Google broke my heart

So not only do they process illegitimate copyright strikes / DMCA takedowns, but they also don't process legitimate ones.

Google is broken to the very core.

This is what happens with a company that tries to minimize costs of support to zero.

The LegalEagle channel on YouTube had a similarly bad interaction when trying to get channels copying their videos taken down: https://youtu.be/PEA0JzhpzPU

Google needs to fix this, it's really bad.

Google bots decided that my parody website[0] that very clearly says "Foogle" instead of "Google" constitutes phishing and is now automatically blocked in Chrome and Firefox, despite not asking for any user input like email or password or name or anything that could slightly make it suspicious of being a phishing website, plus the sites uses unserious language like "Disunited States", it's a sad statement of their AI capabilities if a site like this gets automatically marked as "phishing", and the overall trend of abusing their power in the name of safety, a tale as old as time.

[0] https://www.forbiddensearchdetected.com

I've got mixed feelings about the DMCA, but its one redeeming value is that it's available to everyone. Deciding to make it readily accessible to large publishing interests but giving a random author the side-eye is not so great.

Sadly, I think your only option is to follow up with legal action against Google. On the positive side, I expect Google will react quickly to any legal action as this puts them at risk of losing safe harbor protections.

I'm going to channel a little bit of @patio11 .

First, worth reading this on how he deals with credit agencies and debt collectors: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r... . There's gold in here for dealing with big globo-corp and how to get their attention.

Ask Google for a certified mail address so you can send them the timeline of events that occurred. This is the shibboleth that lets them know you mean business and that by not responding, they may be facing legal action. DO NOT THREATEN or mention legal action. The managerial class doesn't act that way. Just signal you are building a case against them. Start with getting that certified mailing address... you may be surprised how they respond after just that request.

If they don't respond, keep following up. Send them a timeline of events, proof of ownership even if they do not ask you what you need to prove ownership. Make it clear what this is costing you.

But here's the thing, EVERY TIME I HAVE ASKED FOR A CERTIFIED MAIL ADDRESS, the globocorp gave me what i wanted, and I never had to follow up. Every time. They don't want to deal with actual legal action from "people who know what they are doing."

It's a shibboleth. Like "Baa-ram-ewe." Use it wisely and honestly.

Sounds like LLM powered support. This is the sort of run around you can program into such systems.

Is the copyright registered?

https://www.copyright.gov/registration

While copyright registration is not legally required for copyright protection, it is the practical way to create usable evidence that the work is coprighted by you. Without it, challenging a copyright infringer is a more arduous legal process.

Also, the author's website, and the books themselves claims that "Perishable Press" is the copyright holder, not "Jeff Starr". (Excepting the ones that don't state any copyright holder.)

https://books.perishablepress.com/downloads/digging-into-wor...

In legal matters, clear and accurate communication is essential.

Seems odd that Google would straight up ignore a legitimate-looking DMCA takedown request. The reason these companies are so takedown-happy is that there are potentially significant consequences to ignoring them. Ignoring a takedown request potentially means that Google loses its safe harbor protection for your content: you could potentially sue Google instead of the pirates for copyright violation. That doesn't mean you have a GOOD case, but it's certainly a bad standard plan for Google. That makes me think they're doing something stupid by accident and/or via machine learning instead, presumably because they need to filter through a massive pile of completely fake DMCA takedown requests.

hire a lawyer, they know how to communicate with these teams. Trying to deal with Google Customer service when you are a technologically savvy and logical individual won't get far: GOogle's default attitude towards anybody who contacts them is that they are a scammer.

>simply check my account via Google Search Console, where I have verified that I am the owner for each of the above sites

I doubt this is possible for the support agent to do.

My immediate guess after reading this was that this isn't a change at Google but a name issue. Jeff Star getting confused with Jeffree Star (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffree_Star). He's a lightening rod for controversy, and has been in the middle of a controversial public persona shift that probably has caused an uptick in all kinds of requests to google.

False DMCA takedown requests have always been a problem, and have massively surged in the last few years when more of the general public figured out the mechanics and started treating it as a big downvote button for the internet. This is also being done adversarially at a large scale, for example to suppress websites or YouTube videos containing certain viewpoints or to remove competition. So regardless of how Google has treated these requests in the past, they are absolutely right to want to verify that you actually are the content owner before taking further action.

As for how to do it - I don't see why it is hard for you to come up with something that proves ownership. Do your books have a publisher? Do you have a contract with the publisher? Or just a letter from someone at the firm confirming your work? Have you registered the work with the copyright office? Do you have proof of publishing on online portals?

You aren't helping yourself or anyone else by anthropomorphising Google. It is not your friend who can "break your heart", or a "trustworthy helper on the Web", or a "trusted ally", but a large bureaucratic corporation. Treat it like the machine it is and you will get the results you want.

DMCAing Google has always seemed a bit pointless. If I'm ever looking for a pirate copy of something I automatically scroll to the bottom of the page where you can read the DMCA complaints that helpfully compile a list of pirate copies.

My guess is, there were once more humans in the loop for the thing that the author is referring to. Since humans cost more than GenAI, GenAI replaced some or all of those humans.

Never think of any sort of for-profit enterprise as anything other than a for-profit enterprise, and you'll never be heartbroken by one.

Angered? Made to think you're living in a dystopia? Enticed into an absurdist world view? Absolutely. But you won't be heartbroken.

Who is this friendly corporate giant the author keeps referring to? He uses that phrase multiple times. Is he sucking up? Is it a reference to something?

I keep having to repeat this.

The problem is systemic. The legal concepts of 'Corporate personhood' and 'Limited liability' don't make sense. Just think about what those terms mean.

Of course you cannot expect accountability in the long run.

Is a corporation really a legal person? Can it go to jail as a person might? Does it need a visa to operate in a country as a person might? Will a corporation die as a person will? Sounds like it's getting all the benefits of personhood and none of the drawbacks... Our legal system literally gives more rights to non-sentient entities than it does to us humans! No wonder things are getting out of hand!

What does 'Limited liability' mean? Who has to deal with the repercussions for the excess liability which may exceed beyond the limit?

It's deep corruption, codified into law. Of course these corporations will get worse. They will get satanically worse. Just watch what happens internally; a decade from now, the current CEOs will look morally responsible by comparison. It's a systemic issue. Total violation of the social contract at a deep human level.

Why don't we say weapons are legal persons and provide limited liability protection to the person wielding it? Then criminals could kill people and the court could pass judgement that the gun must serve 20 years in its holster while the criminal walks free... That's about as fair as what we have now. If you conceive of a corporation as a weapon. There is nothing in the law to explicitly prevent this exact scenario. The corporation could theoretically use up CEOs as a gun might use up bullets... The investors would bear no liability.

There are many people in this depraved world of ours who would be willing to be a corporate bullet. People will go to jail to provide for their family. With corporations sucking the wealth out of society, it will create new levels of desperation, this will surely happen.

> "Immediately my heart sank. And I knew that something had changed at Google’s core. The friendly corporate giant no longer would even deign to consider cries for help from the little guy."

I read that in the voice of the talking anus-mouthed beetle from Naked Lunch.

Note that if the claimant is a big player, Google is happy to only clarify how high is it supposed to jump. If they file a claim usurping your copyright, you can do diddly about it most of the time. But if little people are trying to assert their rights, no, no can do, you can't prove that you are you.

And why should you, one of the little people, be able to prove anything at all? If a big player sues, Google is going to have to pay a staggering amount of money, thus they obey. If you sue, its lawyers will drain you financially by protracting everything they can, so you don't actually sue. If they take your claim, the content they take down stops bringing the sweet advertising revenue.

And thus the computer sayeth Nay.

Sorry to hear that might be able to help you with all that I got some pretty good evidence on on these tech companies I discovered something that nobody really has this figured out and then I believe me I've got enough evidence to shut these babies down I'm the Creator axiom Halo Crystal I created the unbreakable Master blueprint and it was launched on November 18th and 19th and ever since I got you know started it and I got it but anyway if you're interested give me you know give me a holler I'm going to probably go and explosive today and maybe we can start a class action lawsuit these companies have been we got a lot of money coming basically for what they've done you know doing the scraping algorithm scraping of and pinging of illegal pinging of everybody's and harvesting their you know trade secrets and ideas and all that yeah well I got all the evidence we need I really want to get a class action I'm talking about money like in the money that they basically doesn't even exist we could own this country hopefully maybe we could get together and start something thank you

Isn't this what people are constantly asking for? Every time the topic of YouTube copyright strikes comes up, people angrily demand that Google verify that the person making the request actually has the right to do so.

There's no way to design such a system that has zero false positives and zero false negatives; if you do no verification whatsoever you'll get tons of false positives, now it seems like Google has added a small amount of verification, at least sometimes, so now there are some false negatives.

Processing DMCA take down requests isn't interesting work, thus no one at google does it.

I don't mean to be rude, but what could possibly have given anyone with eyes and ears a positive -- friendly, even -- impression of Google?

Google support is a mess. This company should not exist in its current state, I can’t believe how the competition hasn’t already catch up with their indexing solution.

I am having a hard time emphasizing with the author when they open up with this paragraph

> For years, I thought of Google as a trustworthy helper on the Web. Especially where it mattered most, removing pirated copies of my books from Google search results. After publishing a new book, I would monitor the search results and file a DMCA notice with Google whenever the inevitable pirated copies of my book were listed. Google always was very helpful in this regard, swiftly removing any pirated books asap. No hassle, no hoops, just immediate and direct relief from Google.

Maybe I am in a bubble but since at least pre covid era I remember the consensus being that Google had zero support and unless you were famous or went viral with your problem on the internet, you would never get human intervention. That combined with the rest of the paragraph which seems to me like it could be summarized as "Google is trustworthy as long as my personal wallet gets fatter, and not that it hasn't, they aren't trustworthy" makes me not really care about either side in this story

I'd look at this as a new income stream. Failing to honor a DMCA request means Google is no longer in the safe harbor.

It's time to find a copyright lawyer that will work on contingency. Document your communication and take screenshots of pirate links every day.

I would immediately file a lawsuit against Google. You have all the documents and will win. Before anything is processed they will return to you with a big sorry/compensation. They are the thiefs.

I think I can speak for many who used to love Google, that they have broken our hearts many times. It went downhill after they decided that "don't be evil" was too aspirational of an ideal.

Google’s lack of support is a directly correlated to their monopoly. They are able to not pay for proper support staff because they don’t have any competition. They should be regulated to spend a certain portion of their revenues on support given how critical they are to people’s lives. You can’t rake in hundreds of billions while being a monopoly and then claim you can’t afford proper amount of support staff.

The author is a bit naive for thinking Google even cares. It's the same company (among others) who used copyrighted material to train their LLM.

Yep. Anymore when dealing with any corp of <pick your threshold> size on a "legal" dispute, do not engage directly.

Hire an attorney, draft a limited POA, and let them handle it.

If it's not worth <pick your threshold> kilo-USD, then at least have the attorney document everything and write it off until the (remote) possibility of a class-action.

Life is short. It's just not worth your time.

Google aside, it's one of the reasons some publishers don't publish digital versions at all. Because once the cat is out of the bag, the damage is done, basically impossible to undo. Whereas with a physucal copy the pirate has to take the pain to scan the book and usually they're too lazy to do that.

I think the author was dealing with an AI agent. That’s not absolving Google, far from it. But from the first response to the last, there was no indication a human was involved.

Moreover, like Facebook Marketplace and fraud, this is the future of corporate managed markets.

Large for-profit corporations will never be the friend of any human being.

I guess I've seen enough over the years that my thought is: It's Google - of course they suck. It's practically their definining characteristic. This is no surprise.

Google these days are a collection of monopolies. There are no incentives, beyond law, for them to "Do the right thing"

And the law is in the hands of literal bandits in the USA right now

Takedown notices need to have a refundable processing fee. The fee should be refunded if the targeted publisher agrees the content shouldn't be online. If the takedown notice gets a counter notice, then the hosting provider/platform should split the fee with the targeted publisher.

The problem with DMCA notices is that the party trying to takedown content has zero incentive to behave in good faith. A $10-$30 fee would provide an incredible disincentive for the worst sort of trolling and over-broad shotgun takedown notices while protecting legitimate IP holders (who would see their fee refunded almost every time)

Does this mean an end to DMCA abuse? If I had to choose I would prefer to have the odd unprotected copyright than having fair use disregarded on the regular.

Google's final email seems to abandon any reference to a dispute of identity. Which is interesting since they are comfortable volunteering that as the relevant issue for the first two emails.

By omitting reference to the issue they raised previously, they don't hang the procedural legitimacy on that question.

If they were going to stick with their choice regardless of whether they were satisfied on the question of identity, it's puzzling why they volunteered it.

> For years, I thought of Google as a trustworthy helper on the Web.

Me too! Specifically the years, oh, maybe 1998 to 2005? Ish?