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Blackmailers use false copyright claims to shut down victims' YouTube accounts
- paulgb 8y agoI hate to cheer on a crime, but I actually think this is a positive development. Fake copyright takedown claims are already used to chill speech, but it flies under the radar so the process stays broken. If this type of ransom takes off, YouTube will be forced to actually address false takedowns.
- shard972 8y agoOr not, they will just protect the bigger channels that would get articles written about them and hurt their ad revenue. Everyone else though will just get the classic google cold shoulder.
- sametmax 8y agoMost probably yes. Google hasn't been friendly to his content makers for a while. They were nice before they had the monopoly. Now they don't care. That's why I really hate all those speeches about how it would be great if everybody used chrome. A lot of thing the privacy savy tech community predicted about Google 10 years ago arrived exactly as expected. And the reason is not that they are seers seing the future, but because it's always the same story with entities growing and getting power.
- chii 8y agoYouTube has always had the monopoly - not on video distribution, as many mistakenly assume, but on monetization. Twitch has recently encroached on that front, and therefore YouTube Livestream was made. The real reason YouTube doesn't care about content creators is that they are trying to woo more mainstream media onto their platform. With the decline of ad revenue since the ad-pocalypse of 2015-ish, they are trying to change their platform to look like traditional media where big advertisers would pay for spots (the likes of Coke and Nike).
- busterarm 8y agoYouTube tried to show me a 25 minute video today as a mid-video advertisement. The fuck.
- dotancohen 8y agoI suspect that those 10+ minute advertisements are aimed at people who just leave Youtube open in a background tab playing music all day. 25 minutes seems to be a new record. Congratulations!
- kalleboo 8y agoI once got a 30 minute ad that was just a webinar for how to use some development tool. Very strange.
- DanBC 8y agoI've had a few, and that's not how I use Youtube. I did wonder if it was an experiemnt to see just how far they could push ad-tolerant people like me.
- dotancohen 8y agoThe old adage about giving an inch definitely applies here.
- justinclift 8y agoUse an Ad blocker. :)
- close04 8y agoNot on a TV for example. Even Pi Hole doesn't cut it since YouTube/Google do their best to use random URLs that are close to impossible to block entirely.
- 8y ago
- ganeshkrishnan 8y ago>They were nice before they had the monopoly. Now they don't care. Google was never nice but it didn't matter before the monopoly. They would literally ban and shutdown all accounts based on automated 'strikes' but most users had other emails/search engines/maps/whatever. Now that Google has firmly entrenched itself, it's impossible to jump ship. Look at the other thread about Google Analytics and integration with Google Ads; its quite a difficult task to switch from GA
- sametmax 8y agoGoogle had a stellar reputation during the first decade of their existence. Their were the paragon of all the geeks around the world: promoting freedom and openess, hacking and innovating. And when they bought youtube, they were very, very nice with content creators first. Bot were not banned. No detecting of your white noise video as a copyright material. The danger with you narative is to forget the evolution from underdog to leader. Because people need to learn this happens all the time, and they need to learn what it looks like.
- ThrustVectoring 8y agoIt'll hurt the class divide even more. People without the cultural knowledge that you need to escalate to Twitter/PR or to Google's legal department (eg, certified letter to their process server explaining your possible legal case against the extortionist and demanding they preserve evidence) will be even further out of luck.
- shard972 8y agoCultural knowledge, or just working as a mainstream journo as jack has pretty much confirmed that they are the lifeblood in his eyes so they can't be banned. You only have to look how journos were not even being suspended for calling for the complete destruction of the maga kids. While if your a conservative, make one offensive joke about looks and your permabanned.
- antpls 8y agoI think the point made by paulgb is that it won't go unnoticed (it will accumulate records) which is a first step to fight an injustice
- ikeboy 8y agoYouTube is not supposed to address false complaints, or they lose safe harbor under DMCA. False complaints are meant to be responded to with a counter-notice.
- cabalamat 8y agoThank you, music industry. Your contribution to making the world that bit shittier has been noted.
- yeahitslikethat 8y agoIs all because of the dmca which hurt the music industry and gave Google etc the freedom to pirate content as long as they let someone report it. People sharing music at home got fined heavily and yet Google does the same and nothing. Even worse Google earns money on it. This content id system is aruse. And they lover because they can see we are not only effective but TOO effective. And yet I can watch pirated content with ads on it on YouTube 24x7 - forever.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gesman 8y agoThis also a repeated lesson to never trust 100% of your business to some platform you don’t control. YouTube, Adsense, PayPal, eBay... the list is long and stories are plenty. Use platform for what it’s good for and have plan B always ready and active
- gpm 8y agoI think youtube is actually one of the best demonstrations of why that attitude is incorrect. Obviously it's better if you haven't trusted 100% of your business to a platform you don't control. But for some businesses (such as many youtubers) the choice is either do that or don't have a business (since that's the only place with a large enough audience). In such a case it can make sense to do so.
- gesman 8y agoMany YouTube publishers also maintain their own successful portal with paid subscriptions, memberships, product affiliations etc... There is always plan B. Google of course prefer 100% dependence on their platforms.
- gpm 8y agoIt depends on the youtuber of course, a few of them have an audience that legitimately allows for a plan b. For most of them there isn't. They might have seperate portals which they earn money from, but the business still goes poof fast if they get banned from youtube. Without publishing on youtube they won't reach enough of an audience to have a sustainable business. Twitch alleviates this somewhat for some youtubers. But we don't have to go far back in time to consider an era before that existed.
- yowlingcat 8y agoNot sure I agree with this. Beyond a certain level, subscriptions to a given creator are to that creator, not via the platform. It's true that a lot of consumers won't take the effort to follow the brand off platform, but that's not always the case. I think the recent development of the influencer marketing industry as a whole is proof of this. Of course, how you ever get remotely famous or established in the first place if the content you create is remotely vulnerable to false copyright claims is another question entirely...
- jonny_eh 8y agoIn addition to hiring an infinite number of human reviewers, what's the solution?
- lozenge 8y agoThey could fall back to the legally required process (DMCA takedowns). There is no law requiring Google to take down channels because of reports on a few videos, or requiring Google to keep content down after the uploader has re-affirmed it is not breaking copyright law (called a DMCA counter-notice).
- yeahitslikethat 8y agoDmca ruined the Internet. We thought it was good but it wasn't.
- pilsetnieks 8y agoThat's not even remotely what we're talking about here. Anyway, this has nothing to do with DMCA but with Google's Content ID system which is much worse than DMCA.
- yeahitslikethat 8y agoNo dmca. No Google content ID system.
- nitrogen 8y agoNo, that's not how it happened. ContentID is a proactive system that goes well beyond what the DMCA requires and skirts around the DMCA penalties for false claims.
- nitrogen 8y agoNobody in tech ever thought the DMCA was a good thing.
- phantom_oracle 8y ago> The small number of humans available to review contested claims means that people who fall afoul of machine error, sloppiness and criminal mischief are often unable to get a fair hearing or justice. This is possibly one of the key points in this report. Google is synonymous with their blackbox/magic "AI". These systems become remarkably interesting to game (their ad platform has been subject to fraud, but on a different layer). I wonder how many levels of "AI" they think they can automate before they realize that it's probably not possible. For some good news though, there was a story a little while ago for some educational platform that noped out of YouTube and migrated to self-hosted.
- gdulli 8y agoI'd say that Google is synonymous with hubris. Their unexamined but faulty trust in their ability to create automated systems that don't require manual intervention or customer service is one main application of it.
- duxup 8y agoWe thought it would take some sort of super AI to take over the world just make arbitrary / unfair at face value / decisions that can't be appealed or undone.... naw we just needed companies like Google.
- fucking_tragedy 8y agoBoth AI and bureaucracy are sufficiently opaque enough to be indistinguishable when it comes to ascertaining their decision making processes.
- duxup 8y agoI think for Google at this point we can be sure, there simply isn't a decision making process. Nobody is deciding things, nobody is responding, it's just a black hole where a process leads to and ends.
- 8y ago
- samstave 8y agoWhy arent supposed copyright holders required to prove their copyright in order to affect the takedown? Why then arent we seeing rampant copy claims against huge channels.
- Joakal 8y agoI haven't heard of any 'perjury' prosecution for false DMCA claims or even DMCA counter-suits? Wikipedia even lists many cases of criticisms and abuse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A... Youtube being sued by Hollywood company with big pockets vs angry uploaders of personally-generated content who don't have much money. At the moment, it makes business sense for Youtube to ignore angry uploaders.
- Something1234 8y agoClass action lawsuit? If it's this blatent why hasn't anyone been taken to court by a large group of the wronged.
- Qwertious 8y agoYouTube's "safe harbour" takedown system is a bit stricter than what the law requires - it doesn't require an actual DMCA takedown (which, when falsifies, results in a fine of $800), but simply using YouTube's internal system (which has no such falsity fine).
- ikeboy 8y agoIf you're referring to Content ID, you're correct that it's not a DMCA takedown, but if disputed and appealed the claimant must file a DMCA to keep the claim active.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- JshWright 8y agoHank Green posted a video just yesterday that gives a lot of good context about the YouTube ContentID system, its challenges, and the broader impacts of copyright, creativity, and culture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL829Uf2lzI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL829Uf2lzI
- pdkl95 8y agoTh8a recently posted an outstanding overview of the YT ContentID situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_dhZjLxUzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_dhZjLxUzw
- mnm1 8y agoThat's what happens when there are no consequences for bad actors. Is anyone surprised? A legit copyright claim can take down a copyright violator and "restore" the copyright holder's control of the copyright just as easily as a bad actor can take down a YouTube publisher with lies based on the DMCA. The law equally protects both actors. Greed makes lawmakers look stupid when in fact they are just vile when creating their laws. Then Google comes in, looks at the same problem, and concludes that the law is enough because their content producers are not customers (they are the product, you guessed it) and therefore should be exploited rather than protected. Abusers of this law will simply not be punished. Undoubtedly this sentiment is shared across a variety of major platforms whose only incentive is to pretend like the systems they set up are effective at enforcing a law that's simply unenforceable. And so the charade continues with people's livelihood and creative works as the cannon fodder in this stupid war of greed. Someone should get together and start filing such claims against content the big media corps provide. I guarantee you Google fixes this problem in hours.
- larkeith 8y agoWe desperately need another major video streaming site. Google has been consistently acting in an atrocious manner for users and content creators, with negligible cost due to their functional monopoly - even massively popular creators are able to recover their videos only in the rare situation of widespread media attention [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18758758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18758758
- Something1234 8y agoPornhub? People have been treating pornhub as a site to put random non-pornography content at least since a couple years ago according to my friend, I haven't encountered it though
- darkpuma 8y agoA few prominent gun channels dabbled in it a bit. Here's an article about it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/youtube-bans-firearm-sales-and-how-to-videos-prompting-backlash https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/youtube-b... I think it was mostly a media stunt.
- userbinator 8y agoSearch "iPhone repair" on PornHub and be... amused.
- felipemnoa 8y agodailymotion.com
- dasyatidprime 8y agoIf I were to start publishing video content I'd probably try for Vimeo first, self-hosted second. (No affiliation.)
- 75dvtwin 8y agowhat about dtube.com ugetube.com steemit.com
- 8y ago
- WalterBright 8y agoOne way to cut down on such is to require copyright claimants to post a bond, which is forfeited if the claim cannot be substantiated.
- cm2187 8y agoBut it massively rate limits the ability of an individual who doesn’t have large means to enforce a valid copyright. Also if the outcome is determined by some capricious and unpredictable algorithm, it creates a massive risk for the copyright holder.
- crowbahr 8y agoRequire a bond for the counter claim and give both to the winner. Or we could develop a functional copyright system...
- WalterBright 8y agoThe burden of proof should be on the copyright holder. It shouldn't be necessary for the other party to prove they didn't infringe.
- tzfld 8y agoI'm a little tired of all this creators complaining how broken is Youtube (and other platforms) and still investing lot of their time and effort in building channels, accounts and entire businesses relying on these platforms.
- jobigoud 8y agoThat's just what monopolies look like I think. For them moving to another platform doesn't make sense because they wouldn't get the same reach/make enough to justify the time and effort put into their channel in the first place. So it's either they are on YouTube and complain of its faults, or they aren't anywhere and you don't hear about them.
- ric2b 8y agoThere's a third option that makes the most sense: Be on multiple platforms at once. There's minimal effort in uploading to multiple sites, making the video is what takes multiple hours/days.
- Faark 8y agoUntil the platforms push exclusivity contracts... I do remember a twitch streamer being happy about his contract being old enough to allow him streaming on youtube while temporarily being banned on twitch. Sure, you can fault the individual for signing something like that, but an effective monopoly will hardly leave you an other choice.
- warp_factor 8y agoExactly. Which I don't understand why most of them are not doing. I would put my videos on as many platforms as possible, and try to convince people to move eventually to my own platform that I fully control.
- gbuk2013 8y agoI have a youtube channel where I post videos of dance competitions. Because it involves music, I frequently get copyright claims from whatever rights group that wants to take my ad revenue (which is 0 anyway because I disable monetisation on principle). When you get a claim, there is an option to appeal it, all the way to a formal counter-notification which will remove your strike and require the claimant to institute court proceedings against you. I have even used that a few times, years ago when I still got fired up by this. Now, I just appeal it once on fair use grounds and if it doesn’t get dropped I move on with my life. Has something changed that doesn’t allow this particular channel owner to challenge the claim? (Genuinely interested as a channel owner myself.)
- thinkingemote 8y agoFrom what I understand, YouTube doesn't review challenges to claims, the actual claimer, the blackmailer will review the claim. And when the claimer rejects a claim the youtuber will get a strike. 3 Strikes and you are banned.
- gbuk2013 8y agoSee my reply above.
- jobigoud 8y ago> which is 0 anyway because I disable monetisation on principle I also disable monetization on principle, but I think if a video is claimed by a copyright holder, then YouTube will add adverts in it, even if you disabled it. As to your other point, a claim is different from a strike from what I understand. A strike is a more serious offense that may lead to blocking the account entirely. A strike can come if you dispute a claim and the claimant is considered to be in his right.
- gbuk2013 8y agoI know the distinction between a claim and a strike - I have direct experience of both. ;) You can appeal a strike and it will be removed unless the claimant provides documents that they have instituted proceedings within a fixed period of time. You have to provide your contact details if you appeal a strike. Description of the various stages of the process: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797454 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797454