to sue them to get the money, which is an expensive gamble for a very small pay off.

The biggest issue is that to challenge them, you have to dox yourself, even if the DMCA claim is completely bogus and itself is contains bullshit information about nobody who actually exists (e.g, in a doxing war, the party that fires a bullshit DMCA claim first has a huge advantage).

Internet Crime Syndicate(s)

Ah, the wonders of copyright. A weapon disguised as protection. Like with age verification and "think of the children", copyright claims have "think of the small artists".

Should have used a GDPR takedown instead of copyright: in the EU, Google doesn't tell you the identity of the requester, what qas allegedly infringing, or even the affected URl, and there's no ability to challenge. Great stuff. (/s)

if this makes you angry, it should! but there is nothing "one" can do. it is just how the system is set up.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com