
Ask PG: Has HN ever received a DMCA Takedown Notice? - jcr
I thought it was really weird to find the following submission 
marked [dead] and was curious if it was due to flagging or if
it was due to you getting a DMCA notice?<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5579615<p>[dead] CipherCloud DMCA notice to remove discussion of homomorphic
 encryption (stackexchange.com)
 39 points by dfc 18 hours ago | flag | 16 comments<p>My bet is it got clobbered by flagging, but if I put on my tin foil hat,
flagging until [dead] may have been caused by abusive flagging.<p>The more important question is whether or not HN has ever received any
DMCA Takedown Notices?<p>You went through the trouble to put a "DMCA" link at the bottom of
nearly every page:<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html<p>In reading through the above, it doesn't say anything about publication
of received DMCA notices? It would be great if you published DMCA
notices on the ChillingEffects.org site:<p>http://www.chillingeffects.org/<p>EDIT: It seems the cause of the [dead] was a duplicate post:<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5579538<p>But I'm still curious if HN has gotten any DMCA notices?
======
brudgers
[IANPG]

Y-Combinator's policy requires all notification to be physically delivered -
i.e. US Postal Service or UPS or another delivery service is acceptable. Email
is not acceptable - and presumably fax is not either, since no number is
listed.

This means:

1\. It will take several days for most takedown requests to be acted upon, by
which time material will probably have rolled off the front page.

2\. There is significant documentation when an entity pursues takedown in less
than good faith - and if it came via USPS there could be substantial penalties
for any fraud.

3\. It makes bulk takedowns more difficult because each notice is required to
provide adequate documentation.

In other words, Y-Combinator places a meaningful burden on those claiming
violation of copyright, and I suspect that this creates enough friction to
eliminate many claims - making HN better, and letting YC staff do more
important work.

~~~
mherdeg
Are we reading the same policy? I'm looking at
<https://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html> and I see a fax number of "Fax:
650.360.3189" and "please send a written notice (by fax or regular mail) to
the Designated Agent at the address below".

The January 2013 copy of the policy on archive.org lists the same contact
information.

~~~
brudgers
I missed it. Faxing still creates friction and significantly so for any
attempt at bulk requests.

~~~
elithrar
> I missed it. Faxing still creates friction and significantly so for any
> attempt at bulk requests.

Does it? It's pretty easy to spool up a _lot_ of faxes if you have an account
with an email-to-fax service.

~~~
brudgers
The faxes still come through serially with the receiving machine able to set
the maximum rate of transmission. With one phone line and four minutes per fax
that's a maximum of 360 requests per day. Send some long outgoing faxes and
availability for receiving notices goes down.

In any event, spooling up a lot of faxes would tie up YC's fax machine, not
YC's staff.

~~~
sbochins
Couldn't you just use some online faxing service? That would prevent the 360
request/day limit you mentioned. I don't think any place sending mass DMCA
take downs would be sending faxes themselves.

~~~
gwern
I believe his point was that the bottleneck was on the receiving side, not the
sending side.

~~~
chris_wot
If it was from the one party, then that could be reasonably seen as trying to
disrupt their service.

------
pg
No, we've never gotten a DMCA notice.

It's less trouble to put a link at the bottom of nearly every page than to
think about what pages to put it on.

~~~
chris_wot
It's only a matter of time before you do get one. If you get a frivolous DMCA
claim, will you make good on the bit where you say "Please note that you will
be liable for damages (including costs and attorney’s fees) if you materially
misrepresent that material is infringing your copyright(s)"?

~~~
pg
Our lawyer wrote that text. I've never read it.

~~~
starkness
That text is referring to section 512(f) of the DMCA, which states that any
person that knowingly misrepresents a claim of infringement is liable for any
damages including costs and attorneys' fees of the alleged infringer.

Basically it's just restating what's already in the law.

------
sjtgraham
It's pretty safe to assume that YC has received DMCA takedowns for stuff on HN
given YC has defined a process for dealing with them
(<https://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html>). It's interesting because really
what copyright infringing material can news.yc host other than something
posted in a comment? news.yc is after all merely a list of links to external
hosts controlled by unrelated 3rd parties.

Generally, if you have a question about what happened to something on HN you
should email info@ycombinator.com and someone will reply to you. The terms are
quite clear on that. IIRC people have been hell banned for complaining about
HN/PG on HN instead of emailing them.

~~~
jcr
You mean well, but you're mistaken on one thing. Having a registered "Agent of
Record" along with contact information and a policy is required to be eligible
for "Safe Harbor" provisions. Pretty much any US-based site accepting user
contributions must have them to avoid copyright infringement liability. YC/HN
having all these requirements filled is entirely normal and expected, so it
doesn't really tell us anything. --Heck, I'd be really worried if they didn't
have all of the requirements filled.

As my EDIT shows, the [dead] was due to the submission being a unnecessary
duplicate post. It turned out to be a bad example for the real question in the
title.

Mentioning the [dead] post wasn't a complaint, instead, it was just an example
that led to the question in the title of whether or not HN has received any
DMCA takedown notices. The follow-on question of whether or not PG/YC would be
willing to publish any received DMCA notices on ChillingEffects.org is also
viable.

In spite of the poor example link I picked, they're still good questions to
ask publicly and it seems a lot of people are curious about the answers. None
the less, you are still correct about emailing info@ycombinator being the
right way to handle questions about stuff that gets moderated/deleted/edited.

(BTW over the last half decade I've sent in more than enough private bug
reports directly to pg with my phone number included so he could contact me. I
probably have some minimal "good will" stored up and I sincerely doubt he'd
hell-ban me or anyone for a poor choice of example links.)

~~~
sjtgraham
Thanks. I forgot to mention before, but very clearly IANAL! :)

------
shared4you
Well, I think it was killed because there was another earlier submission
already on HN frontpage with more upvotes:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5579538>

~~~
rdl
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was 2 submissions with /q/ vs /questions/ as the only
difference. I wish there were a way to merge comments on the two posts.

~~~
dfc
I think I grabbed the link from share and rdl grabbed the url from the
location bar. When I noticed the dupe I considered deleting the post but that
did not seem like the right thing to do because its not my place to remove
other peoples comments.

~~~
rdl
Yeah, I felt bad because you had better comments, so I was considering
deleting mine too, but I'm trying to hit #63 on karma...

~~~
dfc
Personally I think karma should be based on comments only. I have bookmark's
for agl, rdl, tptacek, etc's comments, not submissions. If it is any
consolation there are a few people ahead of you on the list that are
essentially link spammers. Anyone can submit links all day and accumulate
karma. That someone was first to file a story does not signal a lot of
information in my opinion. Keep up the good comments and I am sure that you
will continue to move up the list.

------
ams6110
_You went through the trouble to put a "DMCA" link at the bottom of nearly
every page_

Sites do that so they are in compliance with "safe harbor" laws. It not
required to have it on every page of course, but it's probably just a standard
footer template so not really a lot of "trouble" to do.

------
DigitalSea
I was thinking about this just the other day. The whole CipherCloud situation
got a bit out of hand, I think the company are doing themselves more harm than
good as that discussion about their encryption was speculation and
interpretation based on publicly available information they had on their site.
I don't really see any links disappear from the site, a few changed titles
here and there though. Would be great to know if anyone has, especially in
regards to the CipherCloud fiasco.

------
t0
How many DMCA cases are actually pursued? It seems like most DMCA requests are
simply scare letters. You could almost ignore all of them and never run into
any trouble.

~~~
kbar13
if they are valid DMCA notices and you are under the jurisdiction of the US...
pretty sure that's illegal.

~~~
late2part
False.

The DMCA act is readable; read it.

Effectively, all it does is offer safe harbor for an ISP, with ISP loosely
defined.

Congress attempts to offers a pseudo mediation framework to limit/remove
liability from the ISP for the acts of its users.

If the ISP complies with the DMCA, the ISP is immune from liability for
copyright infringement.

Here's the part the ignorant ignore:

If the target of a DMCA notice sends a COUNTER-NOTICE, the ISP
will/must/should put their stuff , else the ISP can be liable for taking it
down without case.

Read the DMCA, it's fairly short as these things go.

<http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf>

Disclosure: I spent $80k on attorneys defending against a nuisance lawsuit and
used the DMCA as a shield.

~~~
rdp
Actually, if the target of a DMCA notice files a counter-notice, the ISP has
to reinstate the content within 10 days _unless_ the person/entity filing the
DMCA notice alerts the ISP that an injunction has been filed within a
specified period of time. See 17 USC § 512(g)(2)(A)-(C).

------
pyre
Relevant: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4872999>

