Fiddy DMCAs and a nice big wet poo :)

2 words: Bulletproof hosting

Wow these shady mother fuckers are still doing this!? This exact same scumbag company did this to me a year or two ago, got my site penalized by google etc.

I had absolutely nothing violating any DMCA content let alone anything that they were even searching for. Want to know what it was and why they struck me? A file name of a .jpg had a similar text string as a cam model.

They exclusively filed the thing based on a file name without even looking at it (It was something completely different of course) and caused damage to my site and it never recovered.

Disclaimer: I am not talking about Cam Model Protection, I don't have experience with them, nor do I believe all model protections are bad or all webmasters are good, this is silly, use your judgement and form an opinion on a case by case using your experience

- Consider the following scenario (one simple scenario of many possibilities):

A model m has a profile picture uploaded on sponsor s1. s1 becomes owner as per their terms (terms that differ from other sponsors' terms of course). m likes that picture of hers (otherwise it wouldn’t be her profile picture) and uploads it to sponsor s2 (they have another set of terms). s1 owns the content, s1 & s2 distribute and make the profile pic available to their affiliates. Google and others index the pages that affiliates have skillfully produced. Model m searches for her username and sees thousands of matches! wtf!! she immediately gets in touch with a "model protection" service (mp) that charges her a hefty monthly recurring fee and files a dmca on her behalf not realizing (or maybe they do) they are not representing the actual owner of the content (which is s1, see above). mp use their unauthorized crawlers to detect the profile picture. Those crawlers are not perfect so they also identify wrong content and flag it in the process as per noted in the previous post. mp will file dmcas to thousands of affiliates swearing by "persuant of article xxxx" and "by God and by Law" etc .. that they represent the owner and will pay if this isn't accurate. But, indeed it isn't accurate: back to the first step, s1 actually owns the content not m. mp doesn't represent s1. mp in fact is harmful to s1 by attacking it by proxy (attacking its affiliates).


model protection service, in the above scenario:
- trespassed, used webmasters bandwidth with non-legit bots and without explicit authorization, in breach of terms, etc..
- lied under oath: the content is owned by sponsors who authorized their affiliates to use it
- are detrimental to sponsors by de-indexing pages that drive traffic to them.
- mislead models into believing dmca is a de-indexing tool.
- benefited from the confusion and entertained further confusion by mixing actual piracy content
- have been unreasonable by not attempting to establish contact before escalating


Of course this is only one case of many. Each case should be carefully addressed because nothing is ever so simple. Automation and filing in bulk with minimal human intervention seems a bad idea. To that you add that they don't try to establish a channel of discussion with webmasters.


And now the article again:
Source: What A Shock: Scammers Are Abusing Takedown System With DMCA Claims