Anatomy Of A Bogus DMCA Scam Run By A Plagiarizing Website
Furnished content.
We have been banging the drum for some time now that the way the DMCA has been setup and is put in practice is wide, wide open for fraud and abuse. A huge part of the problem is how content owners police the internet in general, with the overwhelming majority of DMCA notices coming from bots and automated systems. Because of the imperfections of this technology, and our allowance of its use, the end result is that copyright policing on the internet is done with a shotgun rather than a scalpel, leading to all manner of mistakes and collateral damage. But even setting those instances aside, the fact is that DMCAing content on the internet requires so little in the way of verification that there is any true ownership of the content rights in question that bogus DMCA takedowns are the norm, not the exception. And, given how little consequence comes along with issuing a bogus DMCA notice, bad actors are practically encouraged to perform this sort of chicanery.This leads to all sorts of subterfuge from bad actors looking to fool the people or, more likely, the automated systems policing any of this. One story from Plagiarism Today serves as a nice primer on just how intricate and annoying these nefarious actors behave. Writer Victoria Strauss tells the story of having one of her online articles removed over a DMCA claim. Strauss was understandably confused, as she was absolutely the original writer of the piece, and so she went digging into the details.The original post, which was published on September 28, 2018, detailed the implosion of Fiery Seas Publishing. She had written the article herself and couldn’t figure out what was infringing about it. However, when she checked out the “Original URL”, it took her to a post on a blog named Comusa and operated by a person known as Bella Andreas. However, the post was dated to September 3, 2018, 25 days before the real original post went live.Strauss then realized that the plagiarist clearly backdated the post and then filed a DMCA notice to make it look as if she was the infringer. She then went through other posts on the blog (which has been inactive for nearly a year now) and found that every post on the site followed that pattern, copied wholesale from another site and backdated. Strauss further noticed that many of the post dates on her site actually predate the registration of her domain, with some going as far back as 2014 and the domain being registered in 2016. Worth noting is that "Bella Andreas" has issued at least 10 of these DMCA notices on other publications as well. All appear to have copied the content of others and then backdated the dates of the posts to facilitate the ability to send a DMCA notice.But... why? Well, this looks to be a slightly new take and method for setting up a "spam site" where there is copied content from other publications. The speculation is that the spammer, whatever their actual name is, is trying to generate some traffic to the site through these spam posts so that it can setup more lucrative online advertising programs on the site at a later date.All in all, it’s a standard spam blog, complete with misspellings in the tag line and name. It doesn’t have ads or outbound links, but if the site was only launched in December 2020. The operator is likely waiting until it is performing better to add them.What makes this case unique is the DMCA notices. Why would a spammer want to send DMCA notices against the original authors and draw more attention to themselves? Though it’s impossible to know for certain, there are a few reasons one might. Those reasons are basically what you'd expect: attempts to get plagiarized posts considered the "original" by search engines like Google so as to drive up traffic and engagement. The bottom line, however, is that this is a systemized approach for abusing the DMCA process to benefit from the work of others. And it's also wildly clear that the current DMCA process and legislation is toothless for dealing with this sort of fraud and abuse.The DMCA is in desperate need of reform and one of the things that is needed is an effective system to target those that maliciously abuse it. The upcoming Copyright Small Claims Court may provide some help with that, but it remains to be seen how useful and practical it will be in these cases. It likely won't be useful at all. That Small Claims Court is both a complete mess of its own and will almost certainly open up yet another front for fraudsters to battle on.The actual fix for this is far simpler. Build some real teeth and consequences into the DMCA process to enforce punishment on those who engage in fraud and abuse. It really should be that simple.
Read more here
posted at: 12:00am on 01-May-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)
Content Moderation Case Study: Craigslist Implements Phone Verification To Fight Spam; Spammers Fight Back (2008)
Furnished content.
Summary: Craigslist -- the online marketplace that pretty much still looks the way it looked when it went live all the way back in 1995 -- has the same problems every online marketplace has: spammers and scammers.The battle against people seeking to abuse the system has been ongoing since the site's inception, but in 2008, Craigslist implemented a new control measure that temporarily stymied spammers who had found several ways to beat the systems previously employed by the online market.To mitigate spam and limit the effectiveness of scam operations, Craigslist began requiring a phone number for verification on certain postings. This posed a problem for spammers hoping to engage in mass distribution of their "offerings" since it was unlikely any spammer or scammer would want to have their personal phone tied to their illegitimate (if not actually illegal) operations. When an ad was submitted to Craigslist, the site's automated verification process would call the ad poster to relay a one-time code that would permit the listing to be posted.That wasn't the end of this new weapon against spammers deployed by Craigslist. If successfully-posted ads were subsequently flagged by other users as spam/scams, the phone number associated with the ad placement would be blocked.This led to a pitched battle between Craigslist and scammers/spammers who were interested in exploiting the market's reach. A long discussion on a message board frequented by spammers suggested several workarounds to avoid the countermeasures implemented by Craigslist. (To give you some idea how far back this discussion goes, there are recommendations for utilizing pay phones.)Some suggested using a method favored by drug dealers and other criminal conspirators: burner phones. This was an admittedly-expensive workaround for a business model that requires hundreds of views to attract a few paying victims.Others suggest buying subscriptions to online spam enablers -- ones that provided users with tons of disposable numbers without the expense of buying new phones every time a phone number was rendered unusable.Many of these suggestions were rejected by forum members, which suggests spam is only profitable when costs hover near $0. Some members speculated Craigslist was eliminating even more options by rejecting any numbers linked to VoIP services -- the cheapest option for aspiring scammers. No solution appeared to work for everyone, strongly suggesting the phone verification move by Craiglist at least temporarily put a dent in scammers' efforts.Decisions to be made by Craigslist:- Should reputation damage control (i.e., preventing being known as a host for scams/spam) be prioritized over customer growth (limiting entry barriers like phone verification requirements)?
- Does Craigslist have the funding and/or personnel to add human moderators to the verification process?
- Should users who are willing to verify their identities be given more credence when reporting ads that may lead to blacklisting of other users?
Questions and policy implications to consider:- Does requiring a phone eliminate users create a new barrier for entry that may push legitimate users to competing services?
- Does blacklisting numbers linked to reported ads limit the spread of spam? Or can it help spammers willing to report other spam artists to solidify their control of the market?
Resolution: As is the case anywhere goods are sold online, there is no permanent resolution. What worked in 2008 is not nearly as effective a dozen years down the road. But the discussion in this forum shows it did have a severe impact on spam almost immediately, even if its effectiveness was blunted by the advance of time and tech.Craigslist still uses phone verification for certain posts, limiting users to three verification calls a day to each account, which cannot be triggered more than once every five minutes. VoIP numbers are still forbidden to be used for verification calls, which unfortunately impacts some legitimate users with no other phone options.Originally published to the Trust & Safety Foundation website.
Read more here
posted at: 12:00am on 01-May-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)
|
|