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Comment by Agathos | Hacker News Reader

If you're a search engine and I send you a billion takedown notices, of which one is legitimate, and you don't comply with that one, then you will be liable for infringement. Is it worth the risk?

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That's the point. Email spam works because sending a billion emails costs nearly nothing, and these companies in effect spam takedown notices that clearly have no basis in reality. A DMCA takedown is supposed to be a legal document, I've never once heard of legal documents that it's ok to just throw into the fucking wind with a minigun, that metaphor working both for quantity and accuracy here.

This is similar to the problem where YouTube content claims cause all video revenue to be diverted to the complainant, before any review has actually occurred and leaving no recourse to the victim. There's literally zero downsides to filing the claim, so why not do it? Why not claim everything?

Here's an even better question: Why should search engines be complicit in DCMA takedowns? They're link aggregators only. Send the DCMA requests to the websites directly.

Torrent websites are "link aggregators" only as well, yet they get taken down.

I don't think it's not the same if you mostly link to infringing torrents or link to a lot of the Internet which might include infringing files..

Unrelated: I wonder why the textarea for posting comments on HN turn orange when you click on it? It is really annoying....

You should not be able to send automated takedown requests either in the first place

Why not play their own game and submit a takedown notice for everything on YouTube.

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