'United Healthcare' using DMCA against Luigi Mangione images

[kyledrake]

It's also quite possible that someone falsely claiming to be UHC is doing this. This is a major loophole with the DMCA, there's very little vetting of takedown notices.

[Dwedit]

If you misrepresent that you are authorized by the company making the takedown request, that's literally the only thing that the DMCA considers to be perjury.

So weirdly enough:

* Not owning the copyrighted work and claiming you own it = Okay

* The work you're taking down not even being the claimed copyrighted work = Okay

* Saying you're authorized by the company to file the notice, and you're not = PERJURY

[Trasmatta]

I worked front line technical support at a web hosting company in the early 2010s. We were told to just immediately shut down any site when receiving a DMCA takedown request. We were barely paid above minimum wage, and received no training on how to handle legal requests like this - the rule was just "shut the site down".

[superkuh]

Indeed. Claiming DMCA on something should require KYC for the claimant. If KYC is so easy and un-burdensome that it's being applied everywhere else in our lives surely in such a legal context where 2-parties are central to the dogma the initiating party in a legal case should have to prove it is who it says it is.

Of course this will not happen because the DMCA as used in practice has nothing to do with law or justice and is just a mechanism for corporations to attack humans.

That's not to say there's nothing good in the DMCA as written. The safe harbor provisions are now vital to the continued existence of independent communities on the internet. But in practice safe harbor is often ignored too.

[voidfunc]

I know someone working for UHC legal.. they're in a vendetta mode over there from what I've been told.

[Aurornis]

The article puts ‘United Healthcare’ in quotes and opens with a statement mirroring this same possibility, because the first-pass response to DMCA requests is as you describe: An assumption that it’s legitimate until proven otherwise.

This is very well known and the technique is often abused. Even the source article is presenting this information with a huge grain of salt.

[jazzyjackson]

This did bring up a copyright question I haven't been able to resolve - is footage from a private security camera somehow owned by the owner of the camera? AFAIK copyright is reserved for works of creative expression, so footage taken for non-creative purposes shouldn't be protected - is there some other mechanism to demand someone cease and desist sharing a video or an image once the cats out of the bag? IMO we could use something more flexible than revenge porn laws, that prevent noncensual use of your likeness, inc. impersonations of your face and voice. Fair use exceptions would obviously have to apply for newsworthy events otherwise Luigi could demand the cops take down his image during the manhunt :)

(Similar question for Internet comments , since the bluesky-huggingface-kerfuffle I haven't been able to find a definitive answer if internet commentary is copyrighted creative expression or some other public domain shaped thing)

[hsbauauvhabzb]

Is ‘creative expression’ somehow defined? I could creatively express myself by wiring up a camera and filming a public place, no?

Edit: I do think it would be good taste to censor death/murder footage in some cases such as this, I’ve not thought about it a tonne because I assume there’s a legitimate public interest case in some scenarios (political oppression footage, etc)

[gosub100]

Probably the fact that police released the footage to the media would be enough to remove copyright. Just a guess.

[blackeyeblitzar]

Seems consistent with what I would expect. Trying to memory hole all of this bad PR is very much how they normally operate. For example United has tried really hard to bury all mention of the incredibly damaging breach of change healthcare, which is a subsidiary. Over 100 million Americans had their private medical details leaked. All united has done is offer some basic credit monitoring. They won’t even tell you what data specifically got leaked and refuse to cooperate with such requests.

[gen220]

FYI, this is a really handy website for identifying these breaches. https://ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/breach/breach_report.jsf

Insurers are required by law to submit breach information to this site. It doesn't have all the information you want, but it's at least a system of record.

[EdwardDiego]

Yeah that ChangeMD ransomware kinda broke healthcare in the US for a week or so.

[__MatrixMan__]

Copyright has always been a cover story for legitimizing censorship, ever since it was about preventing people from printing the wrong kind of bible. Of course they're using it that way.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Copyright has always been a cover story for legitimizing censorship, ever since it was about preventing people from printing the wrong kind of bible

Source?

[ashoeafoot]

Its already memefied as Nintendo Luigi, so taking it down is futile. People will just wear Luigi TM shirts and there is nothing all the PR might of cooperate wealth can do. Reality be a hard wall and reality is the masses loath their overlords.

[triyambakam]

Streisand effect comes to mind. Also it seems too late to try to stop it now.

[psadauskas]

Original source was from 404 media: https://www.404media.co/copyright-abuse-is-getting-luigi-man...

[qingcharles]

A lot of providers don't even require it to be a statutory DMCA complaint. Just a simple "I own the copyright, please remove it." These are private sites and can remove material on a whim with no legal recourse.

That's why it sucks to have to rely on hosting your content on other people's territory.

[GiorgioG]

Maybe they should hurry up and approve more claims. Seriously, my son’s insulin pump is sitting in “prior authorization” just so they can fuck me into paying the full deductible come Jan 1. Fuck United Healthcare.

[BadCookie]

It ought to be the law that approved claims should be backdated to when the initial claim was made. UHC pulled this exact trick on me, denying something that ought to have been approved in order to push the date into the new plan year with a reset deductible.

[dgfitz]

I, as a male, have a 4.5k medical bill from a breast cancer biopsy center. I had surgery on December 8th. They billed me for the biopsy on January 3rd, and of course UHC isn’t covering it.

Turns out joke is on them, I’m not paying it.

[hsuduebc2]

It's very hard to have any compassion for architects of this company's system.

[whycome]

How is this legal?

[mattgreenrocks]

Dude, that’s horrible. I’m sorry you have to deal with that.

[rolph]

"It is illegal to file DMCA notices if you don’t own the copyright (or at least have a good faith belief that you do). The idea that UHC now owns every depiction of the guy accused of killing their employee is laughably frivolous and one hopes that its legal department understands this and these requests are coming from a third party troll impersonating the carrier."

[User23]

I wouldn’t be surprised if their legal theory is that they will win the rights to Mangione’s likeness in a future civil suit. If a judge is willing to claim to believe that, then I could see an injunction being issued.

Does that sound ridiculous? Sure, but we’ve seen some absolutely crazy stretching of the law these past few years.

[EE84M3i]

Perhaps they legitimately bought the rights from the original producers? Doesn't seem impossible, although would certainly be a strange strategy to say the least.

[JumpCrisscross]

> idea that UHC now owns every depiction of the guy accused of killing their employee

Hmm, no evidence this is happening, but could Thompson's family claim ownership of his likeness?

[plagiarist]

Wasn't UHC the company that decided to deny claims with an AI that was wrong 90% of the time? I assume they did do this. False DMCA claims are nothing to them.

Yet another egregious abuse of a law that has zero real consequences for a false report. I wonder why this happens so often?

[hedora]

I guess they’re claiming it was an inside job?

So did Mangione, etc. pierce the corporate veil, or does limited liability apply like it usually does when United Healthcare kills someone?

[downrightmike]

I don't think he did it. The guy on the camera in NYC didn't have a unibrow and Luigi clearly does. I think they have a scapegoat that they are trying to pin it on.

[whamlastxmas]

This is really peak capitalism and peak class warfare

[jjguy]

Hey look on the bright side. If this is legit, then it will inevitably become a reference in the bill to overhaul the DMCA when it (finally) gets introduced!

The beginning of the end, the moment when thr DMCA jumped the shark (for the broader world, not us tech geeks)

[jmclnx]

Scrub the internet ? Good luck with that. Streisand joined the chat.

[daft_pink]

Bill Burr is right. https://youtu.be/OILUHHtZt4c?si=TS159SY_VVAHrGnN

[m3kw9]

Yeah f that

[AceyMan]

I love the 'nick handle' I've seen used on some of the socials discussing these events over the past two or three days: The Adjuster.

It's just so ... right.