7 ms·

Still seems like YT's version of "Fair Use" is significantly more constrained than the legal definition. This is a step in the right direction, but YT's system

Still seems like YT's version of "Fair Use" is significantly more constrained than the legal definition. This is a step in the right direction, but YT's system is extra-judicial in nature, and they've decided to be more copyright holder friendly than the law itself requires (likely so the law isn't used, which is cheaper for YT). I suspect in my lifetime governments will need to create better frameworks for content networks. The whole "they're a private company, they can do anything!" argument is growing weaker by the day as these companies have more influence in our lives (with both good (e.g. anti-hate content) and bad (e.g. copyright holders stepping on small creators) consequences).

koboll 7y ago
The fact that creators are still required to edit out sound from audio from passing cars is insane. It's a system designed to be a money grab for the music industry, not follow any sort of legal definition of copyright. The idea that a music company could sue someone over a copyright claim for posting a video in which part of a song is fuzzily heard for a few brief moments as a car passes is risible.
- CamperBob2 7y ago
  Along the same lines, if music from passing cars could be heard in the video, how was it not an unauthorized public performance when it occurred in the first place? Why doesn't the music industry go after people who unlawfully distribute their copyrighted material up and down the street at 100 dB? This sort of event is either strictly incidental, or it's not. Which is it? The copyright industry can't have it both ways, or at least shouldn't be allowed to.
  - compiler-guy 7y ago
    Because the people distributing their copyrighted material up and down the street at 100db don’t have a monetization plan, and, even if they did, don’t have a convenient platform to target.
- basch 7y ago
  >The idea that a music company could sue someone over a copyright claim You can sue for anything. "Its just a car driving by" would usually be a pretty solid defense that youre in the right, both in that its not substantial and doesnt hurt the original work.
  - derefr 7y ago
    Perhaps we need some sort of "cry wolf" doctrine, where you can sue an entity for "suing people too often for spurious reasons" and, if proven (e.g. if 99% of their proposed suits would have been thrown out of court if they had gone to trial), remove their ability to sue others.
    - i_cant_speel 7y ago
      That would be very impractical in the real world. How would you prove that 99% of the suits would be thrown out without having 100 trials?
      - derefr 7y ago
        I meant "thrown out in preliminary hearing." You can work through 100 preliminary hearings (especially when it's essentially the same suit, just with different subjects) pretty quickly, especially if you parallelize it across a bunch of the judge's analysts.
    - teraflop 7y ago
      Sounds like you're referring to something along the lines of anti-SLAPP laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ... There's also the notion of a "vexatious litigant": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexatious_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexatious_litigation
      - derefr 7y ago
        Interesting. It doesn't seem like the concept of vexatious litigation has been applied to corporations. I wonder why not?
- i_cant_speel 7y ago
  The system is a CYA policy for YouTube. It wasn't designed for that. Copyright holders just saw it as an opportunity to abuse a system for some extra cash. The lawsuits would be unlikely to hold up in court.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    But moving it out of court and into an internal demonetization process has lessened the ability for creators to seek redress over spurious claims.
    - skybrian 7y ago
      Would "seeking redress for spurious claims" be a practical solution? Which creators could use it?
      - munk-a 7y ago
        If labels were forced to actually push these into the court system a lot of people would fold and settle but not everyone... those who actually got in front of a judge would likely win the case, probably even being awarded by the court for the prosecution having filed such a spurious claim. Right now there is no cost to labels for submitting these AFAIK, there at least appears to be no cost even if the usage would be covered under fair-use.
- foobarian 7y ago
  Wow, TIL. ris·i·ble /ˈrizəbəl/ adjective such as to provoke laughter. "a risible scene of lovemaking in a tent" synonyms: laughable, ridiculous, absurd, comical, comic, amusing, funny, chucklesome, hilarious, humorous, droll, entertaining, diverting, farcical, slapstick, silly, facetious, ludicrous, hysterical, uproarious, riotous, sidesplitting, zany, grotesque
  - CogitoCogito 7y ago
    I’ve never heard this either, but I guess it’s related to “Are you trying to get a rise of me?”
- fenomas 7y ago
  Dumb question - when someone films outside in public, why is audio of music from a passing car considered a copyright issue but video of a passerby in a Mickey Mouse t-shirt isn't? Is it just because one industry lobbies YouTube and the other doesn't, or is copyright law materially different for the two cases?
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    If that t-shirt was in a film, you can bet there would be someone in the legal department getting the right permissions...
    - fenomas 7y ago
      Presumably the same would be true of music in a film, so I'm not sure how it bears on my question.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    Just because youtube chooses to penalize it, doesn't mean a court would agree its a copyright violation. There is virtually zero chance something that isn't free use 100% in the clear.
  - ecspike 7y ago
    It's not that the Mickey Mouse shirt isn't, it's just that companies don't go after it (at least on the small scale in public spaces). Both are fair use. I think it might be lobby stuff and how they are consumed. Great music can transform / enhance a pivotal moment in a movie whereas the presence of an Apple logo or Mickey Mouse shirt, not so much. Companies can and have sued for licensing fees or if they feel their product logo was shown and misrepresented in film. Back to the t-shirt example, on the movie/funded production scale, a lot of this is prevented by the wardrobe department making sure extras are not clothed in licensed stuff.
devrand 7y ago
> This is a step in the right direction, but YT's system is extra-judicial in nature, and they've decided to be more copyright holder friendly than the law itself requires (likely so the law isn't used, which is cheaper for YT). Bingo. Content ID came out right around the settlement of Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc. Even though the courts consistently upheld YouTube's claims, it wasn't exactly a smooth ride and more appeals were coming. I also imagine every other traditional media companies saw the potential and were equally interested in bring lawsuits. I agree with your assessment: governments need to enact better laws to handle media as it is produced and consumed today. Until then companies of years past will try to suck every dime they can from their competition on their way out. Could YouTube's handling of copyright be improved? Of course. Do I see systems like Content ID going away without a change in law? Absolutely not.
- doh 7y ago
  > Do I see systems like Content ID going away without a change in law? Absolutely not. Considering the new EU Copyright Directive, especially with Article 17, if anything, the world is moving closer towards CID-like systems than away from it.
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Having private entities, or the government for that matter, control hate content is only a good thing when their definition of hate happens to coincide with your definition of hate. It's all fun and games until one day you discover their definition of hate has expanded to include your beliefs. By then the train is going too fast for you to have any chance of stopping it from squashing you.
- gamegod 7y ago
  Can this argument die now?
  - okmokmz 7y ago
    Absolutely not. It's a major, and valid concern against censorship and is shared by many academics. Here is an article from a professor at Harvard Law >She insists, however, that the cure of censorship is worse than the disease of hate speech. “Even worse than speech’s potential power to harm individuals and society,” she maintains, “is government’s potential power to do likewise, by enforcing ‘hate speech’ laws. Predictably, this elastic power will be used to silence dissenting ideas, unpopular speakers, and disempowered groups.” >https://knightcolumbia.org/news/cure-censorship-better-disease-hate-speech https://knightcolumbia.org/news/cure-censorship-better-disea...
    - krapp 7y ago
      Somehow it's always a concern that governments might abuse hate speech laws to "silence dissenting ideas, unpopular speakers, and disempowered groups," but it's never a concern that the purpose of hate speech is to do exactly that.
      - CamperBob2 7y ago
        The difference is that the people (and corporations) only have words, while the government has guns. I don't know what they're teaching kids in history classes these days, but it isn't history.
ghaff 7y ago
Be aware there is no “legal definition” of fair use. There are four factors that would typically be considered together as a defense against a claim of copyright infringement. Which isn’t quite the same thing.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
> I suspect in my lifetime governments will need to create better frameworks for content networks. The whole "they're a private company, they can do anything!" argument is growing weaker by the day as these companies have more influence in our lives The better solution is to prevent individual private companies from holding so much power in the first place. If the major tech companies weren't allowed to drastically consolidate and push out competition, we wouldn't be in this situation.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> This is a step in the right direction, but YT's system is extra-judicial in nature, and they've decided to be more copyright holder friendly than the law itself requires Most hosts are more copyright-holder-friendly than the law requires, because of the structural incentives in the law. (Many structure there relationship with content-submitters so that they have no liability risk from an unnecessary takedown, and thereby avoid needing to do anything with the DMCA counter-notice process, which only provides a safe harbor against claims stemming from the takedown.)
magduf 7y ago
>The whole "they're a private company, they can do anything!" argument is growing weaker by the day as these companies have more influence in our lives This simply isn't true at all, and if fact the opposite is true. The reality is that corporations are becoming ever more powerful, and voters are enabling this with their choices in the voting booths, and electing administrations that very much believe private companies should be able to do whatever they want. It's not getting any better, it's getting worse.
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  I think you’re actually agreeing with OP
  - magduf 7y ago
    I am, but I'm pointing out that society does not agree with him at all.
readams 7y ago
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/after-more-decade-litigation-dancing-baby-ready-move https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/after-more-decade-liti... "It all started when Lenz posted a YouTube video of her then-toddler-aged son dancing while Prince’s song “Let's Go Crazy” played in the background, and Universal used copyright claims to get the link disabled. We brought the case hoping to get some clarity from the courts on a simple but important issue: can a rightsholder use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to take down an obvious fair use, without consequence?" It required only a decade of litigation to get it back up.
alexmlamb2 7y ago
You sound like an average stupid brainwashed westerner and have no idea that most corporate censorship's goal is supporting western corporate colonialism and evil.
tylerl 7y ago
Yep. It's because there isn't actually a legal definition of fair-use. The closest thing we have to a legal definition is the set of four factors typically used in deciding deciding whether the fair-use defense has merit.

koboll 7y ago

The fact that creators are still required to edit out sound from audio from passing cars is insane. It's a system designed to be a money grab for the music industry, not follow any sort of legal definition of copyright. The idea that a music company could sue someone over a copyright claim for posting a video in which part of a song is fuzzily heard for a few brief moments as a car passes is risible.

CamperBob2 7y ago
Along the same lines, if music from passing cars could be heard in the video, how was it not an unauthorized public performance when it occurred in the first place? Why doesn't the music industry go after people who unlawfully distribute their copyrighted material up and down the street at 100 dB? This sort of event is either strictly incidental, or it's not. Which is it? The copyright industry can't have it both ways, or at least shouldn't be allowed to.
- compiler-guy 7y ago
  Because the people distributing their copyrighted material up and down the street at 100db don’t have a monetization plan, and, even if they did, don’t have a convenient platform to target.
basch 7y ago
>The idea that a music company could sue someone over a copyright claim You can sue for anything. "Its just a car driving by" would usually be a pretty solid defense that youre in the right, both in that its not substantial and doesnt hurt the original work.
- derefr 7y ago
  Perhaps we need some sort of "cry wolf" doctrine, where you can sue an entity for "suing people too often for spurious reasons" and, if proven (e.g. if 99% of their proposed suits would have been thrown out of court if they had gone to trial), remove their ability to sue others.
  - i_cant_speel 7y ago
    That would be very impractical in the real world. How would you prove that 99% of the suits would be thrown out without having 100 trials?
    - derefr 7y ago
      I meant "thrown out in preliminary hearing." You can work through 100 preliminary hearings (especially when it's essentially the same suit, just with different subjects) pretty quickly, especially if you parallelize it across a bunch of the judge's analysts.
  - teraflop 7y ago
    Sounds like you're referring to something along the lines of anti-SLAPP laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ... There's also the notion of a "vexatious litigant": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexatious_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexatious_litigation
    - derefr 7y ago
      Interesting. It doesn't seem like the concept of vexatious litigation has been applied to corporations. I wonder why not?
i_cant_speel 7y ago
The system is a CYA policy for YouTube. It wasn't designed for that. Copyright holders just saw it as an opportunity to abuse a system for some extra cash. The lawsuits would be unlikely to hold up in court.
- munk-a 7y ago
  But moving it out of court and into an internal demonetization process has lessened the ability for creators to seek redress over spurious claims.
  - skybrian 7y ago
    Would "seeking redress for spurious claims" be a practical solution? Which creators could use it?
    - munk-a 7y ago
      If labels were forced to actually push these into the court system a lot of people would fold and settle but not everyone... those who actually got in front of a judge would likely win the case, probably even being awarded by the court for the prosecution having filed such a spurious claim. Right now there is no cost to labels for submitting these AFAIK, there at least appears to be no cost even if the usage would be covered under fair-use.
foobarian 7y ago
Wow, TIL. ris·i·ble /ˈrizəbəl/ adjective such as to provoke laughter. "a risible scene of lovemaking in a tent" synonyms: laughable, ridiculous, absurd, comical, comic, amusing, funny, chucklesome, hilarious, humorous, droll, entertaining, diverting, farcical, slapstick, silly, facetious, ludicrous, hysterical, uproarious, riotous, sidesplitting, zany, grotesque
- CogitoCogito 7y ago
  I’ve never heard this either, but I guess it’s related to “Are you trying to get a rise of me?”
fenomas 7y ago
Dumb question - when someone films outside in public, why is audio of music from a passing car considered a copyright issue but video of a passerby in a Mickey Mouse t-shirt isn't? Is it just because one industry lobbies YouTube and the other doesn't, or is copyright law materially different for the two cases?
- londons_explore 7y ago
  If that t-shirt was in a film, you can bet there would be someone in the legal department getting the right permissions...
  - fenomas 7y ago
    Presumably the same would be true of music in a film, so I'm not sure how it bears on my question.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  Just because youtube chooses to penalize it, doesn't mean a court would agree its a copyright violation. There is virtually zero chance something that isn't free use 100% in the clear.
- ecspike 7y ago
  It's not that the Mickey Mouse shirt isn't, it's just that companies don't go after it (at least on the small scale in public spaces). Both are fair use. I think it might be lobby stuff and how they are consumed. Great music can transform / enhance a pivotal moment in a movie whereas the presence of an Apple logo or Mickey Mouse shirt, not so much. Companies can and have sued for licensing fees or if they feel their product logo was shown and misrepresented in film. Back to the t-shirt example, on the movie/funded production scale, a lot of this is prevented by the wardrobe department making sure extras are not clothed in licensed stuff.

devrand 7y ago

> This is a step in the right direction, but YT's system is extra-judicial in nature, and they've decided to be more copyright holder friendly than the law itself requires (likely so the law isn't used, which is cheaper for YT). Bingo. Content ID came out right around the settlement of Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc. Even though the courts consistently upheld YouTube's claims, it wasn't exactly a smooth ride and more appeals were coming. I also imagine every other traditional media companies saw the potential and were equally interested in bring lawsuits. I agree with your assessment: governments need to enact better laws to handle media as it is produced and consumed today. Until then companies of years past will try to suck every dime they can from their competition on their way out. Could YouTube's handling of copyright be improved? Of course. Do I see systems like Content ID going away without a change in law? Absolutely not.

doh 7y ago
> Do I see systems like Content ID going away without a change in law? Absolutely not. Considering the new EU Copyright Directive, especially with Article 17, if anything, the world is moving closer towards CID-like systems than away from it.

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

Having private entities, or the government for that matter, control hate content is only a good thing when their definition of hate happens to coincide with your definition of hate. It's all fun and games until one day you discover their definition of hate has expanded to include your beliefs. By then the train is going too fast for you to have any chance of stopping it from squashing you.

gamegod 7y ago
Can this argument die now?
- okmokmz 7y ago
  Absolutely not. It's a major, and valid concern against censorship and is shared by many academics. Here is an article from a professor at Harvard Law >She insists, however, that the cure of censorship is worse than the disease of hate speech. “Even worse than speech’s potential power to harm individuals and society,” she maintains, “is government’s potential power to do likewise, by enforcing ‘hate speech’ laws. Predictably, this elastic power will be used to silence dissenting ideas, unpopular speakers, and disempowered groups.” >https://knightcolumbia.org/news/cure-censorship-better-disease-hate-speech https://knightcolumbia.org/news/cure-censorship-better-disea...
  - krapp 7y ago
    Somehow it's always a concern that governments might abuse hate speech laws to "silence dissenting ideas, unpopular speakers, and disempowered groups," but it's never a concern that the purpose of hate speech is to do exactly that.
    - CamperBob2 7y ago
      The difference is that the people (and corporations) only have words, while the government has guns. I don't know what they're teaching kids in history classes these days, but it isn't history.

ghaff 7y ago

Be aware there is no “legal definition” of fair use. There are four factors that would typically be considered together as a defense against a claim of copyright infringement. Which isn’t quite the same thing.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

> I suspect in my lifetime governments will need to create better frameworks for content networks. The whole "they're a private company, they can do anything!" argument is growing weaker by the day as these companies have more influence in our lives The better solution is to prevent individual private companies from holding so much power in the first place. If the major tech companies weren't allowed to drastically consolidate and push out competition, we wouldn't be in this situation.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> This is a step in the right direction, but YT's system is extra-judicial in nature, and they've decided to be more copyright holder friendly than the law itself requires Most hosts are more copyright-holder-friendly than the law requires, because of the structural incentives in the law. (Many structure there relationship with content-submitters so that they have no liability risk from an unnecessary takedown, and thereby avoid needing to do anything with the DMCA counter-notice process, which only provides a safe harbor against claims stemming from the takedown.)

magduf 7y ago

>The whole "they're a private company, they can do anything!" argument is growing weaker by the day as these companies have more influence in our lives This simply isn't true at all, and if fact the opposite is true. The reality is that corporations are becoming ever more powerful, and voters are enabling this with their choices in the voting booths, and electing administrations that very much believe private companies should be able to do whatever they want. It's not getting any better, it's getting worse.

colejohnson66 7y ago
I think you’re actually agreeing with OP
- magduf 7y ago
  I am, but I'm pointing out that society does not agree with him at all.

readams 7y ago

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/after-more-decade-litigation-dancing-baby-ready-move https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/after-more-decade-liti... "It all started when Lenz posted a YouTube video of her then-toddler-aged son dancing while Prince’s song “Let's Go Crazy” played in the background, and Universal used copyright claims to get the link disabled. We brought the case hoping to get some clarity from the courts on a simple but important issue: can a rightsholder use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to take down an obvious fair use, without consequence?" It required only a decade of litigation to get it back up.

alexmlamb2 7y ago

You sound like an average stupid brainwashed westerner and have no idea that most corporate censorship's goal is supporting western corporate colonialism and evil.

tylerl 7y ago

Yep. It's because there isn't actually a legal definition of fair-use. The closest thing we have to a legal definition is the set of four factors typically used in deciding deciding whether the fair-use defense has merit.