Shouldn't automated takedowns be considered null and void? If so, is there a way to allow firms that are known to send bogus automated takedowns be blacklisted? (i.e. you can always ignore them, if they try to push anything, you just point to their history of automated processes)

Something.

Anything. To discourage this behavior. To hit them where it hurts. (The wallet.)

Whenever I hear about automated takedowns I think of the Gibson short story "Burning Chrome".

They should. But MAFIAA loves automated takedowns, and they don't care if they're valid either. So it's likely not going to happen.

Fuck the MAFIAA, they're not the only one who matters. This is a problem for any US company.

Well, "any US company" can't coordinate well enough with "any other US company" to bribe the Congress and fix it, therefore they fall prey to the ones that can coordinate to maintain the status quo.

True. I guess the only recourse is to revolt, roll out the guillotine, and solve the RIAA/MPAA problem the old fashioned way.

If you can organize a revolt, it means you can coordinate enough to at least try and fix the problem without (much) bloodshed.

That is why they don't have takedown laws like this in Europe, because you can't just bribe the government.

But then again, we still have to go to streets to prevent the government from passing stupid stuff like ACTA.

Yeah Sweden may have shutdown TPB and arrested the founders but at least file sharing is an official religion, right?

You can very definitly bribe European governments.

Send one communication saying "your bot is clearly throwing up false positives; take action to investigate & remediate, ceasing all bot usage until implemented". Now they're aware / can't claim lack of knowledge. Give them a week or two to read the mail & turn the bot off, then any subsequent requests charge them for. If the fine's based on damages, charge them for all employees time taken to trawl through removing all spammy requests / for the cost of the team on your side who have to develop the automated filters.

> Send one communication saying "your bot is clearly throwing up false positives; take action to investigate & remediate, ceasing all bot usage until implemented". Now they're aware / can't claim lack of knowledge.

Yes, they can. The fact that someone made that claim about the reliability of the process doesn't mean that the person sending the notice knew that any particular notice was in fact false at the time they sent it, even notices made after the claim of unreliability.

It is possible that if it can be proven that the recipient read the complaint, and failed to investigate it because they believed it was likely to be correct (or if, even without such a notice, they knew of the unreliability of the process and failed to investigate the facts of particular notices and just blindly relied on the process), and that decision was motivated by a desire to avoid discovering that the information was false, then they might be considered to have constructive knowledge, but that's a far cry from "a notice was sent claiming that the process was unreliable, so any error resulting from that process automatically will be found to be 'knowing'."

I think the DMCA requires that you obey take down requests without charge, if you don't, you loose safe harbour provision.

Whoa, stop right there.

Setting loose a bot that takes real action in the world when you don't know what it is going to do and failing to even review its actions?

That is a waaaay worse crime!

Punishing or preventing irresponsible bot use will only become more important with the rise of machine intelligence/deep learning, IoT, drones, etc.