[tacotuesday]

>Explain that if they do not remove their copyright claim within the time allotted that I will revoke their rights to use my footage in their video due to a terms of use violation.

The DMCA states they are filing the take down under penalty of perjury. It's very slippery though.

If Sony says "This is A, and I own A. Take down Small Time's video." Then all is good so long as Sony actually owns A. If the content is B, it's a great inconvenience to Small Time, but there's really no recourse.

However, what Sony did was say "This is B, I own B. Take down Small Time's video." The content IS B. Sony has misrepresented their ownership of B. Now they've perjured themselves.

My understanding is that perjury is punishable by up to five years in prison. It seems like someone at Sony should now be under investigation for this little 'oops.' Even if Small Time is satisfied with the outcome, it sounds like someone at Sony still violated the law.

[oasisbob]

> The DMCA states they are filing the take down under penalty of perjury.

Hrrrm, I think that may be overstating it a bit.

The DMCA requires a statement from the complaining party of a good faith belief that the use of the material is not authorized, and a statement that the information is accurate; and that under penalty of perjury that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner.

When Joe's House of Copyright Notices is hired by Sony, and misidentifies content that they (in good faith) believe belongs to Sony, their notification isn't swearing to the accuracy of that information. It's stating that under penalty of perjury they act on behalf of the "owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed".

If I were to claim the same, I'd be perjuring myself, because I sure as hell am not authorized to act on behalf of Sony.

At least that's my reading, as someone who's worked an abuse desk and has spent a bit of time with the DMCA

[sokoloff]

If Sony doesn't actually own the exclusive right, then Joe's House of Copyright Notices being an agent of Sony is not relevant to whether Joe's House of Copyright is authorized to act on behalf of the owner (because Sony is not the owner).

[gergles]

But that's not the point. The only claim made under penalty of perjury is that the party filing the report is authorized to act on behalf of the rightsholder they identified in the report.

The rest (what the material is, who the rightsholder is, that the use is not authorized) is all merely a good faith belief, which is so low a standard as to basically mean "you know, whatever".

[serge2k]

I thought good faith did have some level of standard associated with it (at least to the point where a judge could rule you were just a liar)?

[ceejayoz]

No one ever gets charged under that, because it requires knowingly filing a false claim. Almost all of these takedowns are automated, and it's hard to say an algorithm knowingly lied.

Even with a human in the loop (for example, the "copyright holder has confirmed the claim" from the article) it's hard to prove someone lied. "Idiot intern" makes a generally acceptable defense.

[a3n]

> Almost all of these takedowns are automated, and it's hard to say an algorithm knowingly lied.

In the future I will write programs to break the laws that I used to break by hand, let them loose without any specific target and see what I rake in.

[pasbesoin]

These corporations want to be treated as "entities" for many legal purposes. Yet, when they fuck up, they want to be able to say that "employee a" didn't know about "x".

Well, if your are an "entity", then -- particularly in cases like this -- I don't care about your "employee" components. You, Sony, made a patently false statement having legal implications. And if you had done... "due diligence" upon your own corpus of knowledge about yourself, you would have known this.

So... prosecute them under perjury. Punish them harshly. It's the only way to get them to pay attention to their obligations, obligations for which they are a primary source of the records needed for proper representation, as required by the law.

Personally, I favor revoking the licenses of lawyers involved in this. Make such patently false representations, and it is career death for you. (I guess I am "caring about the employee", in this case, contrary to what I said. But such employees also have a separate, professional obligation to the bar. Hold them to it, and corporations will have to seek higher standards in order to make use of their services.)

P.S. Yes, I am pissed about this. An individual stands a good chance of being thoroughly run over by such mis-representation. Corporate entities use it as a business strategy.

[morganvachon]

When it comes to criminal law, the standard is "knew or should have known". At the very least, Sony and possibly YouTube are liable for the results of a flawed algorithm causing them to break the law. It's been in (mis)use for many years now, and it's obvious it's a horribly inaccurate method of determining copyright violations. Without human intervention to investigate and ensure each and every claim is legitimate, YouTube and the copyright claimants are committing fraud and perjury on a massive scale.

[icebraining]

YouTube and its system doesn't issue DMCA takedown requests; what law are they breaking?

It's not illegal to takedown whatever videos you want from your own platform, nor to allow a partner company from choosing videos to take down.

[morganvachon]

YouTube acts upon DMCA requests from companies claiming copyright infringement, using an algorithm that YouTube employs. When said request is known or should be known to be perjurious, the parties involved should be held liable.

While you are correct that YouTube reserves the right to remove whatever they want to from their site, they do not have the right to monetize on behalf of a third party (Sony, et. al.) content you create and own the copyright to, nor claim copyright on behalf of that third party, just by waving around the DMCA. However, that is exactly what they are doing, and are doing it under color of law, and while committing perjury to boot.

[icebraining]

Why do you say they are using the DMCA? My point is exactly that: if you own the platform, you don't need the DMCA to take down videos from it!

they do not have the right to monetize on behalf of a third party (Sony, et. al.) content you create and own the copyright to

Why not? YouTube can put ads on any video, why couldn't they distribute that income with whoever they want to?

[morganvachon]

> Why do you say they are using the DMCA?

Here's a great example of what I'm talking about:

https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-deal-with-universal-blocks-...

> YouTube can put ads on any video, why couldn't they distribute that income with whoever they want to?

It's a matter of trust. YouTube implemented a monetization policy to encourage regular folks to create viral content, and reward that effort with monetization for original works. However, YouTube is gaming their own system and stacking it in favor of Big Content. They are breaking the trust they asked their users to place in them, and breaking their own policies to support their biggest customers.

[serge2k]

It's not perjury when they just tell youtube (or rather, it gets detected by an automated system). Does google even require DMCA notices anymore?

[sobkas]

>it sounds like someone at Sony still violated the law.

good luck with finding that person, especially when decisions weren't made by single one.

[underwater]

I think that Youtube has a special channel that is distinct from the DMCA for clients like Sony.