Google is broken to the very core.
This is what happens with a company that tries to minimize costs of support to zero.
File in a small claims court (or notify of your intent to do so) and see how long it takes to get a response ...
I wonder if you could probably even suggest a fee for damages, wasted time, etc due to their slow response and hope it's cheaper than them getting a lawyer to assess it ...
You would need to be the owner, and would know where to file though. If it's not your content, and you're "helping a friend" (but not actually legally representing them) then my guess is they haven't received a valid DMCA.
OP needs to get a real lawyer and stop putzing around emailing a machine.
If you want a human at Google you need to send letters from a law firm.
Right, it's federal, not state law.
Also, register the copyright, assuming that's still working under the current administration. (Trump is trying to fire the head of the Copyright Office, which is part of the Library of Congress and doesn't report to Trump.)
Either way, ignoring dcma is asking to be sued. And you can't just block or ignore a court summons.
Which statistically for the insurance industry happens with 90% or so of all claims.
If you give yourself just enough plausible deniability to work around the penalties (or even if you don’t, if the math is in your favor enough!), at a minimum it can give you a boost for the next quarter, which is key.
my wife had an FB account registered on her old phone number. she had that account deleted (but FB 'deactivates' them by default, instead of actually deleting it). her old number then got reassigned after a few years to a new person by the carrier.
that person reactivated her account and started video-calling her relatives. aunts, cousins etc. and exposed himself to them. like literally all of her aunts have seen his dick by now.
she submitted a takedown notice for impersonation. didn't get a reply. went to file a police report, sent that along with a new takedown application. no response.
after some time we just gave up. we're not in the US, so i guess facebook just doesn't give a fuck and has these requests routed straight to the bin.
Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14147719
Use your brain for once, or else don't (please) work for any FAANG companies
The whole copyright policing thing should basically just die.
Or have it be crowdsourced. If enough thousands of (distinct, genuine) viewers flag something as being a rip-off, then take action.
Even if Google paid Harvard JDs to read every DMCA notice (of which there literally aren't enough of them), even then they would sometimes be tricked by adversaries and sometimes incorrectly think someone was an adversary some of the time.
I worked at YouTube in the past and I can tell you copyright ownership isn't even fully known by the lawyers. Concretely there's a lot of major songs where the sum of major companies affirming they have partial ownership sums to more than 100% or less than 100%. Literally even the copyright holders don't actually know what they themselves own without lots of errors, and that's without getting into a system that has to try to combat adversarial / bad-faith actors.
Large companies don't get to say they're too big, so therefore it is hard.
Too damned bad!
They can take advantage of scale, but not at the cost of breaking the law, or just doing their job improperly.
If it makes service at scale difficult, well that's just too bad. Sucks to be them. Maybe a competitor will do better.
No excuses because "oh poor widdle me, I'm too big"
Too bad it’s working only for the powerful.
Marx was right about some things…
If I have 100 customers and I have to spend 1 hour a week dealing with legal compliance requests then if I have 200 customers I have to spend 2 hours a week dealing with legal compliance requests, but I also have more resources to do it with.
In fact, scale usually makes it easier rather than harder because you can take advantage of economies of scale to streamline the process.
And, in the end, if you aren't able to comply with the law then you shouldn't be in that business regardless of your scale.
Copyright can only be determined in court. The fact that not all copyright complaints lead to a video going down is because Google is willing to take on some liability when they believe a complaint is not legit, and leave the video up.
Obviously, this is not something they can do, because offering random people the ability to take down random videos with only the courts as recourse would be a disaster. Neither do these companies want to be in the business of deciding if a complaint is valid or not, because if they decide one way and then a judge decides the other, they get screwed.
Google tries to take a measured stance and evaluate complaints for obvious issues, but otherwise they do generally just act on them, and if the other parties involved can't agree on whether or not there is infringement, they just throw their hands up and tell them to take it to court.
Copyright is so complicated and fraught that it's virtually impossible to manage it in a way that satisfies everyone, regardless of how big or small a player is.
> What precise process do you suggest to tell them apart at Google scale?
The suggestion is that scale makes a difference. I was refuting that.
Again, you're talking from a moral standpoint, but it's not practical. Who's going to stop Google or other corporations from tracking DMCAs the current way?
> Why does scale matter?
Because of resources. Any defined process needs resources to be implemented; law enforcement is no different.
Google provides services at scale by means of automating the shit of them. The only way to identify legit from fake claims at that level is to also create an automated resolution process, with the results we see.
You may want to limit Google size by forcing them to perform human reviews for all their customer service interactions; but again, how are you going to force them into compliance? You'd need a US judiciary system the size of Google to do it.
You've inferred that, but I didn't make this claim. A sensible strategy would involve automating as much as possible while allowing for the ones that matter (e.g. OP's example) to be escalated.
Clearly you can't do that if, as in OP's case, you don't even perform any automated ID checks before telling the complainant that their ID hasn't been verified.
> Again, you're talking from a moral standpoint
Not at all. I'm taking the legal standpoint. I say nothing about whether this particular law, or any other law, is moral or not. Complying with the law is a basic requirement that any company has to satisfy. Why should Google be any different just because it's big? You seem to be suggesting that laws should only apply to small entities and that once you go above a certain scale, you are above the law.
Again, if you simply cannot comply with the law for some reason (as you seem to be suggesting applies to Google) then you shouldn't be running that business at all because, after all, doing so implies doing something illegal.
I have hosting that regularly shut down my servers based on legal demands from jurisdictions that should have no reach my service whatsoever, or on total bogus claim.
If I refuse to act, they shut me down. If I'm late in acting, they shut me down.
Zero check on the legitimacy on the claim, zero trust in my debunking the claim.
The reality is, it's not economically viable to do so. I'm not giving them enough money to be worth it. So as long as I'm a small actor, anything that looks remotely legit is just processed as-is with no recourse.
The entire world can basically impose its view on me as long as they find a convincing way to tell my hosting "you are at risk".
And it's not one single provider either. Most of them do that: domain name, vps hosts, proxies, caches, etc.
The system is broken.
When a Google response to a problem is outright bonkers, there is often not much that can be done, but to keep hitting the head on the wall (hoping something different happens) or be the lucky few that can get or has a human contact at Google. From what I've read and heard, those with human contacts, often have been identified as needing special attention. Where they are persons who are making significant money for Google and the businesses they own or can create problems in court.
I wonder if PDF’ing some random nonsense and referring to them authoritatively would get through. The author’s e-mails are friendly. What it might be looking for is corporate legalese.
At first I thought you meant "Now, [the good guy of the internet] is basically Microsoft with much higher product qualities."
I see what you meant now, in that google is reaching microslop levels of shittiness with slightly shinier shit.
At the end of the day, the best option is to use an attorney who knows the right procedures and would also run the risk of professional consequences if they submitted false claims.
Ok, but then Google needs to say what would convince them that the author is who they say they are. The author asked multiple times how they prove they’re the real author and Google’s replies never even acknowledge the question.
That's not true. He mentions that he is the owner of the books official websites, which are registered with Google, presumably with all of his personal and billing information.
It would take 2 seconds for anyone at Google to confirm this.
Not really... Google is literally too big, and the fact that they've offshored and/or automated support away and compartmentalized it all where no single IC employee could possibly do much.
I had a billing/tax issue come up with my small biz Google Workspace, and I was getting nowhere via the normal support channels... So I asked my brother in-law who literally works at Google (but not in that team) for help. He could not help me as he had no idea who or what department could handle that and neither did his team members, and it would take weeks apparently to find the right person. I'm not the only paying Google customer with that experience. Google products are great, until you run into an issue you need to talk to a human.
Something doesnt add up. Because that seems like a bare minimum to collaborate at all.
Now you're getting a clue why Google had like 3-4 competing communication tools at some point lol
They could have been Slack if they didn't transmogrify it into a social media platform (Google+) and then throw out the baby with the bathwater when it failed.
So it clearly cant be the case.
Ask their managers? But then how do their managers verify?
It's a hierarchical org chart. If you're really not sure ask Sundar.
It's likely any Googler can verify the identity of any other by looking up their username but it's unlikely that the same tool would do something like tell you how the YouTube recommendation algorithm works or who would know that.
They will know the names of frequent collaborators and something about the scope of relevant work but it's not like everyone at Google needs intimate knowledge of every workstream. At that scale it's unlikely anyone has the full picture.
> chart they can check, then how do they
> verify who is on what team?
Having worked at some very large companies, none of which published org charts, it's done by word of mouth and making informed guesses.
"Alice, I saw you were the last editor of this document. Are you still on that team, or can you point me to the best PoC?"
Searching for the tree root starting from a tree leaf is easy, but searching for the right leaf starting from the root takes a lot more effort.
Aside from the huge array of stuff they've built in house, the "List of mergers and acquisitions by Alphabet" wikipedia page has 264 entries. Some of those bought other companies.
You really think some guy in some offshore office for low pay, with his boss hounding at him about his KPIs, is going to go out of his way to bother with this?
Google won't talk to us normies because 1) it's a cost and they don't have to 2) they've convinced themselves that if they tell anyone anything, then the unwashed masses will take advantage of their process/get the service we're owed under law
They really should....
> ... it's a cost and they don't have to
There are much bigger costs looming for Google if they continue to ignore DMCA
Google are in the hands of the Money Monkeys. Short term gain and get out before the pain.
What a shame.
I don't get to ignore the law just because if I follow it, someone who doesn't might get one over on me.
All of this nonsense because Google wants to automate their DMCA takedown process and not hire anyone to deal with real cases as they come, as is their duty to copyright holders.
A company like Google could trust you for being really the author because who would lie? and those that lie about these things usually couldn't spell or use technology.
The world changed and now Google can't afford to trust someone that says he's the author, because people take advantage of that.
So if you ask me what's worse, this guy having to contact his publisher to get his book off the web, or someone being blackmailed to keep his youtube channel, imo they are right to require a proper lawyer
Anyway, it's what I was told when I joined Google Ads a long time ago and it seems consistent with their philosophy and behavior.
So it sounds like their policy of having a high bar for proving identity but still publicising what is required to meet that bar works for preventing fraud?
If anything, your argument is an indictment against Google.
Trademark issues are therefore really simple: is the user of the trademark the one who has it registered or not?
But copyright holders don't have any standard, obvious evidence they can point to that shows it's really their copyright. They can file a DMCA, in which case companies normally just assume the complaint is accurate - but if the party on the other end objects, the case has to go to a judge who will determine who actually has the copyright and if infringement occurred.
(You see a similar thing with benefits and healthcare: often attempts to crackdown on people abusing the system just make it harder for legitimate users)
One of the things that you get, when dealing with a publishing house, is a bunch of IP lawyers on speed-dial.
If you register works with the LoC, it might help in these situations (it isn’t required, but this is exactly the type of thing that it’s supposed to address).
This is not a "mistake", that is negligence.
What if folks signed their work with a private PGP key and published their public key? If you wanted to submit a DMCA request, simply sign a message to prove you’re the content owner. It seems like that could work.
My question is what mechanism proves the video is signed by the rightful owner?
Piracy is more a moral and political statement than an economic one.
Copyright law existed long before 1998, so it's hardly something "invented in 1998 from the UN". There might be some aspects it standardized, but so far as I can tell I can't see how it's relevant to this particular case.
DMCA is one of the worst parts of the internet and for some reason capitalism is the boogieman in this thread. IP law has become hyper restrictive/excessive, with little oversight, and favours large companies with teams of lawyers.
So far as I can tell there's nothing to do with takedowns? From wikipedia:
>The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM). It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself
Capitalism had moral authority from the invisible hand (with empirical support), but absent that, it's just another system of power, and clearly not a just one.
Google needs to fix this, it's really bad.
Do they really? It seems the incentives are aligned so that they continue making the big bucks regardless of 'petty grievances' such as these..
Many other creators don't have a platform with any word near the reach YouTube has... And until that changes, there's almost no incentive for YouTube to change.
The form just errors out, in Google, Firefox. Privacy things disabled.
> Something went wrong there. Try again.
[0] https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_error/?t...
"False positive. Site does not ask for info and is clearly comedic in nature."
So effectively making it not a URL anymore despite being what the form asks for, that’s just great
The console has: "service error: RpcError"
The POST hangs up before it completes, and it seems to be because the JS can't lift a auth token for my Google account, maybe.
Well - the legal system favours those with more money, so basically it is corporate-law that is in effect there. And Google has enough money to burn and protect against small authors.
I don't think there's standing to sue. Linking to pirated content isn't illegal. They could be found guilty of contributory infringement but that's a tough case since the legal requirement is that Google needs to know for sure that it's pirated (which is impossible at scale).
Google being informed by the copyright holder that it's for sure pirated is pretty good evidence that they know it's pirated.
The fact that this doesn't scale isn't really a legal defense.
The author only needs to show up to court with a driver’s license to prove their identity. The judge would rule in favor of the author the same day if someone from Google actually bothered to show up.
A scammer isn’t going to court. Don’t try to solve for that.
I love how this is the defense of all these tech companies. "I'm sorry, your honor, we are just a poor multi-trillion dollar company... there's just no way for us to control anything, because we're just too big..."
Either they solve it or they should give op the benefit of the doubt. Arguing that x or y isn't possible at scale doesn't mean you get to break the law.
(3) Elements of notification.-
(A) To be effective under this subsection, a notification of claimed infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated agent of a service provider that includes substantially the following:
(i) A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
(ii) Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site.
(iii) Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.
(iv) Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted.
(v) A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
(vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
> Not unless you want internet randos to be able to take down any YouTube channel they want for “copyright infringement.”
This is why it's a bad law! But it is the law.
Unless the OP wrote a book thats just one long URL, and even then.
Lol, hail corporate!
It's definitely possible, you just got hand-waved on that.
Simple example: Disney opens up a new website that has some of their obvious content on it. How does Google know that Disney owns that website and has authorized its use? If they get a takedown notice, how do they know the sender owns the content?
There's no formal verification system that exists for such things. It's all based on an honor system that is easy for bad actors to abuse (which is probably why Google changed how they do things).
The entirety of copyrighted law has failed. It isn't working as intended and hasn't for a long time now. Anyone who understands how easy it is to copy bits should know that the original intent of copyright can't work anymore. We need something new to replace it.
AI makes this even more stringent. You cannot protect the "vibe" of your works, AI can replicate it in seconds. If you make "vibe infringement" the new rule, then creativity becomes legally risky. A catch 22.
In 1930 judge Hand said in relation to Nichols v. Universal Pictures:
> Upon any work...a great number of patterns of increasing generality will fit equally well. At the one end is the most concrete possible expression...at the other, a title...Nobody has ever been able to fix that boundary, and nobody ever can...As respects play, plagiarism may be found in the 'sequence of events'...this trivial points of expression come to be included.
And since then a litany of judges and tests expanded the notion of infringement towards vibes and away from expression:
- Hand's Abstractions / The "Patterns" Test (Nichols v. Universal Pictures)
- Total Concept and Feel (Roth Greeting Cards v. United Card Co.)
- The Krofft Test / Extrinsic and Intrinsic Analysis
- Sequence, Structure, and Organization (Whelan Associates v. Jaslow Dental Laboratory)
- Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison (AFC) Test (Computer Associates v. Altai)
The trend has been to make infringement more and more abstract over time, but this makes testing it an impossible burden. How do you ensure you are not infringing any protected abstraction on any level in any prior work? Due diligence has become too difficult now.
No need for the "doesn't scale" argument, whatever system they have in place is already good enough to process OP's inquire. The problematic bit is what they decided to do once they had all the information in their hands.
I do, however, think this is just a mishandled situation and Google will correct, particularly after being featured on the HN wall of shame.
To judge the claim of unscalability true, we would first need to know the rate of DMCA takedown requests, the number 1 person can investigate in a day, and then we can do the math of whether total revenue can pay for those employees.
Even if not, it's not an excuse. The only legal venue google has to complain about this, is getting the law changed.
You call someone, you send a letter, something. It's not rocket science.
It's not automated, sure, but somethings will never be automated, just by their nature. That doesn't mean it doesn't scale. Well, sure it does. You just hire more staff.
For Christ's sake, it used to be that phone calls required physical action from an operator to get connected. And now we can't do shit if there isn't an API for it or some bullshit.
You're right, of course, but when people say "it doesn't scale" they tend to mean "it doesn't scale at with a near-zero marginal cost".
Maybe we should be calling out that wording.
Every Googler on the planet just laughed and downed another Tequila shot.
First, worth reading this on how he deals with credit agencies and debt collectors: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r... . There's gold in here for dealing with big globo-corp and how to get their attention.
Ask Google for a certified mail address so you can send them the timeline of events that occurred. This is the shibboleth that lets them know you mean business and that by not responding, they may be facing legal action. DO NOT THREATEN or mention legal action. The managerial class doesn't act that way. Just signal you are building a case against them. Start with getting that certified mailing address... you may be surprised how they respond after just that request.
If they don't respond, keep following up. Send them a timeline of events, proof of ownership even if they do not ask you what you need to prove ownership. Make it clear what this is costing you.
But here's the thing, EVERY TIME I HAVE ASKED FOR A CERTIFIED MAIL ADDRESS, the globocorp gave me what i wanted, and I never had to follow up. Every time. They don't want to deal with actual legal action from "people who know what they are doing."
It's a shibboleth. Like "Baa-ram-ewe." Use it wisely and honestly.
He points out how expressing all the natural human reactions - anger, fear, supplication, bargaining - tell the institution that you are a vulnerable, manipulable moron. The implacable robot that knows the process but doesn't care is what gets results.
> Where exactly should I address letters?
> Google is your friend.
considering the context, I found it amusing.
It seems to me that without know that, you're still making empty threats, only doing it passive aggressively.
I'm a little confused here - you sue them, in small claims court, for not providing a service address?
How do you serve them without an address, for a claim of not providing an address?
I mean, I know what happens when I appear in court as the applicant/plaintiff, and tell the judge that the respondent/defendant was never served.
Okay, lets say the judge doesn't laugh my case out at that - how is my claim going to proceed? "I claim $X monies for not supplying me with their service address"?
(My understanding is that, by not providing a service address, all you can do is report them to specific bureaus, arbitration councils, etc. You cannot sue businesses, as far as I know, for not having or not providing a service address).
I still remember trying to get my Google Play account unbanned in 2014 after I clicked on my own ad in the app once to test that it’s working. Lovely times. Got the account back, but not due to my actions - their dumb bots masquerading as humans were giving me the runaround, and then I just randomly got my account back.
https://www.copyright.gov/registration
While copyright registration is not legally required for copyright protection, it is the practical way to create usable evidence that the work is coprighted by you. Without it, challenging a copyright infringer is a more arduous legal process.
Also, the author's website, and the books themselves claims that "Perishable Press" is the copyright holder, not "Jeff Starr". (Excepting the ones that don't state any copyright holder.)
https://books.perishablepress.com/downloads/digging-into-wor...
In legal matters, clear and accurate communication is essential.
THink of Google like how Cantrill described Ellison:
You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.
I doubt this is possible for the support agent to do.
As for how to do it - I don't see why it is hard for you to come up with something that proves ownership. Do your books have a publisher? Do you have a contract with the publisher? Or just a letter from someone at the firm confirming your work? Have you registered the work with the copyright office? Do you have proof of publishing on online portals?
You aren't helping yourself or anyone else by anthropomorphising Google. It is not your friend who can "break your heart", or a "trustworthy helper on the Web", or a "trusted ally", but a large bureaucratic corporation. Treat it like the machine it is and you will get the results you want.
It is pretty hard to come up with proof of ownership when Google refuses to tell you what forms of proof they will find acceptable. When I go to the DMV and need to prove my residence, the DMV clearly states what forms are acceptable proof. Google should do the same, especially when they are asked what forms of proof are acceptable. Instead they gave this guy the runaround and ignored his question on how to prove ownership.
I needed to get my "Real ID" driver license (when I was newly moved to CA).
I first went to their official website and printed out the page listing the various types of ID required (n1 from column A, n2 from column B type of thing.)
I then gathered n1+1 items from column A and n2+1 items from column B.
Headed over to the DMV office in West LA.
Stood in two lines (one outside, one indoors) for more than 4 hours.
Eventually got to the desk to verify that I had the correct ID types so that I could get a number in order to wait to be called up to another line where I would actually hand in my documents.
Friendly gentleman with the SEIU sticker on his shirt says "this ID is not sufficient." I show him the printout of their website, indicating all the items matching (exceeding) the requirements. He says "I don't care." I ask to speak to the supervisor. He says, "supervisor's not here" and proceeds to stare at me. I eventually left and went to a different office.
Google can suck at times but it doesn't hold a candle to the DMV. They should be nuked from orbit.
I think the most interesting part was when I finally was “helped” and the person was so rude and demeaning, loudly and vocally, I said as few words as possible to make things move along quickly.
Towards the end, before I had what I needed, I was asked to take a survey and rate my experience. I waited until I had accomplished my goal, and without any guilt gave the worst rating I could.
A manager called me later that day asking about my rating, I was very surprised. I explained myself and even got a bit of an apology.
I’ll add your experience to my list of “why I’ll never live in California” which is starting to really become substantial.
California recalls 325,000 Real IDs. Ooops.
https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/california-dmv-recal...
OTOH, my experience with licenses, renewals, etc., in the State of Washington was the polar opposite. Fast, easy, and efficient.
Whoosh.
And the person I responded to generalized your experience to: California is so bad he'll never live there, ignoring all the data points of people who love living in California and the many reasons to want to.
This whole thing is radical ideology, gullible swallowing of talking points, and bad faith. I won't respond further.
Would your reaction have been as visceral if I had named another state?
Also: https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/d38vof/how_t...
I am a bit biased though - I read way too many stories in HN of abuses of DMCA than this sort of issue. That said, this does seem unresponsive.
Never think of any sort of for-profit enterprise as anything other than a for-profit enterprise, and you'll never be heartbroken by one.
Angered? Made to think you're living in a dystopia? Enticed into an absurdist world view? Absolutely. But you won't be heartbroken.
Not that he needed to do any of this. He wouldn't be a tiny bit less right if the text was a sterile and objetive list of facts about what happened.
It's rhetoric. You're making it about manipulation. Should the world consist of bloodless lists of facts without significance or commentary?
The problem is systemic. The legal concepts of 'Corporate personhood' and 'Limited liability' don't make sense. Just think about what those terms mean.
Of course you cannot expect accountability in the long run.
Is a corporation really a legal person? Can it go to jail as a person might? Does it need a visa to operate in a country as a person might? Will a corporation die as a person will? Sounds like it's getting all the benefits of personhood and none of the drawbacks... Our legal system literally gives more rights to non-sentient entities than it does to us humans! No wonder things are getting out of hand!
What does 'Limited liability' mean? Who has to deal with the repercussions for the excess liability which may exceed beyond the limit?
It's deep corruption, codified into law. Of course these corporations will get worse. They will get satanically worse. Just watch what happens internally; a decade from now, the current CEOs will look morally responsible by comparison. It's a systemic issue. Total violation of the social contract at a deep human level.
Why don't we say weapons are legal persons and provide limited liability protection to the person wielding it? Then criminals could kill people and the court could pass judgement that the gun must serve 20 years in its holster while the criminal walks free... That's about as fair as what we have now. If you conceive of a corporation as a weapon. There is nothing in the law to explicitly prevent this exact scenario. The corporation could theoretically use up CEOs as a gun might use up bullets... The investors would bear no liability.
There are many people in this depraved world of ours who would be willing to be a corporate bullet. People will go to jail to provide for their family. With corporations sucking the wealth out of society, it will create new levels of desperation, this will surely happen.
I read that in the voice of the talking anus-mouthed beetle from Naked Lunch.
And why should you, one of the little people, be able to prove anything at all? If a big player sues, Google is going to have to pay a staggering amount of money, thus they obey. If you sue, its lawyers will drain you financially by protracting everything they can, so you don't actually sue. If they take your claim, the content they take down stops bringing the sweet advertising revenue.
And thus the computer sayeth Nay.
There's no way to design such a system that has zero false positives and zero false negatives; if you do no verification whatsoever you'll get tons of false positives, now it seems like Google has added a small amount of verification, at least sometimes, so now there are some false negatives.
What does engineering have to do with that?
This seems like more than a false negative. Author clearly stated they were willing to jump through whatever necessary hoops. Google didn't seem to have the hoops to jump through.
> For years, I thought of Google as a trustworthy helper on the Web. Especially where it mattered most, removing pirated copies of my books from Google search results. After publishing a new book, I would monitor the search results and file a DMCA notice with Google whenever the inevitable pirated copies of my book were listed. Google always was very helpful in this regard, swiftly removing any pirated books asap. No hassle, no hoops, just immediate and direct relief from Google.
Maybe I am in a bubble but since at least pre covid era I remember the consensus being that Google had zero support and unless you were famous or went viral with your problem on the internet, you would never get human intervention. That combined with the rest of the paragraph which seems to me like it could be summarized as "Google is trustworthy as long as my personal wallet gets fatter, and not that it hasn't, they aren't trustworthy" makes me not really care about either side in this story
It's time to find a copyright lawyer that will work on contingency. Document your communication and take screenshots of pirate links every day.
It doesn't matter if there's competition at the customer acquisition stage, as long as there's some form of customer lock-in the corporation is going to abuse them somehow.
More most markets have some kind of natural lock-in, and even in markets that don't companies without some kind of barrier to exit never scale in the first place, and that's why we must face this kind of bullshit pretty much everywhere even from companies operating in competitive markets.
Hire an attorney, draft a limited POA, and let them handle it.
If it's not worth <pick your threshold> kilo-USD, then at least have the attorney document everything and write it off until the (remote) possibility of a class-action.
Life is short. It's just not worth your time.
Moreover, like Facebook Marketplace and fraud, this is the future of corporate managed markets.
And the law is in the hands of literal bandits in the USA right now
The problem with DMCA notices is that the party trying to takedown content has zero incentive to behave in good faith. A $10-$30 fee would provide an incredible disincentive for the worst sort of trolling and over-broad shotgun takedown notices while protecting legitimate IP holders (who would see their fee refunded almost every time)
A counter notice could also be faked, though. What’s to stop people pirating content to just file a counter notice?
Me too! Specifically the years, oh, maybe 1998 to 2005? Ish?
By omitting reference to the issue they raised previously, they don't hang the procedural legitimacy on that question.
If they were going to stick with their choice regardless of whether they were satisfied on the question of identity, it's puzzling why they volunteered it.
I suspect what happened is they had some tag for what the content at that URL was and it wrongly was some other book, so the question wasn't his identity but the content's identity that had to be addressed. Their replies all look consistent with "the book at that URL is not the book you are claiming you own"
Not that their handling was good or clear, but to my eyes both sides were talking past eachother since he kept talking about his identity and the Google side wasn't disputing his identity.
On one level I would say that simply flatly untrue given the phrasing of the emails from Google. But on another level, there's an integral relation between the question of identity and copyright ownership anyway, which I think makes that distinction moot in this case. Regardless of what you call it, they abandon the topic by the third email.
I think one of the things that makes factual issues difficult to accurately process is there's a lot of tempting paths towards minimizing cognitive dissonance by taking a both sides approach, and has the satisfying psychological effect of relieving tension while freeing one from the burden close comparisons of factual details and not feeling ugly by taking sides. There's obviously a lot of powerful psychology pulling us towards rationalizing an equilibrium. It's what makes fact-checking hard, because if you confront an asymmetry, it doesn't have the convenient relief from psychological dissonance that the brain is searching for.
> It is unclear to us how you came to own the copyright for the content in question, because you do not appear to be the creator of the content
Seems very explicit to me that the concern is "We don't think Jeff Starr owns the content that is at that URL" and not "we don't think you are Jeff Starr"
And then third reply was "your long multiple replies did not addressed our rejection concerns, and so you have failed the challenge script overall". I would really expect he could call a lawyer to restart the process in a way that would be worded less casually and have the necessary shibboleths for their challenge script to be passed.
you're getting human replies from people who do not give a crap.
culture isnt equal.
Now with Youtube and AI its going to be great businesses, but not 99% profitability great. Nothing is 99% profitability great like search used to be.
You will see Google stock go up and down in the short term, but the fate is already sealed. Sooner or later they will be welcomed to the club of Intel and IBM.
As far as I can understand from what the blog's author reproduced, it looks as if the problem was that his DMCA requests may have not been compliant. Go to [1] and do a Ctrl-F downward for "Elements of Notification."
If I were filing a DMCA request with Google, I would do it as follows, matching the requirements laid out for a valid DMCA notice. The below should not be considered legal advice or the practice of law.
[1] - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512
~~~~
Both via Google's webform and as an e-mail to: dmca-agent@google.com
To whom it may concern:
This is a notification of claimed infringement under 17 USC § 512(c)(3), for purposes of 17 USC § 512(d)(3). To maintain the limitation on liability under § 512(d), upon receipt you must respond expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the reference(s) or link(s) identified below.
If you believe that the material below is insufficient for the requirements of § 512(c)(3)(A), I ask you to specify precisely what you feel is absent from this notice yet necessary to meet those requirements.
REQUIREMENT PER § 512(c)(3)(A)(ii)
I identify the copyrighted work as:
- Title: [FULL TITLE]
- Author: [AUTHOR]
- Copyright owner: [YOUR NAME / ENTITY]
- First publication date: [MONTH DAY, YEAR]
- ISBN/ISSN (if any): [NUMBER]
- U.S. Copyright Office registration no. (if any): [TX/VA/PA-…]
- An authorized copy is available from [PUBLISHER] at [BOOK PAGE ON PUBLISHER WEBSITE].
- The infringing material reproduces the work in full.
REQUIREMENT PER § 512(c)(3)(A)(iii)
I identify both (1) the infringing material and (2) the specific reference(s)/link(s) on Google that must be removed or disabled as follows:
A. Infringing material (destination URL(s)):
1. [FULL INFRINGING URL 1]
2. [FULL INFRINGING URL 2] (if the same file is reachable via more than one URL, list each exact variant you can find, including http/https, with/without "www", trailing slash, and direct PDF/EPUB links)
B. Specific Google reference(s)/link(s) to remove/disable (information-location results):
1. Google Search results page URL where the reference appears: [PASTE THE FULL GOOGLE SEARCH URL SHOWING THE RESULT] (Example format: https://www.google.com/search?q=…&… )
a. Google Surface: Google Search (web results) at google.com
b. Locale: United States / English
2. The specific result on that page that must be removed/disabled:
– Result position: [e.g., "Result #3 on the first page"]
– Result title as displayed: "[TITLE SHOWN IN RESULTS]"
– Displayed URL as shown: "[DISPLAYED URL]"
– Snippet text (first ~15–25 words as displayed): "[SNIPPET]"
– Target/destination URL that result resolves to when clicked: [INFRINGING URL]
– If available, the Google redirect URL for the result (copied via "Copy link address"):
[PASTE THE https://www.google.com/url?… LINK]
3. Any Google-served cached/stored version of the same infringing material (if present):
– Cache URL: [PASTE webcache.googleusercontent.com … URL] (or: "The ‘Cached’ link (if shown) for the above result.")
4. When observed: [DATE + TIME, TIME ZONE]
5. Screenshot attached showing the result described above (due to webform limitations, attached on e-mail message only).
REQUIREMENT PER § 512(c)(3)(A)(iv)
I am the complaining party. My name is [NAME]. My postal address is [POSTAL ADDRESS]. My telephone number is [TELEPHONE NUMBER]. My e-mail address is [E-MAIL ADDRESS]. [Alternately, use business contact information, or your agent's contact information.] Please redact this information in any public copy of this notice.
REQUIREMENT PER § 512(c)(3)(A)(v)
I have a good faith belief that use of this material in the manner I am complaining of is not authorized by the copyright owner (myself), any agent that might have the right to authorize such use (there is none), nor the law.
REQUIREMENT PER § 512(c)(3)(A)(vi)
By my electronic signature below (satisfying § 512(c)(3)(A)(i)), under penalty of perjury, I certify that the information I provide above is accurate, and further certify that as the owner of an exclusive right I allege is infringed, I am authorized to act on my own behalf.
/s/ NAME
i was wrong but i could find on the 1° page this [0]... which seem a pretty hypocrite act to consider a technology that violates copyright at its core. "you eat what you plant"
but legitimate DMCA inquery rejected. just lol.
Thankfully I found out that Google has not been trustworthy for many years, even before they removed their old corporate motto "don't do evil" and transitioned into pure Evilness.
People need to realise that what is today called Google, has absolutely nothing to do with the initial stage when Google grew, from small to medium sized company. Now it is a mega-mega corporation and got not only lazy, but is no longer a tech-company. It is an ad-company now and this shows everywhere. For instance, when it decided to ruin google search - that makes sense when you control the evolution of the web e. g. with the chromium ad-code base. And now AI further ruining the very little that is still left of the search engine (oddly enough, the alternative search engines also suck a LOT, so it is not only Google; the whole world wide web has gotten worse in the last ~10 years or so).
> Google always was very helpful in this regard, swiftly removing any pirated books asap. No hassle, no hoops, just immediate and direct relief from Google.
Now, I think Google has to be removed from this planet - however had, at the same time I also believe in universal access to information for every individual on this planet, at all times, without any restriction. I absolutely understand that this opinion puts me at odds with the "we must control what others can do digitally" but I also could not care any less. So I actually have an orthogonal opinion here - there should not be any censorship or restriction in this regard. Again, I absolutely understand the other side of the argument; I just do not share it in any way. And as a consequence, I actually think search engines should give all humans access to such information at all times. You can see this philosophy elsewhere too - wikipedia, for instance, open access in science rather than Elsevier forcing people to pay twice for publicly funded research data or the internet digital archive preserving data. And many more examples. Or the right to repair movement. Or the core idea of the GPL (I personally prefer BSD/MIT style, but I absolutely understand why e. g. the linux kernel has been a better success model due to the GPL primarily).
> Instead of simply de-indexing the search result, like they do for so many other items, Google refused to acknowledge that I was the author of the book.
That is unfortunate - but I still think the public has a right to digital data. I assume his primary concern is renumeration; I am absolutely not at all saying that renumeration should not happen, mind you. We could consider this globally in a different way. States could help enable fair renumeration, for instance. Open source should also be co-funded by states (again, I leave the details here; my point is that I pursue a different philosophy model here). The renumeration discussion is separate here from the author's wish that Google should censor information. I believe search engines should NOT censor information. I actually call it betrayal when search engines censor information. Google here, by censoring, creates a fake-world wide web, an illusion. I am not interested in lies told by Google; I want uncensored information and uncensored results. Again, it is a different philosophy.
Having said that, the Google responds reads like pure automation, probably via crap AI. But just as I wrote before - I believe Google needs to be retired from this planet. It does too much Evil and causes too much frustration among people in general.
> Where was the friendly Google from days past?
Well - we could debate whether Google was ever friendly. But, totally aside from this, the Google today is not the Google that used to exist. It has changed dramatically. It is no longer Google.
> At this point, I was feeling ignored and betrayed by Google, who for many years proved a trusted ally.
I hope he learned a lesson there.
Do not trust Google or Amazon or Apple etc...
> Immediately my heart sank. And I knew that something had changed at Google’s core. The friendly corporate giant no longer would even deign to consider cries for help from the little guy. The little guy being me, the little guy with a broken heart.
I am glad he learned the lesson: do not trust Google. And help all people who want to see real change. The biggest issue I have with Google is that they control the world wide web via chrome. Almost all browser in use depend on Google here. That is very bad.
(This proves that you, the holder of the private key, are the author, not someone who goes by the same name)
Anyway, if you still think this won't help you can use a notary service, yes.
This has been going on for decades on YouTube. Fair use? DMCA. Cover song? DMCA. 3 second clip of the intro drone? DMCA. You playing it live on an instrument, DMCA.
Their copyright system is only there to do one thing, enrich the corporations they work with.
Fuck the MP-double-A
Fuck the RI-double-A
Fuck the suits behind the PSAs
And fuck 'em all for the DMCA
("Fuck the MPAA" by Futuristic Sex Robotz, which is still online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv3GihnduUw&list=PL1CD8E178A...)
I don't particularly like or trust Google, but I can't say I'm broken up about the fact that they refused to de-list a website who someone claimed was hosting pirated content, and told them to go after the website owner directly. False and malicious DMCA takedown requests absolutely happen, and in any case I don't think it should be the responsibility of a search engine to remove links to websites hosting content that is illegal in some jurisdiction.
Fuck Google.
Also I hope you never succeed, all information should be free. I really do hope that any index containing your books is available for all time.
Make your books available for free, and you won't have this problem. You can't expect people to pay for something that literally costs nothing once it has been created.
You may also sell paper versions. Some people like myself enjoy reading paper better and will pay for hard copy if they like the book enough or expect to refer to it often.
See these carrots! it doesn't cost anything to create them now, because they've already been created haven't they!
Once the oil has been extracted from the ground, and transported to the gas station and put in the tank, it doesn't cost anything to pump it!! Why are we paying for this stuff again!?!?
You can't expect people to pay for code you know, it doesn't cost anything!
If the same payment model that is applied to books and music were applied to carrots, it would be illegal to plant carrots. If you think about it like that it's obviously wrong.
The carrots in your example would be similar to the printed books the GP mentioned, not the text itself.
Of course I can agree that there are differences between these things, but the average writer earns less than the average programmer, and for this reason I often feel it is somewhat gauche that many programmers seem offended by how writers earn money and want it stopped, without any good suggestion as to how they should earn money otherwise. It's like when rich people complain that janitors get food stamps to survive, it motivates my sarcasm gland.
You expect every artist, actor, painter, and programmer to make zero $ from anything they create?
Apart from a few notables exceptions, artists have been poor and broken since the dawn of time.
Michelangelo, Mozart, Jeff Koons and Taylor Swift are the exception, not the rule.
It may be hard to imagine, I don't think things would be massively different overall.
Apart from all the millions of people like me (an Indie software developer) that would suddenly have 0 income from their digital products?
Or are you just trolling for a reaction?
There needs to be a transition from making money from unit sales to something else, and until that's sorted out I think having piracy being at least stigmatized for being wrong makes sense.
I think it's important for a creator to ensure that the experience for those who want to pay is as good as possible. Apart from that I don't think any amount of worry will help very much.
So how are software developers, authors and musicians supposed to make a living?
The marginal cost of production of a cheap paperback is marginal, the upfront cost is large.
The few pennies that are saved with digital distribution are not a huge game changer regarding the finances of publishing.
Otherwise printing and distributing 1000 copies of a book is surely vastly more expensive compared to having 1000 downloads of an epub file.
Most of the cost to publish a book is upfront. Editing, laying, cover art, diagrams, etc.
It costs less than $2 to print a book in bulk quantities.
Margins suck. That is why publishers go out of business all the time. Margins aren't any better on ebooks. It costs money to maintain a digital store front.
For an example of the costs of digital distribution in another field, look at Good Old Games. They are a digital distribution platform and they barely break even / turn a profit. (A bit more complicated since they also do some of the porting work)
Digital distribution has super low per unit costs but huge upfront costs.
Newspapers subscription prices only ever covered a small % of the overall costs.
Spotify is a complicated racket, there are some very good video essays exploring who is making money off of Spotify (it isn't Spotify and it isn't the artists!), a but the rabbit hole there goes deep.
>As for software development, the open source model clearly shows that money can be made
Ok, so I sell data wrangling software for Windows and Mac for $99 per license. Mostly to people who aren't programmers. Kindly tell me how that would work with an open source model.
Even without copyright, nothing prevents your from selling software. Chances are people who don't want to pay for your software already don't. If paying for software adds value otherwise (such as access to updates and support), people will still pay for it.
Does it?
bounties, commissions, live concerts, patronage.
Software devs are a fairly new concept but traditionally artists aren't expected to make a living of their work, more like barely surviving.
Even if he offers it for free others may still try to collect money for his work. If he sells paper copies other printers could undercut him.