Copyright Strikes and idiot DMCA companies

There seems to be an increasing amount of “copyright police” using DMCA to take down content which ISN’T actually a breach.

The usual (and legit) thing is that a DMCA Company is hired by another company – I’ll call it Company A – to enforce the rights of Company A. (But see also Total Bastards, below).

So far, so good. If you are a creator and you own all your stuff, and you know where it is, you can hire the DMCA Co, tell them where all the legit content is, and watch as they take down all the stolen stuff.

The problems start when Company A fails to give the DMCA Co the full picture. Or, less professional, DMCA companies don’t care enough to ask.

Result – DMCAs are issued for content which is up legitimately – usually in our industry, it’s your own marketing material or even your own platform sales.

Now DMCAs are US law, and are only valid re US based companies, but in practice, most legit user/creator hosting platforms and media will pay attention to them.

The important thing to realise is that it isn’t the sites fault. DMCA is what stops them being liable for any infringement. The site isn’t expected to take a view as to the accuracy of the DMCA, but simply to assume it’s correct and act accordingly. The site doesn’t have to do ANYTHING (except takedown on request) but the larger ones tend to have a proper process that helps you counter claim. However these processes usually end up with you having to disclose your name and address to the DMCA Co, and that can also become public information as it feeds into the US court system.

So, basically the system is broken. But the alternative (that existed before), held sites liable for everything and under those rules we’d have no social media or User Generated Content or OF type platforms at all.

So, what to do? I am not a lawyer, but if people want to stop the more unprofessional DMCA companies it’s probably going to take getting together and a class action. While also recognising that the way the system is set up, even the best DMCA Co will sometimes issue wrongly because their clients simply haven’t given them accurate info, in spite of being asked for it.

I think this is all Civil Law, so it’s very much, “they are relying on you to not take them to court” that allows this to continue.

Useful article by a DMCA Co that seems to give a damn.

Twitters explanation of their process for dealing with incorrect DMCAs

Lumen – if you are subject to attack via wrong DMCA and think there’s a pattern, this might

Total Bastards

The DMCA system is also broken because it assumes that all parties are genuine, even if incompetent, and sites systems have to assume this too. It was not envisaged that some pillocks would simply lie and tick the “copyright owner” box for material they know they have no rights to, simply as part of a hate campaign against creators they don’t like. They simply take advantage of the fact that the site systems are automated, and that people in our biz are reluctant to counterclaim because of the personal info requirements.