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The major issue in this is not the bot/automated process that initially flagged the video (although I don't agree with that either). The primary issue is that
by lysp 8y ago
The major issue in this is not the bot/automated process that initially flagged the video (although I don't agree with that either).
The primary issue is that the appeal process was rejected. This shows that either all appeals are rejected outright or the person who was physically responsible for checking it didn't read the appeal or view the video.
I'm not sure how anyone could reasonably assume "this is me personally performing a 300yo song" - either by reading the appeal notes or viewing the video could assume that it breached copyright.
This is why there needs to be damages / fines for all incorrect appeal rejections. Because if there's no penalty for getting it wrong, there is no motivation for a company to actually do anything about it.
If it costs them $1000 - $10,000 for getting it wrong, it will be more cost effective for them to pay someone $20/h to double check before rejecting an appeal.
- eitland 8y agoSomebody presented the idea here on HN the other day about $1 fines - both for individuals and for the music copyright abusers. The nice thing about this IMO is 1$ is a small amount for me and you, but for a big corporation like sony this will cost them thousands every time it gets invoked (because legal will probably get involved). Of course it needs to be slightly more advanced I guess but it would be a good start.
- true_religion 8y agoAt most one guy from finance will be involved to rubber stamp the budget for the quarter.
- eitland 8y agoI don't think so. The idea that they should pay anything back will probably be very hard for them to wrap their head around. ;-)
- pmiller2 8y agoNo, it won’t. Corporations understand the phrase “cost of doing business.” If you want fines to deter corporate wrongdoers, they have to be substantial relative to the company’s profits or revenue.
- devdas 8y agoAll divisions, subsidiaries and parent organisations lose all their copyrights for any false claim.
- amelius 8y agoThey might use a computer with possibly AI to handle it. So the procedure must involve something like a CAPTCHA or human-human-interaction to be effective.
- nialv7 8y agoThis is probably a good idea, but it's not really implementable. Google isn't a law enforcement entity, so they are probably not in a position to fine anyone. And IANAL, but charging for claims is probably not allowed by DMCA.
- jcranmer 8y agoContentID has absolutely nothing to do with DMCA takedown notices, especially in a legal sense.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoPrivate groups can levy fines. They can raise the costs of ads for these publishers on their platform, take a portion of the revenue from their content, or simply cease doing business with them until it's paid.
- checkyoursudo 8y agoFor example, late fees on unreturned video cassettes.
- divbyzer0 8y agoGoogle can ban youtubers for breaching a threshold of community guidelines. Apply the same to process to incorrect flagging of copyrighted content. Break the rules, prevent Sony from uploading for a day or two (or some other functionality). This will never be implemented because there is a symbiosis between a mega content creator and an advertising company. Sanctioning a producer like Sony would be a sanction against google itself. I'm afraid the little people will have to suck it up.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoCan they not file a civil suit to recover damages?
- awalton 8y agoIt'd cost more than you'd likely recover. Even a video with a lot (1M+) of hits only generates a few hundred to a few thousand dollars of revenue (depends on how many of those users skip the ads basically). Might be worth trying to put together a class action suit for all of the people that this keeps happening to... but again, the recovery would likely go primarily to the legal firm, though it might be enough to get Google to wake up and do something about their auto-rejecting appeals system.
- briandear 8y agoSmall claims, filed in your local county. Sony isn’t going to send a $500/hr attorney to fight a $5000 suit. I won a case against American Airlines doing that (a baggage related issue.)
- SwellJoe 8y agoCan you file against Sony in your local county when the problem happened via an international company like Facebook or Google, rather than at your local airport? I have no idea, but I'd like it if there really were a simple, and cost-effective way for the little guy to throw some rocks at Goliath now and then in egregious cases like this.
- raverbashing 8y agoSony does business everywhere, and if it's flagging the copyright in your country I assume it is possible to sue the local company.
- SwellJoe 8y ago"county" isn't the same word as "country". In the US, you bring small claims suits in a county court...county is very localized, and there are thousands of them in the US. Usually the terms of service of video hosting sites will require lawsuits to be brought in the home county of the company (probably somewhere in Delaware or California for Facebook and Google), and they're likely the offending party here (since Sony files through Facebook and Google, and those companies are the ones who're imposing a terms of service that prohibits uploading "copyrighted" materials), so it is not at all clear one could bring a small claims suit against Sony in your local county. If fact, it seems unlikely, based on my understanding of the law. I wish it were possible, but I don't know that a county court would consider itself to have jurisdiction in such a case.
- RikNieu 8y agoOr a cost of $1000 or so per flag, refundable upon the copyright infringement being valid.
- dtech 8y agoThere is a large amount of piracy which gets legitimately flagged. It's unfair to ask copyright holders to perpetually "loan" millions of dollars to hosters, which is what this scheme would effectively enforce.
- viscanti 8y ago"It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer". That's been a theoretical basis of the criminal justice system (or at least something it claims to aspire towards). The argument that lots of crime happens and it's difficult to make sure that efforts to police the law only target the guilty doesn't hold up under that. We're not meant to bias towards punishing a few innocent people because of that difficulty.
- jhanschoo 8y agoThis is disproportionately unfair to small business in the space, tho.
- RikNieu 8y agoOk, how about a $1000 to remove the the content immediately, refundable upon investigation, otherwise the content stays live until the investigation finishes?
- dspillett 8y agoThen perhaps make the charge per block of reports? How large a block should be could be a difficult thing to judge. Perhaps a bock could just be all the reports made in one day. Perhaps let the reporter chose: if anything in a given block of reports is rejected then they all are and need reporting again, this would make the reporter group the definite infringements together but be more cautious with the more spurious/speculative reports. Though a concern with any system like that is implementation and UI/API complexities.