Your reading comprehension sucks. I never claimed that anyone has ever been charged with perjury for sending a false DMCA takedown notice. Indeed, I expressly assumed that NO ONE has ever been so charged.
If my comments strike you as an "invalid rant", try rebutting them with logic and accurate facts instead of bullshit.
But we ALREADY KNOW "what the cop [has or hasn't done]."
Namely, he HASN'T sent a DMCA takedown notice.
And since I AGREE with you that "[t]his cop is so ethically challenged that...he'd do anything he could get away with," that means the ONLY POSSIBLE REASON he HASN'T yet sent a DMCA takedown notice is that...are you ready for this?...he thinks he wouldn't get away with it.
And WHY do you suppose he thinks he wouldn't get away with it?
Because he knows that in order for him to send a DMCA takedown notice, he'd have to commit a blatant perjury, which perjury would be incredibly easy to prove, and against which he'd have NO defense whatsoever.
So even assuming that no one else has ever been charged with perjury for sending an erroneous DMCA notice, this cop doesn't want to be the first. And he knows he COULD very well be the first, since unlike all the other people who were never charged because their perjuries were hard to prove, HIS perjury is easy to prove, indeed, an open-and-shut case.
Furthermore, even if he weren't ever charged with perjury, the fact that he committed an obvious perjury could have OTHER adverse consequences for him. For example, even without a perjury conviction, his obvious commission of perjury might subject him to discipline in his job, or might cause New York City judges to automatically discredit his testimony in every criminal case in which he has to testify. (FYI, as a former assistant DA, I can tell you that judges do, in fact, tend to disbelieve cops whose credibility has been hammered in the press.) So even if he's never charged with perjury, it is RATIONAL for him to fear the consequences if he publicly commits a blatant perjury.
Which has been my entire point since my first post above.
So, are you confessing that, yes, in fact, you WOULD commit any obvious, easy-to-prove perjury, just so you could get this troublesome video taken down for a short period?
Before you answer, please keep in mind that this is NOT the typical DMCA takedown "mistake", where the takedown party can plausibly claim that he mistakenly thought the video was his own, or mistakenly thought that the use hadn't been authorized by an employees, or mistakenly thought the use wasn't allowed as a "fair use." In those cases, the perjury law IS toothless (as you claim), because of the difficulty, if not impossibility, of proving perjury.
But in THIS a case, the perjury charge would be open-and-shut. I.e., he cop would be telling a blatant lie about owning the copyright in the video, when he absolutely KNOWS that that claim is false, and it would be easy to prove that he knew it was false.
So, are you claiming that you WOULD tell such a blatant lie in a DMCA takedown notice, even if you knew it would be easy to prove that you're committing perjury?
"It doesn't have to be a valid DMCA notice to temporarily take down a video."
No, but to send an INVALID DMCA take-down notice, the cop would have had to commit PERJURY. The DMCA requires that ALL take-down notices be filed under penalty of perjury, and in fact the first line of a typical valid DMCA notice begins, "I, the undersigned, certify UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY that the information in this notification is accurate and that I am authorized to act on behalf of [the copyright owner]."
Would YOU commit an obvious, easy-to-prove perjury, just so you could get a troublesome video taken down for a short period? I wouldn't. And I don't expect the cop would, either.
Besides, you're just plain wrong about a DMCA notice being sufficient to keep a video off YouTube for "a number of weeks." It's NOT. A separate DMCA notice has to be sent EACH time a video is uploaded to YouTube. So as long as the photographer has enough separate e-mail addresses -- or enough friends with e-mail addresses -- all he has to do is keep uploading the same video faster than the cop can post new DMCA take-down notices.
That's why record and film companies HATE the DMCA take-down process; it's because they can't possibly post take-down notices faster than the infringers can upload their videos. They even have a name for this process. They derisively call it "whack a mole".
Meanwhile, keep in mind that EACH time the cop posts a new DMCA take-down notice, it's a NEW perjury charge against him. So it wouldn't take long for him to commit enough acts of perjury to be facing decades in prison. Enough to make him think twice about posting perjurious DMCA notices, I would think.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Reply to Anonymous coward
If my comments strike you as an "invalid rant", try rebutting them with logic and accurate facts instead of bullshit.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Reply to John Fenderson
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Reply to John Fenderson
Namely, he HASN'T sent a DMCA takedown notice.
And since I AGREE with you that "[t]his cop is so ethically challenged that...he'd do anything he could get away with," that means the ONLY POSSIBLE REASON he HASN'T yet sent a DMCA takedown notice is that...are you ready for this?...he thinks he wouldn't get away with it.
And WHY do you suppose he thinks he wouldn't get away with it?
Because he knows that in order for him to send a DMCA takedown notice, he'd have to commit a blatant perjury, which perjury would be incredibly easy to prove, and against which he'd have NO defense whatsoever.
So even assuming that no one else has ever been charged with perjury for sending an erroneous DMCA notice, this cop doesn't want to be the first. And he knows he COULD very well be the first, since unlike all the other people who were never charged because their perjuries were hard to prove, HIS perjury is easy to prove, indeed, an open-and-shut case.
Furthermore, even if he weren't ever charged with perjury, the fact that he committed an obvious perjury could have OTHER adverse consequences for him. For example, even without a perjury conviction, his obvious commission of perjury might subject him to discipline in his job, or might cause New York City judges to automatically discredit his testimony in every criminal case in which he has to testify. (FYI, as a former assistant DA, I can tell you that judges do, in fact, tend to disbelieve cops whose credibility has been hammered in the press.) So even if he's never charged with perjury, it is RATIONAL for him to fear the consequences if he publicly commits a blatant perjury.
Which has been my entire point since my first post above.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Reply to That One Guy
Before you answer, please keep in mind that this is NOT the typical DMCA takedown "mistake", where the takedown party can plausibly claim that he mistakenly thought the video was his own, or mistakenly thought that the use hadn't been authorized by an employees, or mistakenly thought the use wasn't allowed as a "fair use." In those cases, the perjury law IS toothless (as you claim), because of the difficulty, if not impossibility, of proving perjury.
But in THIS a case, the perjury charge would be open-and-shut. I.e., he cop would be telling a blatant lie about owning the copyright in the video, when he absolutely KNOWS that that claim is false, and it would be easy to prove that he knew it was false.
So, are you claiming that you WOULD tell such a blatant lie in a DMCA takedown notice, even if you knew it would be easy to prove that you're committing perjury?
Re: Re: Re: Reply to Liz
No, but to send an INVALID DMCA take-down notice, the cop would have had to commit PERJURY. The DMCA requires that ALL take-down notices be filed under penalty of perjury, and in fact the first line of a typical valid DMCA notice begins, "I, the undersigned, certify UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY that the information in this notification is accurate and that I am authorized to act on behalf of [the copyright owner]."
Would YOU commit an obvious, easy-to-prove perjury, just so you could get a troublesome video taken down for a short period? I wouldn't. And I don't expect the cop would, either.
Besides, you're just plain wrong about a DMCA notice being sufficient to keep a video off YouTube for "a number of weeks." It's NOT. A separate DMCA notice has to be sent EACH time a video is uploaded to YouTube. So as long as the photographer has enough separate e-mail addresses -- or enough friends with e-mail addresses -- all he has to do is keep uploading the same video faster than the cop can post new DMCA take-down notices.
That's why record and film companies HATE the DMCA take-down process; it's because they can't possibly post take-down notices faster than the infringers can upload their videos. They even have a name for this process. They derisively call it "whack a mole".
Meanwhile, keep in mind that EACH time the cop posts a new DMCA take-down notice, it's a NEW perjury charge against him. So it wouldn't take long for him to commit enough acts of perjury to be facing decades in prison. Enough to make him think twice about posting perjurious DMCA notices, I would think.
Re: reply to Ninja
Not so. A valid DMCA notice can only be sent by the copyright owner, which in this case is the person who took the video, Shawn Randall Thomas.
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