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oh noes! Not the DMCA auto-takedown bot!

Said no-one in the entire world except a hand-full of Hollywood studio owners.

That bot shouldn't have existed in the first place, but I know that that falls under "just world fallacy" and is a naive thought.



I interpreted the GP's comment less as a moral claim ("the DMCA bot is good") and more as a claim that the DMCA bot's failure is a strong indicator of internal instability (given that it sits directly at the intersection between Twitter's profit interests and microservices architecture).

Put another way: being unable keep a little bot running, one that keeps an entire industry happy, doesn't bode well for other components of the service.


No it’s proof that people will take anything and run with it. This bot likely had low priority and that’s all


Run with what?

It seems self-evident that the bot was considered low priority, since it isn’t working anymore. But nobody is disputing that: they’re saying that the fact that it is low priority does not bode well.


> This bot likely had low priority and that’s all

If it was a prerequisite to land $100M ARR from all the media properties’ marketing budgets to advertise the multi-billion dollar pipelines of the movie and entertainment industry, that lil’ bot was the gate to $11,415 per hour of revenue at risk if its uptime failed to sufficiently please the attorneys and auditors from those customers.


I mean, does Twitter want to be a party to a copyright lawsuit? If not, following legitimate looking DMCA notifications (and legitimate looking DMCA counter-notifications) and responding to suponeas as necessary gets you an affirmative defense for copyright infringement.

You may not like it, but having a bot do that probably saves a lot of legal hassle.


Content providers cannot be held liable for user generated content under section 230. Try again.


Hm? Intellectual property is explicitly carved out of 230, and even if it wasn’t: it isn’t user generated. Content providers are regularly found liable for infringement on their platforms, especially when the plaintiff can demonstrate willful negligence (which in this case would include discontinuing a seemingly effective scanning system.)


§230(e)(2) says

> (2) No effect on intellectual property law

> Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit or expand any law pertaining to intellectual property.

If section 230 from the CDA of 1996 provided immunity from copyright claims, there would be no reason to include procedural requirements for processing claims in the DMCA of 1998.


Twitter is a global company.

Many jurisdictions take an even harsher line when it comes to being complicit in intellectual property abuse. We saw this famously with The Pirate Bay, Napster etc.


youtube literally been sued over this exact issue multiple times.


Well, Disney won’t care why their copyrighted material is publicly available, noone likes this sort of copyright, but if Elon wants to avoid huge fines he better (make someone) fix it ASAP.


I wonder whether this handful of Hollywood studio owners will have any influence on Twitter's revenue at all...


Well it is exposing them to significant legal risk if they no longer comply, isn't it?




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