Site plagiarizes blog posts, then files DMCA takedown on originals

Hey, so a common thread here seems to be enforceability of false DMCA notices and how it's a pity there's no penalty.<p>There are penalties.<p>Check out 17 USC 512(f): <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512" rel="nofollow">http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512</a><p>(f) Misrepresentations.— Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section— (1) that material or activity is infringing, or (2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.<p>I was the plaintiff in OPG v. Diebold, which was the first US federal lawsuit to establish the enforceability: we won. You can't just issue spurious, false DMCA notices without opening yourself up to large damages, such as the ones that Diebold had to pay.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPG_v._Diebold" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPG_v._Diebold</a>

Nobody here has made what I thought to be the biggest point in this article. The reputation management company...<p>Given the situation and the details mentioned in the article. It seems the reputation management company is hiring people to re-post content and send DMCAs. What other explanation is there for why somebody would rip off blog posts. Obviously this sort of thing would be a last resort for the reputation management company. But in some cases, there may be no other way to remove / push down the unwanted content.<p>I would bet this is a common tactic of reputation management companies. Can anybody here confirm or offer insight about how these companies work?

This shows the power of Retraction Watch,<p><a href="http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow">http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/</a><p>a site that I think I learned about from another user's comment here on HN, to update the reputations of "researchers" who have had to retract many published journal articles. All the more reason, I think, to regularly read Retraction Watch to find out what is going on. The Retraction Watch site's own reporting<p><a href="http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/wordpress-removes-anil-potti-posts-from-retraction-watch-in-error-after-false-dmca-copyright-claim/" rel="nofollow">http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/wordpress-re...</a><p>on what Ars Technica passes on in the submitted article is quite interesting, and an example of the carefully nuanced writing on Retraction Watch.

Well, that should be fixable - if this is an actual DMCA takedown (instead of a simple complaint), then it does come with a mandatory requirement to be 'under penalty of perjury'. Intentional misuse can thus be persecuted, and may get even criminal penalties.<p>Of course, it's a big question whether they will try to fight it in courts and if DMCA perjury jurisdiction can effectively reach the accused company in India.

Is anyone else having a problem with Google no longer acknowledging responses to false/faulty/inaccurate DMCA takedown requests?<p>We used to receive 3 or 4 a year, and Google was good about getting us relisted when we explained the error to them. I had two DMCAs from Google last month, and they still haven't gotten back to me about my request for relisting....

Are there no "digital notary" services? Off the top of my head, such a service would allow you to submit a block of text or perhaps a link which the service would regularly check and hash / mirror.<p>I'm thinking this would be straightforward to create, but hard to become established as an authoritative source.<p>EDIT: I see archive.org is a popular way to go about something like this.

I start to wonder: what can we do to actively prevent such things to happen? E.g. someone can copy a blog content, set the date back by a few months, publish it, and submit the DMCA takedown. Even if it reaches the court, who and how will decide who the original author was?

I asked this question regarding a recent thread where the site owner claimed to have gotten ripped off, and received no responses. <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5166902" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5166902</a>

One somewhat late comment: based on what I saw in other discussions of this, the domain registration of the site in India is basically all false information - one starting point might be to see what can be done about getting that domain registration cancelled. The Indian registry does have a policy that registrants must provide accurate information.

If we have to keep this thing, I dearly wish the party filing the request would have to show some proof or at least be in the US. this guilty before innocent crap is a pain.<p>On a sadder note, looks like the alumni association is going to receive a letter from me.

How easy is it to file a DMCA takedown notice? I would think there's some due diligence on the part of DMCA to verify the claim first. At least, I hope so.

And that's why I don't contribute anything online

Oh, come on, wake up! Don't you see yet that this is exactly what the DMCA notices and similar have been designed to do? It is a tool to silence the inconvenient whistleblowers.