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A false DMCA takedown is equivalent to perjury. If SteamDB were to counter-sue Sega, Sega could be punished for perjury, forced to pay SteamDB's lawyers fees,
by darig 5y ago
A false DMCA takedown is equivalent to perjury. If SteamDB were to counter-sue Sega, Sega could be punished for perjury, forced to pay SteamDB's lawyers fees, and potentially lose their copyright on the content they claimed was violated.
- burnished 5y agoAny examples of this happening?
- darig 5y agoOnline Policy Group v. Diebold, Incorporated.
- thayne 5y agoReally? If the risks for making a false DMCA takedown request were that high, I would expect to see less false takedown notices, and less aggressive bots. Or maybe the aggressors are just assuming that the victims don't have the resources to fight a megacorp in court? If it's the latter it seems like an organization like EFF should step in to fund such a fight.
- jaywalk 5y agoI believe for all of the above to apply, it would have to be proven that the request was knowingly malicious, as in they had full knowledge that the page did not infringe but decided to send a takedown notice anyway. That's highly unlikely, and good luck proving it anyway. However, they are still liable and can absolutely be sued civilly for an improper takedown notice. But the penalty probably wouldn't extend beyond a monetary payment.
- Aeolun 5y agoAt what point does neglicent become knowingly malicious?
- TeMPOraL 5y agoMore generally: we need a legal framework that makes people deploying automation responsible for what the automation does to the same extent as they would be if they hired people to do the same work. "It's a false positive in an automated system" should never be acceptable justification for invalid legal action, nor should it be used as extenuating circumstances. Either you're prepared to pay for the mistakes of your algorithm, or you should not be deploying the algorithm at all.
- rectang 5y agoIf you knew that your algorithm produced false positives and you deployed it anyway, then you had fraudulent intent for the subset of automatically generated takedown notices which were false positives.
- jaywalk 5y agoThat's a nice theoretical definition of "fraudulent intent" but you're not going to get a court to agree with it, I don't think.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- darig 5y agoThe risks for cops killing innocent people include charges for murder, and yet here we are. Lawyers unwilling to prosecute. Judges in bed with the defense. Really.
- cptskippy 5y agoThere has never been any blowback from false DMCA claims.
- jaywalk 5y agoThat is not true. This old (2010) article mentions two such cases: https://blogs.lawyers.com/attorney/intellectual-property/consequences-of-filing-a-false-dmca-takedown-request-10363/ https://blogs.lawyers.com/attorney/intellectual-property/con...
- cptskippy 5y agoCunningham's Law ftw.
- MaxBarraclough 5y agoSite seems to be broken, gives me an Access Denied. Here's Google cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:AVUICl9sd38J:https://blogs.lawyers.com/attorney/intellectual-property/consequences-of-filing-a-false-dmca-takedown-request-10363/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:AVUICl...
- dragonwriter 5y ago> A false DMCA takedown is equivalent to perjury No, it's not. (There's a couple of points in a DMCA notice that are certified under penalty of perjury, but they aren't the 9bes that are likely to be be false on a false one in the first place.)
- BruiseLee 5y agoAs long as the lawyers that filed this DMCA takedown really represent Sega and Sega owns the copyright that they claim is infringed, then there is no perjury. It is irrelevant if the notice is otherwise frivolous.
- vkou 5y ago> A false DMCA takedown is equivalent to perjury. Has anybody in the history of the DMCA ever been successfully convicted of perjury for misusing it? The difference between theory and practice is that in theory, they are the same thing.
- darig 5y agoAutomattic Inc. v. Steiner