
Hacker News: DMCA - DanielRibeiro
http://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html
======
cduan
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
There's one here: <http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agents/n/news_ycomb.pdf>

~~~
jammmuel
Is that a childs' handwriting?

~~~
m0nastic
It might have just been filled out on a tablet.

When I had to fill out all my job paperwork for my new job, I used pdfpen on
my iPad for everything, and it looks like it was written by a toddler in
crayon.

~~~
anigbrowl
Why would you do that? I would bin any application that looked that way
automatically.

~~~
DanBC
Potential law suit for disability discrimination?

~~~
nvmc
Or a field which requires fine motor skills.

~~~
DanBC
Yes, that's a good point. Some jobs have intrinsic requirements for which no
reasonable adjustment can be made, and thus legal discrimination happens.

------
andrewljohnson
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.

~~~
dpe82
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.

~~~
devcpp
>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.

~~~
frio
So... what of TPB? All they do is link to copyright material; none if it's
hosted there.

~~~
BCM43
TPB is legal. And they don't even link to copyrighted material, they link to a
swarm from which you can git information on where to download copyrighted
material.

------
vegashacker
Times have sure changed:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20050331050049/http://ycombinator...](http://web.archive.org/web/20050331050049/http://ycombinator.com/legal.html)

~~~
levesque
Not that much: <http://ycombinator.com/legal.html>

~~~
vegashacker
Interesting. From today's page source:

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

------
simba-hiiipower
_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..

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

~~~
jkaljundi
People in US still use faxes? Funny!

~~~
DannyBee
Only lawyers and realtors, from my experience

~~~
felideon
Healthcare offices as well, e.g. for requesting records, transferring records,
etc.

~~~
mirkules
Honestly, I don't know what terrifies me more about such businesses: storing
my personal information on pieces of paper with no way to track their
movement, or storing my personal information on (what is most likely)
unsecured computers. They are both pretty horrific, but I think I prefer them
to store it on paper if they can't/won't afford to have secure computers.

I can't count how often I've seen doctors offices use Windows 2K or XP Home
Edition this year alone. Even saw a doctor use a computer after closing down
"does your computer have viruses" IE popups -- and then proceeding to enter my
private info into their (probably HIPAA-certified, which, at that point meant
squat) patient tracking application.

Just saying that paper is not always necessarily worse than electronic
records.

------
cbhl
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
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.

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jval
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.

------
larrys
Link should also appear on this page:

<http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>

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ww520
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?

