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posted by janrinok on Sunday August 25 2019, @02:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the naughty-naughty dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Man sued for using bogus YouTube takedowns to get address for swatting

YouTube is suing a Nebraska man the company says has blatantly abused its copyright takedown process. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act offers online platforms like YouTube legal protections if they promptly take down content flagged by copyright holders. However, this process can be abused—and boy did defendant Christopher L. Brady abuse it, according to YouTube's legal complaint (pdf).

Brady allegedly made fraudulent takedown notices against YouTube videos from at least three well-known Minecraft streamers. In one case, Brady made two false claims against a YouTuber and then sent the user an anonymous message demanding a payment of $150 by PayPal—or $75 in bitcoin.

"If you decide not to pay us, we will file a 3rd strike," the message said. When a YouTube user receives a third copyright strike, the YouTuber's account gets terminated. A second target was ordered to pay $300 by PayPal or $200 in Bitcoin to avoid a third fraudulent copyright strike.

A third incident was arguably even more egregious. According to YouTube, Brady filed several fraudulent copyright notices against another YouTuber with whom he was "engaged in some sort of online dispute." The YouTuber responded with a formal counter-notice stating that the content wasn't infringing—a move that allows the content to be reinstated. However, the law requires the person filing the counter-notice to provide his or her real-world name and address—information that's passed along to the person who filed the takedown request.

This contact information is supposed to enable a legitimate copyright holder to file an infringement lawsuit in court. But YouTube says Brady had another idea. A few days after filing a counter-notice, the targeted YouTuber "announced via Twitter that he had been the victim of a swatting scheme." Swatting, YouTube notes, "is the act of making a bogus call to emergency services in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address."

YouTube doesn't provide hard proof that Brady was responsible for the swatting call, stating only that it "appears" he was responsible based on the sequence of events. But YouTube says it does have compelling evidence that Brady was responsible for the fraudulent takedown notices. And fraudulent takedown notices are themselves against the law.


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  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday August 26 2019, @02:27AM (2 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Monday August 26 2019, @02:27AM (#885474)

    Counterpoint: Some of the people who don't gaf, do things for the lulz, and are all about making money appear at least to be extremely religious.

    There are and have always been completely selfish jerks out there. We should take steps as a society to prevent these folks from doing too much harm to everyone else. And just educating them on morality won't necessarily do the job.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
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  • (Score: 2) by inertnet on Monday August 26 2019, @08:38AM (1 child)

    by inertnet (4071) on Monday August 26 2019, @08:38AM (#885573) Journal

    I'm not a fan of religion either, because it's a surrogate for logical moral behavior. I have no problem with decline of religion, but I believe that possible side effects should be considered. Of course you will always have ruthless people and I agree that you have to prevent them from hurting others.

    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday August 26 2019, @05:35PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Monday August 26 2019, @05:35PM (#885725)

      My experience, knowing people from all over the world affiliated with every major religion as well as several stripes of atheist, is that religious affiliation has no effect whatsoever on a person's morality. You can find extremely moral and extremely immoral people among all religions as well as atheism, and even more people with grey-area morality in all those groups who can self-justify doing terrible things when it suits them. What the religion tends to change isn't what people do, but how they justify what they did, e.g. devout Christians will blame their bad acts on temptation from Satan, while supposedly more-rational atheists will declare that their bad acts are objectively justified, but invariably they will both arrive at "I shouldn't have to face any penalty for what I did".

      These experiences convinced me a long time ago that groups of people don't have morals, individuals do, and even individuals are less principled than they'd like to think they are. The fastest way to make more people behave morally is to ensure they have enough food and other basic necessities of life. The fastest way to make more people behave immorally is to take away one of those necessities of life.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.