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My video with 47M views was stolen on YouTube [video]
- olliej 8y agoSeems like you should be able to leverage standard copyright law - per-violation 10-100k seems like the industry demanded fine...
- larkeith 8y agoDoes YouTube have the necessary information to prosecute false claimants? They certainly are unwilling to pass such info on to content creators; I'm unsure what, if any, verification of identity is required to submit a claim.
- olliej 8y agoWhy would it be YouTube’s job? Someone has claimed ownership and is now making profit on it - that (to me a non lawyer expect same behavior from the legal system ;) ) seems like it would be a standard copyright violation :D
- jtbayly 8y agoIf YouTube is unwilling to pass along the information, as the parent says, then who are you going to file suit against? You’ll have to sue an unknown person and get a court order to get YouTube to turn over the person’s name. That’s an expensive start to aprocess with an unknown end. Isn’t it even possible the person isn’t in the US? Then you’ve thrown away your money.
- greenyoda 8y agoEven if the defendant is in the U.S., they may have no significant income or assets from which you could recover damages or legal fees.
- coding123 8y agoA lot of people have personal liability umbrella policies... However probably not the kinds of people that would do this. Why have we made it so easy for crime in this country.
- CPLX 8y agoIt’s really not that hard to do. People do sometimes overestimate how hard it is to do basic legal tasks. Filing a simple John Doe summons in your home jurisdiction and then sending a subpoena to YouTube for the offending contact information is pretty trivial. You could probably find someone to do it for you for a thousand bucks or less. Admittedly that’s not free but in a context like this with real money at stake it’s not a huge obstacle.
- Andre607 8y agoAnd what do you do when you go through all of that time and effort (and potential expense) and get the very likely outcome that the claimant is not in your home jurisdiction?
- CPLX 8y agoJurisdiction isn’t simply determined by where the opponent is. There’s nuance to this but you can typically sue and gain jurisdiction in any venue that has a nexus to the business activity in question. Given that YouTube is global there’s probably a lot of places you could find a valid venue. California almost certainly being one of them. You might have trouble getting the opponent to cooperate but if your ultimate goal is to get YouTube to do something then that could work just fine. Again, clearly legal action isn’t easy but people seem too inclined to throw up their hands instantly. Learning how to take basic legal action is just a core part of running a business, and someone earning from YouTube at this level is indeed doing just that.
- Andre607 8y agoI'm not sure why you're singling out California, is that where the claimant is in this case? Or are you referring to YouTube? My (and the GPs) question was: let's say, following the filing of the requisite legal documents and the accompanying fees if any, you receive the contact information of the claimant from YouTube. You are in Germany. The claimant's address is in Turkmenistan. What are you meant to do next?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nicoburns 8y agoA court could presumably subpeona that information?
- IshKebab 8y agoYeah after you pay for a lawyer to set all that up for you.
- darkpuma 8y agoLawyers and lawmakers (who are very often also the former) in their infinite wisdom have created a system in which they always win, even when the people the system ostensibly exists to serve do not.
- icebraining 8y agoAs a developer, I also get paid even if the project gets written off later. Doesn't seem that unusual.
- darkpuma 8y agoThe difference being the software industry contains less compulsion. Nobody is compelled to interact with you or your peers. The very nature of the law renders all analogies you can think of inherently flawed. The closest analogy you could make would be to doctors in the hypothetical scenario where other people are allowed to hire doctors to injure you, requiring you to in turn hire your own doctor. Which is absurd but the reality of our legal system.
- singularity2001 8y agoOr youtube just add a clause that whoever lays claims to DMCA content has to agree to share their verified real name and phone number.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kazinator 8y agoIf it doesn't have the necessary information to prosecute false claimants (i.e. their exact identity) then why does it hand over ownership of a video to these same claimants at the drop of a hat?
- Meph504 8y agoI'm pretty sure that as part of the uploading process you agree to use YouTube process of arbitration in these matters, so the courts would likely tell you this a civil matter to be handled by YouTube. With that said, nothing was stolen, a claim for the monetization reimbursement was made to YouTube, who is the sole source in deciding who the compensation goes to, decided to send that compensation to the party that made the claim. Making a claim against an existing video is actually probably a lot safer than re-uploading and attempting to monetize. From that perspective, what would be the grounds for a lawsuit?
- aw3c2 8y agoI am pretty sure that those are not actual copyright claims in a DMCA sense. Sadly Youtube is using some internal system with these claims. I assume they were pressured into this by the music industry for ease of squeezing money out of it.
- tinus_hn 8y agoActually the DMCA requires large players to create some kind of automated system to prevent infringement.
- colejohnson66 8y agoThus subverting the penalty of perjury of the DMCA
- tinus_hn 8y agoYouTube has the automated service. The rights holders are not filing claims. There is no perjury. It’s all about balance. What’s the point of having a takedown procedure if uploading a thousand copies is easier than taking down one?
- dylan604 8y agoIt's great that YT did the right thing by giving him ownership back on their platform. The next thing would be to give him any money earned during the time it was wrongfully taken away and in dispute. That should not be dependent on having the asshats paying it back first. YT messed up, so they need to make it right all the way.
- larkeith 8y agoWhere did you find that YouTube has returned ownership to him? As far as I've been able to find with a quick search, the false claimant continues to receive monetization from the video.
- efrafa 8y agoRead the first comment under the video.
- sniuff 8y agoThe comment on the video by the author of the video > UPDATE: It's official! I got my video back and Ramjets channel was deleted for false copyright claim. Huge thanks to everybody who helped. Every share, like comment, everybody who spread the word about what happened. You made the difference. Now let's make sure we protect EVERY content creator from false claims. Please sign the petition, we can make a difference.
- larkeith 8y agoThank you - that's excellent to hear!
- alecco 8y ago> Please sign the petition https://secure.avaaz.org/en/community_petitions/YouTube_fix_the_copyright_protection_system https://secure.avaaz.org/en/community_petitions/YouTube_fix_...
- colejohnson66 8y ago
- Kaveren 8y agoModeration is really the ultimate scalability problem. I have some level of sympathy for the predicament YouTube is in, but I really hope the system can be redesigned. I've never seen (keyword: seen) a press release or article about how an individual / group of DMCA abusers of this sort was arrested. Why can't this be taken more seriously as a form of fraud, and why can't these people be gone after? Sure, you can obfuscate your real IP when making a takedown request, but they have to receive the money somewhere.
- whoisjuan 8y agoI would have sympathy if they weren't so damn incompetent. You can clearly see how they fail to make a simple rational check in this guy's issue and objectively realize that it's a fraudulent claim. They only care when the issues go public and viral, and the outburst is too large to ignore. This is a disaster for any small creator that uses YouTube. A platform that controls the majority of the internet video distribution is incapable of reacting reasonably to a copyright claim issue until its large enough to actually threaten the solidity of that distribution.
- dylan604 8y agoThe easiest thing to do would require the claimant and defendant to produce proof of ownership. In this case, it really seems like the claimant's case would have been over as soon as the defendant produced his proof. If there is conflicting claims of ownership that seems valid from both sides, then send to a 3rd party to decide. Whether that is arbitration or courts. Why should YouTube be responsible at all? During the term of dispute, the ability to earn money is suspended. If the defendant wins, then the claimant should be required to reimburse lost earnings. At this point, YT would have acted in a reasonable manner such that they should not have any liability in it. How naive am I being for making it seem like a really simple thing to handle?
- singularity2001 8y agoSounds reasonable.
- deleted 8y ago
- topynate 8y agoI do admire just how perverse YouTube's solution for copyright law is. If they were accepting DMCA notices, they'd have the obligation to take note of counter-notices. If they were giving control of claimed videos to the claimants, then if someone filed a false claim against you, taking control of your video, you could then file a DMCA notice against the claimaint. But YouTube does neither of these things. Instead, they leave the video in your ostensible control, and just decide to give advertising revenue to someone who isn't you – which, as far as I can tell, doesn't mean that either YouTube or the claimant is technically infringing your copyright. It's brilliant bastardy.
- annadane 8y agoThanks for actually explaining this. The defenders of Youtube - I'm convinced a few on r/youtube are shills at this point - will say this is all necessary due to copyright law, Viacom lawsuit, etc etc. One day it will emerge the Google leadership is as crooked as it comes.
- walterbell 8y agoThey would now clarify that as YouTube leadership within the Alphabet holding company, at least until they may be separated by antitrust policy or otherwise.
- j45 8y agoI wonder if DMCAing your own videos is still a viable strategy.
- baylisscg 8y agoNo but some people, who just want their video to stay up and don't care about the ad revenue, will purposefully add a snippets of content to trigger multiple copyright bots into filing competing claims. When this happens the video stays up until the claims are resolved and since there's no actual people involved and it's covered by fair use anyway they just time out eventually. [edit: grammar]
- trumped 8y agoYou could shorten #FixYoutubeCopyright to #FixCopyright... because it is probably the source of the problem....
- duskwuff 8y agoNah. This situation is specific to Youtube -- copyright law doesn't deal in terms of monetization.
- trumped 8y ago"yah." lookup dmca takedowns... they probaby just don't want to have to deal with the consequences of that.
- CrowFly 8y agoWe're talking about a specific problem with YouTube here. If you want to start your own initiative to get laws changed, go right ahead, but that's not what this video is about.
- jchw 8y agoI absolutely love the level-headedness and honesty of this person. If I were in his shoes, I can only imagine how furious I would be at YouTube. I hope this system can be fixed... At least, we need a more balanced playing field. Making it so easy and yet having practically no consequences to abuse the system is absurd. But, what can really be done? This is the system that various industries have been pushing super hard to get. I think DMCA also doesn't do nearly enough to dissuade abuse. Can we try to fix DMCA, too? Where do we begin?
- bryanrasmussen 8y agoJust asking, but didn't the company falsely accusing him of copyright infringement slander him? The damage can be shown in the money he lost out on, but I mean I guess his reputation is also damaged with Google by the accusation. It was definitely a realistic accusation that someone might believe as Google evidently believed it.
- darkpuma 8y ago> "Just asking, but didn't the company falsely accusing him of copyright infringement slander him?" Probably, but who is he supposed to sue over it? It's far from clear who the 'company' is. He could sue John Doe and then get youtube to reveal what they know, but he may very likely discover that the 'company' is just some guy with hardly any assets in a country that doesn't give a shit about him or his plight.
- bryanrasmussen 8y agoMaybe, but I guess the guy has some assets now. I mean if it is a guy with hardly any assets in a country that doesn't give a shit I don't think that suit will drag on that long and probably wouldn't be too expensive to litigate. It's only if the guy has assets in a country that does give a shit that will want to fight, and if that's the case they're probably screwed.
- thirdsun 8y agoI guess the right thing for Youtube to do is to simply suspend any payouts, but continue monetization until the dispute is resolved. Once that happens the rightful owner of the content should receive any pending payouts.
- londons_explore 8y agoDoesn't slander only apply to public statements, rather than something privately told to another company?
- icebraining 8y ago
- org3432 8y agoI filed a likeness claim where Youtube created a profile with a picture of me somehow and there was no way to delete it. The takedown request was rejected because they said the video was invalid, despite it not being a video and it being explained that it was a profile and Youtube itself had taken property that wasn't theirs. Eventually I found some email address I could file a complaint against with a picture of my DL and they took it down. It seems like companies have their 99% cases that their systems are optimized for, but within the remaining 1% where they themselves are causing the problem or have a bug etc. the humans they hire can't understand simple things if they deviate an iota from what they're used to.
- heyjudy 8y agoFucking Youtube. Total bullshit.
- dang 8y agoCan you please not break the site guidelines, even if YouTube did something bad? It doesn't help, and only makes this place worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sheeshkebab 8y agoIt’s unfortunate but that’s the reality of centralized content and product platforms (YouTube, Amazon, AppStore etc) - they are often used to squiz out competition using bogus claims, as much as allow for distribution channels. Better strategy is to continue supporting open web and host content or products you care about on your own.
- fouc 8y agoDoes anyone think ramjets is going around doing this with multiple videos and making thousands of dollars as a result? Could be the new scam. I bet people out there are going to be doing this to make tons of money until youtube smartens up.
- astonex 8y agoThis is already happening a lot. So far Youtube hasnt changed anything
- nixarian 8y ago"If you blame the people doing it, you're a LOSER" Okay, buddy.
- Andre607 8y agoYouTube's approach to takedowns is, simply put, appalling. I'm not just referring to the automated Content ID system, which has a vast catalog of false identification, but am talking about the manual, human confirmation of takedowns. My 'favourite' (in the sense of most egregious) example of what I am talking about is the case where YouTube's Content ID flagged the sound of birds in someone's garden as being copyright infringing [1]. So far, par the course for a mistaken automatic identification. But the outrage comes after that: the copyright claimant (the notorious Rumblefish) reviewed the claim and confirmed that it was valid! In other words an actual human being looked at the video of someone in their garden, and confirmed the claim that the sound of the birds in the background was copyrighted. Actions like this are indefensible and highlight the outrageous monstrosity of YouTube's takedown system - -beyond Kafkaesque in its total disenfranchisement of users. [1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120227/00152917884/guy-gets-bogus-youtube-copyright-claim-birds-singing-background.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120227/00152917884/guy-g...
- kkarakk 8y ago> In other words an actual human being looked at the video of someone in their garden, and confirmed the claim that the sound of the birds in the background was copyrighted. i think it is likely that this human is just someone employed from mechanical turk who gets paid on the basis of how many videos they process in an hour and not actually an employee of rumblefish
- Andre607 8y agoIn this case the CEO of Rumblefish, Paul Anthony, confirmed that it was in fact one of their employees [1]: > They still work at RF, feel absolutely terrible about what happened and are taking a whole new approach to claim/dispute reviews. A mistake like this in the hands of the right employee is a game changer and brings about significant improvement. In the hands of a less-competent employee...they fold and get worse and that isn't acceptable for me. I hope and trust that it's the former. I believe that although it was a terrible oversight, that it was an honest mistake by this individual. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q7via/im_the_ceo_of_rumblefish_i_guess_were_the_newest/c3vsc3u/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q7via/im_the_ceo_of_r... Note that since that particular incident, Rumblefish has had continued incidents of blatantly erroneous coypright claims - like claiming ownership of a US Navy rendition of "America the Beautiful" (which is public domain) and proceeded to monetize it! [2] [2] https://boingboing.net/2015/07/03/july-4-rumblefish-claims-to-o.html https://boingboing.net/2015/07/03/july-4-rumblefish-claims-t... Rumblefish of course describes these incidents as "honest mistakes", which completely ignores the inconvenience they cause people and the fact that they have to make noise via social media or tech news outlets for them to take action - the real concern is how often this happens that we don't hear about.
- jayd16 8y agoSo what's stopping this guy from making a new account and claiming the video back? Should creators claim their own videos so they can't be claimed by others?
- kkarakk 8y agoi think that's grounds for an instant strike against your new channel.since you only get 3 strikes before you're kaput it's not worth it
- brailsafe 8y agoI had actually listened to this song recently on his channel. Hot tip: It's fun, check it out.