
Don’t use the word ‘did’ or dumb anti-piracy company will delete you from Google - MikusR
https://torrentfreak.com/dont-use-the-word-did-or-a-dumb-anti-piracy-company-will-delete-you-from-google-200216/
======
matheusmoreira
The word DID isn't just a verb, apparently it also stands for Dance India
Dance and this is sufficient grounds for censorship.

The _allegedly_ infringing URLs include:

    
    
      1. Government websites
      2. Dictionaries, including wiktionary
      3. An article published in Nature
      4. Some random blog posts
    

Mind-boggling. This sort of abuse should lead to substantial fines and the
cancellation of their DMCA complaint privileges at the very least. Censoring
websites should not be this easy and consequence-free.

~~~
dmix
The fact it removed 4 dictionary entries for the word "did" including Merriam
Webster is really the worst part.

DMCA is completely broken and the accounts abuses are endless. We had an
entire subreddit with 25k subscribers taken down by a person using fake DMCA
requests. For months we had random completely innocuous posts with zero
copyrightable content taken down do to "copyright infringement" by an off-
kilter person who people on the subreddit pissed off at some point. Then
eventually the entire subreddit went down due to "repeat copyright
infringement".

Remember kids, if you see something you don't like on the internet (or even
more relevant to this era of intolerance towards free speech: anything that
"offends" you) just spam DMCA requests. Almost all sites like Reddit, Youtube,
and Google don't actually care if it's legitimate or not, and they always
automatically take the side of the person who filed it. And if they do push
back there will be 10 more waiting by the time the system figures one out.

~~~
matheusmoreira
Copyright itself is broken. It's the 21st century. Copying data is not only
trivial, it's a fundamental computer operation. We should not be imposing any
limits on this activity. If these rich 20th century industries can't adapt and
end up bankrupt, so be it. We should not be protecting them from irrelevance
by sacrificing free computing and the free internet for the sake of their
decaying business model.

~~~
est31
People are working weeks, months, years, often under extreme conditions to
create a work of art, like, say an episode of Game of Thrones. Not just one
person, but hundreds of them. Getting such large teams to work on a project
would not be possible if people could just donate for that work or something,
because you'd get much much less money from it. Sure there are issues with
copyright, for one terms are decades too long, but your extreme view of it is
as wrong as the extreme view of Sonny Bono.

~~~
hutzlibu
"Getting such large teams to work on a project would not be possible if people
could just donate for that work or something, because you'd get much much less
money from it. "

Currently yes. Because the normal person is conditioned to only pay if he or
she has to.

But imagine if there is sudddenly no more copyright and ... oh my god, no more
episode of series xyz because of no money ... you really believe all those
hardcore fans would not quickly adopt to pay freely if the result is more of
the content they want, if the alternative is no more content?

~~~
danShumway
I'm not sure I agree with you. But I'll give you this -- that I've thought the
same thing before and I'd be interested in seeing more people experiment with
systems around that idea.

To expand on that, Kickstarter is a platform where you get people to give you
money so you can make something in the future, which is... fine. But it's more
of a bootstrapping platform than anything else, and it suffers from that.
Kickstarter exploits people FOMO, but it's hampered by the inherent risk that
the thing you're funding might never exist.

I'm working on independent games right now. I haven't chosen to Kickstart
them, for a lot of reasons. What I would be curious to do is to pick maybe a
smaller title, _completely finish it_ , and then put it on Kickstarter for the
full amount of money I wanted to get out of it -- not just to fund it, but
including my target returns. The game would be done, it would be reviewable by
press, once it got funded I would just immediately put it as a free download.
But I wouldn't release it until people pledged enough money to make it worth
my while -- meaning not just cost of production, but revenue. In theory,
exploiting FOMO but with none of the risks that the game won't be finished or
that it'll turn out terrible.

I've gone back and forth about the negatives there. It would be way more
expensive than an average Kickstarter goal. You have to decide up-front how
much money your game is going to make. And you're still fighting against the
fact that fans can just say, "well, someone else should fund it." I'm not sure
it's actually a feasible model in practice. But I'm really curious to see how
the patron model could evolve; just not curious enough to experiment with
bigger games where I _need_ them to do well financially.

I am not a copyright abolitionist. I am really interested in seeing
alternative models develop, even interested enough that I might experiment in
those areas in the future, but I think that there needs to be more _working_
examples of those models before I'm willing to jump ship on copyright.

~~~
hutzlibu
"but I think that there needs to be more working examples of those models
before I'm willing to jump ship on copyright"

I understand that. I am also not a fanatic in the sense, that I would fight
towards a political change to abolish copyright (would be hopeless anyway with
the current state of things). I just want to work and fight for more models of
working alternatives.

The linux and blender foundations and wikipedia are the best examples I know
of. And I want to add another working example soon.

~~~
nonbirithm
I'm not saying this is ideal or practical, but I thought about this when I
started playing on a community-run City of Heroes server.

It's an MMO which was shuttered in 2012 despite a very devoted fanbase. People
had been clamoring for any chance to play the thing again for years. As an
example of this devotion people were calling it a big deal when a program
became available that does nothing but allow players to walk around the first
hub world and chat together. It was all they could do.

Then word breaks that there had been a private server running in secret the
whole time based on source code that had secretly traded hands a long time
ago.

Then, regardless of the moral implications, someone went ahead and leaked the
source code. Because of that the general public finally got to play the game
for the first time in over six years. Apparently it has 100,000 registrants on
the most popular server alone, which I find ridiculous for a game which has
resurfaced out of nowhere with no real advertising and whose publisher never
intended it to return. Imagine all the revenue they're missing out on.

(Of course, it's only popular today because it was popular in 2012 when it was
subscription-based.)

From my limited understanding there doesn't seem to be massive feature updates
like new maps or raids when Paragon was developing it. Instead there are minor
quality of life perks like making the paid upgrades purchasable with in-game
currency or tweaking formulas to align with the playerbase's wants. You don't
even have pay for anything to keep playing individually; the server is funded
by volunteers with donations. The monthly target seems to be about $5,000,
most of which goes to hosting fees. Since enough interested people keep
paying, the server stays up. And since the source code is now available
there's nothing precluding another party from starting a different server if
things go under. All to be able to keep playing the game.

It goes to show that people are happy just being able to play the thing at
all. There's no need for large salaries to keep developing content and justify
monitization. The code is worked on by a devoted team of people with a very
big passion for the former-product, and the devs and users are part of the
same community.

In a perfect world this is probably how an MMO could be sustained for years to
come. And it's possible primarily because the source is available.

Of course, the only reason any of this is possible is because the parties
involved blatantly violated copyright by posting the source code and using
proprietary assets like textures and music - but this doesn't matter because,
for some reason, _nobody cares._ Yet. Maybe it's because NCSoft figures
they're not competing with anyone since they were the ones to shut it down
years ago so there's no harm in letting it stay open. Maybe they just got
lucky NCSoft wasn't disingenuous and that they weren't slapped with a
draconian takedown demand for a very popular game that would otherwise never
be playable by anyone until the end of time. But for some reason, the people
with the most interest in where all the development capital went just let it
slide - for now.

Also this differs from a lot of open source projects since it's technically
illegitimate, none of the code is under an open source license, and the work
being done is fairly minor. Basically everyone got a head-start by being able
to reuse Paragon's code back when the people writing it were salaried and
experts in this kind of thing so the complicated parts of the MMO architecture
are already finished and everyone can focus on the small quality of life
things.

~~~
hutzlibu
Interesting story, thanks for sharing.

And yes, this is what I mean. When there are enough people who want something
to work, they make it work. And in your story despite copyright. So I believe
in an ideal world, allmost everything could be organized that way.

------
ajmurmann
Even if "DID" was indeed, unambiguously referring to the dance show, what
would need infringed on? It's not a copyright violation, since the article
would just be talking about the show and not reproducing the copyrighted
content. If anything the name would fall under trademark, but even that
wouldn't be violated here.

In short: why would just mentioning something covered by copyright ever make
for a legitimate takedown?

~~~
rdiddly
If anything, a mention (a real one) should be thought of as free publicity for
their shitty who-cares show! Like if you had a mind to firmly put an end to
any possibility of a viral word-of-mouth campaign (which is the fondest wish
of most producers of attention-based product e.g. entertainment, but let's say
you were a dangerously stupid one), this is how you would do it.

~~~
olodus
Let's hope the people behind the dance show maybe get word of how this
copyrights defender company used the money they gave them to protect their
brand, realized how bad this publicity is and fire the Rights Hero team.

------
tzs
> “Got a cheery confirmation email from Google saying, ‘Thanks for contacting
> us!’ and that it might be a while until the issue is resolved. I assume
> that’s because this is the point where finally a decision has to be made by
> a human being. It is annoying indeed.”

It _should_ be nearly automatic. The procedure given by DMCA is:

1\. Someone claiming their copyright is being infringed (CLAIMANT) by material
hosted at a particular service files a DMCA notice with the service.

2\. Service checks the notice to make sure that it contains all the required
information. Let's assume that it does.

3\. Service takes down the allegedly infringing work and notifies the alleged
infringer (ACCUSED).

If the content was infringing, it probably ends here. If the accused believes
the work was not infringing, we continue...

4\. Accused files a counter-notice with the service provider, saying that the
work is not infringing.

5\. Service provider notifies the claimant of the counter-notice.

6\. Service provider is required to restore the material from 10 to 14
business days after receiving the counter-notice, _unless_ the service
provider receives notice from claimant that claimant has filed an action
seeking a court order to restrain the accused from engaging in infringing
activity relating to the material on the service provider's systems.

~~~
jkaplowitz
Nearly automatic, yes. But step 6 requires a statutory minimum waiting period
of 10 business days, to allow the claimant time to file a lawsuit and notify
Google of it. Google probably has the lawsuit notification handling
sufficiently automated as not to add any additional delay, but if counter-
notices are rare enough, this may be manual involving a check with Google
legal.

------
wolfgke
I often write here on HN:

Make the laws so that companies who claim false copyright infringements
receive the same punishments and (financial) penalties as you would as if you
infringed the copyright.

Also the entity falsely accused of copyright infringement should receive the
same compensation as it would be sued for if it _had_ infringend copyright.

~~~
matheusmoreira
They'll just lobby the government and say such a thing would make it "too
risky" or "too hard" to enforce copyright. Actually making sure a DMCA
complaint is valid is too much work and they shouldn't have to do it. What
they want is a magic button that deletes from the internet everything that
matches their content but doesn't come from them directly. They don't care
about false positives or fair use either, it's just collateral damage.

Copyright laws exist to benefit corporations, not the public.

~~~
wolfgke
> They'll just lobby the government and say such a thing would make it "too
> risky" or "too hard" to enforce copyright.

Any sensible person should counter that argument with the argument that it is
currently "too hard" to defend oneself against false copyright claims.

~~~
matheusmoreira
This assumes that sensible people can afford to pay lobbyists to influence law
makers. Maybe the EFF could do that.

------
moomin
The DMCA was very carefully drafted to make the perjury but only apply to your
claim of ownership, not to the claim of infringement.

In other words, this idiocy is the intended behaviour of the law.

~~~
jagged-chisel
Only the owner (or an authorized agent of the owner) can claim infringement. I
suppose the claim of being an authorized agent is also free of perjury
penalty.

~~~
vageli
> Only the owner (or an authorized agent of the owner) can claim infringement.
> I suppose the claim of being an authorized agent is also free of perjury
> penalty.

Forget perjury, why isn't this outright fraud?

------
unnouinceput
Hmmm, let's weaponize then DMCA claims to the point they no longer will
blindly be followed by drones. So, please start file DMCA for everything they
publish that's used to track/infringe our privacy. Unfortunately I do not have
required SEO (?) skills, so someone please give specific advice for this - but
you folks understand what I'm saying.

------
fenomas
Rest of the story: the article was restored about two days later.

[https://twitter.com/TwoBitHistory/status/1228332876099473409](https://twitter.com/TwoBitHistory/status/1228332876099473409)

~~~
himinlomax
That's one URL, the article implies there's many.

------
michaelmrose
Deliberately false or recklessly false claims ought to be punished.

Make any claimant or their lawyer put up a bond of 100 usd before making any
claims. Publish the claims on a site. Allow anyone, not just the damaged
party, to claim the bounty for the fraudulent claims by submitting proof.

Increase the bond exponentially as it is paid out making it eventually
hideously expensive if you keep breaking the law.

Make the increases eventually expire allowing people to reform their behavior.

------
phendrenad2
We need a paid search engine. Google is willing to lose entire subsets of the
possible results because they don't want to pay humans to handle DMCA
complaints.

~~~
jhauris
Google or any alternative free or otherwise has no choice if they want to
maintain their safe harbor under the DMCA. It's not up to them to referee the
issue, or they become culpable for any infringement on their platform.

My understanding is they also must restore the content when a counter notice
is filed by the alleged infringer (but I'm not a lawyer).

~~~
keyme
Sounds like we should make a bot that makes a counter notice for every notice.
Is there a page on Google that discloses all the recently issued DMCA notices?

~~~
jandrese
On sites like YouTube this is what would happen:

Abusive bot makes fraudulent DMCA requests against your account. Your bot
automatically files disputes. Abusive bot automatically verifies with youtube
that they are the owners of the content, because they say so. Your account is
demonetized and/or shut down for multiple dispute violations.

The entire system is rigged so the abusive bots have more or less free reign
as long as they're backed up by some big media cartel. Google really doesn't
want to anger said cartels who have been more than willing to sue individual
people for trillions of dollars for sharing a single CD. Google has never been
sued by creators for letting media cartels steal their works. They have no
incentive to change policy at the moment.

~~~
keyme
Then perhaps a more adversarial approach.

Let's make software that generates content that to the big-media-bots looks
like their copyrighted content, but to a human arbiter looks like anything
but. This can be done automatically, by continuously gauging the response of
the bots to variations in our generated content, and adjusting accordingly.

We'll spray this content all over, using throw-away accounts. Then dispute all
the claims. Could we increase the volume of all claims n-fold this way? If so,
at some point this would have to affect the trustworthiness of these bots with
Google.

I refuse to accept that there is no way to fight back. If we could abuse the
system in some way as to make this a problem for Google, I believe change can
be achieved.

------
kimi
In VoIP, a DID is a Direct Inbound Dial, that is a phone # you can buy. There
are a lot of websites offering DIDs - like say
[https://www.didx.net/](https://www.didx.net/) \- I wonder if they'll kick
them all off Google....

~~~
matheusmoreira
Searching for DID also gives me dissociative identity disorder. I wonder if
they'll DMCA all the scientific journals hosting articles about that.

~~~
xerox13ster
Moderator of the Dissociative Identity Disorder subreddit here. This was my
first thought upon reading the article.

------
forgotmypw77
is this part of seo strategy?

if you are result #11 on google, but you dmca the first ten...

~~~
macawfish
You joke, but just wait...

~~~
nitrogen
This happens to YouTubers who made a video on a subject that someone else also
has a video on that they want to promote. Or just randomly.

------
ginko
1\. Create some organization with a name that can be abbreviated to some basic
copular verb in the language of your choice

2\. Claim copyright for the name and the abbreviation

3\. Use DMCA to censor pretty much any article you may have issues with for
whatever reason

~~~
imtringued
Register a trademark on every single english word and just take down
everything.

------
gentleman11
This sounds like a trademark claim, not copyright. You can’t copyright 3
letters, can you? Even as a trademark claim it’s bonkers

~~~
everfree
It was a copyright claim under the DMCA. You're right in thinking that it's
bonkers, regardless of whether under copyright or trademark.

------
MrStonedOne
Can we not remove words from titles? This title should read "Don’t Use the
Word ‘Did’ or _a_ Dumb Anti-Piracy Company Will Delete You from Google"

I get that some people think a is useless here, but its really not.

~~~
dredmorbius
There's an 80-character limit. The title you quote is 89 characters.
Something's got to give.

~~~
MrStonedOne
I added one letter (and one space). Somethings not adding up with your logic

~~~
yesenadam
Your title's 82. ($ pbpaste | wc --> 0 15 82)

------
aSplash0fDerp
There could be a link between DID numbers and India... Would removing these
results provide any ancillary value?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_inward_dial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_inward_dial)

------
Abimelex
DID is getting to be fun :) [https://www.w3.org/TR/did-
core/](https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/)

------
praptak
DMCA is one part of the problem, the second is the centralised internet of
now.

"Distributed global" network my ass - one stupid US law and content becomes
inaccessible.

------
8jef
The only idiotic thing in all of this is the enduring reliance on single go to
sources by so-called individuals making this army of unconscious drones called
humanity, and which I'm giddily part of. Then, switching point of view, one
can see how incredible this Internet experiment is for a semiconscious
bystander actor and observer like me. All evolution flaws common to our
species are now totally exposed to anybody daring to look at. Then, probably
too many seek to profit from such perspectives, poisoning the well in the
process. What a great time and place to be living in.

~~~
smallcharleston
What the hell are you talking about dude

~~~
superkuh
He's saying the google monopoly on search is bad.

