If someone filed a wrongful DMCA complaint against you it is probably time to talk to a lawyer. You can sue for damages even though this isn't common. Wordpress won $25,000 in a recent case [webmasterworld.com...]

Thank your for your response!

But wordpress is not a small company. They have money to hire a lawyer, but I do not. Do you have another way? I sent a lot of counter notice to Google but none of them was responded.

What do you mean Wordpress is not a small company? How on Earth is Wordpress involved in all of this unless they are hosting your site and they have no say in a DMCA (they just take your site down). You counteract (and sue) the party who sent the wrong DMCA (which isn't Wordpress).

And, if you even got an actual DMCA from Wordpress themselves, I can guarantee you in this very moment that they are not wrong.

Who is sending DMCA letters and what is your site and the reported URLs? I have a feeling there's more to it than what you've said. Please try to be more specific and detailed if you want help.

Um, Kratos. Read the link below, and then come back and read what Goodroi wrote.

[arstechnica.com...]

Does anyone fill out a DMCA counter notice with receive a positive response from Google? I receive some DMCA notice for search index on Jan 25. All of them are wrong, so I submitted some DMCA counter notice to Google. I received confirmation emails but until now, I still have not received any response from Google. Does anyone know how long the process is? Does anyone have a different way to contact Google?

Thank you for reading my post!

To clarify if you got the notices what was wrong?

You own copyright or you don't or fair use applies.

What other error is there other than maybe a fraudulent DMCA claim as pointed out.

Before you attempt to file a counterclaim you had better be sure you own the copyright or fair use applies. Without an IP attorney to advise you (and you suggest you can't afford one) you could be paying through your teeth.

@netmeg What about the link you posted? I'm aware of the Straight Pride case. What does your link have anything to do with this? Wordpress won a case, yes, against some idiots who should be barred from the internet for life. You think OP is being sued by Wordpress? A poster with a massive 2 posts who just joined and doesn't even disclose what are the URLs he posted that are being DMCAed?

Right...

Let's put it this way. I am on a couple of black hat forums (one full of noobs but it's worth browsing for some hidden gems) and this issue isn't uncommon to crop up by people who are unaware of how copyright works. They think it's Wordpress whom they have to counteract in a DMCA, even when they are ONLY using the free Wordpress script, and it's an actual company unrelated to Wordpress sending the DMCAs.

So I stand by my earlier post. OP, what are the URLs which had the DMCA sent, what is the site and who sent the DMCA? If you post this, we can help you more.

Edit: I apologize if I am sounding confrontational, but I have seen this before a lot of times. I'm actually interested to know what are the URLs with the DMCA so we can help with with his claimed fraudulent DMCA notice.

It is important not to drive the thread off topic ... Wordpress was reference merely as anecdotal.

"All of them are wrong" is not suggestive of fraudulent activity within DMCA. That comment requires clarification.

The legislation states a Designated Agent must respond "promptly" but the law does not provide a definition of what promptly means.

Reasonably that could be in hours to a month depending on how much legal activity there is in Google.

Does anyone have a different way to contact Google?

<added>Try [productforums.google.com...]

As fathom noted, the WordPress reference was anecdotal. OP *cannot* post his URLs here. Reference the TOS please. Re confrontational - yea, maybe take it down a notch.

OP, if you want to contact Google "directly", use their Webmaster forums. However, they WILL ask you to post your URLs. And it will be just regular people helping for the most part, especially if your URLs happen to be spammy.

Cheers

Hi everyone,
I'm sorry to not tell the detailed. It's a long story. I will try to summarize it.
I live in the U.S. now but my own country is Vietnam. So my friends in Vietnam and I had written some novels and posted them on http://example.com (it's a Vietnamese website). Then a lot of Vietnamese websites copied our novels and re-posted them without our permission. Because in Vietnam they do not have DMCA at all so we cannot do anything but sent some DMCA claims to Google search.
At first,our DMCA claims were accepted but then the other websites that their content had been removed from Google search also sent DMCA claims to Google search against us. This is one of DMCA claims <snip> that I received. The problem is, in these claims the original URL and infringing URL do not match each other, and the description did not describe anything relate to the claim. I think this DMCA claim is illegal. However, Google accepted a lot of them.
I sent a lot of DMCA counter-notice to Google by this form [support.google.com...] and received the confirmation emails for all of them. But, six weeks passed and I still have not received any response from Google.
In the counter notice form, I clarified the problem as below:

"Dear Google, Inc.

I declare, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that the complaint against example.com of copyright violation is based on mistaken information of the material in question. The material in question is not copyrighted because example.com is truly the copyright owner. We are the first one made the content and posted it on example.com. Recently, a lot of URLs of example.com were removed from Google search based on mistaken information. We made a lot of DMCA complaint against other websites before and all of the valid complaints were approved. We believe there is someone take revenge for it. In consideration of the above, demand is hereby made by <person's name>, administrator of example.com, that all material removed or disabled from Google Search as a result of the DMCA Notice should be restored as provided by Title 17 USC 512(g)(2)and(3).

Hope Google can help us solve the problem soon. Thank you!"

I think I sent legal counter notice to Google but I'm not sure why they did not respond to me. Do they disagree with it or Is the process time too long?

[edited by: aakk9999 at 3:50 pm (utc) on Mar 17, 2015]
[edit reason] Examplified, please no domain names or identifying details [/edit]

You never sent Google a properly formatted counterclaim which could be your problem.

Additionally, the other problem is you and the other parties think Google should take sides in the matter. All Google can do is protect itself from you all by getting out of the way and allowing you all to fight your dispute out in a court of law.

You bluff about legal action and the other party is too or called your bluff and Google is simply an innocent bystander.

You need a US attorney to help you correct what has happen as Google does not care who owns the rights it only cares that the rightful owner cannot sue them.

By starting this dispute unprepared without proper legal representation you have placed yourself in a tight spot.

You clearly want your content re-enabled. Register it with [copyright.gov...] as Google is bound by US Copyright Law and then send Google another Counterclaim. If you expedite the registration process that can be done in 5 days and you will get a certificate that can add weight to your DMCA counterclaim but that will be $800 USD on top of the $35 fee if you created the works yourself $55 if it was a work-made-for-hire which is way cheaper than a court battle.

But DMCA is merely a process to align the digital world with the paper world thus to get 3rd party agents like hosts and search engines off the battlefield so you can have a clean court battle.

If you can't even afford registration - too bad you didn't get advice first.

Course as I noted first you didn't file a proper counterclaim which is likely why Google hasn't responded.

[edited by: fathom at 7:29 am (utc) on Mar 17, 2015]

@fathom: thank you for your response!
I just wrote the novel for sharing, not for making money so I do not have money to offer for any process. I'm not sure why google allow people to use its counter notice but then it does not respond.

That is the process - Google has no evidence on who owns what and it isn't their job. Their job is to avoid taking any actions that makes them liable.

So they just removed my URLs from Google search without reasonable reason then make me pay for some process before restoring my URLs? Well, it's not fair at all.

That isn't the process completely ... your next step is to get a court order proving this is your content and then filing a lawsuit for damages where you could gain hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions in damages for the defendants filing falsifying DMCA Claims.
__________________
Copyright of intellectual property is worth a lot to you but only if you go to a court of law and have them say that.

Unfortunately you set yourself up to fail as you had no intentions on actually protecting your rights. I advised you on how you can go about doing that and yes that costs money which you should have understood before you started playing this costly game.

You can certainly bluff and win but when they call your bluff you had better go all in or you feel like Google cut off your balls.

Kratos made references that he wanted to aggressively help you not sure if that included springng for your legal defense as it could be worth a lot in the end.

I had to go this route myself $15,000 USD on a retainer for an IP Specialist and so far $6500 in legal costs plus $855 to expedite my copyright claim but will get all this back in a settlement or (plus damages if it needs to be litigated). It is a risk but one I think worth taking.

So they just removed my URLs from Google search without reasonable reason then make me pay for some process before restoring my URLs? Well, it's not fair at all.

They are declining to get involved in your dispute with your scrapers. Google is not a legal entity (and it's not just Google with this policy, by the way) and they don't have any way to know that what you say is true vs what your scrapers say. And there's no compelling reason for them to spend the time and resources to find out (talk about something that won't scale, times millions of DMCA requests)

The people who aren't being fair are the ones stealing your content. Those are the people you need to go up against. Unfortunately, that's the web we have in 2015. Cost of doing business.

The DMCA is a US Law, and Google is not involved in law enforcement. The place to submit your DMCA is with the host of the site where you find a copyright violation. First you can contact the site, but if they don't wish to remove the material, contact their host. It will be gone within 72 hours usually -IF their site is hosted on a SafeHarbor host. The place to go for information about DMCA is chillingeffects.org - they have information and worldwide resources on the topic of copyright abuse.

Contacting Google in response to a DMCA is a waste of time, they don't care about copyrights, they only want to minimize their exposure to liability. When they receive a DMCA, they remove pages from their search index, not off the web, not off the host, just out of their index. They receive millions of DMCA forms a month and really don't get involved in sorting out who's right.