All DMCA notices filed against TorrentFreak in 2019 were bogus
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
Is Torrentfreak getting their legal fee's back for these baseless claims? The courts dont seem to like FRCP rule 11 against lawyers as it makes the whole system bad. Perjury is a slap on the write imho. These claims just clog the legal system with more shenanigans. There needs to be some accountability for this baseless claims.
I think you're mixing two things:
* if a site owner receives a DMCA notice and believes the content is not infringing they can just do nothing and / or tell whoever sent it to get bent, sender may escalate to the courts
* service providers which want to be protected under safe harbour must "act expeditiously to remove purported infringing content" regardless of counter-notices, this is not an either/or situation
Content should be restored 10 to 14 days after the counter-notice is sent to the original claimant unless they engage in legal action, but it must be taken down either way:
> 17 U.S. Code § 512 (c)(1) In general.—A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, if the service provider—
> […]
> 17 U.S. Code § 512 (c)(1)(C) upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.
> […]
> 17 U.S. Code § 512 (g)(2)(B) upon receipt of a counter notification described in paragraph (3), promptly provides the person who provided the notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) with a copy of the counter notification, and informs that person that it will replace the removed material or cease disabling access to it in 10 business days; and
> 17 U.S. Code § 512 (g)(2)(C) replaces the removed material and ceases disabling access to it not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days following receipt of the counter notice, unless its designated agent first receives notice from the person who submitted the notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) that such person has filed an action seeking a court order to restrain the subscriber from engaging in infringing activity relating to the material on the service provider’s system or network.
Also makes me wonder if people could DDOS an entire company with DMCA takedown requests.
Someone should DDOS the web pages of all the American congresscritters and their campaigns and campaign contractors with DMCA notices. That's probably the only way this will get fixed.
However, there is a pending test case attempting to give it some teeth. I expect it will be entertaining, no matter how it substantively turns out:
https://www.popehat.com/2019/12/13/randazza-confederates-dou...
While it’s not an easy case to win, it has teeth - unfortunately they are limited to ACTUAL damages, which does give companies incentive to file misrepresented claims as one cannot easily hire a contingent attorney without the possibility of a statutory windfall.
This was the first successful 512(f) verdict back in 2004, though it may still stand nearly alone, and did not yield enough in damages to affect megacorp behavior in the absence of a huge flurry of such lawsuits: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Policy_Group_v._Diebo....
There's a significant power imbalance here.
Fastest way to make change will probably be using their own game against them and have them lobby on your behalf
The site owner in the case of TF receiving the request is Google, not TF. Google probably automatically acts on the DMCA request and TF has to go through the process of contesting it. So TF can't just sit around and do nothing.
GP states that the site owner must [take down the content] or send a counter-notice, that’s not true regardless of whether you assume the “site owner” is the service provider or the subscriber, which is why I tried explaining the duties of each.
That looks like Korean, to me (Unicorn Media).
DMCA seems to have been one of those things that we say "It seemed like such a good idea, at the time" after the fact. I'm certainly waiting to hear positive stories about it.
The problem is no effective oversight. Laws without oversight are going to be obviously abused. The DMCA is like if police were responsible to ensure their own warrents are valid.
Lots of laws are privately enforced. DMCA doesn't have to be different.
If you file a false DMCA claim, even if unknowingly, you should be liable for damages. To the platform, for their cost in dealing with your B.S. An to the content owner, for their costs (including time and attorneys fees) and any lost or interrupted revenue.
I'd also make such judgements eligible for summary judgment, provided the damages are less than e.g. $25,000.
You can submit a counter-notice, and if for some reason they didn't give you the required information I'd expect you could contact support and ask for it.
You'll note how in that example, they provide lots of information on the party that filed the DMCA claim. That info is only provided to you if the DMCA notice actually included the info - Google will for some reason process malformed notices that don't contain the required information, which leaves you with no options.
In this case the person filing the claim provided no information except their name (4 japanese kanji) with no further contact information or other details. I was unable to find them on Google, if that was even their name.
It shouldn't prevent you from filing a counternotice with whatever information was provided - did it?
There are some logistical issues with enforcing that. I admit that upfront as I don't think those are a fruitful topic if you wish to discuss my initial "belief."
They do. They're the penalties for copyright infringement. DMCA provides a quick takedown mechanism; other copyright law lifts the rest.
I'm actually waiting to hear more stories about abuse. When I look around, I see plenty of pirate sites and I'm all but certain they're not paying royalties to the artists. These sites aren't escaping because they're obeying the law, they're escaping because prosecution is so difficult. It's hard to file the right DMCA notices because the sites are such fly-by-night operations.
My guess is that the DMCA doesn't go far enough. I'm all for giving people more rights to fight back against phony DMCA notices. If Torrent Freak wants some treble damages for filing a fake one, I'm all for it. But in return I would like the ability to file quick and deadly DMCA notices on the real pirates.
That does not look like a Japanese company name to me.
For reference, the famous Korean MMO MapleStory (and the Korean company that operates it, Nexon) are actually, technically, headquartered in Japan. There's no particular reason to expect a Japanese company to operate in Japan or target Japanese customers.
Is Uber a Delawarian company or a Californian company?
What are the chances that these companies genuinely need this sort of draconian copyright law to remain profitable?
2019 was as big a year as any for box office returns and streaming subscription revenue. The only reason you see so many is it costs nothing to send and plenty of companies (as seen by this article) exist to cheaply blast them out via bot.