Someone Under Federal Indictment Impersonates A Journalist To File Bogus DMCA Notice

Copyright

from the system-still-works! dept

Everyone’s favorite abusable statute is back at it. Anyone can file a DMCA takedown request. Not everyone gets theirs granted. But it’s a zero-cost, mostly-zero risk effort that takes about five minutes from start to finish. It’s no wonder it’s been abused by a handful of ex-cons and, very memorably, by a revenge porn purveyor who suddenly developed concerns about personal privacy.

In this case, it’s someone named in an Albuquerque Journal article about a federal fraud indictment. The most obvious pick would be the couple named early on in the article by Nicole Perez: Michael Jacobs and/or Ruth Handler-Jacobs. But there are others listed as well, co-conspirators Rienzie Edwards (of Sri Lanka), F.K. Ho (a broker located in Singapore), and a couple of other Americans, Laurence Lester and Rachel Gendrau.

It could be any one of these people (though the fractured English in the takedown request would seem to point overseas), but there’s no way to know for sure because the DMCA notice is clearly falsely filed in the name of the journalist who wrote the article. This appropriation of someone else’s name and profession leads to one of the most unlikely claims ever made in a DMCA notice: that journalists refer to publishing articles as “posting a content.”

Here’s the whole BS claim:

I am Nicole Perez. I posted a content about Michael Jacobs’s fraud cases on abqjournal.com. I personally investigated that my original content is copied and posted on different websites. I contacted the webmaster team of the websites to remove it, but did not get any positive response. I request you to remove it from online searches.

It’s extremely likely none of what’s said here is true, starting with the name used. I find it incredibly hard to believe someone impersonating a journalist “contacted webmasters” to have these articles removed. (The lack of positive response is the only believable part, but that relies on the original contact taking place.) It’s even harder to believe when one of the websites is the Albuquerque Journal’s Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/TheAlbuquerqueJournal/posts/10154300263908237

It’s impossible to believe when one of the targeted URLs is the DOJ’s indictment press release.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/manhattan-us-attorney-announces-charges-against-six-individuals-international-high

Others targeted include Ripoff Report, Courthouse News Service, and Sri Lankan news site The Sunday Times. The inclusion of this site shifts the needle of blame towards Reinzie Edwards. This story includes a photo of Edwards as well as details of his run-ins with local authorities over apparent financial fraud.

Again, nothing can be said conclusively about the origin of this DMCA notice, other than it obviously wasn’t Nicole Perez, who would likely prefer her “content” to be spread as far as possible across the internet. The people written about, not so much. When you’re already facing federal fraud charges, what’s a little perjury?

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, dmca, takedowns