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Comment by olliej | Hacker News Reader

Seems like you should be able to leverage standard copyright law - per-violation 10-100k seems like the industry demanded fine...

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Does YouTube have the necessary information to prosecute false claimants? They certainly are unwilling to pass such info on to content creators; I'm unsure what, if any, verification of identity is required to submit a claim.

Why would it be YouTube’s job? Someone has claimed ownership and is now making profit on it - that (to me a non lawyer expect same behavior from the legal system ;) ) seems like it would be a standard copyright violation :D

If YouTube is unwilling to pass along the information, as the parent says, then who are you going to file suit against? You’ll have to sue an unknown person and get a court order to get YouTube to turn over the person’s name. That’s an expensive start to aprocess with an unknown end. Isn’t it even possible the person isn’t in the US? Then you’ve thrown away your money.

Even if the defendant is in the U.S., they may have no significant income or assets from which you could recover damages or legal fees.

A lot of people have personal liability umbrella policies... However probably not the kinds of people that would do this.

Why have we made it so easy for crime in this country.

It’s really not that hard to do. People do sometimes overestimate how hard it is to do basic legal tasks.

Filing a simple John Doe summons in your home jurisdiction and then sending a subpoena to YouTube for the offending contact information is pretty trivial. You could probably find someone to do it for you for a thousand bucks or less.

Admittedly that’s not free but in a context like this with real money at stake it’s not a huge obstacle.

And what do you do when you go through all of that time and effort (and potential expense) and get the very likely outcome that the claimant is not in your home jurisdiction?

Jurisdiction isn’t simply determined by where the opponent is. There’s nuance to this but you can typically sue and gain jurisdiction in any venue that has a nexus to the business activity in question. Given that YouTube is global there’s probably a lot of places you could find a valid venue. California almost certainly being one of them.

You might have trouble getting the opponent to cooperate but if your ultimate goal is to get YouTube to do something then that could work just fine.

Again, clearly legal action isn’t easy but people seem too inclined to throw up their hands instantly.

Learning how to take basic legal action is just a core part of running a business, and someone earning from YouTube at this level is indeed doing just that.

I'm not sure why you're singling out California, is that where the claimant is in this case? Or are you referring to YouTube?

My (and the GPs) question was: let's say, following the filing of the requisite legal documents and the accompanying fees if any, you receive the contact information of the claimant from YouTube. You are in Germany. The claimant's address is in Turkmenistan. What are you meant to do next?

A court could presumably subpeona that information?

Yeah after you pay for a lawyer to set all that up for you.

Lawyers and lawmakers (who are very often also the former) in their infinite wisdom have created a system in which they always win, even when the people the system ostensibly exists to serve do not.

As a developer, I also get paid even if the project gets written off later. Doesn't seem that unusual.

The difference being the software industry contains less compulsion. Nobody is compelled to interact with you or your peers. The very nature of the law renders all analogies you can think of inherently flawed. The closest analogy you could make would be to doctors in the hypothetical scenario where other people are allowed to hire doctors to injure you, requiring you to in turn hire your own doctor. Which is absurd but the reality of our legal system.

Or youtube just add a clause that whoever lays claims to DMCA content has to agree to share their verified real name and phone number.

If it doesn't have the necessary information to prosecute false claimants (i.e. their exact identity) then why does it hand over ownership of a video to these same claimants at the drop of a hat?

I'm pretty sure that as part of the uploading process you agree to use YouTube process of arbitration in these matters, so the courts would likely tell you this a civil matter to be handled by YouTube.

With that said, nothing was stolen, a claim for the monetization reimbursement was made to YouTube, who is the sole source in deciding who the compensation goes to, decided to send that compensation to the party that made the claim.

Making a claim against an existing video is actually probably a lot safer than re-uploading and attempting to monetize.

From that perspective, what would be the grounds for a lawsuit?

I am pretty sure that those are not actual copyright claims in a DMCA sense. Sadly Youtube is using some internal system with these claims. I assume they were pressured into this by the music industry for ease of squeezing money out of it.

Actually the DMCA requires large players to create some kind of automated system to prevent infringement.

Thus subverting the penalty of perjury of the DMCA

YouTube has the automated service. The rights holders are not filing claims. There is no perjury.

It’s all about balance. What’s the point of having a takedown procedure if uploading a thousand copies is easier than taking down one?

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