Google Wins Lawsuit Against Scammers Who 'Weaponized' DMCA Takedowns

Google has obtained (PDF) a default judgment against two men who abused its DMCA takedown system to falsely target 117,000 URLs of competitors' online stores. With none of the defendants showing up in court, a California federal court sided with the search engine. Through an injunction, the men are now prohibited from sending false takedown notices and creating new Google accounts. TorrentFreak reports: Last November, Google decided to take action against the rampant DMCA abuse. In a lawsuit filed at a federal court in California, it accused Nguyen Van Duc and Pham Van Thien of sending over 100,000 fraudulent takedown requests. Many of these notices were allegedly filed against third-party T-shirt shops. [...] Following the complaint, the defendants, who are believed to reside in Vietnam, were summoned via their Gmail accounts and SMS. However, the pair remained quiet and didn't respond in court. Without the defendants representing themselves, Google requested a default judgment. According to the tech giant, it's clear that the duo violated the DMCA with their false takedown notices. In addition, they committed contract breach under California law.

Google said that, absent a default judgment, the defendants would continue to harm consumers and third-party businesses. These actions, in turn, will damage Google's reputation as a search engine. In July, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim recommended granting Google's motion for default judgment. The recommendation included an injunction that prevents the two men from abusing Google's services going forward. However, the District Judge had the final say. Last Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Edward Davila adopted the recommendations, issuing a default judgment in favor of Google. The order confirms that defendants Nguyen Van Duc and Pham Van Thien violated the DMCA with their false takedown notices. In addition, they committed contract breach under California law.

In typical copyrights-related verdicts, most attention is paid to the monetary damages, but not here. While Google could have requested millions of dollars in compensation, it didn't request a penny. Google's primary goal was to put an end to the abusive behavior, not to seek financial compensation. Therefore, the company asked for an injunction to prohibit the defendants from sending false takedowns going forward. This includes a ban on registering any new Google accounts. The request ticked all the boxes and, without a word from the defendants, Judge Davila granted the default judgment as well as the associated injunction.

They're in Viet Nam

[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

How much US taxpayer money was wasted on this folly?

Re: They're in Viet Nam

[retchdog]

it's a way of putting indirect pressure on china that's a little more subtle than say an aircraft carrier would be. i would imagine that the communist party understands the concept of a state-corporate partnership.

SCAM

[RitchCraft]

The whole DMCA system is an abusive scam.

Re:

[Z00L00K]

The DMCA is a way to avoid the slow processing by a court and directly strike anyone that is disliked regardless of actual infringement or not.

So the DMCA was flawed from the beginning.

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

"We should nuke it from orbit, just to be sure."

Re:

[gnasher719]

The whole DMCA system is an abusive scam.

That's nonsense. DMCA is an excellent solution when people commit low levels of copyright infringement, to stop the infringement without having to take anyone to court.

If you look at the situation here, one of the conditions to make a DMCA takedown notice legal is that you declare under penalty of perjury that you believe to be the copyright holder or to represent the copyright holder. These two guys are probably guilty of about 100,000 cases or so of perjury. Should be hung up by their toes above a lake

Without a monetary consequence

[bferrell]

This deters ONE bad actor.
With a monetary consequence others would have been deterred

sigh

Internet whack-a-mole continues

Re: Without a monetary consequence

[viperidaenz]

There canâ(TM)t really be monetary consequences considering the âoeoffendersâ are in Vietnam.

I doubt there is proof these are legitimate names of real people.

Re:

[Z00L00K]

Pay for each DMCA takedown request.

Now define what each request shall cost.

Does not even deter the One Bad Actor

[Roger W Moore]

Actually I fail to see how it even deters the original bad actor. What they were doing was already illegal and they could have been sued for millions so clearly huge financial penalties make little difference to them and all the injunction does is add another financial penalty.

Their legal intervention

[NotEmmanuelGoldstein]

... false takedown notices ...

I am not a lawyer, so what is a "false" notice? AFAIK, the DMCA, 1998 does not define such a thing: If the complaint form is completed, it is a valid request to protect intellectual property. The lack of responsibility is why Google YouTube gives copyright brokers direct access to their blocking and de-listing tools. Google doesn't have legal standing here, by my calculation.

I don't want to complain that a judge gave Google cart-blanche over malicious actors, but legally, this is a band-aid on a hole

Re:

[Z00L00K]

But is there any proof that the one that does the request owns the copyright?

That's the first step - don't allow DMCA takedowns without proof of copyright ownership.

Re: Their legal intervention

[phantomfive]

I think the answer to your question is on page 6 of this document: https://torrentfreak.com/image... [torrentfreak.com] they weren't prevented from filing takedown notices, they were prevented from filing false takedown notices.

Bogus! Where are the perjury charges?

[Anonymous Coward]

We have to kill the DMCA, CDA, etc etc etc.

Big win

[viperidaenz]

These people will need to use a new fake identity now that one of their current fake identities is banned

Re: Big win

[vbdasc]

Or their master will use other two trafficked slaves to do his bidding.

Re:

[viperidaenz]

Maybe it means Google can legally ignore DMCA requests from these people?

Re:

[LazyBoot]

I suspect that's exactly the main reason for this.

Google doing something right?

[Eunomion]

Will wonders never cease. But... it's only symbolically right: They still recklessly run a system that enables such behavior. And even the "legitimate" copyright system is so oppressive that there's hardly a moral difference between fake and real claims.

Wooohoo!

[ghostwheel]

Two down, three trillion to go.

I wish there was some company that had the technology and data to detect these automatically!

Did anything at all change?

[erice]

Weren't they already prohibited from sending "false" DMCA takedown notices? If that isn't already illegal, why isn't it?

was google really financially impacted?

[Jayhawk0123]

"While Google could have requested millions of dollars in compensation, it didn't request a penny. Google's primary goal was to put an end to the abusive behavior, not to seek financial compensation."...

was google really financially impacted by the bogus DMCA takedowns? I'm reluctant to think so... more likely the impacted retailers who had to fight these DMCA's wanted to sue Google for damages for blindly following the bogus DMCA takedowns. And that would have actually cost them... instead they ban 2 na

OK, now for copyright strikes on YouTube

[Syberz]

Now the same should be done for YouTube where bad actors can give other content makers copyright strikes that can demonitize the channel and lead to a ban. This is especially egregious considering that victims of a false copyright strike have very little recourse (even bigger name YouTubers have run into this problem) to reverse the issue since communicating with YouTube/Google is nigh impossible.