Hacker News: DMCA

http://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html

by DanielRibeiro • 14 years ago

138 65 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

You may not communicate the information specified below by email.

haven't really read through a dmca policy notice (or whatever you call this) before, but is this standard practice?

i think it’s a good policy as it (somewhat) raises the cost of submitting a notice, which would presumably deter overzealous lawyers and prevent some false takedowns, but given how quickly i've seen things get pulled i'd never have imagined that notices would have to be sent by any means but email..

DannyBee2• 14 years ago

They aren't emailing them, they are faxing them. This won't raise the cost since they accept faxes.

simba-hiiipower2• 14 years ago

oh, haha. well that makes sense..

seems i've shown my age.. though i definitely read that, my mind seems conditioned to totally ignore the notion of faxing something. not discounting anything here, but just find it kind of funny. given my perception of fax machines, it could very well have said send notice via telegraph.. that aside, i can see how as a technology it stills has practical applications, especially in the legal field where paper records are heavily relied upon.

jkaljundi2• 14 years ago

People in US still use faxes? Funny!

drchaos• 14 years ago

The idea behind that is probably that a fax or written message is "less anonymous" than an email.

Firehed3• 14 years ago

It's also a (moderately) higher barrier to entry, so it's less likely to be aggressively used by heavy-handed copyright holders.

Though in practice, fax has turned into this bastard child of excessive analog-to-digital conversion, at least among newer companies. Senders email their attachment to an email-to-fax service, which sends it over POTS to a fax-to-email service converting it back into a PDF and emailed as an attachment to the recipient.

sp332• 14 years ago

Also, there's one workflow which is still easier by fax than email: receive it, physically sign it with a pen, send it back with the signature.

nnnnni2• 14 years ago

The best part is that it SLOWS DOWN the request process.

Silhouette• 14 years ago

IANAL, but I did just look up what looks like the current version of the relevant part of the DMCA[1]. Unless there's one of those funny legal things I don't understand going on, it appears fairly black and white that failing to provide an e-mail address for the designated agent basically nullifies the entire safe harbor provision (see (c)(2)(A)). Whether that is actually what Y Combinator are worried about we don't know, of course; I can't be the only person wondering what prompted this change on a site like HN where DMCA notices/abuse don't seem likely problems under normal circumstances. Or maybe YC's lawyers just know more about the law than I do. :-)

[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512

fab13n• 14 years ago

I guess the point is to make DMCA claims more annoying to file, or at least to automate. I'd also hope that in true HN spirit, this is intended to be portable, so that if enough web sites replicated this policy, it would seriously handicap DMCA claimants.

Of course, this only works if the "not by email" requirement is legal. IANAL, let alone an American one, but I'd love to read informed opinions about the legal validity of this point.

cduan3• 14 years ago

Is this new? Because I can't find a corresponding listing in the Copyright Office's list of service provider agents (http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/a_agents.html).

The reason I'm wondering is that the Copyright Office does require you to provide an email address for your designated DMCA agent, and I'd like to know how they got around that.

(The requirement for registering an agent, by the way, is 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(2).)

d503• 14 years ago

There's one here: http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agents/n/news_ycomb.pdf

jammmuel• 14 years ago

Is that a childs' handwriting?

cduan3• 14 years ago

Interesting--there is an email address listed. Wonder what happens if you email your notification there? Presumably, if you do, you are in compliance with the statute, regardless of the no-email policy, so they would have to do the takedown.

vegashacker2• 14 years ago

Times have sure changed: http://web.archive.org/web/20050331050049/http://ycombinator...

levesque• 14 years ago

Not that much: http://ycombinator.com/legal.html

vegashacker2• 14 years ago

Interesting. From today's page source:

   <!-- | <a href="legal.html">Etc</a> -->

eze• 14 years ago

Does this mean that YC holds the copyright on HN comments?

cbhl• 14 years ago

Are we allowed to submit DMCA Counter-Notifications by email, or do we still need to use (fax or regular mail) to do so?

tnuc• 14 years ago

in bold 6 lines down. http://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html

try faxzero, works for me. http://faxzero.com/

I have never sent a dmca request to ycombinator.

larrys• 14 years ago

Link should also appear on this page:

http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

andrewljohnson• 14 years ago

I think it's just lame that a site like this could be accused of copyright infringement, unless it's a text-only post or a comment. Linking to copyrighted material should not be illegal - the DMCA takedown notice should have to be directed at the linked site, not the linking site. It's not YC's job (or Google's job) to fight copyright infringement by policing their indexes.

But more importantly, it shouldn't be the job of small organizations with few resources to have to create a DMCA policy like this, much less enforce it.

dpe822• 14 years ago

Anyone could copy-paste a news article verbatim. That's a copyright violation, and without a DMCA policy like this Y Combinator is by default liable for the infringement.

The DMCA policy and registered agent gives a content creator a method to notify Y Combinator of the violation so YC can take it down. How else would they know who to contact or how to protect their rights?

If a site has a proper policy and agent (and abides by the policy) it gets safe harbor - it's not liable for the infringement. It's not an unreasonable amount of effort, and the scheme is a pretty decent compromise between protecting copyright holders rights and allowing user generated content.

devcpp2• 14 years ago

>Anyone could copy-paste a news article verbatim.

Yes, andrewljohnson agrees about that. However, his point is:

>Linking to copyrighted material should not be illegal

And I have to concur. This should not be a copyright violation.

evanhr• 14 years ago

Absolutely agree that it's entirely reasonable to comply with the requirements of 512(c) to get the safe harbor, but to pick a couple of nits:

1. Copying a news article is likely to be infringing, but it might not be; it's always worth considering whether it's a fair use, especially for very factual material. 2. More importantly, it's not that HN would be liable "by default". Without the safe harbor, they would be open to claims of secondary liability, but the copyright holder would still have to prove the elements of contributory, vicarious, or "inducement" infringement.

Again, still worth it to be able to avoid lawsuits or at least dispose of them at an early stage, but the risk isn't automatic, full liability for the hosting site.

cduan3• 14 years ago

The reason for setting up a DMCA takedown policy is precisely so that the site doesn't have to deal with copyright infringement: by doing a fairly minimal task of responding to takedown notices, the site operator gets freedom from liability for pretty much any related copyright infringement lawsuit (which otherwise could cost a lot of time and money).

It's pretty easy to set yourself up with such a policy, and anyone running a site that includes user-provided content should have one. EFF used to run a startup boot camp that went through all the steps of how to do it, and if they still offer it I would recommend it.

mtgx• 14 years ago

This is why bad laws like DMCA need to be fought before they get passed, because it could take decades before they are tested in court for stuff like this, whether linking falls under DMCA or not.

rsingel• 14 years ago

The DMCA made HN possible.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/10/ten-years-later/

That doesn't make its implementation or provisions perfect...

shadowmint• 14 years ago

I see full-copies of the content of sites that have gone down under load all the time on here. I can imagine a situation in which someone might take exception to that.

(I agree, it's dumb, but you can see how it might happen; especially for a site where someone has been smashed for being stupid, taken a post down, but a copy of it remains in the comments...)

ww520• 14 years ago

Usually procedures and policies are put in place because of out of ordinary incidents. Haven't seen DMCA notice from HN for the longest time and it pops up now. Can we assume someone actually tried to sue HN for copyright infringement on the user-submitted content?

jval• 14 years ago

I sincerely hope the YC team has made sure the HN entity is legally separate from any asset-bearing entities they might have. Last thing anyone wants to happen is for you guys to get sued by some sort of errant copyright or defamation BS and have them get at any other assets you have.

DISCLAIMER: This is not legal advice. I am not a lawyer. Do not use this as legal advice. I am just a dude.

Hacker News: DMCA

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