Ah, yes, you know someone's desperate when you see a bogus DMCA claim like this. Not the first time this happened and definitely won't be the last.
This also demonstrates why it is bad for a law to mandate private entities to do moderation, in this case taking down copyright infringement materials when reported. Google, like basically all big platforms, doesn't care if a claim is fraudulent because the parties impacted cannot hold it accountable — google will just tell you they are themselves victims of the fraudulent claim. And to be fair, they are. But it has to enforce the claims or else lose its safe harbor exemption. This practically allows bad actors to use platforms as their shields, and in the end no one but the victim suffers any consequences for their abuse of the copyright laws.
I think a more sane approach would to require every copyright takedown to require a court order. Granted, the legal system is not perfect, but judges are not incentivized to always side with the supposed copyright holder like online platforms do. They will not be letting someone claiming to be living on a deserted island to file a claim and even when fraud does occur, they will at least know where the claim is actually coming from and be able to punish the fraudster accordingly.
A good start would be to require that claimants must verify their real identity. The claim in this case was made by an apparent pseudonym and their address is fictional. Both should themselves be reason to reject the claim. The fact that anyone apparently can submit claims to Google under false names seems insane to me.
Fictional address, sure: that would, as I understand, be some kind of fraud, and can reasonably be prohibited if there's a mechanism to do so… but then you run into the problem that not everyone has an address.
This could be like warrants and judicial overview. Warrants are not slow. This is only a gatekeep on "does this make any sense". And of course, the cost of the court system/overview/etc could be born by judgments against those found actually guilty.
> I think a more sane approach would to require every copyright takedown to require a court order.
In a country with an efficient legal system, maybe…
Requiring the claimant to put something at stake (make it a nominal deposit you get back in case of either no challenge or the case actually going to court) seems more realistic, but I’m not holding my breath for a reform of the law to that extent.
I fucking loathe the current DMCA regime with all of my being. That being said, it is currently the only chance of victims of revenge pornography getting any reprieve whatsoever. I think the solution needs to be to actually punish bad-faith actors rather than to make it more onerous to report violations. It is already illegal to file false DMCA claims, but it has literally never been enforced. Changing the laws doesn't help when the existing laws already have an answer for the problem but aren't being enforced.
DMCA notices are meant to be submitted "under penalty of perjury", and false notices could in theory result in civil action being taken against those who send them. In practice, neither of these occur even if the sender is a real person, like a record company lawyer lending their name to complaint that are entirely computer generated, or, in this as in so many cases, a completely fabricated identity.
Requiring verification through government ID for takedown notices should be a minimum requirement.
I'd be curious if any prosecutions are a real deterrent - it seems not. YouTube has to follow the DMCA but also enforces its stricter content ID, with popular creators getting hit (and being vocal) and YouTube seeming to "fix" the issues (until next time).
Ultimately the whole system needs reform now where it's easier than ever via LLMs to send off these notices.
AFAIU, the whole deal is that the bogus claims never actually reach the DMCA stage - big platforms implement their moderation policies and copyright claim handling specifically to avoid involving the legal system. It's that intermediate layer that incentivizes automated, bogus claims, as there's effectively zero consequences to them.
Just as there are SEO firms that help companies ascend the rankings, there are "reputation management" firms that erase bad news by publishing new articles & by pushing takedown requests on articles they don't like. As with SEO, Google appears to tacitly encourage this.
It seems obvious that there should be a review process for takedown requests, with penalties for frivolous requests. (Up to and perhaps including lawsuits to cover costs and for the sake of deterrence.) But it's not at all obvious to Google.
I’m guessing the obvious fakeness of the request is part of it: they’re testing to see if anyone is paying attention. Maybe the author doesn’t care if it gets taken down after four years; maybe they see a super fake request and assume it won’t succeed (or read it as spam). It also costs them nothing and has zero legal liability because there’s nobody to prosecute for such a fake request.
I help run a domain legal case search engine (UDRP.tools) and we run into this type of stuff too. Notices that results are being purged. It's bullshit. We aggregate legal case data and provide analytics about UDRP cases. These aren't private and it's not personal information. It's all coming from publicly documented arbitration decisions. Trying to hide/erase your history in (domain) court on google claiming copyright is a lie. eg. https://lumendatabase.org/notices/27934920
Already 12 points after just 34 minutes. As noted at the end of the article, streisand effect is alive and well and this article is on its way to the front page.
The thing that stands out to me isn't even the fake identity or the fake country. It's that the incentives are completely backwards.
Submitting a bogus DMCA is basically free. Google's cheapest option is to comply first and sort it out later. Meanwhile the person who did nothing wrong has to spend hours (or money) fixing it.
That's a system where every incentive points toward abuse...without knowing what and how this system works behind the scenes, makes me wonder...if it's one of those "delegated to Accenture" processes; like the Google Drive file moderation...
It’s great when someone has such a large online presence that, if they have a problem with a huge company like Google, the company ends up fixing it just for the PR. I doubt they’d respond the same way to an average person.
I'm curious how Google notifies people about things like this... do they pull an email out of whois, or your DNS SOA? If there's nothing linking your website to a Google account, it seems like they could just make your website disappear.
I have received notifications for stories published by the org I work at when they were delisted for certain terms. Like here, it’s people who got caught doing disreputable things and trying to cleanup their online presence.
While that is true, and Google deserves are shaming they get for their terrible handling of DMCA, lets try to be real. Autoaccepting all DMCA takedown requests with zero verification is simplest and cheapest approach to be complaint. Failing to delete a file is tho only way to be on hook for any repercussions.
I have seen that posh double-barreled surname before: Charles and Cathy Negus-Fancey were the managers of the reclusive cult musician Scott Walker and his interface to the world. Any close relation?
> Why does Google allow fraudulent DMCA notices to be filed with no penalty?
Because there is no law that requires a penalty. It's very common on YT, if you are big enough of a company you can file them willy nilly and never get any consequence
The biggest issue is that to challenge them, you have to dox yourself, even if the DMCA claim is completely bogus and itself is contains bullshit information about nobody who actually exists (e.g, in a doxing war, the party that fires a bullshit DMCA claim first has a huge advantage).
> Shouldn't offending side reimburse the expenses?
In an ideal world. They might even be legally liable in this one. But you still have to sue them to get the money, which is an expensive gamble for a very small pay off.
> The fake DMCA is made by a fake profile from a country with zero inhabitants. The removal requests by this "Ellie Piee" are made from the country called Bouvet Island, an uninhabited Norwegian dependent territory in the South Atlantic/Southern Ocean near Antarctica. It has zero inhabitants, and is referred to as the "world's most remote island."
this is the most infuriating part, you don't even have to be a person to do this?
This also demonstrates why it is bad for a law to mandate private entities to do moderation, in this case taking down copyright infringement materials when reported. Google, like basically all big platforms, doesn't care if a claim is fraudulent because the parties impacted cannot hold it accountable — google will just tell you they are themselves victims of the fraudulent claim. And to be fair, they are. But it has to enforce the claims or else lose its safe harbor exemption. This practically allows bad actors to use platforms as their shields, and in the end no one but the victim suffers any consequences for their abuse of the copyright laws.
I think a more sane approach would to require every copyright takedown to require a court order. Granted, the legal system is not perfect, but judges are not incentivized to always side with the supposed copyright holder like online platforms do. They will not be letting someone claiming to be living on a deserted island to file a claim and even when fraud does occur, they will at least know where the claim is actually coming from and be able to punish the fraudster accordingly.
Fictional address, sure: that would, as I understand, be some kind of fraud, and can reasonably be prohibited if there's a mechanism to do so… but then you run into the problem that not everyone has an address.
In a country with an efficient legal system, maybe…
Requiring the claimant to put something at stake (make it a nominal deposit you get back in case of either no challenge or the case actually going to court) seems more realistic, but I’m not holding my breath for a reform of the law to that extent.
Requiring verification through government ID for takedown notices should be a minimum requirement.
Ultimately the whole system needs reform now where it's easier than ever via LLMs to send off these notices.
Somehow my family name does not show up ;)
It seems obvious that there should be a review process for takedown requests, with penalties for frivolous requests. (Up to and perhaps including lawsuits to cover costs and for the sake of deterrence.) But it's not at all obvious to Google.
https://www.mailplus.co.uk/tv-guide/tv/394562/crashed-800m-f...
The thing that stands out to me isn't even the fake identity or the fake country. It's that the incentives are completely backwards.
Submitting a bogus DMCA is basically free. Google's cheapest option is to comply first and sort it out later. Meanwhile the person who did nothing wrong has to spend hours (or money) fixing it.
That's a system where every incentive points toward abuse...without knowing what and how this system works behind the scenes, makes me wonder...if it's one of those "delegated to Accenture" processes; like the Google Drive file moderation...
You know you can just read the linked articles, right?
Edit: parent has edited their post, it used to say something like "google has never notified anyone about such things".
This has been known for years. Copyright has been abused for many many years in this sense.
And Google is very well known for their completely absent human-in-the-loop support, so that doesn’t help either.
I have seen that posh double-barreled surname before: Charles and Cathy Negus-Fancey were the managers of the reclusive cult musician Scott Walker and his interface to the world. Any close relation?
The "Negus-Fancey" family has several IMDB-listed producer/directors, so the two boys are some movie industry nepo kids: https://www.imdb.com/find/?q=Negus-Fancey
Because there is no law that requires a penalty. It's very common on YT, if you are big enough of a company you can file them willy nilly and never get any consequence
In an ideal world. They might even be legally liable in this one. But you still have to sue them to get the money, which is an expensive gamble for a very small pay off.
this is the most infuriating part, you don't even have to be a person to do this?