The $105 Fix That Could Protect You From Copyright-Troll Lawsuits

Mailing a form with $105 to "Copyright RRP" with a PO Box in DC seems pretty sketchy.<p>Second, is this <i>really</i> an issue that online communities need to address? In our site's terms and conditions, we clearly list a DCMA contact and registered agent. Is that not enough?<p>And who are these funds going to? A government agency? A contractor?<p>As I said, on the surface this seems pretty sketchy.

This seems like a monster profit center for future government. Just set up the laws so that you have to look up and pay dozens of little fees in order to have the law protect you from trolls. The trolls are incentivized to troll, you are pressured to pay up, and the government just sits back and watches the money roll in.

<i>“The idea is you need to make it easy for copyright owners to locate who you send infringement notices to,” he says. “They shouldn’t have to go hunting around.”</i>"<p>It seems to me that including a "DMCA takedown request" link in your footer should be good enough, but IANAL..<p>Also, since I'm quoting this article, perhaps HN should have one ;)

A few questions:<p>1 - If I have a blog on Posterous, is it they who need to do this, or I?<p>2 - From the form: who is the "Service Provider"?<p>3 - From the form: who is the "Agent Designated to Receive Notification of Claimed Infringement"?<p>Some of these might be obvious, but I'd rather not screw up a legal form.

So...effectively does everyone need to pay $105 to start any sort of website?<p>Seems like a barrier to entry to me...

I wonder if this applies to sites from outside the US? Or is being overseas protection enough from this sort of trolling?

What strikes me as ridiculous is that you can't fill out a form online and pay electronically. But then again this is the US government. There should be some kind of amnesty for those that do pay the fee now, so as to avoid this kind of trolling.<p>The funny thing is that this law is on the whole favorable to innovators, in that if you do abide by the requirements, you'll have the safe harbor from getting sued. If Viacom had its way, the law either wouldn't exist (thereby exposing hosts to all sorts of potential liability for the infringements of users) or it would require things like proactive filtering using fingerprinting technology. Thankfully, they have not prevailed in their lawsuit against YouTube.

Protection money. Really, America?

Or you could host your service in a sane country.

Does anybody know how this works for Europe? Going through the list at <a href="http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/a_agents.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/a_agents.html</a> I see European companies, but isn't the DCMA only a US thingy?

Seems that for a company like Righthaven there would be a pretty strong motivation to just find blogs that don't have a DMCA agent registration, post some copyrighted material in a comment area, and then sue.<p>I would hope that anyone who found themselves on the receiving end of such a lawsuit would do a little bit of detective work on the origin of the infringing content.

I wonder if you could sign up as a 'registered DMCA agent' and then provide a service to be the contact point for anyone who signed up with you. Some kind of app that simply received and forwarded messages to the appropriate parties. It would need to be thorough about keeping delivery/receipt records, but it seems pretty simple. Maybe a Kickstarter-worthy project!

If comments on my site are handled by Disqus, is it they who have to mail this form and $105, or me?

I wish I knew a little more about the law, but it seems to me that requiring payment in order to exercise your rights under the law is just not proper.<p>Basically the DMCA is saying that you cannot have protection under this part of law unless you pay money to them... if you sent them a letter, certified mail, informing them of your contact information, but did not include payment, they couldn't claim that you didn't notify them.

If I setup my home wifi as a 'private internet cafe', register this form/fee and agree to comply with takedowns of copyright material that 'users' may or may not share on our network (hey its not my fault I 'accidentally' lost all my user logs), then does that shield potential torrenting activities?<p>Seems like a neat loophole to test.

Somewhat related, how is proof of authorship demonstrated if the author decides to dedicate it to the public domain or something less restrictive than copyright? Is, for instance, archive.org considered legitimate evidence that "on day X you had published Y"? Any similar options?

So, in how many years do you think copyright-trolls and patent-trolls will finally kill the internet?

The goverment should be there to protect its citizen and provide a framework for justice without fees. This fee does not provide any form of function except being an income source for the government and lawyers and a tax on the people wanting to produce and invent.

I find it ridiculous that this is happening. There is too much incentive for people to sue each other these days, and too often it's whoever is willing to pay the court fees that wins. This is a huge problem for small businesses and bootstrapped entrepreneurs.

Does no-one in the legal system see the injustice of current copyright law?<p>---- Other idea:<p>If I owned a blog hosting website, could I register as the DMCA contact point for $105, and cover all blogs I host AS WELL AS THEIR POSTS?<p>I could start up pressword.com, host 10,000 blogs with user comments, and charge each blogger $10 for 'legal fees'.