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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, I'm ok with this. The specific case is dumb, but I can't imagine a change to the laws that could make things better. You can't outlaw dumb.

Recently I found that one of my popular posts on startups had been boosted without permission or credit by some wannabe-accelerator in Texas. I filed a DMCA request and their host took the page down promptly. It just worked.

I'd hope Github is doing some basic checks on requests like this. But I don't want them to try to become a mini-court. We already have a perfectly good court system for resolving ownership disputes.

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> I'd hope Github is doing some basic checks on requests like this.

You're not allowed to do that without losing the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. Anything that shows up that matches the format must be obeyed. That's why counter-notifications exist.

Are you sure about that? My guess is that if I, say, forge some DMCA notices as being from major media companies trying to take down stuff belonging to other major media companies, YouTube will happily ignore me.

Certainly I don't see anything in the law itself that prevents them from verifying that the notice actually comes from the entity claimed, or saying, "Hey buddy, are you sure you really own that?" Which is all I meant by basic checks.

Are you aware of some case law that demonstrates otherwise?

My guess is that if I, say, forge some DMCA notices as being from major media companies trying to take down stuff belonging to other major media companies, YouTube will happily ignore me.

On what do you base your guess? Because as I understand it, your guess is 100% wrong.

On a few things.

One, if I read the safe harbor stuff correctly, then if you ignore a DMCA notice it means you can now be sued for hosting the content. If a host decides they are willing to run that risk, I believe they can happily ignore a DMCA notice.

Two, basic business knowledge. YouTube partners with a lot of the major media companies, and taking down large volumes of their stuff in a way that looks dumb would harm their partnerships. Companies are very reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them.

Three, if someone could take down everything on YouTube by forging a zillion DMCA notices, I expect some enterprising troublemaker would have done it long ago just for the lulz.

Ok! Your turn. What's your evidence? Because that's what I asked for before and nobody replied.

Some companies seem to believe that the "losing the safe harbor provisions" risk is in respect to that particular dispute rather than in general. If so, they can knowingly take that particular risk by questioning a particular notice.

I'm not a layer, but I don't think so. IMO if they don't comply, they can be sued for copyright infringement caused by ignoring that notice. If there is no infringement, there is nothing to fear.

These type of bots have many problems. I have see similar situation on Youtube where a content provider mistakingly takes down their own content along with the infringers.

Also, I have heard of this happening with people sharing open source software on bit torrent. This isnt the original article I read but the closest one I could find.[1]

[1] http://max-technology.blogspot.com/2008/12/open-source-torre...

CDA §230 could be amended to immunize intermediaries for all liability for copyright violations (just as they're immunized for liability from other civil lawsuits).

Even in a notice and takedown system, the time required to act on the notice could be increased to ensure that the target has an opportunity to counternotice, and the counternotice could be made immediately effective, rather than effective with a delay.

I think the first would make it useless for purposes of enforcement, so I think that's a bad idea.

But the opportunity for counternotice seems like a great idea, perhaps including some discretion for the hosting company. When the DMCA was written, they would have had to allow for a relatively long period. But now that we all have the internet in our pockets, it seems like a few days or maybe a week would be plenty of time.

> We already have a perfectly good court system for resolving ownership disputes.

Patent trolls are ok too ?

I gather you must not be a native speaker of English. "Perfectly good" does not mean perfect. It means something like "serviceable" or "adequate for the purpose at hand":

http://www.theonion.com/video/nations-parents-release-annual...

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=perfectly%20g...

Ha. Great reference.

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