alt Hacker NewsWho decides what counts as a "real identity"?
Fictional address, sure: that would, as I understand, be some kind of fraud, and can reasonably be prohibited if there's a mechanism to do so… but then you run into the problem that not everyone has an address.
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The onus is on the DMCA processor to verify the legitimacy of the claim. I don't have a real solution, but Congress created the problem and should solve it.
There's of course a whole legal system that has been dealing with this since for ever.
If I were to implement it myself, I'd use a third party service like those that can verify passports and driver's licenses and so on.
from another perspective - who is better resourced than Google to determine if a person and place are real or fictitious? They make these decisions all the time when it suits them. And explain to me this population who is filing DMCA take-down requests that doesn't have an address? the Venn diagram seems shockingly small.
> Who decides what counts as a "real identity"?
Notaries do this all the time often for free or for a fairly minimal fee.
The solution doesn't have to be perfect to be better.
Establish the identities of people is something the courts have long had to deal with and is nothing new for them.
I appreciate the sentiment, as someone who is sympathetic to the plight of the homeless / unhoused. But in practical terms, when it comes to aligning a system with justice, IMHO requiring DMCA plaintiffs to have a legal address seems preferable to the status quo.