Hacker News Reader

Comment by mavhc | Hacker News Reader

https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/16954705 err, how is this even legal, doesn't DMCA have provisions for punishing false claims?

View on HN

So from a quick look that list includes, among the other things:

- A page about Europe from Qatar Airways

- One news article about pollution in India

- An opinion piece on a German newspaper

- A link to an article about upload filters on a lawyer website

- A page about road safety from the EU commission

- An article from a NY law university about a speaker about "Labor Recruitment and its Regulation in the US-Mexico-Central America Corridor"

And several other unrelated links about copyright reform, which adds up to more than half of the links on that DCMA request.

And it was approved?

> doesn't DMCA have provisions for punishing false claims?

Not really effective ones. That's part of the problem. I believe the perjury penalty only applies if the request was made intentionally in bad faith, not for negligence.

Its worse than that, the only part of a DMCA notice that is made under penalty of perjury is that the filer is authorized to represent the holder of the copyright being claimed (so really it just protects big owners of copyright from people impersonating them). The only real recourse for false claims is to sue for damages, and even then the bar is high. You need to prove damages and that the claim was made in bad faith, not merely negligently.

Also, apparently "Gamble Breaux" is an Australian reality TV actress. Why is a US-only law involved when neither the site or the complainer are US based?

Among the press articles and misc pages lies https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/useful-links/eu-l..., a page from the European Commission web site that sports tiny logos from the companies they link to. Isn't that considered fair use?

"Fair use" isn't a thing in most jurisdictions.

The DMCA is a US law, and fair use is a thing in the US. There are AFAIK specific provisions in that law regarding fair use, actually.

But the EU isn't the US and in the EU there isn't a fair use law (though depending on EU jurisdiction you get something sorta similar but way stricter)

Right, if we use this particular DMCA request as the context. But this appears to be alleging that the EU road safety page contains a copyright infringement of "Gamble Breaux-This Time (feat. Jason Singh)", which it plainly does not.

The problem is with the incentives: if the recipient of a DMCA request doesn't immediately take down the target, they become liable for any copyright infringement.

While Google would probably win if it came down to a lawsuit, the two options they have are to take it down and let the site operator dispute it, or go to court to defend the actions of a group they're unaffiliated with. The obvious choice for pretty much any group is to take it down.

The claim has to be wilfully and knowingly false.

It's essentially toothless because it's near impossible to prove, and it takes all responsibility off the filer.

Thanks for the link

BS companies making completely BS claims (the other links also make no sense)

But big copyright doesn't care

What did the Qatar Airways have to do with it? Wow.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com