Google yesterday sued a group of people accused of weaponizing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to get competitors’ websites removed from search results. Over the past few years, the foreign defendants “created at least 65 Google accounts so they could submit thousands of fraudulent notices of copyright infringement against more than 117,000 third-party website URLs,” said Google’s lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California.
DMCA is such a shitty law. But companies like Google choose the safe route and believe every DMCA claim without first using humans to investigate them (because that will cost more money), and this is the result.
I pity the independent creators and makers who get fake DMCA takedowns all the time while Google does nothing to protect them.
If Google really wants to save themselves from this kind of trouble, maybe spend some lobbying money to get DMCA repealed.
Isn’t that because Google would be liable if they ignored DMCA claims and a judge found in favor of the claimant?
Only if they’re wrong, but yea. The risk vs reward is massively against the favor of standing up for a defendant
Yeah, it’s all about incentives. Google’s behavior is what the law incentivizes.