Filing a DMCA w/ our host will get you banned permanently!

[Aidsbait]

100% fair. And the warning makes it another 300% fair. Well done. Don’t let salty ruiners ruin things.

[loadzgoinholes]

On 11/1/2022 at 7:05 AM, rawTOP said:

If you need content taken down off the site you need to work with the moderation team by using a "report" link next to the content. If that doesn't work send me and/or a moderator a DM. Anyone who files a DMCA with the host will get permanently banned from the site.

Some exposure fetishist idiot from Asia has twice uploaded content and then filed a DMCA with the host. That's NOT OK. It could harm the site and if you do it you'll be banned permanently.

[In case you're not familiar with the term - a DMCA is a legal take down request.]

 I'm aware of what DMCA is. That said, why would filing a DMCA get the person who filed it banned? Isn't DMCA about protecting the rights to a video? And if the person reporting it says it is (essentially) "stolen", the person they are reporting on should be banned, right? Or am I missing something? Are you saying the site runners consider such a report bad for them and are discouraging any who might report it by a threat of banishment? Even if the report is made in good faith? This doesn't make sense to me.

[viking8x6]

2 hours ago, loadzgoinholes said:

 I'm aware of what DMCA is. That said, why would filing a DMCA get the person who filed it banned? Isn't DMCA about protecting the rights to a video? And if the person reporting it says it is (essentially) "stolen", the person they are reporting on should be banned, right? Or am I missing something? Are you saying the site runners consider such a report bad for them and are discouraging any who might report it by a threat of banishment? Even if the report is made in good faith? This doesn't make sense to me.

If you read the original post, it is clear that the person who reported the content to the DMCA is the same one who posted it here to begin with. Therefore, the report obviously WAS NOT made in good faith.

[Hotrawbutt4u]

2 minutes ago, viking8x6 said:

If you read the original post, it is clear that the person who reported the content to the DMCA is the same one who posted it here to begin with. Therefore, the report obviously WAS NOT made in good faith.

Someone trying to cause problems?

[hntnhole]

On 11/2/2022 at 8:51 AM, EuroMusk76 said:

I seriously doubt that anyone not familiar with the technical jargon would know what a DMCA is and click on this thread.

You're right.  I didn't, and I did.  I still don't know what it is, but at least I know better than to find out !!! 

[BootmanLA]

6 hours ago, hntnhole said:

You're right.  I didn't, and I did.  I still don't know what it is, but at least I know better than to find out !!! 

DMCA stands for "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" and is intended to modernize some aspects of copyright law in the United States for the digital age.

One key aspect is called the "DMCA takedown request", whereby a copyright holder can make a demand to an online site that it remove material covered by the copyright but posted by others on the online site. If the site owner promptly honors such requests immediately, it's protected by a "safe harbor" provision from being held liable for that copyright infringement. The idea is that, say, YouTube is protected from liability if John uploads a bootleg copy of Dave's recording of a song of his, as long as YouTube immediately removes that upload when notified by the copyright holder (Dave, in this case).

But it also applies if, say, Dave records a song where Robbie owns the copyright to the music and/or lyrics, and Dave doesn't have permission to record it for release to the public; in such a case, Robbie could demand that YouTube take down John's upload of Dave's performance/recording.

That's not the end of it, of course; anyone can "claim" to have a copyright on almost anything. But YouTube is protected from liability while it investigates whether Dave or Robbie actually do have a valid copyright claim - as long as the material isn't accessible during their investigation.

There are other parts of the DMCA that aren't relevant here, but this is the one most relevant for sites like this.

In this case it appears a user (let's call him John) uploaded some pictures of himself, and then thought about it and wanted them removed - and instead of working with the site owners to get them removed, he filed a DMCA takedown request with the company that hosts BZ. That puts BZ on the spot - and since the hosting company is the one protected by acting promptly, it leaves BZ and RawTop in the unenviable position of having to deal with a hosting company pissed off that they've got to now deal with this - which can mean lawyers, or at the least time in investigating the alleged violation.

For that reason, RawTop's position is: If you post something, and then you try to get it removed by a DMCA takedown instead of working with the moderators, you're done here, forever. And I don't blame him.

[loadzgoinholes]

21 hours ago, viking8x6 said:

If you read the original post, it is clear that the person who reported the content to the DMCA is the same one who posted it here to begin with. Therefore, the report obviously WAS NOT made in good faith.

"Some exposure fetishist idiot from Asia has twice uploaded content and then filed a DMCA with the host. That's NOT OK. It could harm the site and if you do it you'll be banned permanently."...is what I saw; I guess it was just poor wording. I equated 'host' with the site, not the person who posted. 

[viking8x6]

4 hours ago, loadzgoinholes said:

I guess it was just poor wording. I equated 'host' with the site, not the person who posted. 

It was precise wording that, as it happened, you didn't understand. The "host" is neither the site nor the person who posted. The host is the company that runs the physical computers that make the site available on the internet. That's not the same as @rawTOP's company, which only provides the site itself (which, remember, is just a bunch of code and data). @BootmanLA's explanation of the details above is clear and correct.

[hntnhole]

16 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

For that reason, RawTop's position is: If you post something, and then you try to get it removed by a DMCA takedown instead of working with the moderators, you're done here, forever. And I don't blame him.

First, thanks so much for that clear explanation.  I'm familiar with copyright laws, in that I was in the publishing business, and had to take care the editors knew what they could and could not do.  But I had no idea about all the electronic stuff, and now I do.  

I don't blame rawTOP one iota, either.  He'd be the one on the hotseat if some guy decided to do something stupid. 

So, thanks yet again for making the unfathomable somewhat less so.  

[BootmanLA]

A little more background on the DMCA.

The law was enacted in 1998, very early in the digital age (back when it was all MSN and AOL and Compuserve, and virtually all dial-up). This was when MP3s were catching on, and people were emailing songs to each other in that format - before there was anything like Napster or Limewire, much less the Apple Music Store or anything like that. Copyright holders could see how improved compression formats like MP3 and increasing speeds for modems (and with things like ISDN, DSL, and cable on the foreseeable horizon) would inevitably lead to rampant piracy of copyrighted materials.

It was one thing if people burned a copy of a CD for a friend - it was illegal, technically, but people were limited in terms of time and cost as to how many CDs they would be willing to copy for people. But the internet changed the economics of that dramatically; you could make one MP3 file of a song, and send it to twenty or thirty people at once, and then do the same thing again and again - assuming you knew that many people online with whom to share the music.

And then Napster came along, popularizing the notion of peer to peer network sharing, coupled with software that was constantly looking at what was being shared and updating a list of who had what available. The DMCA was the primary tool used by the music industry to take down Napster.

(It was also used against Limewire. If I recall correctly, and I'm not sure I do, the difference was that Limewire, unlike Napster, didn't use a central server to track user files; rather, each user would know what, say, 15 or 20 other users had, and those would know 15 or 20 others, and so forth - so a search for a particular song would just bounce between PCs until there was a hit. Limewire argued that because they weren't cataloging the machines that held these infringing files, they weren't liable - they'd just released a piece of software that let users do for themselves what Napster had done for them. The courts disagreed, finding Limewire liable, and ending with it shut down.)

All of which is to say that the DMCA wasn't designed specifically for porn or for adult sites - it's a copyright law designed specifically for how infringements work in the digital era. It's just that the tools available under it - like the takedown request - can have dramatic impacts in lots of ways not necessarily foreseen by anyone. Hosting companies, like the one that owns the servers that BZ is hosted on, are understandably cautious about what they host because if they don't handle things correctly under the law, they can incur liability. And while the company or person who owns a popular website might have few tangible assets (as opposed to the sweat equity and intellectual property involved) to attack if a lawsuit happens and there are violations found, the hosting company has significant tangible skin in the game (servers, racks, other equipment, leases on buildings, whatever). It's why hosting companies have lengthy contracts about what's permitted, what's required, and so forth, to help indemnify themselves.

[PozBearWI]

Thanks @BootmanLA

[rawTOP]

On 1/10/2023 at 8:15 AM, loadzgoinholes said:

 I'm aware of what DMCA is. That said, why would filing a DMCA get the person who filed it banned? Isn't DMCA about protecting the rights to a video? And if the person reporting it says it is (essentially) "stolen", the person they are reporting on should be banned, right? Or am I missing something? Are you saying the site runners consider such a report bad for them and are discouraging any who might report it by a threat of banishment? Even if the report is made in good faith? This doesn't make sense to me.

It's because they went directly to my host, not to me. That sours my relationship with my host if it happens too often.

And in this case it was an exposure fetishist who posted the content himself. It wasn't even piracy. I get it if some take down service goes to the host directly in a case of piracy, but members are expected to work within the community to get problems resolved.