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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

How do you confirm the identity of your customer to ensure your DMCA takedown notices are legitimate?

How do you programmatically discern between non-consensual adult images being shared against the subject's wishes versus images where they are somewhere public, don't own the copyright to the photo, but the law does not require the copyright holder remove or take down the image?

Cool idea, might need to pivot, regardless an interesting space to be in in these times.

EDIT: Appreciate the replies!

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Confirmation is lower right now as we are working to get people into the app, a DMV/government license before people know who we are may be a too big of a pill to swallow for a starting company.

We do have ML models running in the background to detect abuse and the accounts are flagged to management to reach out to those customers. I don't want to go through all the cat-and-mouse strategies we may have to avoid people gaming them.

If someone has taken pictures for a company and given their model release for that image and its made its way to an adult site, then the individual should not initiate a DMCA. This is something we make our customers aware of before they DMCA content. Also, we know from first hand experience that site operators are quick to deny a DMCA if they do own rights for it. We've talked to them about this very situation.

We have an error-proof system in place that follows specific protocols and instructions provided by each individual host websites. This helps us filter out 90% non-legitimate takedown notices.

"We have an error-proof system" ... yeah, no you don't. Especially if you're using ML.

Why is the DMCA even relevant here? Who's the copyright holder?

Not founders, so I can only provide my interpretation. Some states have revenge porn laws, some providers will remove content that is non consensual and of an adult nature if notified, so I presume they’re using DMCA as a proxy for all of the above. “Takedown requests” is probably better verbiage.

Depending on the circumstances, who the copyright holder is is immaterial.

Also, IANAL! Not legal advice!

They are considered unauthorized models.

Can you elaborate? I can't find anything in DMCA that says the subject of the image has copyright of the image.

If you are going to commercialize an image like put ads on your site or charge a paywall to see content all the models featured in the image must have signed model release forms. This isn’t us opining about how DMCA should work, this is just precedent.

Try to run a marketing campaign for any brand without getting model release forms for everyone depicted and you’ll see exact how legal responds.

I am still confused how this is related to DMCA. I tried googling and I couldnt' find any references to specific laws. My understanding of "revenge porn" is rarely commercialized by the user.

Your googling may have failed you. Revenue porn is deeply commercialized.

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