There should be a 3-strikes and you're out when it comes to DMCA abuse. After 3 false DMCA notices you lose all copyrights. That will stop this abuse once and for all. Running automated systems that do nothing but harass people over things that they are legally able to do should be illegal.
> There should be some sort of modest cost somewhere to stop this nonsense.
Playing the Devil's Advocate here:
But wouldn't that in turn incentivise actual copyright infringement on account of it potentially being cheaper to mass publish copyrighted material as opposed to request it being taken down?
I hadn't thought about that angle before. Is the public interest best served by adding friction to copyright enforcement, or by adding friction to fair use?
Certainly the right to copy is different when copying is so much cheaper than when the laws where written. We gave up:the right to copy when you couldn’t really copy. Now we can copy and maybe we want to retain that right to the people. Or at least rejigger so we either get more or give less via this exchange
The law is based on the doctrine of unclean hands. Judges decide on a case by case basis, based on the facts pertaining to the case.
An artist finds their life’s work online, and issues a takedown notice, not realizing it contained a few songs they don’t notice? No big deal.
A label pays a takedown notice mill, that produces completely bogus / mistargeted takedown requests on a regular basis? Scorched earth. They lose the ability to enforce any copyrights on their catalog.
> The law is based on the doctrine of unclean hands. Judges decide on a case by case basis, based on the facts pertaining to the case.
Judges don't scale and they are a step function, not an incentive gradient.
> An artist finds their life’s work online, and issues a takedown notice, not realizing it contained a few songs they don’t notice? No big deal.
If he had to pay a small(!) fee for mistakes in his takedown it would mean little harm to him since he protected his works with one takdown. One could even add an exemption for first-time mistakes. If he has to do it repeatedly then one would hope that he improves his search process.
Additionally you have to consider that takedown notices can be filed against middle-men targeting many different 3rd parties at once. E.g. consider URL takedowns submitted to google. Google has no dirty hands and neither do some of the mistaken targets.
Small fees would only add up if you issue bogus takedowns in bulk. They also have the advantage of not burdening the courts and providing the right incentives. The fact that the cost exists would drive people to reduce false positives which would make the penalty being required less often.
As far as fees go one could also distinguish between fair use disputes vs. wholly incorrect claims. After all in the former case the claimant has a valid case and it is just that there exists a valid defense. In the latter case the claim itself was invalid.
> A label pays a takedown notice mill, that produces completely bogus / mistargeted takedown requests on a regular basis? Scorched earth. They lose the ability to enforce any copyrights on their catalog.
> SoundCloud takes down D.J. Detweiler's 'remix' of John Cage's "4'33" for copyright infringement.
> White Noise Video on YouTube Hit By Five Copyright Claims
Not to mention that almost all classical music pieces recorded by students are under risk of being DMCA'ed for being so similar to copyrighted recordings. Classical music has many interpretations for the same piece and they are harder to tell apart than, say, pop music.
Please consider a quote in its entirety. Takedown mills losing the ability to file claims is not what is happening in reality. Scorched earth (against takedown abuse) is not happening in reality. The first sentence is merely a setup of the scenario, the last two are the conclusion (which doesn't happen, at least not often enough to discourage the behavior).
A sinple solution would be to create a private cause of action, for both the recipient and the impacted user of a DMCA takedown notice that is false in any essential way (including claim of infringement, not just the parts under penalty of perjury, for which there is a public sanction available) for actual costs or other damages or statutory damages, trebled for knowing or reckless falsehoods, with courts given explicit power to also require the offending notice-giver and/or copyright holder, if found to be engaging in a pattern and practice of reckless notices, to post surety and provide special notice in future DMCA notices issued by then (or on behalf, ifnthey are an owner) for a set period of years (say 3) allowing the recipient a 30-day window to investigate claims at the sanctioned actor’s expense to determine legitimacy prior to executing a takedown, with the safe harbor still in place if that investigation is conducted in good faith even if it comes to a negative conclusion.
Kevin Wayne is one of the co-authors of the book, but the copyright listing is "Copyright 2011 Pearson Education, Inc." and there does not appear to be anything in the book that says that the code is GPL licensed.
Presumably Kevin Wayne was given the right to license the code as GPL, but that fact didn't get included in the text of the book, and the f*cking, stupid copyright bot Pearson uses didn't get the memo.
