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by ceejayoz 3888 days ago
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.
3 comments
a3n 3888 days ago
> 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.

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pasbesoin 3888 days ago
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.

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morganvachon 3888 days ago
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.
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icebraining 3888 days ago
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.

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morganvachon 3888 days ago
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.

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icebraining 3888 days ago
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?

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morganvachon 3888 days ago
> 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.

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icebraining 3888 days ago
> Here's a great example of what I'm talking about:

While the email mentions a DMCA notice, I doubt there was one. Content-ID probably detected it, and UMG blocked it without needing to send any DMCA notice, just using YouTube's backend tools. If you search on the DMCA database that Google/Youtube uses, ChillingEffects, there's no match for a notice sent by UMG: https://chillingeffects.org/notices/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&te...

Essentially, my point is that the DMCA is a legal mechanism to force hosting services to comply, but it isn't needed in this case, since YouTube complies voluntarily.

> It's a matter of trust.

Oh, absolutely, I never meant to say that YouTube aren't being assholes by behaving like this, but we were talking about legal rights, and I don't see them violating those.

And playing Devil's advocate, I'm not sure YouTube is all that interested in implementing these mechanisms - their customers are the advertisers, not Big Content. I'd say it's more like paying protection money after getting the proverbial horse head in the bed - or in this case, the barrage of lawsuits they got between 2008-2012.

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serge2k 3887 days ago
There is no law that says you have to treat your customers well.
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