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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't understand why the author does not just submit his ID and the copyright page of the book in a single photo. If the link the author is trying to take down has a copyright notice naming them, then link that too.
I am a bit biased though - I read way too many stories in HN of abuses of DMCA than this sort of issue. That said, this does seem unresponsive.
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.
The LegalEagle channel on YouTube had a similarly bad interaction when trying to get channels copying their videos taken down: https://youtu.be/PEA0JzhpzPU
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.)
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.
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?
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.
> Especially where it mattered most, removing pirated copies of my books from Google search results.
Make your books available for free, and you won't have this problem. You can't expect people to pay for something that literally costs nothing once it has been created.
You may also sell paper versions. Some people like myself enjoy reading paper better and will pay for hard copy if they like the book enough or expect to refer to it often.
I agree that it is probably impossible to maintain the economy around selling copies of a work when those copies are practically free, but making your works actually free in the current business models is giving up too soon.
There needs to be a transition from making money from unit sales to something else, and until that's sorted out I think having piracy being at least stigmatized for being wrong makes sense.
I think it's important for a creator to ensure that the experience for those who want to pay is as good as possible. Apart from that I don't think any amount of worry will help very much.
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.
I have hosting that regularly shut down my servers based on legal demands from jurisdictions that should have no reach my service whatsoever, or on total bogus claim.
If I refuse to act, they shut me down. If I'm late in acting, they shut me down.
Zero check on the legitimacy on the claim, zero trust in my debunking the claim.
The reality is, it's not economically viable to do so. I'm not giving them enough money to be worth it. So as long as I'm a small actor, anything that looks remotely legit is just processed as-is with no recourse.
The entire world can basically impose its view on me as long as they find a convincing way to tell my hosting "you are at risk".
And it's not one single provider either. Most of them do that: domain name, vps hosts, proxies, caches, etc.
A major part of this problem appears to be that there is no identifiable humans in the loop to bring complaints to. Many of Google's responses are automated and black box algorithms.
When a Google response to a problem is outright bonkers, there is often not much that can be done, but to keep hitting the head on the wall (hoping something different happens) or be the lucky few that can get or has a human contact at Google. From what I've read and heard, those with human contacts, often have been identified as needing special attention. Where they are persons who are making significant money for Google and the businesses they own or can create problems in court.
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.
This has been going on for decades on YouTube. Fair use? DMCA. Cover song? DMCA. 3 second clip of the intro drone? DMCA. You playing it live on an instrument, DMCA.
Their copyright system is only there to do one thing, enrich the corporations they work with.
after reading the very first thing i thought was: would be comical if the OP's blog were about AI
i was wrong but i could find on the 1° page this [0]... which seem a pretty hypocrite act to consider a technology that violates copyright at its core. "you eat what you plant"
74 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 80.5 ms ] threadNever 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.
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.
I am a bit biased though - I read way too many stories in HN of abuses of DMCA than this sort of issue. That said, this does seem unresponsive.
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.
Google needs to fix this, it's really bad.
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.
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.
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.
I doubt this is possible for the support agent to do.
Make your books available for free, and you won't have this problem. You can't expect people to pay for something that literally costs nothing once it has been created.
You may also sell paper versions. Some people like myself enjoy reading paper better and will pay for hard copy if they like the book enough or expect to refer to it often.
There needs to be a transition from making money from unit sales to something else, and until that's sorted out I think having piracy being at least stigmatized for being wrong makes sense.
I think it's important for a creator to ensure that the experience for those who want to pay is as good as possible. Apart from that I don't think any amount of worry will help very much.
Google is broken to the very core.
This is what happens with a company that tries to minimize costs of support to zero.
I have hosting that regularly shut down my servers based on legal demands from jurisdictions that should have no reach my service whatsoever, or on total bogus claim.
If I refuse to act, they shut me down. If I'm late in acting, they shut me down.
Zero check on the legitimacy on the claim, zero trust in my debunking the claim.
The reality is, it's not economically viable to do so. I'm not giving them enough money to be worth it. So as long as I'm a small actor, anything that looks remotely legit is just processed as-is with no recourse.
The entire world can basically impose its view on me as long as they find a convincing way to tell my hosting "you are at risk".
And it's not one single provider either. Most of them do that: domain name, vps hosts, proxies, caches, etc.
The system is broken.
When a Google response to a problem is outright bonkers, there is often not much that can be done, but to keep hitting the head on the wall (hoping something different happens) or be the lucky few that can get or has a human contact at Google. From what I've read and heard, those with human contacts, often have been identified as needing special attention. Where they are persons who are making significant money for Google and the businesses they own or can create problems in court.
This has been going on for decades on YouTube. Fair use? DMCA. Cover song? DMCA. 3 second clip of the intro drone? DMCA. You playing it live on an instrument, DMCA.
Their copyright system is only there to do one thing, enrich the corporations they work with.
i was wrong but i could find on the 1° page this [0]... which seem a pretty hypocrite act to consider a technology that violates copyright at its core. "you eat what you plant"
[0] https://perishablepress.com/diving-into-ai/