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Comment by dangoldin | Hacker News Reader

Thanks. I'm helping my mom file it.

Turns out that they actually filed a DMCA request against my mom's site for the photos she took. That's some chutzpah.

Do you have a copy of the DMCA request from chillingeffects.org? I think pretty much every DMCA request that Google receives has a copy sent there for public view. It should at least have their name or company name though they may have faked it.

"If you want to get shady too you could also use tactics like using automated black hat tools and generate lots of suspicious (to google)backlinks pointing to www.bestnewjerseyartsschool.com Far from helping them, it will tell google that they aren't worth ranking that high."

I'd do some research before embarking on this. Remember, they copied your mom's website, they have duplicate content. I wouldn't be surprised if Google's crawler already knows that. So if you make their site look shady, your mom's site may be hurt in SEO rankings for being guilty by association. Ironic, I know. Again, I am not sure if this could be the case, but you may want to get an expert's opinion.

That is precisely why I wrote it would be worthwhile to have existing content rewritten before striking back. Just in case.

I thought there where penalties for malicious use of the DMCA

Filing a false DMCA takedown opens the filer up to civil damages (assuming you want to pursue them). It's a shame there's no criminal penalty.

http://www.aaronkellylaw.com/internet-law/consequences-of-fi...

I'm actually confirming it was a DMCA request. I might have jumped to that conclusion and it may have been something else just trying to extort money from her. I'll update once I find out.

So I was wrong when I said it was a DMCA request. It was actually Getty images telling her she was using an image without licensing it. When she asked which image they sent her a link to the rip-off site since they assumed it's her. Now she just needs to tell them it's not her site and she'd be glad to have them issue a DMCA request.

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