The Copyright Act in the digital age: the greatest legal scam in the world
In connection with the disputes in the previous topic , we specially translated for Habr an article entitled “The Law on the Protection of Copyright in the Digital Era: The Greatest Lawful Scam in the World”. We want to emphasize that we are not supporters of “taking everything and sharing” , but for the necessary reasonable changes in copyright.
Transfer:
The DMCA, adopted in 1998, became the basis for the largest legal fraud that has ever been turned in the United States. The act was signed in the Senate unanimously, and is intended to protect copyright holders in the digital age. The law was poorly thought out, but was introduced in 2000 in two phases and gave rise to many problems in subsequent years. The first part of the law “protection against circumvention”, being poorly formulated, allows anyone to sue others for circumventing encryption, even if they do it legally, for example, in the framework of “fair use”, and information on especially flagrant cases can be find here in the great EFF article .
The second part, which I would like to highlight separately, is the “Tracking and Notification” section. This section allows copyright holders to quickly find and delete copyrighted work on the Internet. Since then, this right has been abused as much as possible.
The problems began with the fact that the DMCA notification is legally binding for web hosts. If you do not remove materials violating the law, you may be sued in accordance with it. This is a great reason to frighten, and there are no legal consequences in case of a false DMCA notice. The only possibility is a counter request. After which, you have to wait 10 days again, just to lift the initial ban. That is, just by sending a notification, you can block any information for 10 days. Rights holders can then send a request that they insist and file a lawsuit, and the disputed data should be blocked before a court decision is issued. The law on copyright now provides for punishment (in the form of a fine of $ 2,500) for deliberately false placement of the mark © on works not protected by copyright. It also provides for punishment for deleting the copyright from copyrighted works or for providing other false data related to copyright. However, there are no legal consequences if you sent a false DMCA request. The only thing you can do is sue to get legal protection from DMCA notifications. On the example of Google, we can see all the consequences of this law. The company receives millions of blocking requests every day, and, in their opinion, more than half of them (English) from unscrupulous competitors, and another third-odd ones are unfounded claims.
How exactly can you use this legal hole to make money? It's simple. Let's imagine that I decided to target iPhone application developers that include ads in their applications. First, I will find a couple of randomly selected patents regarding the display of ads on mobile devices using Google Patent Search. This , for example, is quite suitable for our purposes. Then I will find someone else's DMCA request that looks quite threatening and adapt it for myself. Let's take this one from Microsoft, change it in accordance with our “violations” and add that we are supposedly “going to sue for violations” if we do not receive a compensation of $ 1,000. We can easily send a copy to the owners of all those hundreds of thousands of free apps on the App Store (we won’t even bother checking if they use ads in their apps, because if they don’t, they’ll simply ignore our demand). Of course, we will never sue them, but we want them to believe in our threat. On our part, everything is legal, and the claim may be at least several thousand dollars. Some will ignore, and some will pay, and it is possible that even one or two may try to make a counterclaim, which we will easily dismiss, because we have not violated the law. So you have a completely legal way to turn the scam on thousands of dollars, and all thanks to such a law.
Transfer:
The DMCA, adopted in 1998, became the basis for the largest legal fraud that has ever been turned in the United States. The act was signed in the Senate unanimously, and is intended to protect copyright holders in the digital age. The law was poorly thought out, but was introduced in 2000 in two phases and gave rise to many problems in subsequent years. The first part of the law “protection against circumvention”, being poorly formulated, allows anyone to sue others for circumventing encryption, even if they do it legally, for example, in the framework of “fair use”, and information on especially flagrant cases can be find here in the great EFF article .
The second part, which I would like to highlight separately, is the “Tracking and Notification” section. This section allows copyright holders to quickly find and delete copyrighted work on the Internet. Since then, this right has been abused as much as possible.
The problems began with the fact that the DMCA notification is legally binding for web hosts. If you do not remove materials violating the law, you may be sued in accordance with it. This is a great reason to frighten, and there are no legal consequences in case of a false DMCA notice. The only possibility is a counter request. After which, you have to wait 10 days again, just to lift the initial ban. That is, just by sending a notification, you can block any information for 10 days. Rights holders can then send a request that they insist and file a lawsuit, and the disputed data should be blocked before a court decision is issued. The law on copyright now provides for punishment (in the form of a fine of $ 2,500) for deliberately false placement of the mark © on works not protected by copyright. It also provides for punishment for deleting the copyright from copyrighted works or for providing other false data related to copyright. However, there are no legal consequences if you sent a false DMCA request. The only thing you can do is sue to get legal protection from DMCA notifications. On the example of Google, we can see all the consequences of this law. The company receives millions of blocking requests every day, and, in their opinion, more than half of them (English) from unscrupulous competitors, and another third-odd ones are unfounded claims.
How exactly can you use this legal hole to make money? It's simple. Let's imagine that I decided to target iPhone application developers that include ads in their applications. First, I will find a couple of randomly selected patents regarding the display of ads on mobile devices using Google Patent Search. This , for example, is quite suitable for our purposes. Then I will find someone else's DMCA request that looks quite threatening and adapt it for myself. Let's take this one from Microsoft, change it in accordance with our “violations” and add that we are supposedly “going to sue for violations” if we do not receive a compensation of $ 1,000. We can easily send a copy to the owners of all those hundreds of thousands of free apps on the App Store (we won’t even bother checking if they use ads in their apps, because if they don’t, they’ll simply ignore our demand). Of course, we will never sue them, but we want them to believe in our threat. On our part, everything is legal, and the claim may be at least several thousand dollars. Some will ignore, and some will pay, and it is possible that even one or two may try to make a counterclaim, which we will easily dismiss, because we have not violated the law. So you have a completely legal way to turn the scam on thousands of dollars, and all thanks to such a law.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/166605/
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