[yooo000]

I frequently receive cease and desist notices from "legal entities" demanding I stop selling the officially authorized clothing brands on one of my sites...I ignore them. Nothing ever happens. It's a competitor, or competitors, trying real hard to take over my search engine rankings by trying to shut my site down. These DMCA requests are the same thing - basically bullying or scare tactics. Real legal requests, etc. come in the form of physical paperwork, signed and sometimes notarized.

[theemathas]

Sorry for the irrelevant reply, but I'm trying to get some attention on this.

This youtuber got a fraudulent DMCA notice, and his counter-notice got automatically rejected. The person who sent the notice isn't associated with the devs, and is asking for a $100 ransom to get the channel reinstated. How could this be fixed?

Proof that the person sending the notice isn't "authorized on behalf of the copyright holder": https://twitter.com/Lionheart/status/1671349063931838464

Tweet about the automatic rejection of the counter-notice: https://twitter.com/Azrial_Vanity/status/1671696220190810113

Tweet about the initial DMCA takedown: https://twitter.com/Azrial_Vanity/status/1671323777978736643

Mention of the $100 ransom: https://twitter.com/Azrial_Vanity/status/1671332970836140032

Any youtube people on here can help? Or anyone else have any advice?

[themaninthedark]

That is not how the DMCA is supposed to work.

If you send a counter-notice it is not supposed to be auto-rejected, it is supposed to go to court.

This monster is created by Youtube, they are not using the DMCA process(as flawed and terrible as it is) but instead created something worse.

The best way to get attention? Maybe sue Youtube?

[oliwarner]

Ignoring direct correspondence is one thing.

But in this case, we're talking about notice being served via service providers for hosting and domains. They have the choice to take immediate action or ask you (TFA was lucky) and let you have a period to refute or comply. At which point the complainant can take you to court and get a real order to remove the material. The service providers need to follow this formula to preserve "safe harbor"; otherwise they're seen as picking a side and would become liable.

If you ignore the DMCA takedown process from a service provider, you lose service.

That is to say, a real DMCA takedown involves no papers, no notaries, no being served or court summons. It's a quick and digital way to take something offline. If you ignore it, you'll learn that the hard way.

---

That all said, there are plenty of people who use real lawyers to send "I don't like what you're doing, [stop it, pay me]" demands. I still wouldn't ignore these. Some might have merit, you might have overlooked something and early compliance is often cheapest.

[mcwhy]

Some hosting providers (hetzner) are very scared about any letters so they will boot you for getting any random letter.

[input_sh]

Not my experience at all. Been through double digit amount of bogus claims on Hetzner.

They usually forward the takedowns to me, I take a look at them, let Hetzner know they're bogus claims and that I'm not planning on taking action, and that's where the story ends.

[capableweb]

Exactly the same experience here. If you let them know about it and don't use the servers for shady shit, they side with you.

[slang800]

Sounds like you had better luck than I did. After about a year of getting DMCA notices, Hetzner told me to remove my IPFS gateway from their network or they would kick me off.

I followed the DMCA process, added nginx block rules to make all the content mentioned in the DMCA notices impossible to access, and even submitted "statements" to Hetzner for each DMCA notice they got. None of that saved me.

[thathndude]

This is the real issue.

It’s not whether the complaints are real; it’s whether the recipient has some policy that says “X number of complaints and we show you the door.”

[Cullinet]

If these entities have a legitimate grievance with you such as passing off fake branded goods or a willful interference with a private exclusive licensing agreement for product resale (tortious interference with a third party contract, common law breach of design rights through passing off which is two torts and obviously the inevitable harm to the revenues expected from that agreement which was never open to you) they can just serve the DMCA notices on your upstream provider and enforce effective disconnections of your storefront.

This statutory and perfunctory hence effectively attorney free process would have relieved the beleaguered BIOS developer's concerns discussed here the other day and this is a and usually effective right of protection that's rare in its accessibility to the common man instead of the largest businesses.

[tinus_hn]

It’s because ‘on penalty of perjury’ doesn’t actually mean anything, it is not enforced. There are no consequences so there is no responsibility.

[FireBeyond]

Yup, in the entire history of the DMCA, I do not believe a single person has been convicted of perjury over a takedown notice.

[lampington]

Is there any way to bring a private prosecution for perjury under US law? IANAL but I have the impression that it's something you could do in the UK, and the legal systems are similar. Obviously it wouldn't be worthwhile for a typical site operator or even most hosts, but you can imagine that someone with deep pockets who receives lots of dodgy notices could run something like Cloudflare's Project Jengo as a public service to go after a number of obvious abusers of the DMCA process. Knowing that Bad Things might happen of you lied on the takedown notice might focus people's minds.

[jimz]

Federally, not since 1981. On the state level, some states do provide for a process that is recognizably analogous but still differ state to state, sometimes greatly. Also, states differ as to how direct a route a citizen-initiated complaint can directly affect the actions of the judicial system - some states use prosecutors as a gatekeeping mechanism, while others allow it as a process distinct from the prosecutorial system and so would skip over the gatekeeper and directly go to the judge. I don't know about most states, but I know that it's a mechanism that New Jersey, Washington, New Hampshire, and Idaho recognizes.

This is a sufficiently niche field of even criminal law that would require you to hire a lawyer to handle anyway. And usually there's some statutory limitation on what sort of prosecution a private individual can initiate. It's generally just not worth the trouble.

The DMCA does allow for a separate, federal, and civil cause of action to recover damages if the filer of the takedown notice knowingly and materially misrepresented the operative parts of the notice. 17 U.S.C. § 512(f) is where this cause of action resides. However, to prove "knowingly" and "materially" at the same time is a pretty high bar, although it might be possible to get a default judgment if they simply don't respond. Still, this is a limited remedy that most people won't be able to take advantage of since it involves potentially costly litigation and no punitive damages. It's not a prosecution of any sort, but it's sadly the best (only) option on the books that counts as relief, however limited it is.

[tinus_hn]

The balance is so lopsided a workable strategy is to just retract the complaint if it is answered by a credible threat of a lawsuit.

It’s like stealing from the candy shop and if you’re caught, you just put back the candies you took that time. Not a deterrent for those who don’t care about how it makes them look.

[Cthulhu_]

Can they go directly to e.g. Google and have your site delisted even if it's fraudulent, and if so, does Google inform you of this?

[ducklingquack]

Yes and yes. Whenever a DMCA takedown notice is filed with Google the allegedly infringing URL is quickly removed from the SERP. Google will notify you (and the public) in following ways: 1. Publishing the request on lumendatabase.org 2. Informing you through the Search Console (which has a delay of a few days) 3. Publishing the removal on Google Transparency Report website 4. Publishing a note at the bottom of the SERP mentioning that a website was not featured on the results due to a DMCA takedown notice with a link to lumendatabase

Google takes the ”I trust you bro” stance and delists your URL until (if ever) you file a DMCA counter notification which can be done through Google (can look up the link if you need it).

[ixwt]

I don't necessarily think it's "I trust you bro", I think it's more "Section 230 requires us to delist any content immediately until a counter claim is filed to maintain safe harbor protections".

But I'm not a lawyer. Just listened and read a lot about this kind of content.