this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
428 points (99.3% liked)

Technology

59990 readers
2324 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s
[email protected]
[email protected]
L4s
enu
428
Google sues people who “weaponized” DMCA to remove rivals’ search results (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 year ago by Salamendacious to c/technology
33 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Google yesterday sued a group of people accused of weaponizing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to get competitors' websites removed from search results.

"To date, Defendants' scheme has forced Google to investigate and respond to fraudulent takedown requests targeting more than 117,000 third-party website URLs, as well as takedown requests targeting more than half a million additional third-party URLs that are likely fraudulent based on preliminary investigation," the lawsuit said.

But the lawsuit helps show how easy it is for fraudsters to game Google's system for responding to DMCA notices.

The defendants provided fake names in their takedown requests and "falsely purported to represent large companies (e.g., Amazon, Twitter, NBC News), sports teams (e.g., Philadelphia Eagles, Los Angeles Lakers, San Diego Padres), prominent individuals (e.g., Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, LeVar Burton, Kanye West), and famous bands (e.g., Blink 182)," the Google lawsuit said.

For example, "Defendants falsely claimed to represent Elon Musk, alleging infringement of a t-shirt with a logo with the text 'Pharmacy Technician,'" the lawsuit said.

"Defendants signed and submitted their thousands of fraudulent takedown requests containing false information under penalty of perjury," Google said.

The original article contains 642 words, the summary contains 188 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!