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YouTube's Copyright Protection System Is a Mess

324 points by okket 8y ago

skilled 8y ago
One of PewDiePie recent videos highlights this issue. He had one of his videos copystriked in which he used a fair use segment from another video. And in that segment was a song playing in the background. So, that's like three levels deep of systematic abuse. Apparently, you can also get in trouble by humming or singing (for a few seconds) copyrighted songs. That's just plain stupid. It's kind of funny though, seeing a song copyright holder getting hit by a 3rd-party strike. Goes to show what kind of a mess YouTube is turning into. And it for sure does not help that YouTube's motto is 'screw creators. we are always right.'.
- r3bl 8y ago
  It seems to me like the viewers are finally starting to give a shit. Otherwise, YouTube Rewind wouldn't be the most disliked video ever in a matter of days.
  - markovbot 8y ago
    That sure showed them!
    - r3bl 8y ago
      If your biggest project of the year that includes (or is at least supposed to include) the biggest creators on your platform becomes the most disliked video on your platform, you're bound to take notice. Your marketing team is surely gonna attend a meeting or two to answer some questions about what the hell happened and how could a creation that's supposed to unite the platform become the most disliked one in its history. Of course, you wouldn't want to go public with the internal drama, because why would you, that would only weakens your position. You can't minimize the damage either, it's a done deal. You can either accept the alienation of your audience or do something to fix the situation. Regardless of what choice they make, it is bound to become a point of no return.
      - snaky 8y ago
        Maybe that's just an effect of mixing different youtubers catering to different crowds in one video. Put monster trucks and chess in one video, and you get dislike from not a small part of both monster trucks fans and chess fans.
- ams6110 8y ago
  Yep, my kid had a video of himself singing a popular song removed on copyright grounds. He was like 8 years old.
  - paulpauper 8y ago
    was it a Prince song? lol
  - meh2frdf 8y ago
    Well that is what copyright upholds. The problem is there is no simple way you can get a license for the video clip from the rights holders. And then no sensible way of verifying that license with the platform.
    - CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
      Not necessarily. I think for most countries only public performances are prohibited. While YouTube certainly is a public platform I think an interesting case could be made for videos with a limited popularity, say only viewed by family and friends.
      - meh2frdf 8y ago
        So you would need a change internationally to copyright law, and then for YouTube to limit the number of viewers to a video (which doesn’t make much business sense). There are a lot of opinions on how copyright should work, however little understanding of how it actually works. There are possible tech solutions that could work with the current copyright system. The truth is both big tech and the rights collection societies like the status quo as they both profit off the actual creative works done by others. The actual battle is between who can get the biggest slice.
        CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
        It wasn’t meant as a suggestion, I actually meant that a case could be made in court that a particular performance isn’t public with a reference to low view counts.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > Apparently, you can also get in trouble by humming or singing (for a few seconds) copyrighted songs. That's just plain stupid. Disregarding the main issue, I'm impressed by that level of detection. I mean, if it works reliably, they could spin it off to make a better Shazam. I find myself in need to identify a melody stuck in my head, which I can hum, far more often than a song playing in the background.
  - aylons 8y ago
    Try Sound Hound! I've been using it for several years, and it does identify hums and badly song music I have in my head.
jstanley 8y ago
I used to republish scam marketing videos for binary options trading scams on YouTube.[0] I recently got an email saying they had received a claim from the copyright holder, which seems strange as it is unlikely that the copyright holder would wish to identify themself. The so-called "copyright holder" was actually a music publisher, and there was music in the video at various points, so I assumed it must be about that. But I looked at the identified time section, and there was no music at all. It was just a guy talking. I have no idea why it matched. I submitted an appeal. It gives you several options for why you want to appeal, but notably absent is "the video does not contain any of the claimant's material", so my "appeal" had to be submitted on the grounds that my (non-)usage of the claimant's audio is fair use... YouTube's copyright system is laughable. [0] If you're interested, this is one of my favourites: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BeeUXNF1H8s https://youtube.com/watch?v=BeeUXNF1H8s
- themodelplumber 8y ago
  Ah man. That video :/ so awkward. Looks like they used some 3D-rendered backgrounds, too? I do career coaching and occasionally get clients who have worked for incredibly scammy outfits. It's sad but these businesses can easily grow on the backs of (often really low-paid) employees who are just treading water in their careers, and the employees typically hear similar career-related promises from the principals. "You'll be off the ground floor in no time," etc.
- skilled 8y ago
  That video is hilarious! The stone-cold act, basement dwelling 'reviews', green screen -- let's get it!
  - ehsankia 8y ago
    That "professional trader" was over-acting the hell out of that scene. I also love that each consecutive "day", they had the same clothes but slightly more undressed.
    - pooppaint 8y ago
judge2020 8y ago
The article touches on this, but a big factor of Content ID is that it's not in any way tied to copyright law or the DMCA. Yes, Youtube says users need to play by DMCA rules regarding what they own, but content creators are not entitled to disputes, fair use, or even the ability to sue over a claim.
- lucb1e 8y ago
  There is no need to implement DMCA if the people that would sue you over it are happy. The system they use is extremely aggressive in matching anything and everything, and gives copyright owners the choice to get money from it without doing anything, remove it, or just give credit. There does not have to be a connection with DMCA rules if this is what keeps the bigcorps happy. Laws typically only get enacted when you make someone angry.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  > The article touches on this, but a big factor of Content ID is that it's not in any way tied to copyright law or the DMCA. Yup - it's a "Copyright Protection System" that has nothing to do with Copyright. So, how long before people start referring to it more simply, as a "Protection" system"?
AnssiH 8y ago
I wonder whether Article 13(2b) of the infamous EU copyright directive will change anything. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&language=EN&reference=P8-TA-2018-0337 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&langua... It requires "effective and expeditious complaints and redress mechanisms" for users affected by unjustified removals, and complaints shall "be processed without undue delay and be subject to human review", and that "users shall have access to an independent body for the resolution of disputes as well as to a court or another relevant judicial authority to assert the use of an exception or limitation to copyright rules". It might, or maybe YouTube's current mechanism already satisfies the above, don't know.
- c3o 8y ago
  Just to be clear, what you linked to is the European Parliament's proposal for the law. Compromise negotiations are currently ongoing with the Council (representing the member state governments), which in its own proposal does not ask for human review or an independent dispute resolution body. At this point it's unclear what the final law will say. https://juliareda.eu/2018/10/copyright-trilogue-positions/ https://juliareda.eu/2018/10/copyright-trilogue-positions/ No matter what the safeguards end up being though, Article 13 is likely to make the problem worse overall because it will force all other platforms that host a lot of user posts/uploads (all content types, including text and photos) to also implement automated copyright systems, which are likely to be even shoddier than YouTube's.
grecy 8y ago
Another brilliant YouTube stupidity case has just shown up. This guy [1] reviewed a channel that is very likely inappropriate. HE gets a strike on his channel, the one he reviewed is still ticking along, no consequences! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM4OwGhchUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM4OwGhchUA
- mnayz 8y ago
  You better get used to children being sexualised, because that's the way the tides are turning.
  - edoceo 8y ago
    I refuse to get used to that kind of stuff.
    - mnayz 8y ago
      That's how I and many others used to feel about homosexuality. This is where we are now: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/dragkid/ https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/dragkid/ You don't like this? What are you, some kind of bigot? It's almost 2019, for fuck's sake! ;)
  - tzakrajs 8y ago
    Or not? What the hell kind of attitude is this?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
chirau 8y ago
They shut down my channel with more than 20k subscribers earlier in September. I sent in all the digital publishing rights contracts signed by all the artists whose content I had. No response, just automated emails. Even tried my assigned partner manager, just more automated emails. I feel most sorry for the artists... Most were from my home country in Africa and I had given them a sustainable source of income. Overnight, like Thanos, it was gone. I tried to fight for them, but YouTube would not even bat an ear. Maybe one day we will get a better service than this. And if there is a person from YouTube or Google here, your company really needs to do better. I personally have not forgiven them yet.
- ckocagil 8y ago
  Or maybe instead of crying and groveling at Google's feet we could get up in arms and create a better platform. But, oh, we can't make it a centralized platform because then we'd have to replicate something similar to Youtube's copyright system to avoid getting litigated to death by media companies. So how about a federated or fully distributed platform? That could work... except it couldn't use regular payment processors because they will block payments. I seriously believe cryptocurrencies were the final piece to this puzzle. Maybe we'll see a resurrection of cryptocurrencies in 5 to 10 years, like the one the internet had after the dotcom bubble.
  - paulpauper 8y ago
    there are tons of alternatives. the probme is, no traffic, no viralness, and terrible user experience relative to YouTube
    - ttoinou 8y ago
      Chicken and egg issue and having good website with good UX and good bandwidth and accepting anyone who wants to open his own channel costs a lot of money... The parent comment is kinda right crypto currencies could help here
- nikanj 8y ago
  Looking at the revenue, growth rates, etc, it looks like Youtube sadly does not need to do better. It seems protecting the rights of massive media companies at the expense of tiny players has resulted them in attracting the massive crowds, at the expense of tiny crowds. Keeping Marvel trailers and Madonna music videos up brings in much more money than serving the indie sector. They care very little for the false positives, because only false negatives actually cost them money.
lucb1e 8y ago
We all know it's a mess. Most comments provide anecdotal or other evidence of how terrible and unjust it is, but it's not a disputed issue. What I am more interested to hear is what we can do about it.
- izacus 8y ago
  Implement a framework where YT and/or copyright holder issuing the takedown needs to pay damages for each mistaken takedown notice. At this point the copyright holders keep the advertising revenue (!) for period of demonetization even if the takedown was completely fraudulent. They actually have a financial incentive to just issue as much Content ID takedowns as possible because they earn money from them.
swozey 8y ago
I've been hearing a lot lately that hiking/nature photography people, who is mostly what I follow, have been getting copyright striked by "meditation" publishers for recording the actual waves crashing against a shore, or the rain on a tent, things like that that happen naturally and they just happen to film within their hiking videos. I really, really wish Youtube had competition. edit1: Example; https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/a74f7p/youtubes_content_claim_system_is_out_of_control/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/a74f7p/youtubes_con... edit2: TheFatRat made this song, it's his own music. He said anyone could use it so long as they credited him. Some publisher made a remix of it, copystruck his original, claimed it as their own and now they receive the revenue for its views. https://twitter.com/ThisIsTheFatRat/status/1072933046939193344 https://twitter.com/ThisIsTheFatRat/status/10729330469391933... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR-eV7fHNbM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR-eV7fHNbM
- nikanj 8y ago
  Competition, like Vimeo et at?
  - swozey 8y ago
    That's like saying to me that Opera is competition to Chrome. Come on. What's it have, 0.1% of the videos and 99% of them are from professional photography studios? I can't even remember the last time I visited Vimeo. edit: I just signed up to give it another chance, looked up something I constantly watch on youtube; "Medieval Documentary" and the few selections I have (3-4) are 5-10 years old. On the flip side there are so many choices from that search on youtube I'm not even sure what to watch. Youtube is my cable TV replacement and has been for maybe 10 years, and I'm in my mid 30s. edit-2: I finally stopped scrolling and getting medieval documentaries. It's endless scroll so it's hard to gauge but I'm guessing I'd be on page 30-40 by now. The only way that I can tell that my search ended was now I'm getting thrown random Youtube rental videos. The first one at the end of my search is An Inconvenient Truth. But they still speckle interesting historical stuff in there for me. Lots of native american, 18th, 19th century stuff, etc. Then a lot of completely unrelated movies, like Holy Hell and Once in a Lifetime, Bill & Ted, what we do in the Shadows. I guess you could use a very vague "historical" against those so maybe that's legit, but not really my aim with that search.
paulpauper 8y ago
Youtube has gotten out of control regarding copyright take-downs. Something as inconspicuous as a MIDI file or some really old video game music in the background can get a take-down notice. A publisher I used to follow, 10k subs, got taken down recently for this. Appeal process was useless for him. I suspect a someone will submit tons of flags and then YouTube will automatically suspend the account. Guilty until proven innocent in the eyes of YouTube.
paulpauper 8y ago
Not to mention, YouTube req. a Google account. If you lose that, you lose your YouTube account.
cft 8y ago
We should support and switch to Bitchute.com if we want to have more than one internet cable channel.
tcd 8y ago
I'm not wanting to defend Youtube entirely but perspective is important with issues like this. Never before in human history have we have had the ability to have a free, unlimited access repository of our endeavors, and allow anyone to share their stories or creations. Youtube is still at the wright brothers level of their systems; they're fragile, prone to mistakes and are pretty terrible to use. We didn't get to airplanes in a decade or two, it took thousands of years and we're still making improvements. I see a lot of frustration but not many answers. How do you develop a system that has to be flawless for everyone and deal with 350 hours of video uploaded every minute. That's like designing a perfect 4 lane highway with 350 cars every second of every day, week, month and year, and having a perfect system in case of an accident. It's not possible, there will be mistakes and we should accept that but always push for improvement, but we're still in the early stages. Just like aircraft, it'll get better but it will take some time. This isn't exclusive to Youtube, why do you think no one else is insane enough to challenge them? Any provider would have these issues (there are many Twitch dramas for example). If I were Youtube I'd throw in the towel and just say "well, we can't deal with this, goodbye". That, I think, is far worse than a few videos being demonetized or channels deleted. Perspective is important.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  A significant portion of the grumbling around this is that YouTube has put their head in the sand and refused to admit that their service has issues, and steadfastly continues to use automated systems when what they really need is backup from a subjective human.
- clarry 8y ago
  People aren't complaining that it isn't perfect. People are complaining because the system is and has been in favor of fraudlent claimants what, seven years now? We don't need a technically perfect solution, we just need some balance in the system so people can fight fire with fire and make claimants liable for their fraud and broken auto-harassment systems. It doesn't take decades to do that. It just takes will.
ekianjo 8y ago
Good article but falls completely flat at the very end: > For TheFatRat the recent trouble was the final straw. Yesterday he launched a petition urging YouTube to fix the copyright protection system which 22,000 people have signed already, Since when do online petitions matter? Like... never?
Carpetsmoker 8y ago
Every minute "over 400 hours" of content is uploaded to YouTube. It's a serious challenge to moderate a community at that scale. This extends far beyond just the copyright claims. There is all sort of objectionable content being uploaded that needs to be removed, and it's easy to find literal neo-Nazi propaganda in the YouTube comments, as well as all sorts of racial slurs. Reporting this seems to have little effect in my experience. I don't have any good answers to this problem, but it's frustrating that YouTube is so opaque in their process. I have no idea what happened to my reports of neo-Nazi content for example (it wasn't removed) and also no notification that it was reviewed but denied. I hold little love for Facebook, but in my experience their process is a lot better.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Every minute "over 400 hours" of content is uploaded to YouTube. It's a serious challenge to moderate a community at that scale. If only YouTube had a large parent company with a significant portion of a trillion dollars that could be spent actually taking care of this problem. Instead we get, “Let the bot script handle it. Oh, the system doesn’t work? Too bad.”
  - tcd 8y ago
    "If only the world had a significant portion of several trillion dollars that could be spent curing cancer". Money isn't the answer to all the world's problems. But I'm intrigued to hear how you think they should "take care of the problem". Maybe you can share your innovative python script that solves the problem for good.
    - reaperducer 8y ago
      I'm intrigued to hear how you think they should "take care of the problem". Hire actual humans to review disputed decisions, while putting in a proper appeals process that is also overseen by actual thinking humans. Maybe you can share your innovative python script that solves the problem for good. I'm not Google. I don't pretend that all of the world's problems can be solved by computers, and then fail while trying.
jwr 8y ago
It seems that the whole "copyright claim" system is just a distraction. We are all getting distracted instead of looking at the bigger picture: while we are fighting, Google earns money no matter what. I recently noticed my own work being sold on Etsy by thieves. Guess what, Etsy doesn't even want to hear from you about copyright problems. There is no way to report it (try it). I hope eventually people will start suing and things will end up in courts. I don't think courts will look kindly on profiteering from stolen property.
- trevyn 8y ago
  The magic word for reporting copyright infringement is DMCA. First hit for searching “etsy dmca”: https://www.etsy.com/legal/ip-dmca/ https://www.etsy.com/legal/ip-dmca/
libraryatnight 8y ago
I had a video up once, and after a bunch of issues with background music on other videos, I decided to use one of the royalty free selections youtube offers up in their editor/upload tool. It still got flagged. Past videos I made my own simple drum loops etc, and those got flagged. I just don't really bother with creating content for youtube anymore. In part because it's a pain, but equally just because I'm ADD and have moved on to other interests :)
- pedrocx486 8y ago
  I had a channel where I did silent game streams (no-commentary streams) and I was playing a game where its background songs were generated procedurally (not citing names today), and I got flagged by a company that represented "keygens and cracks blah blah blah". A company that represented songs in keygens. The ones used in piracy. The irony was so strong I shut down my channel to never look back.
paulpauper 8y ago
Dealing with YouTube support (and Google support in general) is the epitome of 'Kafkaesque'
annadane 8y ago
And does it HAVE to be? At what point does YT just say "piss off, you can't control the internet"? When they use the DMCA properly and not Content ID only because they don't want to lose money on lawsuits?
slcjordan 8y ago
The mess is simply a syptom of dated copyright laws applied in the modern era.
anhonestopinion 8y ago
Big youtubers should sue, win and create a precedent. Instead they make video where they whine and things only get worse.
- rezashirazian 8y ago
  This is a very good point. Top youtubers definitely have the resources to put up a decent fight and add a certain level of consequence for haphazard video claims by the Music Companies.
nutcracker46 8y ago
Fuck YouTube and the copyright trolls infesting the service. I have repeatedly fought copyright claims on material that was obviously public domain. Being tired of reminding claimants and YouTube that NASA air to ground comms and presidential speeches are not subject to copyright, I deleted the content. There were absurd claims, where my uploads were on YouTube for years before the claimants published their material, and the audio was from events recorded by the U.S. government a half century ago. Yeah, fuck YouTube and the copyright trolls who infest it.
manfredo 8y ago
YouTube seems like they're stuck between a rock, and a hard place. The stakes for copyright infringement seem to be getting ever higher. The EU's Article 13 is perhaps the most extreme example of this, which effectively expects platforms to be prescient and in whether or not content is infringing. On top of this, the extremely large amount of content YouTube hosts make it effectively impossible to manually review a large number of videos This puts a huge pressure on the platform to be strict with copyright infringement, and to try and minimize false negatives even at the cost of false positives. To make matters worse, the media companies filing the copyright claims are the established players that are getting disrupted by internet services like YouTube. These companies have zero incentive to avoid false copyright claims, and it seems like they have no accountability for the instances where they flag unambiguously non-infringing videos. If you're even more cynical, they actually have an incentive to file bogus claims as it degrades the experience of using YouTube and thus hurts the established media companies' competitor. The main solution I see is to have some element of accountability on the one filing the copyright claim. E.g. charge $X for every false claim. Or revoke the copyright holder's ability to file claims if they exceeding a certain number of false claims, or they they flag unambiguously non-infringing videos. Give the ones filing claims a strike, for once. But as far as I can tell, enforcing these mechanisms would put YouTube and other platforms in violation of the DMCA which is effectively a death sentence for such a platform.
- Fej 8y ago
  For accountability: DMCA claims require a sworn statement under penalty of perjury. The fact that it's a crime is a deterrent. Unfortunately YouTube's Content ID system does not actually deal with DMCA claims directly and so false claims are not unlawful under that provision. YouTube has been fine with this because it keeps Viacom et al. off their back.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    So what would be the consequence of giving strikes to those that make bogus copyright claims, or revoking the ability to make claims if the rate at which they are overturned goes above a certain percentage? It seems to be a pretty obvious solution to me, but I'm willing to give YT the benefit of the doubt if people give compelling explanations.
RyanShook 8y ago
YouTube has no incentive to enforce copyright laws correctly. As long as large rights holders can claim and takedown content on the platform YouTube gets to keep placing ads against videos regardless of who actually owns the copyright.
heyjudy 8y ago
Dave of EEVblog got hit with a copyright strike for something in the public domain that a corporation uploaded and claimed as theirs. It's bullshit. Worse, other randoms are extorting small-but-growing channels to pay them in exchange for not pulling similar crap. How I see it is that YT facilitates copyright abuse, fraud and racketeering much more than it enforces legitimate copyright assertions.
Nasrudith 8y ago
Really it is impossible for it not to be a mess when the law is a mess. Until there is a sufficiently severe punishment for fraudulent take-downs and it is applied frequently there will be no hesitation. If they could give a three strikes on false takedowns to be removed youtube would probably happily do it just to reduce their load as all rightholders would have gotten themselves banned.
yantrams 8y ago
On a somewhat unrelated and maybe tangential note, I felt the logo of Torrent Freak reminded me of Techcrunch quite a bit and ran it against the logo database I have and indeed found Techcrunch show up in the results. http://compute.vision/brands/logo-results.html?hash=CD1POO56TN07DGJG http://compute.vision/brands/logo-results.html?hash=CD1POO56... Edit: Updated Link
balibebas 8y ago
In 2016 YouTube banned me from using their service based on a single claim made against a video which had already been taken down. Within two weeks not only was my account terminated, my original content was deleted without trace. Content deleted included both video I'd uploaded to YouTube as well as 10 years of videos I'd backed-up on Google Photos (then called Picassa). I never did get any of that content back.
InclinedPlane 8y ago
YouTube is a perfect example of a platform that has somehow managed to serve as host to an incredible ecosystem of content creators despite the management having little real concept of the value of the system and consistently treating its most important creators poorly. They would kill the goose that laid the golden egg just to make things marginally easier for advertisers or to save themselves the trouble of having to do real work. Not only that, but they do a very poor job of contending with what can only euphemistically be called "the wide diversity of content" on the site. Dumb as rocks machine learning based recommendations and content filtering means that for a vast majority of users (including minors and children) it's common to watch perfectly ordinary videos and then be recommended all sorts of ridiculous videos to watch next, from flat Earth and ancient aliens conspiracies to misogynists to holocaust deniers and actual nazis. To call YouTube a "mess" is a vast understatement. Much like twitter they have captured the attention and engagement of enormous numbers of people, and yet somehow they cannot figure out how to prevent the platform from becoming a toxic hell hole (because they refuse to do the work), they treat their users and creators poorly, and somehow they are constantly in a battle to increase revenue. I support about half a dozen different folks who make youtube videos via patreon but I refuse to give youtube money until they get their head out of their ass.
makecheck 8y ago
It would be wonderful if every single takedown request required a phone call. And let these copyright claimers be put on hold for 40 minutes like they’re trying to reach the cable company. It sure as hell shouldn’t be automatic or point-and-click, and it sure as hell shouldn’t be this guilty-until-proven-innocent system.
nitrogen 8y ago
A lot of comments are assuming that any competitor to YouTube must have something like ContentID. Why? It's not required by any law.
Applejinx 8y ago
I've taken to tweeting every time my plugin-release videos are hit by a ContentID troll: https://twitter.com/applejinx/status/1070249318609752064 https://twitter.com/applejinx/status/1070249318609752064 I'm using Logic's Test Oscillator to generate white noise, which goes through my plugins to demonstrate how they react, and gets shown on a frequency analyzer. Some bright spark (over the years it has been more than one 'publisher') has ContentIDed noise… different sorts of noise… in order to stealth copyright strike people's videos and get revenue. If you file a complaint they quickly remove the claim so they're not noticed. Your only form for filing the complaint involves making a statement that you think they're doing it by mistake, and acknowledging that you know YouTube has nothing to do with it and won't do a thing about it. So this becomes an exercise I do over and over and over again. Or I suppose I could never use a test oscillator or noise source again, because somebody owns the idea of audio noise now. They've got a bunch of different EQings of noise, so demonstrating a filter is no refuge. Since once upon a time it was a different claimant, I think that from time to time someone gets YouTube to kick them out of ContentID: I've been told of some magic URL to go to where you can complain against this sort of abuse, but I don't remember what it was and don't know if it's helpful or actually dangerous for a creator to make use of such tools. I do know that it doesn't help because the Noise Owners come back under different names and keep operating. I've been dealing with this for YEARS.
- Applejinx 8y ago
  Also, Drew Gooden this November was not at all the first to copyright strike themselves: I've done that as well, uploading an old CD of my own music which, it turned out, I'd also distributed through CDBaby. I don't remember ever telling CDBaby to attack people on YouTube over my work, much less myself, and I wasn't able to get a satisfactory answer about whether I could withdraw from their automatic listing with ContentID, so I ended up removing the album from CDBaby entirely. I'm sure others have had that experience with CDBaby. Probably some find it valuable: as an individual I can't put stuff into ContentID, so it's one obvious way to jump to the 'abuser' side of the equation. I'm not clear on how you'd tell YouTube that you've licensed your music to somebody and to let their channel/etc play your content, and without that there's no commercial use to the system. Well, except for copyright striking stuff that's not yours and seizing tiny crumbs of ad revenue in however many hours or minutes you get before you're noticed. It's generally old videos so I'm sure the real paydirt here is copyright striking stuff that's old and forgotten. It's still pathetic because stuff like that doesn't get views…
EamonnMR 8y ago
I was uploading family videos transferred from VHS and one got flagged down because in the background someone had a radio on.
ezoe 8y ago
False flagging shall be a crime with jail sentence. The result of automation shall be responsible.
- clarry 8y ago
  Ok, put me in jail (I just flagged yer message)! I agree though that there should be severe penalty for large scale, intentional false flagging with intent to profit or cause losses to someone else. Smaller scale "accidents" that slip through from companies that do mass flagging should probably have at least a small penalty, and if the flag caused monetization to shift in favor of the false claimant, then all of that income must be returned to the rightful owner. This would disincentivize false flagging, and incentivize companies to fix their shit (or stop mass flagging until they figure out something that doesn't have so many false positives). AIUI the current system on YT is completely in favor of those who fraudlently claim copyright, because they have nothing to lose and something to gain. This is all Google's fault as far as I can tell. Ultimately Goog will need to do human review in cases of dispute but they're already doing that anyway for other reasons (e.g. child porn, gore, and other content that isn't allowed on the site). Though I'd really prefer that this isn't handled by Google at all. It should go to courts, and if it's too much paperwork for courts to handle the flood of copyright cases, then it's on the lawmakers to fix their broken laws and make the system workable. One can dream..

324 points by okket 8y ago

One of PewDiePie recent videos highlights this issue. He had one of his videos copystriked in which he used a fair use segment from another video. And in that segment was a song playing in the background. So, that's like three levels deep of systematic abuse. Apparently, you can also get in trouble by humming or singing (for a few seconds) copyrighted songs. That's just plain stupid. It's kind of funny though, seeing a song copyright holder getting hit by a 3rd-party strike. Goes to show what kind of a mess YouTube is turning into. And it for sure does not help that YouTube's motto is 'screw creators. we are always right.'.

r3bl 8y ago
It seems to me like the viewers are finally starting to give a shit. Otherwise, YouTube Rewind wouldn't be the most disliked video ever in a matter of days.
- markovbot 8y ago
  That sure showed them!
  - r3bl 8y ago
    If your biggest project of the year that includes (or is at least supposed to include) the biggest creators on your platform becomes the most disliked video on your platform, you're bound to take notice. Your marketing team is surely gonna attend a meeting or two to answer some questions about what the hell happened and how could a creation that's supposed to unite the platform become the most disliked one in its history. Of course, you wouldn't want to go public with the internal drama, because why would you, that would only weakens your position. You can't minimize the damage either, it's a done deal. You can either accept the alienation of your audience or do something to fix the situation. Regardless of what choice they make, it is bound to become a point of no return.
    - snaky 8y ago
      Maybe that's just an effect of mixing different youtubers catering to different crowds in one video. Put monster trucks and chess in one video, and you get dislike from not a small part of both monster trucks fans and chess fans.
ams6110 8y ago
Yep, my kid had a video of himself singing a popular song removed on copyright grounds. He was like 8 years old.
- paulpauper 8y ago
  was it a Prince song? lol
- meh2frdf 8y ago
  Well that is what copyright upholds. The problem is there is no simple way you can get a license for the video clip from the rights holders. And then no sensible way of verifying that license with the platform.
  - CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
    Not necessarily. I think for most countries only public performances are prohibited. While YouTube certainly is a public platform I think an interesting case could be made for videos with a limited popularity, say only viewed by family and friends.
    - meh2frdf 8y ago
      So you would need a change internationally to copyright law, and then for YouTube to limit the number of viewers to a video (which doesn’t make much business sense). There are a lot of opinions on how copyright should work, however little understanding of how it actually works. There are possible tech solutions that could work with the current copyright system. The truth is both big tech and the rights collection societies like the status quo as they both profit off the actual creative works done by others. The actual battle is between who can get the biggest slice.
      - CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
        It wasn’t meant as a suggestion, I actually meant that a case could be made in court that a particular performance isn’t public with a reference to low view counts.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
> Apparently, you can also get in trouble by humming or singing (for a few seconds) copyrighted songs. That's just plain stupid. Disregarding the main issue, I'm impressed by that level of detection. I mean, if it works reliably, they could spin it off to make a better Shazam. I find myself in need to identify a melody stuck in my head, which I can hum, far more often than a song playing in the background.
- aylons 8y ago
  Try Sound Hound! I've been using it for several years, and it does identify hums and badly song music I have in my head.

jstanley 8y ago

I used to republish scam marketing videos for binary options trading scams on YouTube.[0] I recently got an email saying they had received a claim from the copyright holder, which seems strange as it is unlikely that the copyright holder would wish to identify themself. The so-called "copyright holder" was actually a music publisher, and there was music in the video at various points, so I assumed it must be about that. But I looked at the identified time section, and there was no music at all. It was just a guy talking. I have no idea why it matched. I submitted an appeal. It gives you several options for why you want to appeal, but notably absent is "the video does not contain any of the claimant's material", so my "appeal" had to be submitted on the grounds that my (non-)usage of the claimant's audio is fair use... YouTube's copyright system is laughable. [0] If you're interested, this is one of my favourites: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BeeUXNF1H8s https://youtube.com/watch?v=BeeUXNF1H8s

themodelplumber 8y ago
Ah man. That video :/ so awkward. Looks like they used some 3D-rendered backgrounds, too? I do career coaching and occasionally get clients who have worked for incredibly scammy outfits. It's sad but these businesses can easily grow on the backs of (often really low-paid) employees who are just treading water in their careers, and the employees typically hear similar career-related promises from the principals. "You'll be off the ground floor in no time," etc.
skilled 8y ago
That video is hilarious! The stone-cold act, basement dwelling 'reviews', green screen -- let's get it!
- ehsankia 8y ago
  That "professional trader" was over-acting the hell out of that scene. I also love that each consecutive "day", they had the same clothes but slightly more undressed.
  - pooppaint 8y ago

judge2020 8y ago

The article touches on this, but a big factor of Content ID is that it's not in any way tied to copyright law or the DMCA. Yes, Youtube says users need to play by DMCA rules regarding what they own, but content creators are not entitled to disputes, fair use, or even the ability to sue over a claim.

lucb1e 8y ago
There is no need to implement DMCA if the people that would sue you over it are happy. The system they use is extremely aggressive in matching anything and everything, and gives copyright owners the choice to get money from it without doing anything, remove it, or just give credit. There does not have to be a connection with DMCA rules if this is what keeps the bigcorps happy. Laws typically only get enacted when you make someone angry.
zozbot123 8y ago
> The article touches on this, but a big factor of Content ID is that it's not in any way tied to copyright law or the DMCA. Yup - it's a "Copyright Protection System" that has nothing to do with Copyright. So, how long before people start referring to it more simply, as a "Protection" system"?

AnssiH 8y ago

I wonder whether Article 13(2b) of the infamous EU copyright directive will change anything. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&language=EN&reference=P8-TA-2018-0337 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&langua... It requires "effective and expeditious complaints and redress mechanisms" for users affected by unjustified removals, and complaints shall "be processed without undue delay and be subject to human review", and that "users shall have access to an independent body for the resolution of disputes as well as to a court or another relevant judicial authority to assert the use of an exception or limitation to copyright rules". It might, or maybe YouTube's current mechanism already satisfies the above, don't know.

c3o 8y ago
Just to be clear, what you linked to is the European Parliament's proposal for the law. Compromise negotiations are currently ongoing with the Council (representing the member state governments), which in its own proposal does not ask for human review or an independent dispute resolution body. At this point it's unclear what the final law will say. https://juliareda.eu/2018/10/copyright-trilogue-positions/ https://juliareda.eu/2018/10/copyright-trilogue-positions/ No matter what the safeguards end up being though, Article 13 is likely to make the problem worse overall because it will force all other platforms that host a lot of user posts/uploads (all content types, including text and photos) to also implement automated copyright systems, which are likely to be even shoddier than YouTube's.

grecy 8y ago

Another brilliant YouTube stupidity case has just shown up. This guy [1] reviewed a channel that is very likely inappropriate. HE gets a strike on his channel, the one he reviewed is still ticking along, no consequences! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM4OwGhchUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM4OwGhchUA

mnayz 8y ago
You better get used to children being sexualised, because that's the way the tides are turning.
- edoceo 8y ago
  I refuse to get used to that kind of stuff.
  - mnayz 8y ago
    That's how I and many others used to feel about homosexuality. This is where we are now: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/dragkid/ https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/dragkid/ You don't like this? What are you, some kind of bigot? It's almost 2019, for fuck's sake! ;)
- tzakrajs 8y ago
  Or not? What the hell kind of attitude is this?
  - deleted 8y ago
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chirau 8y ago

They shut down my channel with more than 20k subscribers earlier in September. I sent in all the digital publishing rights contracts signed by all the artists whose content I had. No response, just automated emails. Even tried my assigned partner manager, just more automated emails. I feel most sorry for the artists... Most were from my home country in Africa and I had given them a sustainable source of income. Overnight, like Thanos, it was gone. I tried to fight for them, but YouTube would not even bat an ear. Maybe one day we will get a better service than this. And if there is a person from YouTube or Google here, your company really needs to do better. I personally have not forgiven them yet.

ckocagil 8y ago
Or maybe instead of crying and groveling at Google's feet we could get up in arms and create a better platform. But, oh, we can't make it a centralized platform because then we'd have to replicate something similar to Youtube's copyright system to avoid getting litigated to death by media companies. So how about a federated or fully distributed platform? That could work... except it couldn't use regular payment processors because they will block payments. I seriously believe cryptocurrencies were the final piece to this puzzle. Maybe we'll see a resurrection of cryptocurrencies in 5 to 10 years, like the one the internet had after the dotcom bubble.
- paulpauper 8y ago
  there are tons of alternatives. the probme is, no traffic, no viralness, and terrible user experience relative to YouTube
  - ttoinou 8y ago
    Chicken and egg issue and having good website with good UX and good bandwidth and accepting anyone who wants to open his own channel costs a lot of money... The parent comment is kinda right crypto currencies could help here
nikanj 8y ago
Looking at the revenue, growth rates, etc, it looks like Youtube sadly does not need to do better. It seems protecting the rights of massive media companies at the expense of tiny players has resulted them in attracting the massive crowds, at the expense of tiny crowds. Keeping Marvel trailers and Madonna music videos up brings in much more money than serving the indie sector. They care very little for the false positives, because only false negatives actually cost them money.

lucb1e 8y ago

We all know it's a mess. Most comments provide anecdotal or other evidence of how terrible and unjust it is, but it's not a disputed issue. What I am more interested to hear is what we can do about it.

izacus 8y ago
Implement a framework where YT and/or copyright holder issuing the takedown needs to pay damages for each mistaken takedown notice. At this point the copyright holders keep the advertising revenue (!) for period of demonetization even if the takedown was completely fraudulent. They actually have a financial incentive to just issue as much Content ID takedowns as possible because they earn money from them.

swozey 8y ago

I've been hearing a lot lately that hiking/nature photography people, who is mostly what I follow, have been getting copyright striked by "meditation" publishers for recording the actual waves crashing against a shore, or the rain on a tent, things like that that happen naturally and they just happen to film within their hiking videos. I really, really wish Youtube had competition. edit1: Example; https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/a74f7p/youtubes_content_claim_system_is_out_of_control/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/a74f7p/youtubes_con... edit2: TheFatRat made this song, it's his own music. He said anyone could use it so long as they credited him. Some publisher made a remix of it, copystruck his original, claimed it as their own and now they receive the revenue for its views. https://twitter.com/ThisIsTheFatRat/status/1072933046939193344 https://twitter.com/ThisIsTheFatRat/status/10729330469391933... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR-eV7fHNbM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR-eV7fHNbM

nikanj 8y ago
Competition, like Vimeo et at?
- swozey 8y ago
  That's like saying to me that Opera is competition to Chrome. Come on. What's it have, 0.1% of the videos and 99% of them are from professional photography studios? I can't even remember the last time I visited Vimeo. edit: I just signed up to give it another chance, looked up something I constantly watch on youtube; "Medieval Documentary" and the few selections I have (3-4) are 5-10 years old. On the flip side there are so many choices from that search on youtube I'm not even sure what to watch. Youtube is my cable TV replacement and has been for maybe 10 years, and I'm in my mid 30s. edit-2: I finally stopped scrolling and getting medieval documentaries. It's endless scroll so it's hard to gauge but I'm guessing I'd be on page 30-40 by now. The only way that I can tell that my search ended was now I'm getting thrown random Youtube rental videos. The first one at the end of my search is An Inconvenient Truth. But they still speckle interesting historical stuff in there for me. Lots of native american, 18th, 19th century stuff, etc. Then a lot of completely unrelated movies, like Holy Hell and Once in a Lifetime, Bill & Ted, what we do in the Shadows. I guess you could use a very vague "historical" against those so maybe that's legit, but not really my aim with that search.

paulpauper 8y ago

Youtube has gotten out of control regarding copyright take-downs. Something as inconspicuous as a MIDI file or some really old video game music in the background can get a take-down notice. A publisher I used to follow, 10k subs, got taken down recently for this. Appeal process was useless for him. I suspect a someone will submit tons of flags and then YouTube will automatically suspend the account. Guilty until proven innocent in the eyes of YouTube.

paulpauper 8y ago

Not to mention, YouTube req. a Google account. If you lose that, you lose your YouTube account.

cft 8y ago

We should support and switch to Bitchute.com if we want to have more than one internet cable channel.

tcd 8y ago

I'm not wanting to defend Youtube entirely but perspective is important with issues like this. Never before in human history have we have had the ability to have a free, unlimited access repository of our endeavors, and allow anyone to share their stories or creations. Youtube is still at the wright brothers level of their systems; they're fragile, prone to mistakes and are pretty terrible to use. We didn't get to airplanes in a decade or two, it took thousands of years and we're still making improvements. I see a lot of frustration but not many answers. How do you develop a system that has to be flawless for everyone and deal with 350 hours of video uploaded every minute. That's like designing a perfect 4 lane highway with 350 cars every second of every day, week, month and year, and having a perfect system in case of an accident. It's not possible, there will be mistakes and we should accept that but always push for improvement, but we're still in the early stages. Just like aircraft, it'll get better but it will take some time. This isn't exclusive to Youtube, why do you think no one else is insane enough to challenge them? Any provider would have these issues (there are many Twitch dramas for example). If I were Youtube I'd throw in the towel and just say "well, we can't deal with this, goodbye". That, I think, is far worse than a few videos being demonetized or channels deleted. Perspective is important.

saagarjha 8y ago
A significant portion of the grumbling around this is that YouTube has put their head in the sand and refused to admit that their service has issues, and steadfastly continues to use automated systems when what they really need is backup from a subjective human.
clarry 8y ago
People aren't complaining that it isn't perfect. People are complaining because the system is and has been in favor of fraudlent claimants what, seven years now? We don't need a technically perfect solution, we just need some balance in the system so people can fight fire with fire and make claimants liable for their fraud and broken auto-harassment systems. It doesn't take decades to do that. It just takes will.

ekianjo 8y ago

Good article but falls completely flat at the very end: > For TheFatRat the recent trouble was the final straw. Yesterday he launched a petition urging YouTube to fix the copyright protection system which 22,000 people have signed already, Since when do online petitions matter? Like... never?

Carpetsmoker 8y ago

Every minute "over 400 hours" of content is uploaded to YouTube. It's a serious challenge to moderate a community at that scale. This extends far beyond just the copyright claims. There is all sort of objectionable content being uploaded that needs to be removed, and it's easy to find literal neo-Nazi propaganda in the YouTube comments, as well as all sorts of racial slurs. Reporting this seems to have little effect in my experience. I don't have any good answers to this problem, but it's frustrating that YouTube is so opaque in their process. I have no idea what happened to my reports of neo-Nazi content for example (it wasn't removed) and also no notification that it was reviewed but denied. I hold little love for Facebook, but in my experience their process is a lot better.

reaperducer 8y ago
Every minute "over 400 hours" of content is uploaded to YouTube. It's a serious challenge to moderate a community at that scale. If only YouTube had a large parent company with a significant portion of a trillion dollars that could be spent actually taking care of this problem. Instead we get, “Let the bot script handle it. Oh, the system doesn’t work? Too bad.”
- tcd 8y ago
  "If only the world had a significant portion of several trillion dollars that could be spent curing cancer". Money isn't the answer to all the world's problems. But I'm intrigued to hear how you think they should "take care of the problem". Maybe you can share your innovative python script that solves the problem for good.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    I'm intrigued to hear how you think they should "take care of the problem". Hire actual humans to review disputed decisions, while putting in a proper appeals process that is also overseen by actual thinking humans. Maybe you can share your innovative python script that solves the problem for good. I'm not Google. I don't pretend that all of the world's problems can be solved by computers, and then fail while trying.

jwr 8y ago

It seems that the whole "copyright claim" system is just a distraction. We are all getting distracted instead of looking at the bigger picture: while we are fighting, Google earns money no matter what. I recently noticed my own work being sold on Etsy by thieves. Guess what, Etsy doesn't even want to hear from you about copyright problems. There is no way to report it (try it). I hope eventually people will start suing and things will end up in courts. I don't think courts will look kindly on profiteering from stolen property.

trevyn 8y ago
The magic word for reporting copyright infringement is DMCA. First hit for searching “etsy dmca”: https://www.etsy.com/legal/ip-dmca/ https://www.etsy.com/legal/ip-dmca/

libraryatnight 8y ago

I had a video up once, and after a bunch of issues with background music on other videos, I decided to use one of the royalty free selections youtube offers up in their editor/upload tool. It still got flagged. Past videos I made my own simple drum loops etc, and those got flagged. I just don't really bother with creating content for youtube anymore. In part because it's a pain, but equally just because I'm ADD and have moved on to other interests :)

pedrocx486 8y ago
I had a channel where I did silent game streams (no-commentary streams) and I was playing a game where its background songs were generated procedurally (not citing names today), and I got flagged by a company that represented "keygens and cracks blah blah blah". A company that represented songs in keygens. The ones used in piracy. The irony was so strong I shut down my channel to never look back.

paulpauper 8y ago

Dealing with YouTube support (and Google support in general) is the epitome of 'Kafkaesque'

annadane 8y ago

And does it HAVE to be? At what point does YT just say "piss off, you can't control the internet"? When they use the DMCA properly and not Content ID only because they don't want to lose money on lawsuits?

slcjordan 8y ago

The mess is simply a syptom of dated copyright laws applied in the modern era.

anhonestopinion 8y ago

Big youtubers should sue, win and create a precedent. Instead they make video where they whine and things only get worse.

rezashirazian 8y ago
This is a very good point. Top youtubers definitely have the resources to put up a decent fight and add a certain level of consequence for haphazard video claims by the Music Companies.

nutcracker46 8y ago

Fuck YouTube and the copyright trolls infesting the service. I have repeatedly fought copyright claims on material that was obviously public domain. Being tired of reminding claimants and YouTube that NASA air to ground comms and presidential speeches are not subject to copyright, I deleted the content. There were absurd claims, where my uploads were on YouTube for years before the claimants published their material, and the audio was from events recorded by the U.S. government a half century ago. Yeah, fuck YouTube and the copyright trolls who infest it.

manfredo 8y ago

YouTube seems like they're stuck between a rock, and a hard place. The stakes for copyright infringement seem to be getting ever higher. The EU's Article 13 is perhaps the most extreme example of this, which effectively expects platforms to be prescient and in whether or not content is infringing. On top of this, the extremely large amount of content YouTube hosts make it effectively impossible to manually review a large number of videos This puts a huge pressure on the platform to be strict with copyright infringement, and to try and minimize false negatives even at the cost of false positives. To make matters worse, the media companies filing the copyright claims are the established players that are getting disrupted by internet services like YouTube. These companies have zero incentive to avoid false copyright claims, and it seems like they have no accountability for the instances where they flag unambiguously non-infringing videos. If you're even more cynical, they actually have an incentive to file bogus claims as it degrades the experience of using YouTube and thus hurts the established media companies' competitor. The main solution I see is to have some element of accountability on the one filing the copyright claim. E.g. charge $X for every false claim. Or revoke the copyright holder's ability to file claims if they exceeding a certain number of false claims, or they they flag unambiguously non-infringing videos. Give the ones filing claims a strike, for once. But as far as I can tell, enforcing these mechanisms would put YouTube and other platforms in violation of the DMCA which is effectively a death sentence for such a platform.

Fej 8y ago
For accountability: DMCA claims require a sworn statement under penalty of perjury. The fact that it's a crime is a deterrent. Unfortunately YouTube's Content ID system does not actually deal with DMCA claims directly and so false claims are not unlawful under that provision. YouTube has been fine with this because it keeps Viacom et al. off their back.
- manfredo 8y ago
  So what would be the consequence of giving strikes to those that make bogus copyright claims, or revoking the ability to make claims if the rate at which they are overturned goes above a certain percentage? It seems to be a pretty obvious solution to me, but I'm willing to give YT the benefit of the doubt if people give compelling explanations.

RyanShook 8y ago

YouTube has no incentive to enforce copyright laws correctly. As long as large rights holders can claim and takedown content on the platform YouTube gets to keep placing ads against videos regardless of who actually owns the copyright.

heyjudy 8y ago

Dave of EEVblog got hit with a copyright strike for something in the public domain that a corporation uploaded and claimed as theirs. It's bullshit. Worse, other randoms are extorting small-but-growing channels to pay them in exchange for not pulling similar crap. How I see it is that YT facilitates copyright abuse, fraud and racketeering much more than it enforces legitimate copyright assertions.

Nasrudith 8y ago

Really it is impossible for it not to be a mess when the law is a mess. Until there is a sufficiently severe punishment for fraudulent take-downs and it is applied frequently there will be no hesitation. If they could give a three strikes on false takedowns to be removed youtube would probably happily do it just to reduce their load as all rightholders would have gotten themselves banned.

yantrams 8y ago

On a somewhat unrelated and maybe tangential note, I felt the logo of Torrent Freak reminded me of Techcrunch quite a bit and ran it against the logo database I have and indeed found Techcrunch show up in the results. http://compute.vision/brands/logo-results.html?hash=CD1POO56TN07DGJG http://compute.vision/brands/logo-results.html?hash=CD1POO56... Edit: Updated Link

balibebas 8y ago

In 2016 YouTube banned me from using their service based on a single claim made against a video which had already been taken down. Within two weeks not only was my account terminated, my original content was deleted without trace. Content deleted included both video I'd uploaded to YouTube as well as 10 years of videos I'd backed-up on Google Photos (then called Picassa). I never did get any of that content back.

InclinedPlane 8y ago

YouTube is a perfect example of a platform that has somehow managed to serve as host to an incredible ecosystem of content creators despite the management having little real concept of the value of the system and consistently treating its most important creators poorly. They would kill the goose that laid the golden egg just to make things marginally easier for advertisers or to save themselves the trouble of having to do real work. Not only that, but they do a very poor job of contending with what can only euphemistically be called "the wide diversity of content" on the site. Dumb as rocks machine learning based recommendations and content filtering means that for a vast majority of users (including minors and children) it's common to watch perfectly ordinary videos and then be recommended all sorts of ridiculous videos to watch next, from flat Earth and ancient aliens conspiracies to misogynists to holocaust deniers and actual nazis. To call YouTube a "mess" is a vast understatement. Much like twitter they have captured the attention and engagement of enormous numbers of people, and yet somehow they cannot figure out how to prevent the platform from becoming a toxic hell hole (because they refuse to do the work), they treat their users and creators poorly, and somehow they are constantly in a battle to increase revenue. I support about half a dozen different folks who make youtube videos via patreon but I refuse to give youtube money until they get their head out of their ass.

makecheck 8y ago

It would be wonderful if every single takedown request required a phone call. And let these copyright claimers be put on hold for 40 minutes like they’re trying to reach the cable company. It sure as hell shouldn’t be automatic or point-and-click, and it sure as hell shouldn’t be this guilty-until-proven-innocent system.

nitrogen 8y ago

A lot of comments are assuming that any competitor to YouTube must have something like ContentID. Why? It's not required by any law.

Applejinx 8y ago

I've taken to tweeting every time my plugin-release videos are hit by a ContentID troll: https://twitter.com/applejinx/status/1070249318609752064 https://twitter.com/applejinx/status/1070249318609752064 I'm using Logic's Test Oscillator to generate white noise, which goes through my plugins to demonstrate how they react, and gets shown on a frequency analyzer. Some bright spark (over the years it has been more than one 'publisher') has ContentIDed noise… different sorts of noise… in order to stealth copyright strike people's videos and get revenue. If you file a complaint they quickly remove the claim so they're not noticed. Your only form for filing the complaint involves making a statement that you think they're doing it by mistake, and acknowledging that you know YouTube has nothing to do with it and won't do a thing about it. So this becomes an exercise I do over and over and over again. Or I suppose I could never use a test oscillator or noise source again, because somebody owns the idea of audio noise now. They've got a bunch of different EQings of noise, so demonstrating a filter is no refuge. Since once upon a time it was a different claimant, I think that from time to time someone gets YouTube to kick them out of ContentID: I've been told of some magic URL to go to where you can complain against this sort of abuse, but I don't remember what it was and don't know if it's helpful or actually dangerous for a creator to make use of such tools. I do know that it doesn't help because the Noise Owners come back under different names and keep operating. I've been dealing with this for YEARS.

Applejinx 8y ago
Also, Drew Gooden this November was not at all the first to copyright strike themselves: I've done that as well, uploading an old CD of my own music which, it turned out, I'd also distributed through CDBaby. I don't remember ever telling CDBaby to attack people on YouTube over my work, much less myself, and I wasn't able to get a satisfactory answer about whether I could withdraw from their automatic listing with ContentID, so I ended up removing the album from CDBaby entirely. I'm sure others have had that experience with CDBaby. Probably some find it valuable: as an individual I can't put stuff into ContentID, so it's one obvious way to jump to the 'abuser' side of the equation. I'm not clear on how you'd tell YouTube that you've licensed your music to somebody and to let their channel/etc play your content, and without that there's no commercial use to the system. Well, except for copyright striking stuff that's not yours and seizing tiny crumbs of ad revenue in however many hours or minutes you get before you're noticed. It's generally old videos so I'm sure the real paydirt here is copyright striking stuff that's old and forgotten. It's still pathetic because stuff like that doesn't get views…

EamonnMR 8y ago

I was uploading family videos transferred from VHS and one got flagged down because in the background someone had a radio on.

ezoe 8y ago

False flagging shall be a crime with jail sentence. The result of automation shall be responsible.

clarry 8y ago
Ok, put me in jail (I just flagged yer message)! I agree though that there should be severe penalty for large scale, intentional false flagging with intent to profit or cause losses to someone else. Smaller scale "accidents" that slip through from companies that do mass flagging should probably have at least a small penalty, and if the flag caused monetization to shift in favor of the false claimant, then all of that income must be returned to the rightful owner. This would disincentivize false flagging, and incentivize companies to fix their shit (or stop mass flagging until they figure out something that doesn't have so many false positives). AIUI the current system on YT is completely in favor of those who fraudlently claim copyright, because they have nothing to lose and something to gain. This is all Google's fault as far as I can tell. Ultimately Goog will need to do human review in cases of dispute but they're already doing that anyway for other reasons (e.g. child porn, gore, and other content that isn't allowed on the site). Though I'd really prefer that this isn't handled by Google at all. It should go to courts, and if it's too much paperwork for courts to handle the flood of copyright cases, then it's on the lawmakers to fix their broken laws and make the system workable. One can dream..