Fake DMCA Takedowns Blocking Journalists' Stories - Slashdot

Posted by EditorDavid

• ›

  The only surprise is it took this long, and that there aren't more people doing things like this. There's been a couple people doing the same to criticism of them on YouTube as well.Not as many as I thought though there'd be though.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04, 2023 @01:11PM (#63342365)

    Oil companies have $9 Trillion dollars in identified reserves

    Exploiting these reserves will result in the continued escalation in global warming and result in loss of significant human habitat because most humans live near coastlines

    Oil companies have no intention to give up on these profits, so they have
    1. Lied about global warming, even though their own investigators identified it in the 1960's [scientificamerican.com]
    2. Paid other groups to lie about the safety of nuclear power [environmen...ogress.org]
    3. Paid other groups to lie about environmental impacts of wind power generation [americanprogress.org]
    4. Paid other groups to lie about effectiveness of solar power [reuters.com]
    5. Influenced the major auto companies to abandon electric vehicles for decades [ewg.org]

    Just be aware, they will work to get all of their profits, regardless of the negative effects on the entire human species

    Now they are using deceptive means to quiet reporters from, um, reporting on these facts

    Just wait until you see the paid trolls pile on to this article, remember their names and expect them to continue to lie

    • 1 hidden comment

  • Facebook, too. Anybody who does classical concerts gets a barrage of abusive DMCA claims by big conglomerates like Sony and Warner-Chappell claiming that you're using their recordings. The tech for detecting this stuff is simply inadequate, and because the DMCA only prescribes perjury for false claims if you don't actually hold a copyright or represent someone who holds a copyright, not for situations where the claim is entirely bogus, there's no incentive for these companies to have a human review any of their DMCA claims before sending them out.

    The DMCA is an absolute disaster, and these problems are probably by design.

    • Re:

      "Facebook, too. Anybody who does classical concerts gets a barrage of abusive DMCA claims by big conglomerates like Sony and Warner-Chappell claiming that you're using their recordings"

      It's worse on YouTube because your video gets blocked, you get a copyright strike which is very difficult to contest and could get your channel disabled and any money your earned from views is given to the claimant.
      Rick Beato has talked about this on his channel and in a Congressional hearing.

  • Bigger Surprise

    The bigger surprise for me is that it worked. When did US laws start applying to newspapers in South Africa?

    • Re:

      When you have the biggest dick, you can fuck anyone (over).

  • Re:

    I would be shocked, shocked I tell you, if this hasn't been rampant for a long time.
    There were numerous online discussions as to how this could & would be abused; I'm sure there were a few here on Slashdot back in the day

  • Re:

    The MAZZTer observed:

    Such as has-been whiz-kid guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen [youtube.com], to name one notorious offender...

• • Re:

    Ok, then let's ask, what DO you trust?

  • Re:

    Here's a clue, Vladimir:

    Get better at English before you troll.

• by Archtech ( 159117 ) on Saturday March 04, 2023 @01:18PM (#63342381)

  If anyone raising a copyright claim or a takedown request is required to prove their identity. Then if the claims are fraudulent they can be prosecuted, sued, or both.

  On the other hand, if a copyright claim or takedown request cannot be confirmed as coming from a real person or corporation, it should be ignored.

  • Re:

    You want to sue an oil company? Be prepared to run this for a couple years, hope you prepared enough money for this endeavour.

    • You want to sue an oil company? Be prepared to run this for a couple years, hope you prepared enough money for this endeavour.

      It's a criminal law. The government should do the prosecuting.

      But yeah, no "mystery individual" should be able to file a claim and the penalties for false claims should be worse than the penalties for copyright infringement.

      But they can, and they aren't.

      America: The best laws that money can buy.

• by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Saturday March 04, 2023 @01:26PM (#63342409)

  Lets use the right terms: these take-down requests aren't fake (in which case there wouldn't be a take-down), they're fraudulent.

  And the DMCA specifically bans issuing fraudulent DMCA take-down requests. How about we start enforcing the law, with sufficient teeth that the rich and powerful think twice about breaking it. Maybe bring in some of that German "the fine is X% of your yearly income" sanity to make penalties actually act as a deterrent to the rich.

  • Re:

    It's a great idea, but the copyright cartel has too much power for that to happen. Copyright is for them to use as a weapon, not to improve the lives of The People. Someone has to take whoever filed the request to court and show damages in order to recover any money, and then maybe if there is public interest there might be perjury chargers. The DMCA doesn't include any mandatory punishment for willful abuse, so the government isn't in any way obligated to punish the offenders.

  • Re:

    Not just fines. DMCA takedowns are supposed to be "under penalty of perjury". Well... perjury is supposed to be a crime. When someone (And there should *ALWAYS* be a specific, identifiable, someone. Automatic machine-generated takedowns should be banned.) commits that perjury by filing a DMCA takedown against content that is fair use, satire, news, commentary, or in any other way not an actual infringement; they should be prosecuted, imprisoned, and disbarred if a malpracticing lawyer.

• Circa 1999 / 2000. I reverse-engineered a tremendously stupid and completely obvious XOR-based "encryption" scheme in a well-know electronic device of the time. Fortunately, the company I was working for back then agreed to host my open-source code, so the maker of the device sued my company rather than me.

  The ground for the lawsuit? I broke an encryption scheme, which is forbidden under the then-new DMCA. Nevermind that the "encryption" was just a XOR. In fact, they didn't want any encryption at all (the hardware was way too dumb to do encryption): they stuck the XORing thing there specifically to be able to sue people like me under the DMCA.

  Long story short: my company eventually beat them in court, and it cost them a pretty penny in attorney fees. But they were happy to foot the bill for the publicity. Had the device's maker sued me personally though, they would have ruined me for life.

  • Re:

    They might well not have sued if you had hosted it on geocities or whatever, on the assumption that there was no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.

• On YouTube it seems particularly easy to submit made-up DMCA claims and there is no recourse for the target. You can file a dispute, but they don't pay attention unless your channel has tens of millions of followers. Even the most mainstream of outlets outside the US won't break high enough in the subscriber count to dispute a DMCA takedown. Much less anyone trying to do real journalism.

• Working As Designed.

  Everyone knew the legislation was almost 100% weighted towards bypassing review and allowing rapid take down of anything claimed to be in violation without inconvenient legal review first.

  And anyone with half a brain knew this would only benefit the deep pockets, and anyone without a big war chest would be too worried about a lawsuit to abuse the system against the big guys like the big guys abuse it towards the little guys.

  • Re:

    +5 The Truth

• Unless the website in question is located in United States. DMCA requests means nothing and can just be thrown in the trash. It does not matter if the hosting is in the United States (I don't recommend it because of legal risk) or if the domain is registered there. The DMCA law is only within United States borders and anything outside of that can just throw such demands directly into the spam folder and have a good laugh about the demand.

  This is a fact that not many people realize and are meeting the demand

  • Re:

    Really? How come Youtube removed one of my videos if I don't live over there?

    • Re:

      Because YouTube (Alphabet) is located in United States with their headquarters. A company must be located in United States to be required to follow the DMCA laws.Unless a country has laws similar to DMCA laws of United States, this demands can be ignored. Some of those laws are because of a WIPO treaties that are in effect around the world. How much depends on the country, so there's no way for more to know for sure. Its complicated legal issue and there are no clear answers.

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