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Originator: Pino Carafa Printable Version
Title: YouTube opens a loophole for cyber stalkers
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From: Send Carobit Mail Pino Carafa On: 2008/07/01 02:26:31
Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing you to highlight an issue with the way YouTube handles DMCA reports.

First of all, I am not personally affected by this as nobody has filed any DMCA reports against me, but when I heard about this I felt that some people could be exposed to an unacceptable level of risk.

I am hoping you will take some action to rectify this situation before somebody ends up hurt or worse.

From the way it has been explained to me, the way YouTube handles DMCA reports is as follows:

Anyone can file a DMCA report against a video posted by a YouTube account.

When the user is notified, they have two options. Either they can accept the notification and do nothing, or they can counter the DMCA.

Neither option is satisfactory.

If the user accepts the DMCA, it counts as a DMCA “strike” against the account. Especially if somebody has invested a lot of time and effort into their account, this is not a viable course of action, as it doesn’t take many such “strikes” to have an account suspended.

But the alternative is even worse. Anybody who contests a DMCA report must accompany their counter claim with their personal details. These are then forwarded to the person who originally filed the DMCA.

The reality of “life” on YouTube is that some people get unhealthy fixations on other YouTube members. This is a real and serious problem, and no doubt this is one of the reasons why you implemented mechanisms that allow YouTube members to block other members from their account. With that, and the assured anonymity of having one’s personal details hidden from fellow members of YouTube, people can feel safe participating on your site.

The way you handle DMCAs, however, has handed cyber-stalkers and people with criminal intent a mechanism by which they can terrorise YouTube users. Somebody who feels a profound hatred for another YouTube user now has available to them a way to make that user’s life impossible. All they need to do is file a number of DMCAs.

What choice has somebody at the receiving end of this got? Either they do nothing, and allow the DMCA “strikes” to accumulate, and basically allow the “hater” to DMCA them off YouTube.

But what can they do? If they counter claim, it’s even worse! Their “hater” then comes into possession of their personal details, including name and address. It is bad enough having to put up with a cyber stalker, but it gets levels of magnitude worse when they are then given the opportunity to show up on one’s doorstep.

Like I said already, this is not something that affects me, personally. But it could. And it IS affecting one or two of my YouTube friends. So I would really appreciate it if you could address this now, before something happens that everybody will regret.

Thank you for taking the time to read this communication.
 

Kind regards


Pino Carafa

(rozeboosje)

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