DMCA takedown requests are sent under the penalty of perjury for false claims, so doing so is a criminal offense. The requester is also subject to civil liability.
YouTube’s content takedown system isn’t running on DMCA requests. It’s just a private agreement between YouTube and the labels: You don’t sue us and we give you the power to disable any song you own immediately without having to go through us.
Maybe the contract between YouTube and the labels contains punishments for labels wrongfully disabling songs they don’t own – but I very much doubt that.
>DMCA takedown requests are sent under the penalty of perjury for false claims
Unfortunately, perjury requires willful false statements, made in bad faith, which is very, very hard to prove. In fact, to my knowledge, nobody has ever successfully sued a major label for making bogus takedowns.
Perhaps a negligence clause should be added to the DMCA.
The songs were flagged by Youtube's ContentID system, which looks for infringing material and gives the labels the option of directly removing it. No DMCA notices were involved.
YT identifies possibly infringing content via ContentID. Notifies the label.
Either at this stage or the reassertion stage, the label must file a DMCA notice, under penalty of perjury (the requirements for filing a notice are de minimis, a simple text template would suffice).
If the label is correct in its claim, it (and YT) are protected. If not, the falsely-accused infringer may seek remedy under 17 USC 512(f).
Unfortunately, that's limited to attorney's fees and damages, there are no additional penalties stipulated.
Who could pay your USA politicians enough to give such a clause teeth given the deep pockets of media mega-corps?
The damage performed is restriction of the entire populations ability to enjoy a PD work. So 50¢ per head of population should be reasonable damages. That should stop such fraud against the populace pretty quickly I'd think?
I'm assuming you're implying that attempting to deny the rights of citizens to use works in the public domain doesn't provide sufficient harm to support a law suit?
In which case I disagree; it is an insidious harm inflicted on the entire citizenship.
The issue isn't that it doesn't indicate harm, and I'm not saying that standing wouldn't permit a suit, but in general, unless the plaintiff can demonstrate to the court direct harm.
If that harm is shared by a large group of persons, any one person may not have standing to demonstrate harm to that group, unless a class action can be brought.
I do entirely agree with your point that this is a harm against, not only the citizenship, but all persons who may lawfully use public domain or otherwise unencumbered works. That's unfortunately not the question addressed by standing, and law (often, though not always) hinges on specifics.
Law isn't my specialty, though I dabble in some research on the topic.
>unless the plaintiff can demonstrate to the court direct harm //
The harm per capita is slight in financial terms I'd agree. But demonstrating the harm is simple - I did something with a PD work, this company acted to prevent my free exercise of using that PD work.
It's akin to blocking a public right of way (not sure about law concerning such things outside the UK sorry) - you block access on a path or road that should be free to access by the public, you're preventing a person from exercising their rights.
Possibly there is a libel issue too - the company [maliciously] claim you're copyright infringing, you show the work used is out of copyright and that the company would have [on the balance of probabilities] known that.
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¹ I gather that's the measure used for torts in the UK courts.
