Hi,

Not here for legal advice, just trying to seek help just in case anybody happens to know someone working for Google.

I run a rather successful game modification/add-on community and sadly (but unsurprisingly) our work is often illicitly shared on various 3rd party websites.
We've had a clash of a colossal scale with one of our ex-developers and he was booted out of the team when he dumped the contents of our entire development server on various download sites.
Michael Murphy knows a lot about the backlash of that, the hacking of our servers and the subsequent DDoS attacks (that are still ongoing to this day) from this guy and his fan base.

We've had to resort to seeking representation of a lawyer in Poland (where he is based) in order to make him aware of the gravity of his actions and to get him to stop sharing our data.
So far so good he has mostly complied, however some of his fans have resorted to re-uploading his stuff to Google Drive.

I've never had any incident sending DMCA take downs to various file sharing sites, including Zippyshare, Mega, WeTransfer, etc etc. However I am having huge issues with Google.
First of all Google makes you aware that the request must be genuine or you risk losing your Google/Gmail account (this would be disastrous for me as I have almost a decade of history on it).
Secondly the system seems to be largely automated and there is no reasonable response from a human being.

The first response I got from Google when lodging a claim was the following

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out to us.

 

It is unclear to us whether or not you are the authorized copyright agent for the content in question. Only the copyright owner or an authorized representative can file a DMCA Infringement Notice on his/her behalf. Please note that you could be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys' fees) if you materially misrepresent that your rights have been infringed.

 

If you or your client is not the copyright owner for this content, we cannot process your notice. Please have the copyright owner file a DMCA notice with us. If you or your client is the copyright owner, please provide more detail explaining how this is the case.

 

Regards,
The Google Team

I responded by sending them our standard DMCA template, with a further explanation how we are the authorised agents, and a copy of the documentation produced by our lawyer in Poland.
Then I got another response

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out to us.

 

At this time, Google has decided not to take action. We encourage you to resolve any disputes directly with the individual who posted the content.

 

If you cannot reach an agreement and choose to pursue legal action against the individual who posted the content, and that action results in a judicial determination that the material is illegal or should be removed, please send us the court order seeking removal. If you would like to request identifying information about an anonymous poster, please contact google-legal-support@google.com (if you are in the U.S.) or internationalcivil@google.com (if you are outside of the U.S.) for more information on how to serve us with valid legal process.

 

Regards,
The Google Team

 

I've run this process on 3 different occasions, and twice when the first automated response comes back the offending user seems to get a notification of a piracy take down request. They then rename the file and if I submit another one with the valid DMCA template, Google will respond saying that the file no longer exists.

The individual that posted the content is giving us the finger and basically responding with insults. Sending further legal docs to the addresses posted has resulted in nothing.

In the mean time our sensitive information is still being shared and we can't get it off those links, which is greatly frustrating.

Also, on another forum one of the Polish users have threatened they will soon release a whole new distribution (including our stolen assets) and publish them on Google Drive, because they seem to know that we are unable to get Google to remove them.

How can I get in touch with a sensible human being that can take this stuff off-line? Any experience welcome.

Cheers