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- Hacker News
- This is an extremely common technique against investigative reporting, in particular because certain social media / blogging platforms allow backdating posts [1]. So people just copy your post, claim DMCA, and then take it down quickly after.by janpeuker
- 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.by gorgmah
- > It seems that anyone can file a bogus copyright claim to get an article they don't like removed from Google's search index
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.
by znpy - The irony is that now this article and the hackers news post are the top google search results for Negus Fancey
- I would have never heard about Negus-Fancey and Wright, but now I have! Streisand at its finest.by samat
- 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.
by A_D_E_P_T - 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.
by lambdaone - 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.
by pibaker