TorrenFreak:: Should Bogus Copyright Takedown Senders Be Punished?
Every week copyright holders send out millions of takedown notices to websites all across the Internet. While the majority of these claims are legitimate, a healthy percentage are not. These “errors” can cause serious harm to the public, but the senders are never held responsible for their mistakes. Perhaps it’s time to punish repeat senders of bogus takedown notices?
One of the problems is that many rightsholders use completely automated systems to inform Google and other sites of infringements. They swear under penalty of perjury that their notices are correct, but this is often an outright lie.
Since most websites simply don’t have the resources to check the validity of these bogus notices, content is then censored in error.
My dream solution is to reduce liability of web sites with regard to notices from copyright holders that have a record of bogus notices. Let sites move notices from these companies to the bottom of the pile to be processed last. Reduce maximum lawsuit awards by a fixed percentage each time a bogus notice is received.