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On Facebook and YouTube, classical musicians are getting blocked or muted
- BitwiseFool 6y agoIf there's no penalty for false-positives on content ID this is only going to get worse.
- protomyth 6y agoIf YouTube charged these companies for their false claims, then we would see a very quick end to the BS flagging.
- nullc 6y agoThis only thing unusual about this problem for classical music is the extremely large repertoire of public domain works. The article vaguely implies that there is also an issue of miscalibration of the matching due to emphasising commercial pop-music but I've never seen any evidence of that and wouldn't expect it from how these systems work. In particular, I've found various contentid services to be effective at identifying classical music-- so clearly their database contain plenty of it. I expect that this claim is pure speculation on the part of the article's author.
- msandford 6y agoI think the idea of miscalibration of matching isn't that the system can't ID classical, it's that the system doesn't know that classical should have different rules apply. A lot of pop music "sounds the same" but the songs are actually different in meaningful ways note-wise. When you're dealing with classical music it's all the same notes! Just different people playing it. So probably what's happening (some-how, some-way) is that the ID mechanism is trained to find songs that are "the same" and in pop music they're only "the same" if they're the _same song_. But in classical there are many songs that are different that are the _same song_ and so the model which was trained with one set of assumptions completely fails when a different set of assumptions are in play. And because classical doesn't register in a big way to the people in charge this doesn't get fixed because it only takes the algorithm from 99.85% accurate to 99.72% accurate which as we all know, is meaningless!
- zozbot234 6y ago> So probably what's happening (some-how, some-way) is that the ID mechanism is trained to find songs that are "the same" and in pop music they're only "the same" if they're the _same song_. Right. Pop music has a lot of variation in timbre even between 'covers' of the same composition, so if the notes match and the overall timbre matches it's a safe bet that you're looking at two instances of the exact same recording, or at most two versions by the same performer. In classical that just isn't true, the timbre of acoustic instruments is basically fixed and the notes are defined by the original composition. There's just too little variation for an auto-id system to work with.
- Pyrodogg 6y ago> “Though the technology works most of the time in terms of correctly identifying instances of our clients’ content on-platform, it still generates a not-insignificant amount of mismatches that require human review to differentiate,” Hammons says. “The chances of conflicts with this amount of content are considerable. For these reasons there is always a volume of potentially erroneous auto-generated claims that unless contested, I may never be made explicitly aware.” --- This is exactly the problem. It's obvious that there is a "not-insignificant" amount of cases where the there isn't extremely high confidence in the automated model. Instead of these cases defaulting to claims, it should default to human review.
- bcatanzaro 6y agoI got a takedown notice on YouTube for posting a chamber music recording of me and 3 friends playing a piece written in 1715. Insane. We need to work on AI that can evaluate the musical talent in a recording. I mean yes, I was playing the same song as some famous musician, but anyone could tell I am an amateur and my recording was not professional.
- nitrogen 6y agoWe need to work on AI that can evaluate the musical talent in a recording. I mean yes, I was playing the same song as some famous musician, but anyone could tell I am an amateur and my recording was not professional. Years of reading the arguments on HN (and other forums and aggregators before that) have convinced me that technology will not provide the answers to this problem. We need better laws from governments, and better policies from corporations.
- ngold 6y agoHow about every copyright claim has to be submitted in a handwritten letter with a picture of you holding that days newspaper. Then put the photo and handwritten note in an envelope and mail it in.
- kec 6y agoBetter (and simpler), there needs to be a fine or other punishment for fraudulent copyright claims. Even better if that fine can be proportional to income of the claimant.
- 0x00000000 6y agoOr the fine is that the work in question becomes public domain.
- kube-system 6y agoThese YouTube takedowns are typically not copyright claims. The DMCA process does have more rigor. YouTube has a voluntary process that doesn’t require any of that rigor. YouTube’s company policy is essentially “ask us and we’ll take it down”, and has nothing to do with what the law requires.
- bob1029 6y agoI can regularly trick apps like Shazam by playing classical pieces on a Yamaha digital keyboard with only the built-in speakers being used. Its almost deterministic. I can get Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata to detect as one of several published recordings almost 100% of the time. I feel classical music is especially tricky from a ML modeling perspective. How many unique recordings are there of Pachelbel's Canon in D? This is probably similar in difficulty to identifying a specific bird in a flock of thousands, and then looking at another discontinuous (in time) photo of the flock taken from a slightly different perspective and being able to recognize the same exact bird again.
- botwriter 6y agoWhy not make it so that you just can't own copyright on versions of Public domain music. Makes life a hell of a lot easier the ai recognised this is public domain and so no one can make a claim on it.
- recursive 6y agoThe music or the performance of the music? Eliminating performance copyright would be a big deal.
- BrandoElFollito 6y agoOne thing I do not understand in law is that there is no proportionality (except in some cases in Nordic countries). If 100B€ company is against me then all of us should expect a painful fine if we loose. For me that will be 10k€,for them 1B€ (or whatever). They can afford to send lawyers whose job is to just do that: go to court. I have to take a day off. If the fine is 10k it is insignificant to them and they can assume they will lose and this is no big deal. For me it is. This unequality between a normal person and a company is painful. I belive that if companies were possibly in trouble when they loose then they would make more efforts to provide a good service (also out of court arrangements should be forbidden to force them to face the music)
- mrits 6y agoYou are even describing a big corp vs top 5%. Less privileged people might end up losing their job to go to court.
- rectang 6y agoThe impracticality of turning to the courts is what drives a lot of the thirst for government regulation — legislative relief is the only hope for these classical musicians. What good are the courts if the law is on your side but justice is inaccessible?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoThey work better in loser pays systems. A legitimate complaint can't be shut down with escalating costs.
- space_fountain 6y agoDoesn't that make it a lot worse if you as an average Joe do lose against a team of well payed lawyers?
- fortran77 6y agoI've had Sony block my own amateur recordings of me sitting in my living room playing Schubert on my own piano. These companies should face criminal charges for this extortion. It's disgusting and outrageous.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.md/B32kS https://archive.md/B32kS
- thirteenfingers 6y agoI've posted about this here before, but a lot of people who upload their own videos of classical music on youtube and get copyright-warned or copyright-striked are too spooked to file a counter-claim. If it was a bot that automatically filed the claim against you, there's a very good chance the claim will be automatically lifted if you counter-claim. Yes, youtube will give you a big scary warning about how repeated violations could mean your account is shut down. Every time this happened I went ahead and submitted counter-claim anyway. On all but one occasion the copyright claim disappeared immediately. The one exception required a bit of escalation but I still wound up on top (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22488897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22488897 if you're curious). I understand a good many people simply do not feel comfortable risking their youtube account being shut down from contested claims, but I suspect that for many the risk is a lot lower than they realize.
- rectang 6y agoYou've described a system which defaults to injustice and is statistically guaranteed to produce an unjust aggregate result. That a handful of individuals can work around it is immaterial.
- switch11 6y agoagreed 100%
- Rochus 6y agoRight. That's the essence of the essence of copyright law. And the (mostly unjust) claims of the collecting societies and their henchmen are enforced with the methods of protection racketing, because hardly any of the victims will ever defend themselves in court. The same game as with the patent trolls, simply less known.
- anewdirection 6y agoNot so much the law, but how it has been crafted to apply online, and the sheer amount of malicious compliance by Google et al.
- scottious 6y agoAnecdote: I got silenced by posting a performance of Fur Elise by Beethoven on Facebook and Instagram. Really weird.
- kube-system 6y agoWas it your performance?
- xg15 6y ago> Hammons [of Naxos] says that most claims contested by Facebook and YouTube users are cleared within a week of dispute, and that arrangements can be made for channel owners who are able to prove “the legitimacy of their status as a performing arts entity, [or] that their channel constitutes a low risk for abuse of the privilege.” The "privilege" of being able to play your own original works on your own channel - generously granted by a random company that has no business relationship to you whatsoever...
- crazygringo 6y agoWho is making those "arrangements"? Naxos? Or Facebook/YouTube? Because I haven't heard of Facebook/YouTube doing so, though I'd love to know if they do. And if it's Naxos, well that doesn't exactly solve the problem does it? Because the claim against your recording might be Naxos one day, but another label next week, and yet another label the week after that. Naxos is a big label, but it certainly doesn't have even the majority of classical music or anything.
- nikanj 6y agoYoutube doesn't care whether they actually have the rights or not, that's for the courts to decide. You can submit copyright claims on whatever on Youtube, they don't traverse the complex web of agreements and assignments to see if you actually hold copyright to the thing you're claiming.
- Rochus 6y agoThen this blatant nonsense with these collecting societies strikes back at those who have benefited from it for many years. When you do a concert you don't just have to pay for the composition and arrangement and such, you also have to pay for the secondary exploitation rights (i.e. the performing musicians), and if someone sings, you also have to satisfy the collecting society responsible for the lyrics. And if you want to make live recordings of the concert accessible to people (even for free) it gets even more complicated. And ironically, the musicians and composers get the least from this horrendous machinery. The musicians who can secure a decent income from the collecting societies' revenues can be counted on one hand. For most of us, it is just enough for a part of the travel expenses. The people who still dare to perform a classical concert somewhere in the hinterland are immediately punished and exempted by these collecting societies. In the age of the Internet, this is now even automatic. No wonder that there are fewer and fewer places that perform. So today the shot is well and truly fired in the wrong diretion when composers and musicians assign their rights to such a society. Where there is hardly any market anyway, the promoters are penalised even more, although composers and musicians should be rather glad that someone is still listening to them. I, for my part, am not affiliated with any such society anymore and have all my fellow musicians sign agreements whereby I pay them directly and no further claims of such societies are permissible.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Rochus 6y agoSee also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_collective https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_collective. Ironically, a musician working as a clerc for a collecting society earns at least an order of magnitude more than what the median musician can expect as annual royalties from the collecting society.
- zuminator 6y agoWhy can't it work something like this: * As a YouTube channel owner you have the option of officially registering your channel with verified contact information. * A video you have uploaded gets flagged by a bot. * YouTube mutes the content and immediately texts you an alert. * If you have opted to officially register with YouTube, you are given the ability to text back a countermand to the alert. * If you countermand the copyright violation flag, your video is immediately unmuted, and the copyright holder receives instructions that if it still believes the content is an IP violation, commencing legal proceedings are the next option. * If and only if the copyright holder affirms to Google that it will follow through with legal proceedings, it is given your contact information.
- rickbutton 6y agoBecause Google has a financial interest in keeping these malicious "rights holders" happy and profits from the stealing of profits from YouTube creators. Until it becomes illegal, or YouTubers organize, Google will continue to steal from creators.
- mikece 6y agoSince the start of quarantine I've been live-streaming Catholic Masses where the choir and schola take pride in their ability to sing polyphony and chant which you typically never hear these days and which has always been in the public domain. However, because commercial recordings exist of these works, every single Sunday I've got to file protests against the copyright notices, pointing out that these are live, original performances of works that were in the public domain for over 200 years (over 1500 in some cases). No matter, if a recording of this music exists then CLEARLY no human could have possibly duplicated, in the year 2020, a melody and text that was already ancient a millennium ago. I realize this is machine learning and music sampling but I'm a tad surprised that the dataset cannot include a field such as "this recording is of public domain music"... and after a YouTube channel has to keep saying "No, I'm not playing someone else's CDs, we have a choir singing these live -- can't you hear the imperfections and that the soprano missed that eighth?" I suspect that at some point the channel will be cancelled because its too much of a copyright hazard.
- smitty1e 6y agoThe good news is that the means to roll your own system are within reach. Maybe YouTube just has to commit copyright seppuku to achieve enlightenment.
- thatswrong0 6y agoIt's not really Youtube's fault though. The copyright system in the USA is absolute garbage and stifles creativity and innovation.
- mullingitover 6y agoIt's absolutely Youtube's fault. Nothing in the existing body of law requires them to proactively block copyrighted material from their platform. They only have to act on DMCA takedown notices in the required timeframe. Their automation obsession has resulted in a firehose of erroneous takedowns that 100% aren't required by law, and they deserve all the ridicule and damage to their business that comes with that.
- betenoire 6y agoI used to record myself playing classical music, then listen to it later to find my weak spots to focus my practicing. I was flattered and annoyed when one of my recordings was taken down. I contested it, it was restored. This was SoundCloud though
- guscost 6y agoYet another (non-political, this time) reason why the law needs to be changed. I’ve sent a note asking my district representative to support reform, and would encourage everyone to do the same: > In Green v. AOL (2003), the court established: > There is no real dispute that Green's fundamental tort claim is that AOL was negligent in promulgating harmful content and in failing to address certain harmful content on its network. Green thus attempts to hold AOL liable for decisions relating to the monitoring, screening, and deletion of content from its network — actions quintessentially related to a publisher's role. Section 230 "specifically proscribes liability" in such circumstances. Zeran, 129 F.3d at 332-33. > There is immediately a question why this "quintessential relation" only works in one direction, i.e. why even when "monitoring, screening, and [deleting content]", a provider should not be considered a publisher, and thus ineligible for immunity under Section 230. The courts may not agree with that argument, but I would say that it highlights a serious deficiency, and the law needs to be changed in a similar manner as Josh Hawley's bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1914 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/191... > In fact I would argue that his bill does not go far enough. Getting an FTC rubber-stamp certifying "no political bias" seems like a vague and squishy system that will be easy to game. Perhaps the law should state that any provider above a certain size which takes action to "monitor, screen, or delete content" that is not illegal, and does not respond to an appropriate claim by reversing this decision, should forfeit immunity under Section 230. This would be very controversial, because it effectively bans e.g. YouTube from having their own "code of conduct" independent of US law. But I think that is exactly what needs to happen - YouTube is far too big for a "community standard" to make sense, and any attempt to do this will be abused for censorship. These companies should be forced to engage with all of us in the making of laws about free speech, they should not effectively be able to declare what free speech is by fiat.
- ken 6y agoThis happened to a friend of mine recently, who didn't care to fight it, so we all lost. The part that I don't understand is: Shazam is really bad at classical music. Unless it's the exact recording of the piece as their database, it seems, Shazam won't recognize it at all. And a little noise or static is enough to throw it off. How is it that FB/YT content detectors are so far ahead of the game that they can detect old music in completely new recordings? Or, alternatively, why can't FB/GOOG slap a simple UI on their services and make an app like Shazam for users but 50 times better? We've got the worst of both worlds right now: bad detection of music when we want it, and overzealous matching of new recordings when we don't.
- jimbob45 6y ago+1 this I don't think a lot of people know how truly bad Shazam is at classical music. Stuff that should be very obvious (NPR Live From Here, for example) routinely gets misidentified for me.
- jecel 6y agoIs Youtube really better at identifying the music? For one video my father posted we got a complaint that some company owned the song for the part where my sister was playing the piano and singing. It offered the option of muting it or allowing ads with the money going to the company. What it didn't say was what song specifically it thought the video had. So though they offered the option to contest it there was no way for us to do that without this information. The lyrics were something my sister had written herself, so it was very likely that it was a false match. It obviously had a recording of what they thought matched or it couldn't have made the comparison. But without allowing me access to that recording there is no way to know if their algorithm is any good.
- causality0 6y agoThe automation of the law ranks very highly among the worst things in modern society.
- aaisola 6y agoThe fact that you can copyright a rendition of something that itself was created hundreds of years ago is appalling and shortsighted.
- jrochkind1 6y ago> Duncan Hammons, considers copyright protection “among our chief duties per our relationship with our distributed label clients.” > “We’re at the mercy of automation in order to uphold our obligations to our clients,” Hammons says in an email. Like other record companies, Naxos relies on Facebook’s and YouTube’s content identification systems to track potential illegal use. Naxos, please explain who is forcing you to use software/algorithms implemented by other companies, that you implied you know is harming the classical music industry/community? It's clear to me who is at Naxios' mercy, but it's not entirely clear to me whose mercy Naxios is saying they are at.
- jancsika 6y ago> A few Sundays ago, Camerata Pacifica artistic director Adrian Spence, aided by his tech-savvy son Keiran, went live on Facebook to broadcast a previously recorded performance of Mozart’s Trio in E flat (K. 498), a.k.a. the “Kegelstatt” trio. > an original performance of an hour-long piece composed by Mozart in 1786 I'm surprised the bot recognized the piece when it was apparently played at about half speed. :)
- ojosilva 6y agoWe probably need a PBS equivalent for streaming, as FB and Google and huge businesses alike will always put their financial goals and liabilities before the general public interest. This has worked well for Wikipedia, where money hasn't been, at least in most cases, able to permanently wipe unwanted information off of articles. This doesn't mean there won't be copyright claims, but the burden should be on the copyright owner not the user. If this platform is a "public streaming system", then no ads are shown and the limits of infringement will be constrained by the lack of ads (ie "fair use"). Having no financial incentives for people to make money off of other people's work makes it all much simpler. A "Wikitube" would have its many challenges, certainly, but resolution would lean on the side of the public interest, something that has been wildly forgotten in the digital age.