[master-lincoln]

agree, it's unfathomable to me how an unauthenticated user can just make shops go offline with a false claim. This should send a strong signal to shopify users to change to a provider that cares about all users, not just the aggregate numbers.

[mcherm]

> it's unfathomable to me how an unauthenticated user can just make shops go offline with a false claim

That behavior is strongly incentivized by US law (the DMCA), which holds Shopify liable for any copyright infringement by the shops on its site unless it performs takedowns in exactly this fashion.

To be sure, the law does require the person or entity filing the complaint to attest "under penalty of perjury" that the accusation of copyright infringement is true. But I am not aware of any cases ever where someone was prosecuted for filing false DMCA claims.

If this Shopify lawsuit were to hold the person submitting false claims liable for Shopify's expenses in handling the false claims, that might set a useful president.

[M2Ys4U]

>To be sure, the law does require the person or entity filing the complaint to attest "under penalty of perjury" that the accusation of copyright infringement is true.

It doesn't. It requires them to attest under penalty of perjury that they are authorised to act on behalf the copyright holder, but not to the accuracy of the take-down claim.

[singleshot_]

I’m flummoxed by the fact that anyone would understand “under penalty of perjury” to include an anonymous guy who is under no risk of being prosecuted for perjury. I would have interpreted this (maybe with the aid of a declaratory judgment?) as a defective notice.

[j-bos]

> To be sure, the law does require the person or entity filing the complaint to attest "under penalty of perjury"

Yet another case where powerful legal actions are taken onlime with a single mouse click. Some (FEW) things really would benefit from a physical world friction, like notarization.

[SSLy]

Is there no governmental IdP they could connect to for matching the DMCA's with real entities?

[Uvix]

No, there is not.

[bryanrasmussen]

Is shopify membership free?

If not, you definitely can't require companies pay you to be able to make DMCA takedown notices.

Oops, went and looked - it's not free. So that's why.

Obviously a bug in the system there needs to be another tier for companies to make DMCA takedowns somehow, I bet someone there is working on that now. Bet it's not easy though.

on edit: what I don't understand though, do other companies pay for shopify just to make takedown notices? Their pricing model and the wording of the article implies they do - that's weird. If I was a lawyer doing shopify takedown notices for my clients I'd get pissed.