A Law of One's Own: The Inefficacy of the DMCA for Non-Consensual Intimate Media

2024-09-20

arXiv.org

AI Summary

This study exposes the systemic failure of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in addressing non-consensual intimate media (NCIM), stemming from a fundamental misalignment between its copyright-centric framework and the core objective of personality rights protection. Leveraging the first large-scale empirical analysis of over 54,000 DMCA takedown notices and 85 million infringing URLs, the research reveals alarmingly low enforcement efficacy: fewer than 50% of URLs are removed within 60 days; only 4% receive any response within 48 hours; and Google requires an average of 11.7 days to deindex content from search results. Through web crawling, URL longevity tracking, and host-response latency modeling, the paper rigorously demonstrates that DMCA-driven removal is both highly inefficient and severely delayed. Its principal contribution lies in empirically substantiating, at unprecedented scale, the structural mismatch between existing legal mechanisms and urgent real-world harms—thereby underscoring the imperative for platform-agnostic, mandatory, and expedited NCIM-specific legislation.

Technology Category

• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Web
• Application Domains: Misinformation & Fake News
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Causality

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Measurement, analysis, and circumvention of Web censorship
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data quality in the era of algorithmically-generated content
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems

Abstract

Non-consensual intimate media (NCIM) presents internet-scale harm to individuals who are depicted. One of the most powerful tools for requesting its removal is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). However, the DMCA was designed to protect copyright holders rather than to address the problem of NCIM. Using a dataset of more than 54,000 DMCA reports and over 85 million infringing URLs spanning over a decade, this paper evaluates the efficacy of the DMCA for NCIM takedown. Results show less than 50% of infringing URLs are removed from website hosts in 60 days, and Google Search takes a median of 11.7 days to deindex infringing content. Across web hosts, only 4% of URLs are removed within the first 48 hours. Additionally, the most frequently reported domains for non-commercial NCIM are smaller websites, not large platforms. We stress the need for new laws that ensure a shorter time to takedown that are enforceable across big and small platforms alike.

Problem

• DMCA inefficacy for NCIM removal
• Slow removal rates by web hosts
• Need for new NCIM-specific laws

Innovation

• Dataset of 54,000 DMCA reports
• Analysis of 85 million URLs
• Evaluation of DMCA efficacy