After initially being taken down by a DMCA, this page is now back up as the DMCA has been retracted.
SEGA statement:
Earlier this week, one of our games was incorrectly flagged on SteamDB. We utilize anti-piracy software to protect our games at a large scale, but sometimes it makes mistakes. SEGA will continue to fine-tune these systems to avoid this in the future and we appreciate SteamDB cooperating with us to resolve the issue quickly.
It should be illegal to send DMCA takedown notices without a human review, or at least there should be a penalty if there is no reasonable indication of actual infringement.
It's illegal to send DMCA notices you know to be false, and US courts seem to have interpreted "knowingly" fairly generously. Problem is, you've got to take them to court, and that happens infrequently enough they don't seem to care much.
[citation needed] From all the DMCA news I've ever seen over the last 23 years, "knowingly" has been interpreted extremely narrowly. As far as I've ever heard or been able to search online, no one has ever been censured by a Court for a bogus DMCA take-down. Prove me wrong please.
Only one part of the DMCA [aclu.org]-compliant takedown notice has to be averred under penalty of perjury:
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 in-fringed.
The assertion of believed infringement in particular is not under penalty of perjury, only that the person complaining is authorized to act on behalf of the identified right-owner.
Requiring that the person complaining is authorized to act on behalf of the identified right-owner makes sense. Otherwise any joker could take down content for shits and giggles.
What would be needed on top of that are penalties for bogus takedown notices. AFAIK courts sometimes require the plaintiff to pay defendant's legal costs for frivolous lawsuits, but that seems to happen rarely and I'm not sure if it would apply in this situation.
No it's only illegal to send a notice for an item you aren't empowered to control the copyright on. As long as you are actually the copyright owner if the item you claim there is nothing illegal about sending a notice to the wrong person. That was an _intentional_ distinction in the law.
You could be subject to civil damages with a false complaint, but the cost of recovering these damages would likely exceed anything but the most rare situation.
because there is no award specifically written into it like there is in the FDCPA. If a collector violates the FDCPA they can be liable for $1000 per infraction. Its easy to rack up $12k in damages with proper evidence and a $100 pro se filing fee. Thats how you self regulate abuses. When you make laws like this, you put teeth in there to keep the trolls in check. Unfortunately all the Democrats that rammed this through back then were beholden to the $5000 per plate dinner fundraisers in Hollywood. So natu
Unfortunately all the Democrats that rammed this through back then were beholden to the $5000 per plate dinner fundraisers in Hollywood.
I'm not sure why you think the Democrats "rammed this through back then" since it was passed by on a bipartisan basis.
Introduced in the House of Representatives as H.R. 2281 by Howard Coble (R-NC) on July 29, 1997 Committee consideration by House Judiciary Committee (Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property); House Commerce Committee(Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection) Passed the House on August 4, 1998 (voice vote) Passed the Senate on September 17, 1998 (unanimous consent) Reported by the joint conference committee on October 8, 1998; agreed to by the Senate on October 8, 1998 (consent) and by the House on October 12, 1998 (voice vote) Signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998
In fact the only Democrat that really had any control over the passing of the DMCA was President Clinton. Both the House and Senate were controlled by the Republicans at the time. I know it is fun to blame everything on the Democrats selling out to Hollywood but in this case it looks more like the Republicans "cock-gobbled to the RIAA and MPAA".
Often limited to arbitration in a venue of the companies choice. Extremely difficult and expensive to bring actions against technology companies. They employ as many lawyers as they do scientists.
And most of the time the DMCA recipient doesn't take the sender to court because the sender is a giant corporation and the recipient is a small company. Suppose you made an indie game with your team of 4 people. Your sales are moderate for a game from such a small group. Then SEGA comes along and issues a DMCA. After some back and forth, the DMCA is retracted and you're good to continue selling your game.
At this point, do you sue SEGA? You're a small company with minimal revenue. Spending the time and money
It should be illegal to send DMCA takedown notices without a human review
Since it has been shown a few billion times that intentionally and knowingly sending false DMCA takedown requests are not illegal, I say instead we should avail ourselves of it.
A few takedown requests to all of Segas datacenters and backbone providers every couple of days from now on should do the trick. Serves Sega right for illegally hosting the pirated programs "ASDF" and video "XXYYZ"
Then just setup a botnet to send them weekly or even daily from different sources. Add in all the other companies using aut
instead of illegal just put teeth in there that the improperly punished can sue and get, as a matter of case law, an automatic $10,000 in damages, or more should a tort claim be brought forth. Bullies only respect you when you kick them in the balls and steal their wallet.
The problem is that SEGA are going to have much deeper pockets than SteamDB and will pull every trick in the book - and then some - to distract, delay, change venue, counter-claim - and as a result the cost of litigation for SteamDB would quickly spiral to many times the amount of money they could expect to recover in damages.
That would be the law working as designed, not necessarily as sold to the general public.
SEGA is not sending these notices. They contract a brand protection firm. The likes of BrandShield Ltd., BrandVerity Inc., Corporation Service Company, Custodian Solutions, EnablonS.A., etc. Those use Web crawling and analysis software - usually developed in-house - and they act as the copyright holderâ(TM)s legal representatives. The notices are automated and are sent out by a truckload every day. Nobody is checking them for accuracy. All this tells me the chances of a significant penalty for an erron
It should be illegal to send DMCA takedown notices without a human review, or at least there should be a penalty if there is no reasonable indication of actual infringement.
It should be illegal to send DMCA takedown notices without a human review, or at least there should be a penalty if there is no reasonable indication of actual infringement.
Regards
Bestbushcraft [bestbushcraft.com]
The only person who always got his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.
It's been resolved already (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's been resolved already (Score:5, Insightful)
It should be illegal to send DMCA takedown notices without a human review, or at least there should be a penalty if there is no reasonable indication of actual infringement.
Re:It's been resolved already (Score:5, Informative)
It's illegal to send DMCA notices you know to be false, and US courts seem to have interpreted "knowingly" fairly generously. Problem is, you've got to take them to court, and that happens infrequently enough they don't seem to care much.
Re: (Score:2)
[citation needed] From all the DMCA news I've ever seen over the last 23 years, "knowingly" has been interpreted extremely narrowly. As far as I've ever heard or been able to search online, no one has ever been censured by a Court for a bogus DMCA take-down. Prove me wrong please.
Re: (Score:2)
FYI: You two seem to be agreeing on the important parts of this statement, and just disagree on whether that counts as "narrow" or "generous."
Re: (Score:2)
'"narrow" or "generous"' depends entirely on whether it's describing the size of the cock you're giving or being forced to take.
Re: (Score:2)
Only one part of the DMCA [aclu.org]-compliant takedown notice has to be averred under penalty of perjury:
The assertion of believed infringement in particular is not under penalty of perjury, only that the person complaining is authorized to act on behalf of the identified right-owner.
Re: (Score:1)
Requiring that the person complaining is authorized to act on behalf of the identified right-owner makes sense. Otherwise any joker could take down content for shits and giggles.
What would be needed on top of that are penalties for bogus takedown notices. AFAIK courts sometimes require the plaintiff to pay defendant's legal costs for frivolous lawsuits, but that seems to happen rarely and I'm not sure if it would apply in this situation.
Re: (Score:2)
No it's only illegal to send a notice for an item you aren't empowered to control the copyright on. As long as you are actually the copyright owner if the item you claim there is nothing illegal about sending a notice to the wrong person. That was an _intentional_ distinction in the law.
You could be subject to civil damages with a false complaint, but the cost of recovering these damages would likely exceed anything but the most rare situation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:It's been resolved already (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately all the Democrats that rammed this through back then were beholden to the $5000 per plate dinner fundraisers in Hollywood.
I'm not sure why you think the Democrats "rammed this through back then" since it was passed by on a bipartisan basis.
Introduced in the House of Representatives as H.R. 2281 by Howard Coble (R-NC) on July 29, 1997
Committee consideration by House Judiciary Committee (Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property); House Commerce Committee(Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection)
Passed the House on August 4, 1998 (voice vote)
Passed the Senate on September 17, 1998 (unanimous consent)
Reported by the joint conference committee on October 8, 1998; agreed to by the Senate on October 8, 1998 (consent) and by the House on October 12, 1998 (voice vote)
Signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In fact the only Democrat that really had any control over the passing of the DMCA was President Clinton. Both the House and Senate were controlled by the Republicans at the time. I know it is fun to blame everything on the Democrats selling out to Hollywood but in this case it looks more like the Republicans "cock-gobbled to the RIAA and MPAA".
Re: (Score:2)
But, Your Honor, I didn't send that false take-down notice, it's all the automated flagging software's fault!
Re: It's been resolved already (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
And most of the time the DMCA recipient doesn't take the sender to court because the sender is a giant corporation and the recipient is a small company. Suppose you made an indie game with your team of 4 people. Your sales are moderate for a game from such a small group. Then SEGA comes along and issues a DMCA. After some back and forth, the DMCA is retracted and you're good to continue selling your game.
At this point, do you sue SEGA? You're a small company with minimal revenue. Spending the time and money
Re: (Score:1)
It should be illegal to send DMCA takedown notices without a human review
Since it has been shown a few billion times that intentionally and knowingly sending false DMCA takedown requests are not illegal, I say instead we should avail ourselves of it.
A few takedown requests to all of Segas datacenters and backbone providers every couple of days from now on should do the trick.
Serves Sega right for illegally hosting the pirated programs "ASDF" and video "XXYYZ"
Then just setup a botnet to send them weekly or even daily from different sources.
Add in all the other companies using aut
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that SEGA are going to have much deeper pockets than SteamDB and will pull every trick in the book - and then some - to distract, delay, change venue, counter-claim - and as a result the cost of litigation for SteamDB would quickly spiral to many times the amount of money they could expect to recover in damages.
That would be the law working as designed, not necessarily as sold to the general public.
Re: (Score:2)
When laws are written by lobbyists for lobbyists, what do you expect?
Re: It's been resolved already (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It should be illegal to send DMCA takedown notices without a human review, or at least there should be a penalty if there is no reasonable indication of actual infringement.
It should be illegal to send DMCA takedown notices without a human review, or at least there should be a penalty if there is no reasonable indication of actual infringement. Regards Bestbushcraft [bestbushcraft.com]