Counter DMCA Google play Suppose that a person received a DMCA takedown notice about a month ago and has filed a couple of counter notices, but and always gets an automated response saying &quot;We are unable to take further action on your request because it does not provide all required information.&quot; No action has been taken on the counter notice. What information must be provided? What evidence?
Given that filing a DMCA counter notice is essentially an invitation to a lawsuit, consulting a licensed lawyer in your jurisdiction before filing a counter notice is highly recommended. To understand what is happening, one must understand the relevant intent of the &quot;safe-harbor&quot; provisions of the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). Essentially, there are/were two &quot;complications&quot; of standard copyright doctrine to the internet: The standard of Anonymity online, which makes filing a traditional lawsuit more difficult. Because of the nature of the internet, a) few people host their own content, either using a hosting company directly (like most websites do), or post their content on someone else's website (like Youtube and StackExchange), which makes them distributors, traditionally liable for infringement, (and much nicer targets for litigation, because they have deep pockets). However, without the ability to post on someone else's website, the internet as we know it wouldn't exist (we'd basically blogs, and maybe email). Both of these issues were &quot;solved&quot;/dealt with via the takedown notice/counter notice system. A displayer of other's content (e.g. Youtube or StackExchange, ISPs, etc.) has &quot;safe harbor&quot; protection from liability for hosting copyright infringing content, provided that they respond to a properly formatted takedown notice within the specified time frame. Someone one the other side of this, who believes that they do have the legal right to utilize such content, either due to owning it, licensing it, or fair use, can file a counter notice, and upon receipt of a properly made counter notice, must return the content in a specified time period 10-14 days. This &quot;solves&quot; both of the above issues: The intermediary service is no longer legally liable, instead acting as a message carrier, and if the person uploading the disputed material believes that the DMCA should not apply, they can reverse the takedown, by filing a counter notice that allows the original claim filer to file a standard lawsuit. Essentially, the hoster gets to say &quot;I want no part of this, this is between you guys, I'm just a messenger&quot;. But what does a counter notice need to contain? 17 U.S. Code § 512g(3) states that a counter notice must contain 4 things (legal code below, my comments are in italics): Contents of counter notification.—To be effective under this subsection, a counter notification must be a written communication provided to the service provider’s designated agent that includes substantially the following: (A)A physical or electronic signature of the subscriber. This is a legal document, you must sign it, either physically or electronically. (B)Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled. Clarification of what material is specifically being requested to be made accessible again; this information should also be in the original takedown notice (C)A statement under penalty of perjury that the subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled. This is essentially the bit that gives legal cover for the hoster to restore access to the disputed content, and places the liability on the counter notice filer's shoulders. Note that this is under the penalty of perjury, so jail time can concievably result if this is made falsely. (D)The subscriber’s name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that the subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if the subscriber’s address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which the service provider may be found, and that the subscriber will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person. Essentially stuff that makes it easy for the filer of the original takedown notice to sue you. Sources: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 https://www.crucialp.com/resources/tutorials/web-hosting/how-to-file-dmca-counter-claim/
It has as much legal standing as the evidence that supports it. See a lawyer to evaluate your position, obviously. But if the evidence is clear that there is no infringement, then the cease and desist letter doesn't mean much.
In all likelihood, the judge's order related to data collection and reselling is not legally enforceable. They weren't parties to the expungement action, so the judge doesn't have jurisdiction over them. And, the First Amendment protects the right to say truthful things pretty absolutely. Arguably, if the sites provided the information without making clear that it might not be current because records were expunged or corrected, there might be a claim for negligent misrepresentation, false light, or even defamation, but I seriously doubt that even those claims would hold up. The language in the order might cause sites to comply out of not legally justified concern, or just a desire to be accurate, even if it is not enforceable. So, it doesn't hurt to bring that information to the attention of such sites and ask them to take down the information. But, when push comes to shove, I very much doubt that you would prevail in court enforcing that order against them. Certainly, if you do nothing, they will do nothing, because they are not psychic and have no idea that the court order related to those records has been entered. Even a valid and enforceable order directed at a party over whom a court has jurisdiction is not effective until the person ordered to comply with it has notice of the order. And, there is no system that gives sites like that notice without you taking action to inform them of an order.
People running web servers are generally liable for contributory culpability, when some user breaks the law by putting the material on the server. There are legal mechanisms for relieving the server guy from this burden. The best-known mechanism is "DMCA takedown", where you publish contact information so that an offended person can serve up a proper legal claim that you are distributing material that they own copyright to. If you follow the rules, you may enjoy "safe harbor" protection against contributory liability: one of the requirements is that you have to take infringing material down. The specific requirements can depend on the nature of the liability and jurisdiction, but generally involves a "hands off" involvement where the person has no knowledge of what's going on on his server. So just disclaiming responsibility does not work. There are other more serious violations, such as distribution of child porn or transmission of top secret information. Jurisdiction is not totally central to internet questions, and I could sue you (the server guy) in US courts, or (depending on the offense: copyright infringement of a particular item) in UK courts. Nailing this down specifically to Sweden is harder, but recall that The Pirate Bay had a whopping judgment against them.
Under the DMCA(United States Federal Law: Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and its Safe Harbor provisions, yes, Youtube is protected from copyright claims, provided they comply when they receive a notice. But....the DMCA that gives Youtube (and its parent company Google/Alphabet) this shield is US law, but Youtube does large amounts of business in other countries, making it liable in those countries, which don't necessarily have the same protections. Case-in-point, the EU. Under some other nation's law, Youtube may be liable for infringement if they wait to be notified. Alternatively, part of the agreement that was being hammered out between Youtube and the content companies might very well be some sort of indemnity agreement, that protects Youtube from the content companies so long as they uphold their end of the agreement. Additionally, even if Youtube isn't liable for the copyright infringement itself, since they serve ads on such videos, they could conceivably be sued under the theory of "unjust enrichment". (Similar to the logic that the EU is currently trying to get Google to pay their "link tax" for Google News on). There are also non-legal considerations to consider: Benefit to Self: Youtube is now selling/renting copyrighted content such as movies and TV shows as well. By becoming a distributor, it's in their interest to not also allow free versions of what they are selling on their platform. Cost-to-implement: As Ron Beyer points out, a call center/email center/mail room to receive the DMCA notices would be an enormous cost. What's more, it's a continuous, recurring and likely-growing cost. Youtube/Google is also not short on software engineers. It's much cheaper to pull some devs off of their current project for a couple days, implement a solution and call it a day, with occasional maintenance, especially as they are going to be paying those engineers' salaries anyway. Business Relationships: Youtube/Google make most of their money from advertising (and off of user data, but that is often tied to advertising in the other direction). The content companies are often their customers. Angering your customers is generally not a good idea. Ultimate Desires/Future View:Youtube doesn't care about the lost content. They don't care about the fight. If the copyrighted material is blocked, their users are far more likely to find something else than leave the site; if the material is blocked before uploading, most users won't even realize it was ever there. As such, Youtube doesn't care if copyrighted content is blocked, as that is not their main market.
First of all, taking a video made by someone else, making alterations and then distributing the resulting work is probably already a copyright violation. There are exemptions like fair use (check the comments for an example), but just taking a whole video, mirroring it and reposting it without any own contribution very likely does not constitute fair use. The people who do that don't avoid copyright infingement. They just try to avoid getting caught by any automatic system YouTube has in place to detect copyright infringements. But avoiding automatic filters does not mean to avoid DMCA takedown notices, cease&amp;desist letters or lawsuits from real humans who find a mirrored version of their video and feel that their copyright was violated. However, alterations to a creative work can be a creative work in itself. So regardless of the fact that one violated copyright in creating a derivative work, that derivative work might still be eligible for copyright in its own right. That means someone who reposts a video originally made by party A and then altered by party B would violate the copyright of both A and B at once and thus expose themselves to potential legal actions from either party. But the question is if simply mirroring a video constitutes the necessary threshold of originality to make the resulting work eligible for copyright. In most courts, it probably would not.
If an infringement suit is filed, the plaintiff(s) would have rights of discovery. They could subpoena the source code in such a case for comparison. They could take the depositions of EvilCorp's developers and ask them about the libraries that they used. There might well be other ways to achieve the same effect.
Nothing in 17 USC 512, which includes the DMCA Safe Harbor and Takedown procedures requires an online service provider to notify others who may have made copies of content (including archive sites) claimed to be infringing that a takedown notice has been received or that access to the content has been blocked or removed. A separate DMCA takedown could be sent to the archive site. The internet archive honors robots.txt files set to deny access to a particular site, page, or section of a site by removing from public view all archived versions of that content. This is often done when a new owner acquires a domain and it is repurposed or put up for sale. To the best of my understanding there is no legal requirement that an archive act in this way, but the IA at least does so.