If you're an ISP, fully automated software sends DMCA notices for video content copyright violations all the time. There's no human in the loop anymore. If you see the vast bulk of these notices, a lot of them are spurious. It's a GIGO problem.

Even more entertaining, the bot has no idea what is or isn't legit. Ages ago I received a take-down from "The Internet Police" ordering me to remove all the Atari game updates from the FTP servers. Thing is, they belonged there. Atari paid us to run parts of their site, including game updates.

You have not met the staff of these orgs. It is actually not exaggeration to say they live in a media bubble where their studio chiefs are captains of industry that are infallible and are to be served with total fealty.

I once sat in a meeting where some VP at a major client asked (because they were technically daft) if it was possible -in not so many words- DDOS google because "they (google) have all this infringing content on their site"

I had to tell me boss "is anyone going to explain to that guy that what he's describing is A. not realistic and B. not legal?"

> studio chiefs are captains of industry that are infallible and are to be served with total fealty

Harvey Weinstein was taken down. I wonder if others will be.

It seems to me that they are deliberately conflating "infringing someone's copyright" and "using to infringe someone's copyright" - there's a difference between "you have my copyrighted code in your github" and "you are providing software that can be used for copying my movie" - the first is what DMCA notices are for, not the second

Your last sentence is not true. The DMCA notice can be used for anything that the DMCA covers. One thing in the DMCA is:

> linking users to an online location containing [...] infringing activity

Extremely broad, but a link to a file sharing site with infringing content is also infringing. The DMCA notice can be used against the site containing the link.

How many degrees of separation is this true for?

That’s a good question. A strict reading would imply a single one, and would mean that only TPB would be infringing because they’re the ones “linking” to the content (they don’t host it). But it could easily be construed to mean a link to TPB is also infringing.

The problem with the DMCA is that it’s so broadly worded with not enough words defined. What is the definition of “linking”? After a quick skim, I couldn’t find it. Are only hyperlinks (<a> tags) counted? Or are magnet “links” counted (despite not taking you to the content, but telling you the hashes of the content)? There’s no clear answer.

So to answer your question: we don’t know.

Notice-and-takedown provisions are not just for things that actually infringe copyright, and the "DMCA notice" part may be an extremely easy misclassification of the letter sent to GitHub. More specifically, notice-and-takedown is for user-submitted content that is illegal or tortious to knowingly distribute. Copyrighted content is the main offender here, but there are other categories, especially "anti-circumvention" tools illegal under other provisions of the DMCA.

Seems like they're moving towards thought crime than actual crime.