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Comment by greglindahl | Hacker News Reader

The DMCA is easy to abuse without any consequences. There's no known case of anyone ever being legally sanctioned for filing a DMCA takedown, even when it involved lies such as assertions of copyright ownership that were clearly untrue.

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Depends on what your criteria is. Google settled for 25k with someone who submitted fake notices to YouTube. Given that most litigation ends before a decision, it's likely there's been other private settlements.

More broadly than just DMCA, but here's a partial list of successful cases:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4226764/dynamic-designs... awarded declaratory judgement and 37k in attorney fees for a false claim made to eBay (see docket 38) >On November 11, 2011, Mr. Nalin filed a “VeRO complaint with eBay asserting that the Dynamic Designs speaker adapter infringed Nalin’s trademark rights.”

https://courts.state.md.us/sites/default/files/import/appell... 150k jury award of punitive damages, reduced by appeals court to 75k, for a false Amazon complaint of counterfeiting

https://casetext.com/case/alexander-binzel-corporation-v-nu-... really old case not involving the Internet, but a $4 million jury award reduced by the district court to $2.34 million+interest for false claims of counterfeiting

Given the large number of attempts at legal sanctions which have all failed, I'm not so sure that an out-of-court settlement is that interesting. So yes, that's what I think is important.

Edit: I'm having a hard time keeping up with your edits, can you stop editing at some point?

You've added 3 links about counterfitting. The DMCA only applies to copyrights, not trademarks or patents.

I think I only did one edit to add the cases, won't edit that comment any more.

I did disclaim that those are broader than DMCA. I'm well aware of the distinctions.

You're looking only for final judgements? I have a handful where a judge ordered the DMCA notice to be retracted and ordered them not to refile it, and then the case settled, presumably on favorable terms.

I agree DMCA cases seem to be harder to win than trademark/patent abuse.

If you're aware of the distinctions, then why are you bringing up irrelevant trademark / patent / counterfeiting cases?

A required retraction is not much of a legal sanction.

I love having interesting discussions about this topic, but this discussion isn't one.

>A required retraction is not much of a legal sanction.

It gives somewhat of a hint about the nature of the settlement, which in most cases is private. There do seem to be a decent number of settlements; my guess is the most egregious cases all settle, and the ones that move forward are harder to win.

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nynd.113766... here's another recent case awarding $86k for false DMCA notices.

Here's one from 2014 https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.581417...

>Since Curtis repeatedly alleged that Defendants knew that the takedown notices contained false infringement allegations, she adequately pleaded all of § 512(f)’s elements.

Here is an example where the DMCA notice was claimed fraudulent and some money was awarded to the party that was hit by it[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...

"default judgment"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Policy_Group_v._Diebold....

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