[HN Gopher] How Bungie identified a mass sender of fake DMCA not...
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How Bungie identified a mass sender of fake DMCA notices
Author : perihelions
Score : 402 points
Date : 2022-06-24 21:44 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| silisili wrote:
| Can anyone explain the below? Did he DMCA strike himself, and
| then get angry about it? Or am I reading something wrong...
|
| > The clickable emblem link was sent to PerfectNazo1@gmail.com
| and during the chaos of fake notice campaign, a YouTuber called
| 'Lord Nazo' was hit with fraudulent DMCA notice, sent by the
| Wiland Google account.
|
| > Apparently angered by this injustice, Lord Nazo fired a DMCA
| counternotice back at YouTube in which he criticized the wave of
| fake notices and claimed his video was not infringing since it
| was a "transformative case of fair use."
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| He got legitimately DMCA stricken, then he manufactured a
| campaign of illegitimate DMCA strikes and hoped he could get
| his own strike overturned as part of the reversal of
| illegitimate strikes.
| squarefoot wrote:
| And that idiot revenge campaign served him with over $7M in
| damages. Assuming he can't pay even a fraction of that
| amount, what is going to happen to this genius? Will he land
| in jail for some time?
|
| I have mixed feelings about this however: pretty sure that if
| they inverted the roles, that is, it was the big company that
| sent bogus DMCA take down requests, the outcome wouldn't
| change: the small fish would still be eaten.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Here's what will happen. He will lose the $7M civil suit.
| He will have a judgement of $7M that Bungie is free to
| collect on such as wage garnishments if his home state
| allows it or repossessing any assets the state doesn't
| protect (many states block repossession of your primary
| household). At this point his option is Bankruptcy.
|
| Depending on his total assets, a judge will either allow
| Chapter 7 or Chapter 13. Chapter 13 happens when you
| negotiate with your creditors based on your income. In
| Chapter 7, you discharge the entirety of the debt. If he
| does not file Bankruptcy, then Bungie can reinstate the
| judgement every 10 years (time depends on the state) and
| continue collecting until his death.
|
| After Bankruptcy, the debt will follow him for 7 years
| (possibly more as unscrupulous debt buyers will give him a
| taste of his own medicine filing invalid, but hard to
| prove, claims on his credit report). The size of the debt
| may make seeking employment difficult. Having a judgement
| of any size will limit his ability to rent houses or
| getting any sort of credit. And good luck getting any kind
| of government clearance. This is the real debtor's prison
| which will regulate him to living under sleazy landlords
| likely in questionable locations, getting loans with
| insanely high APRs, and having to use his own money to
| generate credit (secured credit cards). Even though
| judgements last for 7 years, after bankruptcy you are
| usually out of this prison in 3-4 years. FWIW, many loan
| officers may look at that judgement as a clerical error
| (someone pressed 0 too many times) but once they ask for
| clarity all bets are off. But I've heard many stories of
| people climbing into a $50K car loan a year after
| bankruptcy so his mileage may vary
|
| EDIT: Bungie and this gentleman could settle out of court
| with no judgement as well. The filed civil suit will still
| be a public record but that is much lower weight on one's
| credit score. The out of court settlement could stipulate
| no more bungie content being uploaded or posted on the
| internet for a period of time. There are many different
| directions, what I outlined is if this person does not
| respond or otherwise loses the civil suit
| [deleted]
| bluGill wrote:
| In some cases court judgements are not discharged in
| bankruptcy. Not sure about this one though
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Civil cases are dischargable. Government judgements iirc
| cannot be discharged. The two most well known are IRS
| debt and government backed student loan debt
|
| EDIT: the government agency has a method to discharge the
| debt, which is why the courts will not intervene except
| under extraordinary circumstances
| puffoflogic wrote:
| It seems like actual debtors' prison, or rather a system
| of translating judgement debts to months imprisonment,
| would be better than the current system, for everyone. It
| keeps these consequences from being invisible.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| No because you still have all of your rights. The
| government is not infringing on your freedoms, they are
| providing a service (the courts) to settle disputes
| between civilians
| walrus01 wrote:
| _Or_ he will do something like leave the United States
| entirely and get a low-end job teaching English in China,
| or something similar.
|
| There's a number of things overseas that a reasonably
| well educated American can try to get hired for, and a US
| domestic civil judgment won't show up on a criminal
| background check if one is run.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Leaving the United States doesn't absolve him of the
| debt. Any wages or assets he makes in the USA is subject
| to garnishment. I would fully recommend bankruptcy for
| this individual regardless of his residence
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >And that idiot revenge campaign served him with over $7M
| in damages. Assuming he can't pay even a fraction of that
| amount, what is going to happen to this genius? Will he
| land in jail for some time?
|
| Thankfully, we don't have _explicit_ (although there 's
| plenty of incarcerated folks who wouldn't spend a day in
| jail if they had enough money to fight whatever bullshit
| charges are brought against them) debtor's prisons, so
| probably not.
| thfuran wrote:
| But isn't filing a false DMCA takedown in and of itself
| illegal, beyond any civil damages caused?
|
| Edit: Okay, the filing requires asserting "under penalty
| of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to
| act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is
| allegedly in-fringed." But I'm not sure whether anyone
| has ever been prosecuted for perjury for something like
| this. It's seemingly generally resolved only by suing for
| damages.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >But isn't filing a false DMCA takedown in and of itself
| illegal, beyond any civil damages caused?
|
| According to this site[0]: "...if someone files a
| fraudulent DMCA takedown notice, they can be sued for the
| damages caused, along with the costs and attorneys' fees
| that were incurred in pursuing those damages. In many
| cases, the costs of attorneys' fees can far outweigh the
| actual damages."
|
| Apparently, there is standing for _civil_ action against
| someone filing a fake DMCA claim, but no criminal
| penalties.
|
| But YMMV. The above was just the first relevant link in a
| search for 'criminal fake dmca claims'.
|
| [0] http://smithlawtlh.com/false-fraudulent-bad-faith-
| dmca-take-...
| thfuran wrote:
| That article also mentions that (at least some aspect of)
| the filing is made under penalty of perjury. So,
| theoretically, there's potential for criminal charges for
| abuse of DMCA process. I think that just never gets
| prosecuted.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >That article also mentions that (at least some aspect
| of) the filing is made under penalty of perjury. So,
| theoretically, there's potential for criminal charges for
| abuse of DMCA process. I think that just never gets
| prosecuted.
|
| The relevant _Federal_ laws[0] do appear to support your
| assertions.
|
| That said, it's apparently a bit more complicated to
| prosecute someone in the context of a false DMCA takedown
| requests.
|
| Even more, you can't put a corporate entity in jail
| (limited liability, the corporate veil, etc.), only
| people.
|
| As such, I imagine that unless there's something _really_
| egregious (and this situation _might_ be an example of
| that -- ask a US Attorney -- I 'm not one of those), I
| suppose Federal prosecutors _could_ charge someone with
| perjury over such false claims.
|
| [0] https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-
| resource-manual...
| testplzignore wrote:
| This bit explains it:
|
| > My channel even got terminated because of all these fake
| takedowns. Is there anything you can do about this?
|
| His bright idea was to get his account unbanned by hoping
| Bungie would think it was part of the fake notices.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| He posted the soundtrack from the game to youtube and got a
| real DMCA takedown notice. Then he created fake email accounts
| similar to the those used by the lawfirm bungie hired and
| started sending out fake notices
| mola wrote:
| This should've been a story that shows how dangerous and
| ridiculous DMCA is. Instead we see copyright owners double-down
| on the legal bullying. Bah
| hueyluey wrote:
| Maybe this is a way to do anti DMCA activism? You send thousands
| of takedown notices to big companies until they realize that's it
| a stupid system?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| This seems like an excellent way to respond to companies
| abusing the DMCA, like Nintendo and Hackerrank.
| prox wrote:
| I know this forum is about curious conversation, but in this
| case, fuck Google and the system it uses. It's overreaching and
| again the classic "you don't talk to humans Google, unless you
| are a rich or famous company/person."
| barneygale wrote:
| KMag wrote:
| When I worked for them a decade ago, it was an in-joke that
| internal surveys were anonymous, but you needed to be logged
| in to fill them out.
|
| One year, my manager said he was in a meeting where they told
| him that he was the only manager in New York where nobody on
| the team said that they thought it was highly likely that
| they'd be at Google in 5 years (or was it 10 years?). What a
| hell of a way to find out that the survey really isn't
| anonymous. What was management thinking in leaking that to
| him? The beatings will continue until morale improves.
|
| Edit: as I remember, the survey asked things like "Which
| office are you in?" and "What's your seniority level?", but
| didn't ask who our managers were, leading to some
| plausibility that login information wasn't being used to
| aggregate the data, but it turns out they were aggregating
| down to the team (4-6 people) level.
| iratewizard wrote:
| I learned that one the hard way when I had to put "diversity"
| checkboxes in their c-level stalking app.
| kevinh wrote:
| The system YouTube uses backs up onto the DMCA. If you submit a
| copyright counter notice, the claimant needs to engage in legal
| action within a certain amount of time or YT will reinstate the
| video.
|
| https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2807684
| m-p-3 wrote:
| It should require a legal action to engage a DMCA notice in
| the first place.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| Try to look at it from small content owner perspective:
|
| Google is making content you own available online and
| monetizing it through subscription fees and ads.
|
| Then when you ask them to stop, they require you to start
| with law suit before doing anything. That costs money and
| takes time. Meanwhile there might be already couple more
| channels with the content, requiring more lawsuits.
| MBCook wrote:
| Wasn't that the whole point of the DMCA? That copyright
| injunctions were too expensive and slow to get?
|
| I think it's working exactly as intended.
|
| Which, unsurprisingly, is terrifically easily to abuse.
| [deleted]
| zeruch wrote:
| That's a tautology. The DMCA _is_ a legal action, but not
| inherently one that requires litigation. There is a
| difference.
| judge2020 wrote:
| DMCA takedowns technically are legal actions, as:
|
| > (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...
|
| In practice, as far as I know nobody has ever been
| prosecuted or civilly sued under this section of the DMCA.
| Maybe this will be the first case to do so.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| During which the content creator misses out on revenue, much
| of which they often can't recoup because the content may not
| be evergreen.
|
| If I release a video about election results during an
| election and it takes weeks - hell let's be generous and say
| 72 hours - to go out because of a bogus DMCA claim, that's a
| huge financial loss for me.
|
| 90 days? No way. In the world of online content creation
| that's a death sentence. That's not even remotely a solution.
| causality0 wrote:
| Don't forget they can just file three strikes at once and
| obliterate your whole channel.
| tyingq wrote:
| And the entity filing the false claims is free to spawn a
| few extra corporate identities if they like and keep your
| videos in limbo.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| This is one of the few things Vimeo (at least used to,
| it's been a while since it happened to me) does right.
|
| I got a notice that I used licensed music and they took
| my video down, I appealed and my video immediately went
| back up during the appeal process. This all took place
| within about half an hour of my posting it. I sent them
| the email showing the artist gave me permission, and a
| few days later the notice was lifted. All through this
| process my video was only down for about 15min.
|
| For YouTube: Freeze the transfer of the revenue on that
| one video until it's resolved _but keep the video up and
| let it still collect revenue_. It's not great if you
| depend on the income but it's a hell of a lot better than
| losing the income entirely. This solution is much better,
| if still imperfect.
| kromem wrote:
| Honestly though, it's not "fuck Google," it's "fuck Congress."
|
| Google needs to err on the side of caution with DMCA because
| it's the immediate response to the requests that provides the
| safe harbor to Google under the law.
|
| You had Disney (et al) lobbying like crazy decades ago to get
| the most insane laws passed when it came to digital IP.
|
| Now we live in a world where those lobbying efforts were
| successful, which of course sucks for everyone that didn't have
| millions of dollars to spend on lobbying their interests and
| far outnumber those that did.
|
| Minority rule through corruption causing a pseudo-oligarchy is
| sucking more and more every day, and DMCA takedowns are simply
| a small part of that larger sucking.
| prox wrote:
| Even before congress there is a lot of wiggle room for Google
| to step in. Why is this possible? : "The immediate challenge
| for Bungie was that the company either didn't know or
| couldn't prove the identity of the culprit before filing the
| lawsuit."
|
| The takedown notice should come with a verifiable address.
| Google has a business directory for crying out loud! Just
| make it mandatory you have a business listing account.
| anon9001 wrote:
| Honestly though, it's not "fuck Congress", it's "fuck the
| electorate".
|
| One of the great ironies about the rise of corporate fascism
| in the US is that the democracy does function on a technical
| level. If enough people worked together to do the right
| things, ballots could be cast and there is no dictator to
| prevent the will of the people from being heard.
|
| Of course, that does not happen. The people have proven
| ineffective at self-governance.
|
| At this point I'm wondering if we should just hand all
| governance over to a consortium of industry leaders that are
| accountable to shareholders. If we're going to do an
| oligarchy, let's at least be efficient about it.
|
| That seems better to me than the current system of an easily
| brainwashed public electing whoever has the best
| disinformation campaign.
|
| Do you think we'd have all these crazy IP laws if the big IP
| holders and big tech companies had to get in a room together
| and actually figure out what the law should be?
| teddyh wrote:
| > _we should just hand all governance over to a consortium
| of industry leaders that are accountable to shareholders.
| If we 're going to do an oligarchy, let's at least be
| efficient about it._
|
| They might at least make the trains run on time.
| anon9001 wrote:
| We might _have trains_!
|
| All the fascist stuff is pretty bad -- nationalism,
| strongman leaders, isolating an "other" with violence,
| grifters selling out the people's interests to
| corporations -- I'm not down with any of that.
|
| But maybe we could have some kind of system where
| corporations are forced to vote on governance that
| applies to all other corporations for the collective good
| of capitalist progress?
|
| There needs to be some kind of unified governing
| principle to make everyone's lives better.
|
| We can't go on with BIG_CO hiring lobbying firms to most
| efficiently snake their legislation through the system
| unchecked.
|
| In my thought experiment here, most corporations would
| want to enact policy responsibly for the public good.
| Cooperation between corporations would happen, but the
| default position would be for more happy consumers.
|
| So far we've tried letting representative democracy work
| out hard issues and that hasn't gone well. We've also
| tried deferring governance entirely to the courts with
| poor results.
|
| I'm open to suggestions.
| KMag wrote:
| Which is why I'm particularly worried about Google getting
| involved with healthcare. "We're sorry, the malgorithm has
| denied you access to your health records. Go ahead and sue us,
| but good luck surviving long enough to see resolution with both
| you and your doctor locked out of your health records."
|
| And yes, I'm aware that Google doesn't currently seek to be in
| a position where they could lock you out of your own records,
| but the octopus's tentacles only grow. I'm also aware that
| Google Health is quite old... it was around back when I worked
| on Google's indexing system a decade ago.
|
| Edit: This month, expiration of Google's legacy free tier of
| whatever they now call Apps For Your Domain is forcing me to
| get off of my butt and migrate my vanity domain away, and start
| moving the keys to my digital life off of Google's "free"
| services. It'd be rather painful if I got locked out of GMail
| today, and I don't have any financial leverage to get back in.
| anon9001 wrote:
| You can confirm it's non-commercial and they let you keep it
| for free... for now.
|
| They made the change fairly late in the process, and
| supposedly there was a way to undo the paid migrations by
| opening a support ticket, but I saw lots of posts about
| people being unable to migrate back and get refunded.
| KMag wrote:
| Thanks; great info! However, I think it's long past due for
| me to move the keys to my kingdom onto a paid service.
| However, maybe I'll leave one of my vanity domains on
| Google services. (Roughly 70 people worldwide share my
| surname, so it was easy to pick up a few vanity domains.)
| javajosh wrote:
| My understanding is that if you wanted to hurt a YouTube channel,
| you could do so like this 1. Use a VPN create a
| gmail address. 2. Use that address to file a DMCA notice
| on each channel video. 3. Google auto-accepts; the channel
| challenges each notice. 4. You deny all challenges.
|
| And just like that, you can destroy any YouTube channel, without
| any accountability. Is this correct?
| lifeformed wrote:
| You also have to provide some personal information to file a
| request, like phone number, name, address.
| javajosh wrote:
| But it isn't verified by Google. Is it given to the channel?
| Do they have any recourse if they determine it's fake?
| jimmydorry wrote:
| I'm not sure about Google in particular, but typically the
| service provider will pass along the information and tell
| the parties to settle in court. They will also keep the
| reported material down until either party forwards them the
| outcome of the court case.
| javajosh wrote:
| Sure, but doesn't Google assume the DMCA notice is valid
| unless proven otherwise? If that is the case, time is on
| the attackers side, and won't affect the attack too much.
| smotched wrote:
| failed at 1, you cannot create a gmail account with a VPN
| (unless you want to verify by phone)
| pid-1 wrote:
| Wait what?
|
| I definitely did that in past.
| stepupmakeup wrote:
| SMS verification services from first-world countries cost a
| couple dollars at most
| vhgyu75e6u wrote:
| I always read that but have never found a service like
| that, do you have a link?
|
| A lot of services that I don't want then to have my PII are
| starting to ask for phone verification.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Try textverified, you can even pay in crypto for legit
| unused numbers
|
| Though I don't know if they are somehow blacklisted by
| Google. And the main service is just a one time
| verification rental but you can also rent a number for a
| few days.
| javajosh wrote:
| How does Google know you're on a VPN? I'd assume that it
| could only be inferred from the source IP address of your UA,
| which implies Google keeps track of well-known VPN source
| IPs. However, apart from the fact this is imperfect (I assume
| IP blocks are shifting all the time?) you could easily spin
| up a VPN of your own on a cloud VPS, in which case tracking
| IP blocks wouldn't work.
|
| Perhaps simplest of all, you could always sign up for the
| email on a semi/public wifi access point, or even from a
| shared computer, as from an internet cafe or even a friends
| phone.
| lionkor wrote:
| Cloud VPSs can be looked up and you can see theyre a
| datacenter IP, which is probably assumed to be "VPN" by
| default. I'm running my own vpn like that, but i still get
| blocked on sites for use of a VPN.
| dewey wrote:
| VPN detection isn't rocket science. It's a commodity and
| works well for Netflix and all other services relying on
| geo ip detection. It's not always accurate but works well
| enough. Blocking data center IP ranges is also done
| frequently and so spinning up a VPS on a provider like
| DigitalOcean won't work.
|
| The most likely option to use is residential proxies which
| are real IPs of devices, these are very hard to block but
| expensive.
|
| Probably best to just go to a public wifi and used a burner
| phone if that's what you want to do.
| mnd999 wrote:
| A pay-as-you-go burner phone is pretty cheap.
| lionkor wrote:
| Lots of sites, including afaik google, discord, etc. detect
| this and do not allow them.
| VanTheBrand wrote:
| I'm surprised I haven't read any articles about how low
| income people with bad credit who can't get a post paid
| cell phone are banned from gmail. Or maybe this is just
| incorrect.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| They do not. I know from first hand experience. More
| fundamental question: How can you distiguish a "burner"
| phone (no registered user name at mobile phone company)?
| As I understand, a SaaS (like Google et al) cannot
| distinguish.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Facebook probably can (or could if they wanted) because
| they've got everyone's contacts. But yeah, never had an
| issue with throwaway SIMs with any of the listed
| services.
| myself248 wrote:
| They absolutely do not. Or didn't 3 months ago.
| aliswe wrote:
| Wow, big claim. Also your other comment that they detect
| custom vpns, im just thinking hmmm ... do you actually
| know what youre talking about?
| nikolqy wrote:
| That's actually wildly hilarious in a way. Pretty creative way of
| attacking businesses. Probably more creative than something I
| could come up with. Copyright is way too strict though. It's
| ridiculous that this is even possible, to an extent.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Weaponizing Google's lack of customer service is in fact pretty
| creative. The "exploit" here is that Google really doesn't care
| in the slightest about fraudulent DMCA takedowns - it's
| expensive labor-wise to handle it.
|
| Doing it from your home internet connection, less creative...
| redm wrote:
| This is highly overlooked "The company tried to subpoena Google
| using the DMCA but the chosen mechanism only allowed Bungie to
| identify an alleged copyright infringer, not the sender of
| allegedly abusive DMCA notices."
|
| We have been the recipient of many invalid notices to Google.
| Google publishes the details via Lumen but makes it impossible to
| reasonably analyze the data. 1) They hide the sender info. 2)
| They make you validate, via email, for EACH DMCA you want to
| view. In other words, they claim transparency, but practical use
| isn't possible. They also don't publish DMCA's against sites like
| YouTube.
| system2 wrote:
| You have to be a true imbecile to pull this type of stuff without
| spoofing your IP and keep using the same email addresses created
| by the same address. This person must be a kid.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| His name is even nick minor
| Chio wrote:
| This is an interesting lawsuit as it is a *company* seeking
| damages due to DMCA abuse by a third party, and my understanding
| is that this is very widespread (no source sorry). Is anyone
| aware of any studies done on the total cost1 (vs benefit1) of the
| DMCA due to malicious actors?
|
| 1 defining what is a cost vs benefit (and how much) is probably
| the hardest part, maybe after acquiring the necessary data.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| A side note that I found particularly interesting
|
| > On March 22, the Reynolds account logged out of Google and less
| than a second later, the Wiland account logged in, suggesting the
| same person was behind both accounts.
|
| I've always wondered how often timing analysis is used in
| practice by surveillence big tech. I suspect that as people
| become more privacy aware, and start using VPNs, pseudonames,
| multiple accounts, etc, that big tech will start using timing
| analysis more and more to correlate traffic and identify users.
| Like if your friend sends you a Reddit link on WhatsApp, and you
| immediately open it in your browser, that Reddit session is now
| linked to you.
|
| Another more complex example: let's say Google has already
| identified your Reddit account. You open a Reddit discussion, and
| deep in the discussion it links to a Youtube video, and you open
| it in your browser. Now even if you weren't logged into Youtube,
| Google could guess that it's you based on the timing of when your
| Reddit account opened the discussion, and when the linked Youtube
| video was accessed. And not just that video, but now every
| Youtube video watched in the same browsing session, is now linked
| back to you (assuming you have first-party cookies enabled, which
| is basically required if you ever want to log into anything).
|
| Seems a bit paranoid, but I actually suspect this happened to me
| a few months ago. I was using a FOSS reddit client and clicked a
| youtube link buried deep in a reddit thread, and opened it in
| Newpipe (a FOSS youtube client). I wasn't logged in, and was
| using a VPN, and yet the next day on my Youtube feed I started
| getting recommendations based on that video (and those
| recommendations were very different from my usual ones). Scary
| stuff.
| smokeypanda wrote:
| I don't have an expert understanding of how cookies or VPNs
| function, but these are the two categories of causes that I
| came up with. Both seem more likely than Google having timing
| data from a third-party service.
|
| Within the first category, possibilities include that the phone
| logged into your Google account while using the VPN, that there
| was a Google tracking cookie on your phone and that phone
| wasn't always connected to the VPN so it related 2 ip
| addresses, and that your other device on same network shared a
| VPN session with your phone.
|
| The 2nd category I'm including for posterity even if it's
| unlikely based off your stated usage of FOSS on your phone.
| That your phone isn't a degoogled OS or other device with
| Google integration. Smart devices with microphones aren't
| supposed to collect voice data when not explicitly activated,
| but it is a potentiality.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| At this point I feel like I should have used a throwaway with
| how many details I'm giving away here haha, but I have never
| attached a google account to my phone (I access any google
| services via browser), and while I don't run a degoogled OS
| but I have disabled play services and all google features +
| apps. I'm aware that there's still a chance that Google has
| trackers, but those trackers would (1) have to detect which
| reddit account I was using inside my FOSS reddit client (2)
| detect which video I watched on my FOSS youtube client. It's
| possible but I decided that this level of surveillance was
| both more nefarious and less likely than them using timing
| analysis.
| derefr wrote:
| > I've always wondered how often timing analysis is used in
| practice by surveillence big tech
|
| Temporal correlation is the difference between regular network
| analysis, and _dynamic_ network analysis. Just search "dynamic
| network analysis" on Google Scholar, and look at who's writing
| the papers :)
|
| But to back up a step -- every SaaS company does this on some
| level. If you have an backend audit-log for e.g. user
| registrations, and you eyeball it every so often to notice
| event clusters of people trying to bulk-register accounts in
| order to block their IPs -- well, that's timing analysis!
| root_axis wrote:
| In your example how does google correlate your particular
| reddit account with the link you clicked? YouTube can't access
| your reddit session cookie so how would google be able to
| disambiguate your reddit session from arbitrary traffic flowing
| through the reddit page?
| woojoo666 wrote:
| That's where the timing comes in. The reddit discussion I
| clicked the link from was an old one, and so was the youtube
| video (though it did have hundreds of thousands of views). I
| was probably the only person who opened them up within the
| same hour
| ta988 wrote:
| It is used a lot, also to identify people on TOR. But you
| usually need something else if you want to use that in court.
|
| See:
|
| https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/topic/timing-analysis...
|
| Or the academic research on the domain
| https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C14&as_vi...
| xiphias2 wrote:
| There was an article about how easy it is to find out if 2 of
| your Facebook friends are dating just by analyzing when your
| Facebook friends are online, and there isn't any effective way
| of stopping it from working other than disabling presence
| notifications.
| walrus01 wrote:
| > I've always wondered how often timing analysis is used in
| practice by surveillence big tech
|
| Books written about the NSA, GCHQ, CSE etc talk about them
| using things like timestamp logs/traffic analysis/time of day
| analyzing commercial and government telecom links going back to
| the _1960s_ , so in the modern era even if your crypto is
| absolutely unbreakable, there's a huge amount of analysis and
| correlation that can be done based on timing analysis.
|
| Then you combine your timing analysis with things like
| correlating geolocation of blocks of IP addresses, netflow and
| traffic analysis, metadata obtained from other adjacent/nearby
| users on same ISPs at either end, a whole fire hose of other
| data that's still useful even if the crypto is solid.
|
| > let's say Google has already identified your Reddit account.
| You open a Reddit discussion, and deep in the discussion it
| links to a Youtube video, and you open it in your browser. Now
| even if you weren't logged into Youtube, Google could guess
| that it's you based on the timing
|
| Not just timing but also cookies, client device/browser
| fingerprinting, IP address/what ISP you're on, and the usage
| patterns and logged in activity (and app-collected telemetry
| data on android and ios devices) of all the other persons in
| your household and neighbors.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I can't easily find the links _(but I'm sure they are
| available)_ , but there's a [relatively] new science, that
| 'fingerprints' people's writing style.
|
| I think the technique, itself, is decades old, but has been
| vastly improved, using AI and algorithms.
|
| It can be used to match things like anonymous rants, to
| individuals.
| walrus01 wrote:
| As I recall, the Unabomber's brother read a portion of the
| manifesto and recognized Ted's writing style.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yes. It used the world's oldest "AI"; the human brain.
|
| But that is exactly how this works. From what I
| understand, the "enhanced" version of the technique is
| scarily accurate, able to match, using just a couple of
| sentences.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| I guess part of my hope was that big tech didn't think timing
| analysis was worth the effort. But it's rather scary if they
| are truly scaling up their timing analysis efforts. Now, if
| you care about privacy, it's not enough to just use a VPN or
| stay logged out or use anonymous accounts. You have to worry
| about _when_ you open every webpage. Be wary of immediately
| opening links that your friend sends you, or sharing webpages
| that you had just opened to your friends. And that's not even
| factoring in fingerprinting attacks
| jcims wrote:
| This sounds more like a forensic analysis than an
| operational capability.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| Well it means that Google logs and preserves all that
| data for at least a few months. Who knows what they do
| with it
| ta988 wrote:
| Store it because nobody knows what to do with it?
| iamacyborg wrote:
| That would explicitly not be in line with the GDPR.
| Specifically, it would break 5.1(b) - purpose limitation.
|
| > collected for specified, explicit and legitimate
| purposes
| scrollaway wrote:
| Data about logged in sessions is generally stored for
| security purposes.
|
| If a malicious person had access to your account you want
| to know for how long they had that access for example.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Sure, that seems like it'd be a legitimate purpose, my
| comment was more a response to this.
|
| > Store it because nobody knows what to do with it?
| woojoo666 wrote:
| That's the optimistic case I guess. But I've already
| given an example where I suspect Google used timing
| analysis to figure out a youtube video that I watched
| (over VPN and using a FOSS youtube client). I think it's
| plausible that Google is already using timing analysis to
| track users
| walrus01 wrote:
| the average residential DHCP-pool-assigned customer on a
| cablemodem, dsl, gpon line or something doesn't change IP
| addresses that much, and very often the dhcpd will renew
| the router/modem's WAN port lease with the same address for
| months at a time. even if it's not an actual static IP.
|
| this alone can be used to correlate a huge number of things
| since very often you have one household with a whole
| assortment of people and tablets, phones, laptops, xboxes,
| playstations, smart speakers etc all behind one IP address
| and NAT.
|
| just having an entity like google know that your ip address
| is coming from a /24 in a /19 sized IP block that's known
| to be a comcast dhcp pool in a particular city/metro area
| is a huge amount of info.
|
| other things happen as well. you have other people in your
| household who installed the facebook app on their phone and
| left geolocation/GPS permissions set to on? now your IP
| address has been correlated with a very specific
| latitude/longitude and the usage patterns of your (spouse,
| roommate, child, etc) who is using that app.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| I'm well aware of the issues with IP (I mentioned that I
| use a VPN), and the general public is becoming more wary
| too, as can be seen with the rise of VPN usage. Which is
| why timing analysis is so scary, it bypasses most
| countermeasures
| yajjackson wrote:
| Have any good links to papers or books covering the state of
| the art in developing these systems?
| Youden wrote:
| Though worrying if it's done, I doubt that it's done at any
| scale in the way you're suggesting. Linking accounts is PII and
| the GDPR would require consent, right to view the information,
| right to correct the information and so on.
|
| I think it was only doable in the end in the article because
| the data were released as part of a legal process.
|
| Regarding your YouTube story, there are lots of examples of
| things like this (e.g. "I talked to someone about X in person
| then saw X in Facebook ads") but I haven't yet seen hard
| evidence. So far I've written it off as coincidence at scale.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| The GDPR considerations are interesting, and it does seem
| like GDPR can cover things like behavioral data [1]. I'm not
| sure how it works in regards to Newpipe, the FOSS youtube
| client I use though. I assume whatever scraper Newpipe uses
| in the background has already accepted the cookie consent
| dialog, which would allow Google to start scraping data like
| IPs and other behavioral data. Not an expert on GDPR law
| though obviously.
|
| As far as it being a coincidence, that's usually something I
| assume as well. But it really comes down to a game of
| probabilities. Is it more likely that it's a coincidence, or
| that Google is doing timing analysis? In this case, a
| coincidence just felt less likely. I check my youtube feed at
| least once a day, so I know what my recommendations look
| like. This recommendation was so out of the ordinary that it
| stood out to me in a sea of my usual recommendations. And it
| stood out so much that it prompted me to go back and check my
| Newpipe history and Reddit history, and spend like an hour
| investigating and trying to figure out what was most likely.
| I even wrote down notes about the incident. Also I should
| probably mention now that earlier I had said that I got those
| youtube recommendations the next day, but checking my notes
| now, it was actually within an hour. The video that was
| recommended to me was not some trending video, it was already
| a few months old. I also searched my Youtube history to see
| if I had watched anything else from the same channel, and I
| had only watched 2 videos from that channel total, and over a
| year prior.
|
| I know that timing analysis seems very nefarious, more high-
| effort and nefarious that I would expect from even a company
| like Google. But my guess is that they aren't doing it
| intentionally, they instead just feed a bunch of analytics
| data (that they have user consent to collect) into some giant
| ML model, and that ML model has learned to use timing in its
| predictions.
|
| [1]: https://blog.rsisecurity.com/what-is-considered-pii-
| under-gd...
| onlyusername wrote:
| Here is a long-ish Tom Scott video related to YouTube's (or
| rather the Internet's) broken copyright system:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU
| xbmcuser wrote:
| Its funny how people are siding with Bungie that Google should
| have given them the details but these same people complain about
| google knowing too much about them and its privacy implications.
| From the looks of it Google did the right thing where it comes to
| siloing data of different departments. Youtube dmca should not
| know the ip address of someone that send the email using gmail
| that is the correct way to go about it.
| pyrolistical wrote:
| Is part of the story missing on how google eventually accepted
| the fake dmca requests? Seems like at some point google slipped
| up or else this wouldn't have gotten so out of hand
| spondyl wrote:
| > Is part of the story missing on how google eventually
| accepted the fake dmca requests?
|
| There isn't really a story here. YouTube just kind of blindly
| accepts any and all DMCAs regardless of whether the claimant
| has legitimate ownership or not.
|
| Here's an excerpt from the court filing:
|
| > Ninety-six separate times, Minor used his fake "CSC" Gmail
| addresses to exploit the hole in YouTube's DMCA-process
| security that allows anyone at all to claim to be representing
| a rights holder for purposes of issuing a takedown, with no
| real safeguards against fraud.
|
| I'd note that they refer to it as "the" hole
|
| https://www.pcworld.co.nz/article/483729/google_submission_h...
|
| > In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of
| the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital
| Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting
| competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid
| copyright claims.
| cowvin wrote:
| wow 57% and 37% are awful. it's almost as if the system
| shouldn't be automated.
| noptd wrote:
| > There isn't really a story here. YouTube just kind of
| blindly accepts any and all DMCAs regardless of whether the
| claimant has legitimate ownership or not.
|
| Sounds like a compelling story to me.
| tadfisher wrote:
| That is what is required under the DMCA, though. YouTube
| _must_ remove content immediately after receiving a notice,
| under penalty of losing safe-harbor privileges. In turn, the
| claimant _must_ represent themselves as the copyright holder
| or their agent, and the content _must_ be infringing, under
| penalty of liability for the accused 's costs and attorney
| fees. The law does not make a provision for YouTube to reject
| bogus claims.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If it's a bogus claim then they don't need safe harbor for
| it...
| bzzli wrote:
| YT requires you to use a gmail address to submit DMCA claims,
| instead of a corporate domain that can be verified.
|
| There are no ID requirements, either.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| The article buried the lede, which I think is this-- Google as
| email provider had information all along that DMCA notices it was
| sending to its YouTube property were not legitimate. Google even
| went so far as to flag and reject _some_ of those notices because
| of false personalities, but instead of going to the root cause to
| stop abuse of its systems it allowed the same user to plug along
| long enough to manipulate YouTube in a way that caused Bungie an
| alleged $7.6m in damages. Then the icing is that when Bungie came
| knocking Google initially resisted a court-related request to
| allow Bungie to identify the user and stop the abuse. Wow.
| cm2187 wrote:
| But can google legally stop processing DMCA notices from a
| source that was known to make fake DMCA notices in the past?
| myself248 wrote:
| IANAL but I think they might be able to pursue a case of
| "vexatious litigancy" against the person. That essentially
| strips them of some ability to use the legal system because
| they've rampantly abused it in the past.
|
| It's a high bar to pass, but literal thousands of fake claims
| might indeed pass it.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| They didn't just bury the lede, they didn't cover google's barn
| door security hole on the DMCA submission process that allowed
| this guy to submit a hundred or so DMCA takedown requests with
| no need to prove his identity.
|
| And then there's this:
|
| > Bungie had to devote significant internal resources to
| addressing it and helping its players restore their videos and
| channels - an effort complicated by the fact that while YouTube
| has a form that allows anyone to claim to represent a copyright
| holder and issue copyright strikes, it has no dedicated
| mechanism for copyright holders who are being impersonated to
| let YouTube know about the DMCA fraud
|
| Small content creators have only been complaining about this
| for, oh, ten years or so?
|
| > This meant that Bungie had to work through several layers of
| YouTube contacts over a period of several days before it could
| adequately communicate and begin addressing the problem.
|
| Days? Several layers? Gasp! Fetch the vapors!
|
| Now imagine you're not a billions-of-dollars-in-revenue
| worldwide-known gaming company - and thus you have _zero_
| ability to reach a human.
| jonas21 wrote:
| > _Then the icing is that when Bungie came knocking Google
| initially resisted a court-related request to allow Bungie to
| identify the user and stop the abuse. Wow._
|
| A big corporation came asking for data on an individual GMail
| user, and Google told them, "we're not giving that to you
| without a proper subpoena." That's exactly what you want your
| email provider to do.
| myself248 wrote:
| Google shouldn't just hand over someone's information, but
| when Bungie provided evidence of abuse, Google _should_ have
| kicked off a robust internal abuse investigation. Knocking
| people off their platform for being jerks is absolutely
| within their ToS and purview under law.
|
| The fact that they harbored the jerk for so long, even in the
| face of credible evidence and actual harm, suggests that, as
| another headline on the frontpage right now says, "If your
| [platform] is full of assholes, it's your fault."
| tinco wrote:
| Maybe, but that's not the point. It's not about the owner of
| the Gmail account, it's about the identity of whoever sent
| the DMCA request. Google should have had more than just an
| email, should have verified at least a registered company or
| domain or trademark, and should have willingly gave up the
| verified contact information to anyone who asks.
| palunon wrote:
| > should have verified at least a registered company or
| domain or trademark
|
| None of those things are necessary to hold copyright.
| tinco wrote:
| Regardless of that it should be required for filing an
| automated DMCA filing with Google. They should just be
| paying a helpdesk that does KYC for stuff like this.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| But basically all of those actions would be things that would
| generate negative headlines. Would any of the following Hacker
| News stories surprise you?
|
| * Google Shut Down British Teen's YouTube Account, Kid Loses
| Access to GMail
|
| * Google Giving Out User Information to Companies Without Court
| Order or Protest
|
| * Google Is Sharing GMail User Information with Game Publishers
| Out For DMCA Revenge
|
| Every step along the way, there'd be an article and 100 Hacker
| News comments talking about how evil Google is and talking up
| how Duck Duck Go really isn't so bad as long as you remember
| the shortcuts that make it use Google.
|
| Resisting requests from big companies demanding that they give
| out user information is a good thing. Changing their mind when
| they had clear evidence that the user was up to no good is a
| good thing. Not immediately shutting down someone's GMail
| account because they're doing something that upsets YouTube is
| a good thing.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| I'm baffled how filing a copyright notice can be done without
| disclosing legal details of the one who is filing to the one
| who is hit by it.
| xmprt wrote:
| The thing that's missing in all those headlines is context.
| Google has context and I like to imagine Hacker News readers
| would understand the context too (or at least find a top
| comment talking about the context). So Google refusing to do
| anything or make life extremely hard when they're the ones
| with all the data is really frustrating.
| themitigating wrote:
| "Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-
| source Android app"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20826618
|
| "Google can ban your Android app if they think you've
| clicked on your own ads"
|
| https://danfabulich.medium.com/never-run-google-ads-if-
| you-h...
|
| And here's a Facebook one because it's almost too good
|
| "Facebook banned me for life because I help people use it
| less"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28788821
|
| Now I don't know the details of those stories but I can
| tell you the comments are what you'd think. There's never
| context when someone feels wronged and wants to show the
| world.
|
| Google like many companies doesn't comment in detail on
| these types of situations so what we would get is the kind
| of headlines the parent made up.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > Google like many companies doesn't comment in detail on
| these types of situations.
|
| I think the best statement from Google would say:
|
| "We have more information which gives additional context
| to our actions here. We have asked for permission from
| the account holder to publish this information, but so
| far that permission hasn't been granted".
|
| Why don't they make statements like that?
| scrame wrote:
| because they wouldn't put in the effort? Google is
| notorious for bad customer service.
| yunohn wrote:
| Yeah, I think every single "FAANG does X which is bad"
| thread on HN is _completely_ devoid of context and nuanced
| discussion.
| nindalf wrote:
| This 100x. I feel the Gel-Mann effect so hard on HN
| sometimes. 99 times out of 100 I think "wow the
| discussion on HN is so good". The other 1 it's about
| something I'm an expert in and the comments are so wrong
| it hurts. But I simply ignore that and continue thinking
| HN comments are great. That's how the cycle goes.
| quitit wrote:
| Of course context matters:
|
| Otherwise we'd be astonished at "Bungie sues long time
| gamer for 7.6m". Obviously we can investigate further, it's
| not that complicated a matter. I neither believe negative
| publicity would have occurred, nor that this is a
| justification for a cover-up. A trivial headline would be
| "Google suspends account of DMCA troll." - I doubt it would
| even generate any clicks.
|
| It just sounds like Google weren't looking into the matter
| sufficiently (there are humans there afterall.)
| crayboff wrote:
| It's relatively rare on the internet, even in HN, that all
| of the nuance would be seen or understood before people
| jumped to conclusions.
| hackernewds wrote:
| But it was done here, and that deserves credit. Few
| forums on the internet would solicit this level of
| discussion
| crayboff wrote:
| This isn't really a great example of the point, however.
| This wasn't a story about a large company that cut
| corners for the sake of speed and efficiency just because
| there was context could have justified it.
| loldk wrote:
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Sure.
|
| But if Google is deciding that avoiding those potential
| headlines is of higher priority than protecting its users
| from getting abused by the unfair system they put in place,
| we are justified to attach a derogative label to the company.
|
| And it's cumulative, with all the other ones. The labels, I
| mean.
|
| I just hope people will not forget them in 20 years after
| they make a giant PR campaign to become the good guys again,
| like with Microsoft.
| yunohn wrote:
| > how evil Google is and talking up how Duck Duck Go really
| isn't so bad as long as you remember the shortcuts that make
| it use Google
|
| These comments are always the _piece de resistance_ of HN
| absolutism.
| lupire wrote:
| There's no right to privacy while actively committing a
| crime.
|
| Google already had a policy of doxxing YT users, only DMCA
| abusers get protection by default.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Back a decade ago, century link kept disabling my isdn line
| based of spammed dmca takedowns. I wrote them several letters
| demanding proof, even pointing that their abuse form was
| entirely open to anyone and asking for any substantive proof.
| It took them a third time to actually send some printouts which
| amounted to again random spammer on their dmca form.
|
| They "solved" the problem by firewalling connections and a lame
| gateway asking you to admit to whatever.
| remus wrote:
| To my mind it's far more concerning that Google did so little
| to confirm the identity of the guy sending the fake notices,
| let alone establish whether he had any right to be sending the
| notices in the first place.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| That's just the DMCA.
| spondyl wrote:
| Does anyone else have any other interesting court case filings to
| share, off the top of their head, that documents the evidence
| trail used to unmask litigants?
| walrus01 wrote:
| not on the topic of unmasking anyone, but the judgment on Meads
| v. Meads is required reading on the topic of what's going on
| now with "sovereign citizens / freeman on the land", an
| increasingly common thing.
|
| https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abqb/doc/2012/2012abqb571/2012a...
| ajsfoux234 wrote:
| This doesn't have much of an 'evidence trail' but I thought
| last year's court filing about the Maryland nuclear engineer
| was interesting: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/maryland-
| nuclear-engineer-and... (click on the "Download Toebbe
| Complaint" link to see the full PDF)
| bzzli wrote:
| Here's a link to the complaint:
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.30...
| dylan604 wrote:
| Gotta love stupid criminals. "Nope, nobody will ever figure out
| my anonymity shield of multiple GMail accounts"
|
| I'd really hope this might shed a light on YouTube's ludicrous
| policies, but no, it will not do anything towards that.
| aliswe wrote:
| I would class him as a lone possibly mentally unstable sad
| individual rather than a criminal.
| judge2020 wrote:
| All claims in this process dealt with the DMCA system, not the
| Content ID system, and YT handled it in the only way they
| legally can throughout the entire process.
| dangrossman wrote:
| The safe harbor provisions of the DMCA are a carrot, not a
| stick. They do not impose any responsibilities upon YT, they
| only provide benefits should YT voluntarily respond to
| complaints in a specific way. YT does not accept every DMCA
| complaint at face value, and they aren't required to.
| bityard wrote:
| YouTube goes FAR beyond what the DMCA requires, they
| actively filter EVERY video through a data lake of
| fingerprints for copyrighted music/video and this process
| biases HEAVILY toward false positives. It not only takes
| down videos cases of accidental infringement (e.g. a
| vlogger walking past a radio in public) but also suffers
| from well-documented cases of just plain getting it wrong.
| Musicians often get their own music taken down, even when
| it contains no samples.
|
| Many content creators have fallen back to playing NO music
| at all in their videos, and they still get hit by it.
| YouTube has been silent on the matter, not to mention on
| how that's even possible.
|
| The algorithm is so effective that police have taken to
| playing loud copyrighted music when engaging in actions
| that they don't want spread via social media.
|
| At this point, it's getting hard to ascribe the awfulness
| of the fingerprint-driven auto-takedowns as mere
| incompetence.
| judge2020 wrote:
| That's called Content ID and was created in response to
| Viacom dragging YT through court for not preemptively
| stopping people from uploading episodes of Spongebob.
| Viacom was planning to take it further up the appeal
| process until a settlement was reached, almost certainly
| with the goal being "you upload your copyrighted material
| and we'll automatically scan every video upload to remove
| it". Of course, other copyright holders weren't going to
| let Viacom have all the fun, so YT expanded it to allow
| any big-name rights management firm or copyright holder
| to use the system.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v
| ._Y....
|
| Despite this, everything mentioned in the torrentfreak
| article was handled under the official DMCA process, and
| they handled it as they should have, as they disabled
| access to all videos immediately until the counter-notice
| was posted by the claimee. Eventually they started asking
| the user for proof of identity after they suspected he
| didn't represent Bungie, but that's not a requirement in
| the DMCA process.
|
| Separately, YT does often go to bat for its creators
| if/when they suspect supposedly infringing content is
| actually protected under fair use, eg. recently when
| "Vantage Media" was trying to take down all footage of
| the trailers for Kevin Spacey's new movie, _Peter Five-
| Eight_ [1]. This is still only wrt DMCA, as Content ID is
| designed to allow rights management companies to control
| their content on YT entirely (with no regard for fair
| use, on purpose) as YouTube doesn't want to get on the
| bad side of their partners in the Music (YouTube
| Music[2][3]) and TV/Sports (YouTube TV) space.
|
| 1: https://youtu.be/aY1CYF3MKec?t=27
|
| 2: https://variety.com/2017/biz/news/warner-music-
| extends-youtu...
|
| 3: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/19/16796058/youtube-
| univers...
| danuker wrote:
| > Google initially refused to comply but after some work, Bungie
| started getting the information it was looking for earlier this
| month.
|
| Yet another example of justice for me, but not for thee.
|
| A smaller content creator might not have even overturned a false
| DMCA claim, let alone get information about the copyright troll
| submitting it.
| metacritic12 wrote:
| Genuine question: for Google to offer free services, economic
| constraints dictate they can't offer human support. If we just
| assume for a moment this is valid, there is a possible
| solution:
|
| You can pre-pay $50/hour (in 30 minute increments) for live
| human access that can fix your problem. The fee is paid no
| matter whose fault it is -- it's basically a "competent, in-
| your-country, rep fair wage fee". How much take up would there
| be? Would that fix the complaints with these free services not
| offering support?
| jonas21 wrote:
| $50/hour? How about $2/month? This gets you support from real
| humans [1]. Given this already exists, I guess the answer to
| your question is "no".
|
| [1] https://one.google.com/about
| michaelt wrote:
| Do you think $2/month gets you access to people who can
| actually fix DMCA problems?
| [deleted]
| m-p-3 wrote:
| IMO the fee should be waived if the issue is deemed to be an
| error made by Google's algorithm at least.
| throwbacktictac wrote:
| Totally. If that became a revenue driver for Google I could
| see their Algorithm optimizing for the case in some
| contrived form :).
| izzydata wrote:
| Maybe Google is too big then eh?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Except I don't assume that is valid. Google has plenty of
| money, they can easily afford support personnel, they're just
| more interested in making money.
| lokar wrote:
| I don't think you have done the math on revenue per account
| vs support cost
| colinmhayes wrote:
| They can hire 20,000 support staff for a 2.5% profit hit.
| I don't think you've done the math.
| metacritic12 wrote:
| 20,000 is an arbitrary number without knowing the
| denominator. How many accounts do they have, how often
| would they need to support these accounts per year?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Well luckily 2.5% is an arbitrary number too. They'd have
| no problem scaling up to as many customer support people
| as they need. But yes, they would need to figure out how
| many staff members per account they need.
| jonas21 wrote:
| If you scale it up over 100%, you won't be in business
| for very long.
| metacritic12 wrote:
| Well they can certainly offer free support for one-user,
| but for all users? There are a lot of 100-view, $1/year
| revenue accounts out there, and good quality customer
| services (based in-developed-country, good benefits, smart,
| can solve problems) probably is in reality excess of
| $100/hour of fully burdened cost.
|
| On the steelmaning your argument side, there is definitely
| an argument for "common carrier" status for a lot of web
| technologies. This would guarantee universal access, fixed
| prices (either dollars or amount of data collected), and
| due process for disconnects. Governments could also mandate
| real ids with each account (therefore drastically reducing
| fraud and abuse in the first case).
| ipaddr wrote:
| Wouldn't that be a lawsuit in the making? Create problem,
| charge for support, profit?
| bityard wrote:
| No... charging for support is the most popular software
| business model, and in the enterprise sector, FAR more
| lucrative than selling the software itself.
|
| The goal of the company charging for support (directly or
| indirectly through purchases) is to collect the support
| payment WITHOUT having to turn around and spend it on
| paying someone to solve problems.
|
| It's very much in the company's financial best interest to
| not have problems.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| They would still outsource the human part to people with no
| knowledge or power like all YouTube appeals
| pid-1 wrote:
| I've used Googles support for paid services in the past (GCP,
| YouTube Premium, Workspaces) and it's the same almost non
| existent garbage.
| mchusma wrote:
| I would have 100% paid this on multiple occasions.
| icehawk wrote:
| But for YouTube creators it's NOT a free service, they're
| uploading videos for YouTube to monetize so both YouTube and
| the content produces get revenue.
| davidwritesbugs wrote:
| The article didn't say what this "other thing" Bungie then did
| to get Google to cough data up. Wondering what it was?
| judge2020 wrote:
| > A smaller content creator might not have even overturned a
| false DMCA claim
|
| In the YouTube DMCA process, they always, 100% restore your
| video if you submit a DMCA counterclaim. It'll only stay down
| if the claimant informs YouTube they are pursuing a lawsuit
| against you.
|
| > let alone get information about the copyright troll
| submitting it.
|
| You receive the full information of the copyright holder if you
| receive a DMCA takedown. You obviously don't get IP log
| information unless you subpoena Google, though.
| devrand wrote:
| > You receive the full information of the copyright holder if
| you receive a DMCA takedown.
|
| That's not exactly helpful if it's a fraudulent claim.
| [deleted]
| vageli wrote:
| What is "after some work" here alluding to (I know it's
| verbatim from the article but very cryptic)? Can Google
| arbitrarily share account details with anyone who asks without
| a subpoena? Does that not violate even their own ToS?
| waiwai933 wrote:
| The First Amended Complaint linked in the article indicates
| that Google required a subpoena (paragraphs 112-114) and were
| unwilling/unable to provide information informally.
| gpm wrote:
| It also says
|
| > While Bungie's legal department, management, and
| executives were attempting to negotiate the byzantine
| procedural labyrinth Google required before it would
| address the fraud Minor was committing, let alone identify
| him to Bungie, Minor was gloating, confessing, and
| threatening
|
| I'm guessing there was something more going on here...
| waiwai933 wrote:
| This seems more like difficulty getting in touch with a
| human at YouTube in the first place. Once they got that,
| the practical issues were resolved with YouTube undoing
| the takedowns, but the PII of the involved accounts
| needed to go through the legal process.
| gumby wrote:
| > This seems more like difficulty getting in touch with a
| human at YouTube...
|
| If you serve them with a subpoena your lawyer will get a
| prompt phone call from a real human. That's the point.
| vageli wrote:
| Thank you for pointing this out, I didn't realize they
| linked to the complaint at the very bottom.
| superkuh wrote:
| What stands out most here is that the youtube video creator
| behind the "fake" DMCA notices was himself hit by a fraudulent
| DMCA notice. It seems like he was only trying to bring attention
| to the completely broken system.
|
| I see this more as a political protest than anything else. But if
| you rock the boat you're going to get hit.
| s28l wrote:
| My understanding of the article was that the perpetrator was
| hit with a genuine DMCA notice that he was upset about. It
| seemed his plan was to generate these fake notices with the
| hope that they'd be noticed and rolled back, and in the
| confusion, he could get his notice rescinded as well.
| sorokod wrote:
| So like swatting with Google in the role of incompetent and
| heavily armed police?
| rahNae7o wrote:
| Can't accuse them of being incompetent if the law requires them
| to behave this way.
| mehlmao wrote:
| The law doesn't require them to behave this way. They have
| implemented their own system that is more draconian than the
| DMCA so they don't have to deal with entertainment industry
| lawyers.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It's not so they have to deal with entertainment industry
| lawyers, it's to minimize the labor costs of compliance.
| noptd wrote:
| Or more likely - all of the above.
| sorokod wrote:
| Well, law enforcement agencies are required to take reports
| of violent crimes seriously.
|
| I think that the analogy holds.
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