erik lundegaard

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Monday December 23, 2024

Here's Searching For You, Kid: How a review of a Humphrey Bogart movie led to a DMCA copyright claim

This is a story about the stupidity of our online/AI world—meaning it’s annoying to experience and dull to hear about later. You’re hearing about it later but I imagine you’ve experienced it elsewhere. Either way, apologies.


Last month, I got an email from the Google Search Console Team informing me that a post on this website had been flagged for copyright infringement and would be removed from Google search results. When I dug further, I discovered the complaint had been filed by Owego Co. Ltd., on behalf of author RJ Kane and his magnum opus King of the Underworld. How had I infringed upon Mr. Kane? By writing a review of King of the Underworld … the 1939 Warners Bros. movie starring Humphrey Bogart.

Did I quote Mr. Kane in my review? No. Did I mention him? Of course not. Did I have an inkling he existed? Please. His book, and the 1939 Warner Bros. movie, shared a title. As near as I could figure, that was the infringement. 

I wasn’t alone. Owego flagged 29 other websites, including Instagram, Etsy, and The New York Times. But I did have recourse. Google told me I could hire an attorney. Or Google might reinstate my review into its search results “upon receipt of a DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] Counter Notification.”

That's the direction I went, but on the site I was immediately asked for the reference ID for the flagged material. “The reference ID,” they mentioned further down, “is provided in the notification you received when we restricted your content...” Right. Except there was no reference ID in the email. I took a few guesses—maybe this bunch of numbers? Maybe those?—but kept getting “Invalid ID” responses.

At this point, I did what you do in situations where you have no recourse: I went on social media and bitched. I live a fairly marginal existence on social—fewer than 100 followers on Threads—but the post blew up: 25k views, 1k likes, much commiseration, a few suggestions of what was really going on. One of those, from an RPG tabletop publisher, made the most sense to me:

My read on this is Owego Co. Ltd. is attempting to increase search results for their client by removing other references to the title from Google’s index. It’s a sleazy but clever hack, made more clever because Google is playing along with it.

I was almost flattered. They wanted my review out of the way to improve their Google search results? Who did they think I was?

None of this is a bug, by the way; it’s baked into the system. The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act is strong on copyright but weak on liability for online service providers. Meaning Google is not liable for including my Humphrey Bogart review in its search results, and it is also not liable for removing my Humphrey Bogart review from its search results. It doesn’t know. And it doesn’t want to know. Knowing takes time and thought. And Google is too busy making money to think.

Several days later, I tried Google’s Counter Notification site again, and the glitch—if it was a glitch—was fixed. Afterwards, I received a no-reply email which reminded me Google was a busy entity: “We will only be able to provide you with a response, if we determine your request may be a valid and actionable legal complaint…”

Two days later, I got this:

We have received your counter notice. We’ll forward it to the user who requested removal of your content. If we don’t receive proof that they have filed a legal action against you within 10 business days, we’ll reinstate the material in question.

Meaning Google still hadn’t done due diligence. I don’t know if Google can read but surely Google can search? For, say, anything copyrightable by RJ Kane in my review? Instead, it kept playing arbiter determined to know nothing but the process—a process, it should be added, that is particularly burdensome to the accused.

In the end, 10 business days passed, Google apparently didn’t receive proof that the publisher of RJ Kane’s books was suing me for writing a review of a 1939 Humphrey Bogart movie, and my review was reinstated. Now, if you search for “King of the Underworld,” you can see my review again. Eventually. The first few results are about RJ Kane’s series of books, while no. 3 is the IMDb page for the Humphrey Bogart movie. But if you keep scrolling, if you keep hitting “next,” you’ll get to my review. It’s 90th with a bullet.

Posted at 11:24 AM on Monday December 23, 2024 in category Personal Pieces