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YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Videos, and More
- JumpCrisscross 8y agoDoes YouTube plan to deploy its "enhanced" upload filters globally, or just in Europe?
- vezycash 8y agoYouTube seems to be more of a monopoly than Google Search. If only Facebook created a dedicated site for Facebook videos. Fbtube, fbv.com... Microsoft has a YouTube like service but limits it to enterprise. Since video hosting is such a resource intensive undertaking, I wonder why many free porn sites don't have outages and have no limit on uploads for free users - unlike YouTube competitors.
- no_wizard 8y agoWhat about Vimeo? I know it’s target market has pivoted to More high end indie creations however aren’t they somewhat positioned at least to exploit any holes in YouTube’s strategy? This is one of those things where I feel like a real competitor will only sort of be able to creep up not explode on the scene. I always thought Vimeo had a decent chance here because it’s pretty easy (imo) to use just like YouTube and they have free tiers (or st least when I signed up they did)
- shittyadmin 8y agoI think a big chunk of the problem now is that when people want to watch regularly released video content from internet creators they reach to YouTube, there's no integration of subscriptions across sites. You'd basically have to scrape video feeds from youtube to compete in this way.
- robotmlg 8y agoIf only there were some way to Syndicate website updates to a centralized reader in a Really Simple way...
- shittyadmin 8y agoSeriously though, I dream of a world in which all apps had a "subscribe on your news reader" button which could open an RSS client, maybe something implemented by mobile OS providers so it's easy for new users but overridable by users like the browser or calling apps would be ideal.
- gnulinux 8y agoI think RSS is a vastly underused technology/tool. I wonder at what point people lost hope in it and abandoned. Not to say, it's completely abandoned, but it's not used as much as it should be used.
- no_wizard 8y agoI personally feel like and I remember very distinctly that RSS (and Atom Feeds to boot) seemingly hit their peak with google reader and when google reader was discontinued RSS seemed to wane quickly thereafter. I’d be very interested in knowing if hard statistics back this up or not but my anecdotal experience suggests that this is indeed the case
- icebraining 8y agoI think Twitter's coming of age was the big blow. When Reader shut down it was already waning.
- jake_the_third 8y ago>You'd basically have to scrape video feeds from youtube to compete in this way. Youtube still offers RSS and it's reliable and chronological unlike youtube's subscription feed algorithm.
- RIMR 8y agoHonestly, I wouldn't be surprised to see PornHub launch a YouTube competitor strategically as YouTube is flailing. They already run a high functioning video network. They really just need a SFW frontend with alternate branding (and no adult videos).
- judge2020 8y agoWith the recently released VPNHub [0], it seems like they're willing to branch out and I see this as a possibility. [0]: https://vpnhub.com https://vpnhub.com
- tschwimmer 8y agoYou might be interested in this news: https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/11/instagram-long-form-video/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/11/instagram-long-form-video/
- Andrex 8y ago> Since video hosting is such a resource intensive undertaking, I wonder why many free porn sites don't have outages and have no limit on uploads for free users - unlike YouTube competitors. Because they can run far riskier and less-vetted ads. They can also run as many of them as they want - the "target audience" doesn't really care if there's 1000 banner ads on a page. There's a reason much of malware is spread from porn sites. For consumer facing video sites, they have to compete with YouTube on UX, which means much more stringent ad vetting, and far fewer ads. This likely tips the balance just enough that normal online video startups are not feasible without 3-4 years of runway.
- linuxps2 8y ago>There's a reason much of malware is spread from porn sites. I thought this was no longer the case
- zaroth 8y agoWith the death of Flash, if malware ads are getting past Chrome’s sandbox isn’t there like $100k at Pwnium just waiting to be claimed?
- earenndil 8y ago100k is peanuts compared to what you can make bitcoin mining on the computers of all pornhub users.
- zaroth 8y agoI meant to say, if such a piece of malware were ever actually deployed in the wild researchers would be scrambling to decompile and reverse engineer it, to determine how it worked in order to report the vulnerability.
- tiglionabbit 8y agoYou can upload videos to facebook though. In fact, that's the only way to get videos to play inline in peoples' timelines.
- mlindner 8y agoYes but you can't browse Facebook videos without a Facebook account. You can view them if people directly link them, but viewing someone's video page is blocked, let alone actually searching for videos.
- narrator 8y agoThere's also bitchute.com and d.tube as credible youtube alternatives.
- TylerE 8y agoFor very loose values of credible.
- JackCh 8y agoVery annoyingly youtube-dl refuses to support bitchute for reasons that aren't exactly clear: https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/14052 https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/14052 If I can't get data off bitchute easily using de facto standard tools (I get that I could use a bittorrent client, but that's beyond the point), I have little interest in putting data on it.
- userbinator 8y agoIt's open-source so... just fork it. (I know you're not a developer, but this is a perfect use-case for forking and continuing.)
- icebraining 8y agoDoesn't seem so? Seems to me that some user @tv21 was arguing against it for some reason, and @dstftw locked the conversation to avoid the argument. The issue is still open, implying it's free to be worked on. Has anyone submitted a PR?
- ucaetano 8y agoThis isn't a competition problem: Any competitor that gets big enough to challenge YT will attract the same scrutiny from content rights owners. and will face the same copyright issues that YT does. The problem isn't in the content hosting industry, it is on the policy & legal side.
- MrStonedOne 8y agoYet this issue is on youtube preemptively blocking first party content by established organizations. This isn't Babby's First Copyright Violiating CS:GO Montage, this is content released by the same university that trained a chunk of youtube's employees. The issues we are seeing can be easily fixed by some simple common sense controls on what levels of certainty are required to take down a video and/or channel that scale with how established the channel is, including requiring escalating levels of human review. With the "advertiser friendly" issue, the same approach can be taken, topped off with a monetize time prompt or form that allows them to assert how advertiser friendly the uploader understands the video to be (weighted by the history of how accurate their answers have been in the past). These are such solved problems, that youtube really shouldn't be having them.
- ucaetano 8y ago> some simple common sense controls on what levels of certainty are required to take down a video This is solved already, but there will always be false positives. What isn't solved, and likely never will be, is copyright. But it seems that the issue isn't due to content ID, but contractual issues.
- MrStonedOne 8y agoYa, youtube is obucating this, but it seems they are changing the terms to force monetization on certain kinds of content where they never did before. As in, force the creator to take a cut (as well as enable more ads to be shown.) It seems like an odd play, increase supply of ad slots while dealing with a demand decrease from random companies dropping ads during drama. They must have signed some kind of deal recently. If they are trying to increase the ad slot supply expect actions against ad blockers to come next.
- ravenstine 8y agoI know this is just filtering for now, but I've been backing up entire channels for fear they'll one day disappear because global policy or legacy media conglomerates won't allow for it. I imagine the "you" in YouTube will be mostly gone in the next decade. The writing's on the wall.
- amatecha 8y agoNice, do you have any summary of what process you take to back up channels? I've considered the same in the past, but found that there are a lot of crappy/sketchy plugins, and not too many legit/decent ones that actually get the highest quality copy of the content.
- icebraining 8y agoyoutube-dl is great for this, you can run it periodically against a channel and only download new videos. See the --download-archive option. Using "-f best" will fetch the highest quality format, but you can be more specific with filters like "-f best[filesize<50M]".
- walterbell 8y agoRecommended storage device and disk drives?
- toomuchtodo 8y agohttps://www.backblaze.com/blog/open-source-data-storage-server/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/open-source-data-storage-serv... ; it's what I use to keep anything in cold storage that can't immediately go into the Internet Archive or that they're unable to dark after I upload.
- craftyguy 8y agoWait so you bought a $10k 60 disk storage platform? Or built one?
- killaken2000 8y agoIts also possible to upload content to the contentid system without having any claim to the work. Often nefarious companies will upload swaths of royalty free or otherwise content (large sound effects libraries) and claim all of the videos ad revenue. They never contest the response and the flag dissappears.
- ausjke 8y agogoogle is dominated in search and youtube, both especially the latter, need a competitor, kind of burger-king to MacDonald
- stevehawk 8y agoIs that the place with the Golden Arcs and the BigMic?
- tclancy 8y agoYou're thinking of McDowell's.
- partiallypro 8y agoIt's basically impossible for a competitor to just pop-up for Google, there are too many costs associated with it. Google has too much data to be competed with. Though, I would not rule out that Amazon may enter the search space.
- CryoLogic 8y agoduckduckgo?
- sli 8y agoI quite like DDG and use it almost exclusively (sometimes I need to go to Startpage), but they've got quite the hell of a mountain to climb before "duckduckgoing" becomes a household verb. I do hope they get there, though. Probably without the verbing of their name, though, since it's a bit of a mouthful.
- ucaetano 8y agoAny competitor that gets big enough to challenge YT will attract the same scrutiny from content rights owners. and will face the same copyright issues that YT does. The problem isn't in the content hosting industry, it isn't even on the content producing industry. It is on the policy & legal side.
- keth 8y agoTerrific, I can't wait for what will happen with the forced content filter that will be voted on in the european parliament on june 20th. what could go wrong... https://act1.openmedia.org/savethelink https://act1.openmedia.org/savethelink
- partiallypro 8y agoFor as much grief as the US Congress gets for its lack of knowledge in tech, I would take (current) US laws over EU and GB restrictions any day.
- jedberg 8y agoI saw a great "joke" the other day. It said, "If Shazam or Siri can't identify a song for you, make a quick video and upload it to YouTube. Within a few seconds you'll get a copyright takedown telling you the name of the song".
- reificator 8y agoI've seen nature videos where there's no sound but the birds chirping, and YouTube is still able to hear someone playing All-Star on Mars and flag the video. It's really incredible tech. EDIT: The article actually mentions some similar examples: http://c4sif.org/2012/02/youtube-identifies-birdsong-as-copyrighted-music/ http://c4sif.org/2012/02/youtube-identifies-birdsong-as-copy...
- jedberg 8y agoI know the guy who created ContentID. He's a good guy and only had good intentions, namely to keep YouTube in business by identifying legit copyright issues. At the time, a human had to review all the claims. This is a good example of how AI can go bad.
- reificator 8y agoI'm not demonizing the people making it, or even necessarily the people demanding it be made. The DMCA was the beginning of the end of a free and open internet, and now it's accelerating. I just hope the next generation understands what they're missing under the spectre of copyright law.
- haywirez 8y agoAs you might know, this is related to the disastrous EU copyright reform directive proposal that would mandate such filters put in place everywhere. Please don't be complacent, it's very important to do something about this. At risk of repeating my comment[0] from 3 days ago, I'd like to appeal to you to contact the MEPs that will vote on Wednesday in the EU's JURI committee. This was the first time I called politicians' offices to voice my opinion. The assistants were shocked that a private person actually bothered to do so and seemed quite humbled - I could hear the change in the tone of their voice when they realised an ordinary citizen is calling. I think it's a lot more effective than the 1000s of e-mails piling up in their spam folders. Please help out to make sure this directive proposal is voted against on Wednesday by the majority of the JURI committee. List of Twitter handles of reportedly yet undecided MEPs: @jbergeronmep @1PavelSvoboda @FrancisZD @KaufmannSylvia @mcboutonnetfn @rohde_jens @marinhopintoeu @mady_delvaux @emil_radev [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320122
- pitaj 8y agoAccording to some, YouTube's copyright filters / markers aren't good enough to satisfy the EU directive. It's insane. The DMCA is bad enough already. Copyright should be loosened, not tightened. Then maybe we'd see some competition in video hosting.
- avs733 8y agoI've always felt like false assertion of copyright should cause the loss of copyright. Seems like a fair balance for me. And before someone gets on me...I realize that these are automated filters that are rarely asserted by the actual copyright holder.
- ben_w 8y agoI agree with the sentiment, but I think in practice that would lead to something like patent trolls — organizations designed no face no threat from the normal consequences. Plain old money based fines should work. Even a tiny fixed fee of $50 per error might be enough, given the scale of the internet.
- avoutthere 8y agoWhy is this content being blocked in the U.S.?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- _bxg1 8y agoI don't understand why no other video platform has broken into YouTube's market share, after the last couple years' constant stream of PR disasters which mostly have to do with the scale of the platform
- rodorgas 8y agoIt’s so expensive that only Google can afford.
- zouhair 8y agoPornhub is doing well.
- JackCh 8y agoAs I understand it MindGeek is pretty big but still only a small fraction the size of Youtube in terms of traffic. And they've yet to create a non-porn version of their site. I've heard rumors that they've at least considered it, but so far it hasn't happened.
- pitaj 8y agoIt's expensive at least partially because publishers will sue the crap out of you if you don't invest heavily in content ID etc. It creates a huge barrier to entry, which is why copyright laws should be reformed to respect the idea of "common carrier" sites which don't discriminate on content.
- icebraining 8y ago(US) Copyright law does have that idea, the DMCA encodes it explicitly as the "safe harbor" provision.
- rocqua 8y agoBeyond the issues of infrastructure cost and litigious publishers as mentioned by others, there is also the user base. If users are on YT, that is where the content creators will be. And if the content creators are on YT, that is where the users are. Moreover, users have curated lists of subscriptions and creators have large lists of material. Finally, YT has access to a lot of data on viewing behavior, and likes. This means YT should be a lot better at recommending videos to users. Finally, the creators that most want to switch to an alternative are those who are the most censored. These tend to be more controversial, which means these alternative services gather controversial content. This tends to give these places a bad reputation which pushes away the non-controversial content. The best bet would probably to take a non-controversial niche, start there, and try and integrate well with YT to keep down switching costs. Its still hard to provide actual added value to such a niche. Alternatively one might take a controversial niche with wide acceptance. For example, gun channels or LGBTQ+ channels. Both are currently demonetized, but both are still widely accepted in broad swathes of society.
- dghughes 8y agoIt seems Phase 1 of analog to digital media (music, TV shows and movies) was late 90s to early 2000s. It was going to happen but the teething pains lasted quite a while. CDs and DVDs were abandoned for USB then just a file. Now it seems Phase 2 will be trying to control the massive amount of media users share. It's a whack-a-mole game against things like Kodi and sharing media. For YoutTube it's trying to delete copyright violations and it gets rid of hundreds of accounts which are just created again and the material uploaded again. Even an "AI" can't cope. At some point it would be nice to see all video, all music available to anyone for a reasonable price. "You will!" as Tom Selleck said. Really it's going to be that way eventually otherwise enormous amounts of money and effort will be spent trying to chase down endless illegal copies.
- emodendroket 8y agoCDs, DVDs, and Blurays are still very much around.
- jwilk 8y agoSomewat related article from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17333920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17333920 ("Politicians, about to vote in favor of mandatory upload filtering in Europe, get channel deleted by YouTube’s upload filtering")
- doh 8y agoLet me first say that this law is taking too far. There is a need for better legislation around copyright, but this one is just moving the needle from platforms abusing copyright to rights holders abusing the platforms. However the situation around YouTube is not a direct consequence of poor technology, but rather poor policies. YouTube built 2 separate products, a) Content ID (CID), b) partnership program. CID is the system that, based on fingerprinting algorithms, is able to identify videos containing same segments (both audio and visual). Technically it's actually pretty good. However through the partnership program, YouTube allows rights holders to abuse the system by providing reference files that they may not have direct rights for, or allow them to claim any content just because they say so. This however has nothing to do with the technology itself, but rather with YouTube's decision to not to have to challenge right holders directly (they can and will sue, while users uploading content will most probably not). There are ways to deal with this kind of situation, but most of the platforms, especially YouTube and Facebook are somehow not interested.
- icebraining 8y agoThey can, will, and have. ContentID came after the Viacom lawsuit.
- volaski 8y agoin the short term this is annoying, but in the long term I think this is really great. it's almost as if the market is pushing people to adopt decentralization technologies, which would have been difficult to get adoption without this type of push.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dqpb 8y agoSo YouTube takes down educational content while at the same time recommending knockoff cartoons featuring violence, sexualization, and gore aimed at traumatizing and corrupting the minds of our children. Way to tip the scales YouTube!
- mmaanniisshh 8y agoYouTube has [addressed the issue](https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/18/youtube-is-working-to-restore-accidentally-blocked-videos-from-mit-and-others/ https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/18/youtube-is-working-to-res...). There is no mention of copyright violation, it says it was updating user agreements.
- gregallan 8y agoIt seems YouTube's statement here is really disingenuous. When they say "We are working with MITOpenCourseWare and Blender Foundation to get their videos back online." they mean that they are holding these non-profit organizations' video hosting rights hostage until they agree to enable ads! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17347560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17347560
- gm-conspiracy 8y agoI never suspected the balkanization of the internet would occur, particularly with such a coordinated effort across nations.
- ledriveby 8y agoDamned if you do, damned if you don't. Google gets roasted by the press no matter what it does.
- lovelearning 8y agoThey are blocking original educational content from everybody, including members of the organizations producing that content. Seems perfectly reasonable to criticize such a mistake on its own merit, independent of whatever other criticisms you are referring to.
- hknd 8y agoThey have to block them. Apparently these partners had >2 years time to sign their new contracts to be policy compliant with latest legal regulations around different countries. Apparently they didn't do it, and they didn't respond to any outreaches. YT legal team _had_ to react.
- ta2987 8y agoMaybe they shouldn't exist.
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- dingo_bat 8y agoThis is why true net neutrality covers services like Google Facebook reddit and YouTube. But you won't see anybody mention this anywhere.
- drderidder 8y agoIt's becoming a common occurrence to fall victim to false positives from algorithmic filters. False positives are just always going to be part of any kind of machine-learning algo. In the end it's statistical probability, and probability doesn't equal certainty. Sure there are techniques to reduce false positives, but I sincerely think that any user-affecting policy based on ML / algos should always have a real-live human based support fallback to get real resolution to the real issue of false positives.
- obsurveyor 8y agoThere's an update buried at the bottom of the article. Ton Roosendaal tweeted[1] that they sent Blender a contract to enable monetization. I can see why he doesn't want to do it based on the principles of the Blender Foundation. Sounds to me like Youtube is holding these creator's content hostage because they don't want to put up ads. He put the contract up for review as well: http://download.blender.org/institute/Contract%20between%20Google%20and%20Blender%20Foundation.pdf http://download.blender.org/institute/Contract%20between%20G... [1] https://twitter.com/tonroosendaal/status/1009010581549060097 https://twitter.com/tonroosendaal/status/1009010581549060097
- lainga 8y agoOught to tell Torrentfreak and all involved. It's not a piracy filter gone wrong, it's monetization humans at Youtube.
- lucio 8y agoBlender seems to be testing #peertube but: "PeerTube uses the BitTorrent protocol to share bandwidth between users. It implies that your public IP address is stored in the public BitTorrent tracker of the video PeerTube instance as long as you're watching the video" Does this have GDPR ramifications?
- hjnilsson 8y agoNot really, since you opt-in to use the service and accept that your IP is shared there is no issue.
- frockington 8y agoI'm hopeful that as everything on the internet becomes illegal in Europe, it will be the equivalent of nothing being illegal. It seems like companies could just play the stall in court game forever with all of the claims that can be made