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Comment by enjo | Hacker News Reader

This is my biggest issue with the DMCA. Issuing a take-down notice for content you do not own should result in large fines. Maybe you get a couple of false positives, but at some point you have to be accountable for this stuff. If you want to rigorously enforce your copyright, good on ya... but be prepared to pay out the nose when you hurt someone else in the process.

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> Issuing a take-down notice for content you do not own should result in large fines

It effectively does. The DMCA makes damages, costs and attorneys fees mandatory for material misrepresentations. Doctorow can sue at no cost to himself, while Fox would be out a significant amount of money in two sets of attorneys fees plus whatever damages Doctorow can show this caused to his sales.

It's not at no cost. Cory would need to invest the time and money up front for cost of the lawsuit and then make recovery after he won. He may, given his connections, be able to get assistance from organizations to assist with the financial side, but he would still need to invest the time.

Fox likely just has lawyers on staff and would not really be paying attorney fees, just their usual wages.

This is the downfall of the legal system, you need hefty resources to pursue justice.

This seem to be a major reason that there is no practical penalty for false notices the majority of the time.

Once our content was taken down because of DMCA from Poland (With just a gmail address). We got our content back online with counter following procedures with google after 15 days. (That is the time required after counter for the DMCA complainer to respond back). How can we expect to sue some on in Poland with just a email address and no idea who the real person is and what they are worth?

DMCA is an American law that only hurts people who live in US. It is very easy to abuse DMCA and trouble people in US if you live outside the country.

I'm not a laywer, nor I know US laws, but mustn't DMCA takedown notice include full contact details on entity who owns a copyrighted materials and, thus, sent the notice?

I'm not sure, but I suspect, without those, the notice is legally void and provider should just drop it as junk mail.

They're supposed to put your content back up once they receive the counter notice. Your provider screwed you.

He said it was put back online after 15 days. That's how it's supposed to work. There is a gap between the content being taken down and going back up to allow time for a copyright holder to go to court and get an injunction.

It would be nice if Google would let submitters to provide (and honor) a OnDMCANotice event handler, so the counter-notice gets sent inmediately, maybe documented with a reference to IP registration.

Proving material misrepresentation is an exceedingly costly affair. So most people will ask, which hurts worse, the takedown or the courtroom.

Fines would make the DMCA the exclusive weapon of major corporations with big piles of money for legal stuff.

Oh, wait...

The biggest issue with the DMCA is that it exists. There's no way of mitigating the basic concept of putting exercising the law into the hands of those who profit from it.

Why should even one false positive be tolerated?

Because companies are largely still operated by humans, who make mistakes. There's a difference between "oops" and "let's systematically abuse this system for our benefit". Granted, I think there should still be a penalty for "oops" moments, just not as bad. The penalty should exponentially increase with the frequency of false positives.

In other words, it comes down to intent (i.e. the difference between manslaughter and murder).

As digital "piracy" does not, in fact, kill music executives, I think we should stay with analogies a little closer to civil law. There's honest mistakes, then there's neglect, and then there is fraud.

Then there's conspiracy to commit fraud (I guess that is what happens when your lobbyists can't get your scam passed as law, but you try to get your way anyway? ;-)

Exactly this. The first draft of that sentence included something about big fines on the very first offense. Then I realized it would be rather impractical and unfair. Sometimes you screw up.

This is about "screwing up" alot, to the point that it becomes malicious.

I say, misuse it deliberately (and perhaps repeatedly), and you lose the ability, as an and for the entire entity, to use it in future. Oops, material you think is infringing is online? Tough shit.

That's my simple solution: Abuse it, and you lose it -- for everything.

P.S. And your little dog, too. I.e. any subsidiaries or shell companies you create, and any subsequent purchaser of copyright for the specific material in question. (In this instance, Fox's copyright surrounding their "Homeland" product.) And any material passed to another agent under the terms of your sale to said agent remains excluded from DMCA action.

Copyright is a monopoly granted by the government -- in our democracy, by the people -- to serve the common good. I'm perfectly happy with the people changing the terms of such grants when they find that they are not serving the common good. If we can "Mickey Mouse" ever longer copyright term extensions, by goodness, we can curtail them, as well.

Why isn't this the case in practice?

Yeah, my friend's startup recently got its mobile app blown out of Play Store for almost a month because of a bogus DMCA.

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