Sadly, I think your only option is to follow up with legal action against Google. On the positive side, I expect Google will react quickly to any legal action as this puts them at risk of losing safe harbor protections.
The problem is that Google isn't hosting the content. They're merely linking to it. There's no content to "take down."
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).
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.
No they shouldn’t give anybody the benefit of the doubt when that person claims copyright infringement! Not unless you want internet randos to be able to take down any YouTube channel they want for “copyright infringement.”
As far as I can tell, requiring valid ID would lose a provider safe harbor protection as it is not one of the required elements:
(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.
I'll be the first to shout from the rooftops that the DMCA is in general a bad law, but according to that law, if the takedown notice contains the required verbiage, then they are required by law to give it the benefit of the doubt (that is, if they want to keep their lack of liability).
> Not unless you want internet randos to be able to take down any YouTube channel they want for “copyright infringement.”
Until there's a database of all the copyrighted works in the world that anyone can access—along with their licenses—it is absolutely not possible to know for certain if something is violating copyright.
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.
> Anyone who understands how easy it is to copy bits should know that the original intent of copyright can't work anymore.
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.
OP got in touch with one (or many) humans on Google. Humans then decided not to act on the DCMA request.
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.
Before we can assume this is impossible for Google, let's look at their revenue: Is it greater than the salary of 1 person, which is all that's required to comply with OP's request? If so, then it isn't impossible.
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.
It’s certainly due for an update, but it isn’t doing nothing at all. The friction it creates for unlicensed use at scale is enough to keep all the streaming services etc. afloat, which in turn are still funding the production of content. Maybe the anarchy that would follow its abolition would be superior to the old system creaking along, but that remains to be seen (and would be silly to accept on faith).
I don't know, how did the world manage to work before the internet?
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.
> 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.
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".
Right, it scales linearly, as is the case in most businesses. Only tech craves a constant time scaling factor, because in most business it's just not possible. You can't run 100 walmarts with the same employees as 1 Walmart, and Walmart knows that and is very successful in spite of it.
