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Google yesterday sued a group of people accused of weaponizing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to get competitors' websites removed from search results. Over the past few years, the foreign defendants "created at least 65 Google accounts so they could submit thousands of fraudulent notices of copyright infringement against more than 117,000 third-party website URLs," said Google's lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

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[-] MotoAsh@lemmy.world 189 points 1 year ago

Wait, Google cares about DMCA abuse!? Someone tell them about YouTube.

[-] Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 68 points 1 year ago

Most of the YouTube issues aren't DMCA claims but their own Content ID horseshit where there's automated matching, zero policing of catalogs and associated rights, and seemingly zero recourse for misrepresentations.

I'm friends with a YouTuber (with just under 1M subs) who has licensed music for his intro/outro. Other people have taken that music and created remixes, then uploaded those remixes to rights management companies with access to the Content ID system. They then flag the original work automatically, which allows them to divert monetization from the YouTuber. It doesn't go into escrow pending dispute resolution. The claiming company just gets to steal the money and keep it no matter what the ultimate result is. On top of that the initial appeal/dispute process is decided by the claiming party instead of someone neutral like YouTube themselves. It's usually a huge hassle to resolve. My friend has lost thousands of dollars through this.

[-] Makeitstop@lemmy.world 57 points 1 year ago

The automatic diverting of money to the copyright troll is the part that gets me. That really ought to open YouTube up for liability just as much if not more so than hosting copyright violating material. Copyright trolls should be facing fraud charges and systems that reward them should be under intense legal scrutiny.

Sadly, that's not how it works and even if there was enough interest to organize and lobby for a positive change, there'd still be zero chance of congress anything useful in the foreseeable future.

[-] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 21 points 1 year ago

Personally, if we're talking thousands then I'd be considering lawyering up. I know that's a dangerous game to play with YouTube, but damn dude, that's a lot of money.

[-] Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

My friend was actually a lawyer himself previous to going full time on YouTube. He talked about it once, but suing YouTube/Google itself for it is something he wasn't prepared to do. It's daunting enough to litigate against someone only moderately bigger than you, suing one of the largest corporations in the world wasn't something he was eager to do. One of the rights companies maybe, but there have been a couple dozen of those for him alone. It would be like whack-a-mole.

[-] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 15 points 1 year ago

Damn, imagine having a system so fucked up that even a lawyer can't deal with it.

[-] AnonTwo@kbin.social 37 points 1 year ago

The trick is to make it so their product isn't reliable enough to use. Then they care.

[-] ElectroNeutrino@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

Unless it's themselves making it less reliable to push more ads.

[-] blackbrook@mander.xyz 4 points 1 year ago

But they are doing that themselves already. I think they care because handling takedowns creates work for them and because they may be taking down search results that generate them ad revenue.

[-] CharlesMangione@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

It started to affect someone's bottom line.

this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
427 points (99.3% liked)

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