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I used to have a Youtube channel where I posted videos of me playing the piano. I played mostly Mozart, Beethoven and Rachmaninoff compositions. I had around 40

• dotancohen 8y ago
  Who was sending these notices? Sounds like perjury to me.
  • Jerry2 8y ago
    >Who was sending these notices? There's lots of them. The most notorious one I had to deal with was Adrev. There are reports of people getting notices from AdRev for videos that don't even have any music in them. [1] [1] https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/42xLenp36Co https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/42xLe...
    • yomly 8y ago
      Is this a new evolution of patent trolling? Except you don't even need a patent anymore...?
      • digi_owl 8y ago
        Copyright trolling?
        • yomly 8y ago
          Of course it already exists /sigh. Seems like this is a great way to do copyright trolling - it's highly scalable and exists within a walled garden which means it's a legal grey area for things like this, much like how free speech on YouTube/Reddit isn't really a thing.
    • mirimir 8y ago
      There's lots of information here: https://talent.adrev.net/about https://talent.adrev.net/about
  • lozenge 8y ago
    It isn't perjury. In the DMCA, It is illegal for me to send copyright notices about you infringing a work I don't own, but it is not illegal for me to send a copyright notice about a work I do own - say a film - even if the page doesn't actually contain any of that film. Apart from classical music, bird noises and ambient noises are common cases of inaccurate YouTube takedowns.
    • gorbachev 8y ago
      These are not DMCA notices, but YouTube's/Google's own copyright cop they implemented to pacify the big media companies. It's notorious for false positives and how impossible those false positives are to resolve.
  • ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
    Welcome to the DMCA. It's as broken as copyright and causing quite serious stifling of young creators. It sometimes feels like it's used more for evil than for its legitimate purpose.
    • ekianjo 8y ago
      Seems? More like its mainly used in this way nowadays. There is no risk in sending DMCA notices so of course its abused.
      • dalore 8y ago
        Wonder if we can return the favour? If someone sends us an obvious unfair takedown (like in the article) we can name and shame them. And also do the same tactics, go to their content and report it as violation of your content. Even if it doesn't they still have to respond and go through the same hoops. If a group of us formed and we did this to all of them and gunged up the system, google would be forced to improve it.
        • jstarfish 8y ago
          > And also do the same tactics, go to their content and report it as violation of your content. This might work between rival game streamers or something but the law offices of Dewey, Cheatem & Howe likely do not have a YouTube channel for you to retaliate against.
          • Timmah 8y ago
            But you could find out who is legitimately using that copyright on YT and retaliate against them. For instance, if you use a clip of a Prince song that is taken down, and you determine that BMG music owns the Prince catalog, you could send automated infringement requests against PrinceVEVO or any official BMG uploads. Even better if you created a "burner" corporation. Ie P.O. box in Delaware and act on their behalf. They have to take you seriously because corporation, amirite?
  • jobigoud 8y ago
    YouTube partners can upload a collection of files they claim rights on, and a YouTube bot will check any newly published video against anything in that database. It's all automated. They don't verify if the claimant actually has the rights, this is left to the "dispute" process. Sometimes multiple companies upload the same files. Sometimes the algorithm has false positives because the section of audio used is too short.
    • AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      Sometimes they use your work in theirs, upload it and have YouTube flag your original as infringing. I have to wonder why anybody still uses YouTube. It can't be the community.
      • komali2 8y ago
        I mean, what could compete, in terms of raw audience?
      • binomialxenon 8y ago
        Centralization.
      • TremendousJudge 8y ago
        it's the best video streaming platform. nothing comes close in terms on quality, speed, and amount of content
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• strig 8y ago
  How is this not considered fraud or theft?
  • M2Ys4U 8y ago
    At the very least tortuous interference in a contract.
  • lmm 8y ago
    Because Google is a private company and allowed to delete videos whenever they like (assuming you don't have a contract where they've agreed to host them for you or anything like that). IMO YouTube ought to be regulated the same way as broadcast media used to, with things like the equal-time rule, but that's not the rule as it currently stands.
    • ConceptJunkie 8y ago
      The Equal Time rule was strictly for political candidates. Perhaps you're thinking of the Fairness Doctrine, which only made sense when broadcast media were very limited. There's got to be a good way to get Google to stop censoring one side of the political spectrum, but if we have to resort to legislation or regulation, we're doing it wrong. If we can't, then I guess Google really is too powerful. Edit: Google is evil. But Google is also free. If we can't counter the first without eliminating the second, then we have failed as a society.
      • vkou 8y ago
        The Fairness Doctrine never made any sense. It only required that contrasting viewpoints be presented for an issue of public import. You could satisfy it, by discussing, say, gun control, and presenting two contrasting viewpoints: One that all guns should be banned, and one that all guns, except for ones used by police and security guards should be banned. A distinction without much of a difference (That is well within the scope of very limited political orthodoxy) is a contrasting viewpoint.
    • ConceptJunkie 8y ago
• Savageman 8y ago
  Same experience from me: they run thing really bad. A TV company came to our office doing a report. They gave us the video, and I uploaded it to YouTube as a private video to share it internally. After a week the private video has maybe 20 views. Months later I receive a copyright claim from the TV network. Their contact email obviously didn't work, and since I'm not a content creator I don't really care about my YouTube channel. So my account ended up being locked/limited during 6 months for a private video that had 0 views since several months... What a mess.
• taneq 8y ago
  > I always found it interesting that under YT rules content creators have the "3 strikes and you're banned" rule hanging over their heads Does this include any linked Gmail accounts? Because that's heinous if so.
  • Jerry2 8y ago
    Any Gmail linked to your Google Account could be closed if they close any of your other services. If they ban your YT channel, your Google Account will be banned too.
• hammock 8y ago
  >those who falsely claim copyright can do so with impunity It's a different enforcement mechanism. DMCA requires by law that YouTube affords people a way to report things. If it gets abused that's on the government to correct, YouTube hands are tied.
• gnopgnip 8y ago
  Advertisers, and not content creators or viewers are Youtube's real customer, and their policies align with that. The whole existence of a take down procedure separate from, and more favorable to the take down issuer is evidence of that
  • cortesoft 8y ago
    Wait, why would an aggressive takedown procedure be favorable for advertisers? Advertisers just want popular videos on which they can put their ads, they don't care if the content is copyrighted or not. Now, they probably care more about other types of censorship (for example, taking down offensive videos to avoid their brand being associated with them).
    • nescoiquid 8y ago
      I think this is a good question. My suspicion is that the policy resulted from legal, rather than market forces. If that's true, then the fact that we the readers, viewers, listeners are the product sold to the advertisers is irrelevant.
• oh_sigh 8y ago
  I wonder if you could do something like file a restraining order against the company to prevent them from communicating with you in the future.
• ocharles 8y ago
  Wait what the hell - getting blocked on YouTube would stop you reading your GMail? Did I really read that correctly?
  • digi_owl 8y ago
    Yep. You do not have an account on each, you have a Google account that allows you to access all of google's services. And once it is closed, it is game over. Most people didn't notice this until G+ hit the net, and some kids used their gmail account (set up with parental knowledge and support) got closed because G+ found out they were under 13. Others have discovered that if their app on Google Play gets into trouble, bye bye gmail etc. It is a downright hamfisted system, and likely an outcome of Google's drive to automate all the tings...
    • toss1 8y ago
      And this is specifically why, as I select for my biz an upgraded email service provider, even though Google/GMail has a solid service & good prices, they are completely disqualified.
      • notriddle 8y ago
        Yeah. I am personally abandoning GMail specifically because I want to be able to upload stuff to YouTube. You know a company is mismanaging things when they're doing things that are against their own interests.
        • mehrdadn 8y ago
          > I am personally abandoning GMail specifically because I want to be able to upload stuff to YouTube Can't you just make another account for videos?
          • scatters 8y ago
            Google will work out that the accounts are operated by the same person and forcibly link them together. They may then decide that you are abusively trying to evade their restrictions and permanently ban all of your accounts.
• voicedYoda 8y ago
  Would something like Media Goblin [1] work for you? It's easy to host, you can share the media how you see fit, and you control copyright, and they're are many ways to deploy to keep costs down. I'm not saying this is easier than yt, but there are some trade offs worth making if you want to really have that level of control. [1] https://mediagoblin.org/ https://mediagoblin.org/
  • Jerry2 8y ago
    >many ways to deploy to keep costs down. If you or someone else has some suggestions for cheap media hosting, I'm all ears :) The one thing I miss from Youtube was all the commenters and people who enjoyed me playing. I got a lot of satisfaction from that and it kept me going and posting more videos (it definitely wasn't the money since ad revenue was abysmal).
    • def_true_false 8y ago
      Hetzner VPS has 20TB of traffic per month for like 3 EUR. You could probably use torrents to save some more bandwidth. Maybe a Peertube instance?
• pervycreeper 8y ago
  As a viewer, it's routine to see classical recordings on YouTube claimed as/attributed to/ categorized as the wrong thing. It doesn't help that differences in two different recordings of, say, the same piano piece can be so similar in some respects, so as to trip up automatic systems. "Widespread systematic failure" is probably the best way to describe the current state of affairs. This issue needs special attention, and classical videos ought to be treated as a special case, IMHO. Worth noting that the reverse is also possible, i.e. recordings being altered only slightly, being able to fool human listeners into hearing them as being different, see for instance the fraudulent recordings attributed to Joyce Hatto.
• mooman219 8y ago
  Ah that sounds like such a frustrating experience. It may be selection bias since I'm on HN a lot, but this sounds like a common situation. If you were a developer at YouTube, what do you think could be done to fix this? Personally, I think a starter is only suspending a user from the specific service they "violated" the TOS on instead of their who freaking account. I don't know how content-id works, but preventing double jeopardy for a flag sounds like a good starting point. Obviously getting human support is a train-wreck and it goes without saying that needs to be fixed.
  • gammatrigono 8y ago
    This isn't a developer level design decision. This is executive level.
  • hegz 8y ago
    Google randomly locking out users seems to be pretty common. I have had them randomly lock me out of google docs files for "ToS violations" only to have the file unlock a few days later. Ever since that happened I stopped using google services to store my stuff.
• mirimir 8y ago
  Maybe there are other mechanisms for revenge :)
  • hegz 8y ago
    Trolls tend to own nothing themselves so they can sling out legal threats all day and not get any in return.
    • mirimir 8y ago
      No infrastructure at all? No people to doxx?
      • hegz 8y ago
        The org that they send from will legally have nothing but patents so they are safe from counter attacks.
• me8 8y ago
  YouTube copyright enforcement is bizarre. Claims against you seem unfounded if your playing classical works and if anyone could claim copyright of your performance is you, as it's a new performance and arrangement makes that your copyright. I have used commercial tracks on videos I've posted and YouTube has authorised saying the copyright owner allows me too in exchange for me accepting adverts on my video. I know they don't check copyright much, as I once got locked out of an old YouTube account I had, forgot the password and didn't have access to the email I signed up with. But I wanted the only video on the channel taken down, so I did a copyright complaint against myself, YouTube accepted it!
• anonytrary 8y ago
  > those who falsely claim copyright can do so with impunity False accusations should be given the same punishment as the accused would have faced. The "flag" and "report" buttons are abused on every single platform, as any mod can tell us.