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Comment by DannyB2 | Hacker News Reader

Any company CAN sit there and think "should I be evil or not?"

> it is still incredibly dangerous for society that one company > has so much power over what people can find on the internet

That could easily refer to the RIAA / MPAA with their bogus DMCA takedown notices. Particularly when DMCA is misused to take down sites with no direct copyright infringement. Especially when it is obvious bogus, such as a DMCA takedown of someone's nature audio recordings, while the DMCA filer even doubles-down on the notice claiming it infringes the copyright on their music.

There should be a statutory large fine for filing a bogus DMCA notice just as their is a statutory high cost for copyright infringement.

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The public has a lot more influence with policy than they do with internal corporate affairs. I'd much rather fight a bad law than an evil but legally operating company.

> I'd much rather fight a bad law than an evil but legally operating company.

You have more faith in the power of your vote than in the power of your dollar, I take it.

For the majority of people, their share of the vote is a lot more powerful than their share of the dollars.

Precisely this. Thank you.

Wait how exactly would I use my dollars to influence internal decisions at a company such as Facebook?

When they screw up, stop using them. The currency you're giving them is attention, which goes to the user activity counts they use to sell advertising opportunities to marketers. If they run out of eyeballs, they run out of money.

You pay off a politician to get laws passed against them or to go after them with legal instruments.

In most of these cases, they aren't filing an actual DMCA notice (which takes a lot of human resources from both the filer and the receiver side), they are using a lighter-weight platform-provided system (such as Google's content ID system).

So any crackdown on filing false DMCA notices will need to be extended to private-party DMCA surrogate systems also.

The fine is supposed to be: being charged with perjury.

That obviously doesn't work or doesn't mean anything.

That's why a Statutory fine for specific things such as:

* not stating an actual copyright infringement

* not being the registered owner or agent of the copyright

Those two would get rid of a LOT of abuse immediately. Such as people using DMCA for something not copyright related, such as to shut someone up for saying something they don't like. To silence criticism. Etc. Those are beyond clear examples of DMCA abuse.

The other is when someone who has no actual interest in the copyright merely uses the DMCA to silence something because they recognize it might be a copyright infringement -- whether the actual copyright owner cares or not.

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