6 ms·

It sucks that Google doesn't offer better support, but are they really to blame here? Isn't the root of the issue IP and copyright laws and this very nebulous n

by simias 6y ago

It sucks that Google doesn't offer better support, but are they really to blame here? Isn't the root of the issue IP and copyright laws and this very nebulous notion of "fair use" that seems extremely easy for IP owners to dispute and win? I see people in this comment section posting alternatives to Youtube but I really wonder if, should they become equally as successful, they could end up behaving any different. When you get thousands of videos uploaded at any given moment and probably a huge amount of DMCA takedown requests what choice do you reasonably have? If there's one thing Google doesn't want is to be sued by the copyright owners, so they always take the defensive stance of taking the content down until proven innocent, which seems cynically reasonable to me. That guy makes song covers. He claims it's non-profit, he claims it's fair use. The IP owner disagrees, issues a takedown. At this point Google either takes the content down, or starts a lengthy and risky legal battle on behalf of third party content that they do not control. I can't really blame them for not bothering. BTW, IANAL and all that but I'm not entirely convinced that his "non-profit fair-use" defense would even hold up in court. Surely he monetizes his videos on top of asking for donations and putting ads on his website. Given his number of subscribers he probably makes a significant amount of money from these videos. To be clear, I think ethically what he does is perfectly fine, but as we all know IP laws have very little to do with ethics. Focusing on big bad google is a bit simplistic here IMO.

ALittleLight 6y ago
Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious Google is completely to blame here. Rather than say "Your channel will be deleted for unexplained copyright infringement" they could say "Videos X, Y, and Z contain copyrighted material at timestamps X', Y', and Z'. This material has been claimed, you may dispute it, because this is your first infringement we will allow you to correct the issue, etc." As the video points out, in order to make a copyright claim the claimant must specifically state the content that is infringing. Thus, Google knows what material is (allegedly) infringing and has the information to provide to the user. Also as stated in the video Google is not required by law to delete the YouTube channel. They've taken that upon themselves. To review, Google is being unnecessarily vague about what material is involved and unnecessarily harsh about punishing someone for an unexplained infringement. The copyright system is, no doubt, messed up - but clearly Google is completely at fault for their lazy and Kafkaesque actions here.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  The whole thing is play for media uproar. Gareth Evans has channel based on playing & covering songs. Courts have always held that this is textbook copyright infringement. Gareth Evans videos all have the songs and artist name in the title. Whoever filed the takedown was lazy in that they didn't include the description because the entire video is infringing. Edit for sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_version#U.S._copyright_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_version#U.S._copyright_l... https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/posting-cover-songs-on-youtube-what-you-need-to-know https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/posting-cover-songs-on-yo... https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/question-when-mechanical-royalty-due-28002.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/question-when-mechan...
- DanBC 6y ago
  You're trying to say that Google should be generous to people using their service to commit criminal offences? You can disagree with the law, but it's pretty clear he's breaking it. https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html > 506. Criminal offenses6 > (a) Criminal Infringement.— > (1) In general.—Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed— > (A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    Yes Google should be generous to people breaking the law. There are many laws and they are complicated and often inscrutable and sometimes unfair. Breaking a law is something everyone does frequently, often without realizing it, so being generous and lenient with law breakers, especially those who have been valuable contributors, seems reasonable. The allegation is that five of his videos had infringing content. Five out of six hundred. Being generous and letting him fix, remove, or contest the allegation prior to deleting the channel strikes me as a much better course than to just tell him "Your channel is being deleted for copyright infringement but we won't tell you where it happened."
Ensorceled 6y ago
> It sucks that Google doesn't offer better support, but are they really to blame here? Can't we blame them for shitty support at least? For not providing any explanation at all? For not having an appeal process? For always taking side of the IP Owner? For deleting the channel instead of some other mechanism? For not actually fighting for reasonable IP laws for this kind of video? I don't know why people come out to defend the shitty actions of a Fortune 50 company and explain why the underdog had it coming.
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  Because some people are tribal, and root for the underdog. Other people are impartial, and do not consider the relative size of parties when figuring out who's in the wrong.
  - Ensorceled 6y ago
    So you are also agree YouTube is doing the right thing here? That their actions are just and correct?
- simias 6y ago
  >Can't we blame them for shitty support at least? For not providing any explanation at all? For not having an appeal process? By all means, that's a well known problem with Google, way beyond Youtube. The way they treat content creators and smaller customers is frankly disrespectful. That being said I still think that while they could handle these matters better, in this case I suspect that the end result would effectively be the same. >For always taking side of the IP Owner? For deleting the channel instead of some other mechanism? For not actually fighting for reasonable IP laws for this kind of video? No, that part is not something I'd necessarily blame them for. You're asking them to go through a world of trouble for content that's not even theirs. When you create a Youtube account you're not entitled to Google's legal team. You're not a partner in this relationship, you're arguably not even a customer unless you buy ads. >I don't know why people come out to defend the shitty actions of a Fortune 50 company and explain why the underdog had it coming. The relative size of these entities is frankly irrelevant in this case. I could spend all day bashing Google for various things (and do on occasions, as my comment history shows) but in this case I'm not sure that the guy uploading unlicensed song covers while claiming fair use and getting copyright struck to death is really the best showcase of Google's abusive practices.
hrktb 6y ago
> What choice do you reasonably have ? They are the ones providing the tools and also set a number of rules (following the law mostly) to use it. Are you arguing that they can’t improve their tools to add even surface validation, or go deeper and force the filling party to provide enough information for the claims to be reviewable by a human (the receiving party)? Would the copyright owner sue Youtube for forcing them in the interface to provide evidence of the claims ?
vorpalhex 6y ago
> When you get thousands of videos uploaded at any given moment and probably a huge amount of DMCA takedown requests what choice do you reasonably have? Legally following the DMCA process. The DMCA process allows a response and does not demand channel deletion. Also the DMCA complaints are supposed to be forwarded. > That guy makes song covers. He claims it's non-profit, he claims it's fair use. The IP owner disagrees, issues a takedown. Automated takedown software issues the takedown because it's crappy software that can't tell a cover from infringement. Covers are not new, they are very well protected and very common. This isn't some kind of new internet thing, covers date back to like the dawn of radio. > I'm not entirely convinced that his "non-profit fair-use" defense would even hold up in court That he makes money from the cover isn't infringement, anymore than other covers are infringement when they were sold on physical CDs. > Focusing on big bad google is a bit simplistic here IMO. Yet other services are capable of handling the DMCA process correctly. Instead Google didn't even forward the DMCA notices, list the specific infringements or give him the legally required ability to respond. Google is choosing to not follow DMCA and instead just delete channels because it's more cost effective. That's it - this is about a few dollars of profit margin that they're destroying someone else's business they've spent a decade building. So yeah, they're the big bad in this situation.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  >That he makes money from the cover isn't infringement, anymore than other covers are infringement when they were sold on physical CDs. The law is clear that both are valid infringement and subject to DMCA takedown, unless the songs have been licensed. Not saying a like it, but there is a long list of cases upholding it. Edit for sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_version#U.S._copyright_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_version#U.S._copyright_l... https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/posting-cover-songs-on-youtube-what-you-need-to-know https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/posting-cover-songs-on-yo... https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/question-when-mechanical-royalty-due-28002.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/question-when-mechan...
labcomputer 6y ago
> BTW, IANAL and all that but I'm not entirely convinced that his "non-profit fair-use" defense would even hold up in court. Surely he monetizes his videos on top of asking for donations and putting ads on his website. Given his number of subscribers he probably makes a significant amount of money from these videos. Also not a lawyer (and I think that Google sucks for not disclosing what is allegedly being infringed and what is allegedly infringing), but I suspect this is not a slam-dunk case of fair use. Running through the 4-factor test (https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/fairuse/fourfactor https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/fairuse/fourfactor), it really feels like a fair-use claim would hinge on how transformative the work is: 1. The fact that he's monetizing it at all (even if not in a quid-pro-quo exchange of content for money) I suspect undermines the "non-profit" argument, even if the purpose is educational. 2. Music is pretty clearly in the "imaginative or highly creative" bucket. 3. He states that he "uses no more of the original subject matter than is necessary". Which implies that he might be using more than just a little (or even all of it). But that kinda seems to contradict what he says elsewhere in the video, which that he "doesn't use any resources or materials which are distributed or sold at a premium" and "every thing I've ever created has been 100% self-generated". 4. The website (https://www.goliathguitartutorials.com/ https://www.goliathguitartutorials.com/) he mentions in the video has guitar tabs and (broken) links to Youtube videos which share names of popular artists and their songs. Without seeing the videos, I would infer that his lessons teach how to play popular commercial songs, which do have an established market for licenses he is avoiding. It's hard to judge because we can't see the videos... but it kinda looks like this falls firmly under "not fair use" unless he's writing music that is only very loosely inspired by the songs it is named after.
- athms 6y ago
  Covers need a license. This is established in copyright law. There is no fair use defense for this. It makes no difference that a person is playing covers for educational or non-profit purposes. Doing cover songs for free still requires a license. A person needs a mechanical license for audio distribution, whether it be physical or digital, and a synchronization license if there is video distribution. Most established streaming sites already have a synchronization license that covers (pun intended) covers, whereas the site will divert ad revenue. However, it is up to the performer to make sure a synchronization license is available from the site for all the songs they will be covering. Some publishers or copyright holders refuse to issue synchronization licenses as there isn't an obligation and there isn't a fixed rate, each license is negotiated separately. The current mechanical rate is $0.091 for songs five minutes or less and $0.0175 per minute or fraction thereof for songs over five minutes. This rate is set by the Copyright Royalty Board, part of the Library of Congress, and for United States territories only.

by simias 6y ago

ALittleLight 6y ago

Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious Google is completely to blame here. Rather than say "Your channel will be deleted for unexplained copyright infringement" they could say "Videos X, Y, and Z contain copyrighted material at timestamps X', Y', and Z'. This material has been claimed, you may dispute it, because this is your first infringement we will allow you to correct the issue, etc." As the video points out, in order to make a copyright claim the claimant must specifically state the content that is infringing. Thus, Google knows what material is (allegedly) infringing and has the information to provide to the user. Also as stated in the video Google is not required by law to delete the YouTube channel. They've taken that upon themselves. To review, Google is being unnecessarily vague about what material is involved and unnecessarily harsh about punishing someone for an unexplained infringement. The copyright system is, no doubt, messed up - but clearly Google is completely at fault for their lazy and Kafkaesque actions here.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
s1artibartfast 6y ago
The whole thing is play for media uproar. Gareth Evans has channel based on playing & covering songs. Courts have always held that this is textbook copyright infringement. Gareth Evans videos all have the songs and artist name in the title. Whoever filed the takedown was lazy in that they didn't include the description because the entire video is infringing. Edit for sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_version#U.S._copyright_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_version#U.S._copyright_l... https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/posting-cover-songs-on-youtube-what-you-need-to-know https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/posting-cover-songs-on-yo... https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/question-when-mechanical-royalty-due-28002.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/question-when-mechan...
DanBC 6y ago
You're trying to say that Google should be generous to people using their service to commit criminal offences? You can disagree with the law, but it's pretty clear he's breaking it. https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html > 506. Criminal offenses6 > (a) Criminal Infringement.— > (1) In general.—Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed— > (A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  Yes Google should be generous to people breaking the law. There are many laws and they are complicated and often inscrutable and sometimes unfair. Breaking a law is something everyone does frequently, often without realizing it, so being generous and lenient with law breakers, especially those who have been valuable contributors, seems reasonable. The allegation is that five of his videos had infringing content. Five out of six hundred. Being generous and letting him fix, remove, or contest the allegation prior to deleting the channel strikes me as a much better course than to just tell him "Your channel is being deleted for copyright infringement but we won't tell you where it happened."

Ensorceled 6y ago

> It sucks that Google doesn't offer better support, but are they really to blame here? Can't we blame them for shitty support at least? For not providing any explanation at all? For not having an appeal process? For always taking side of the IP Owner? For deleting the channel instead of some other mechanism? For not actually fighting for reasonable IP laws for this kind of video? I don't know why people come out to defend the shitty actions of a Fortune 50 company and explain why the underdog had it coming.

robertlagrant 6y ago
Because some people are tribal, and root for the underdog. Other people are impartial, and do not consider the relative size of parties when figuring out who's in the wrong.
- Ensorceled 6y ago
  So you are also agree YouTube is doing the right thing here? That their actions are just and correct?
simias 6y ago
>Can't we blame them for shitty support at least? For not providing any explanation at all? For not having an appeal process? By all means, that's a well known problem with Google, way beyond Youtube. The way they treat content creators and smaller customers is frankly disrespectful. That being said I still think that while they could handle these matters better, in this case I suspect that the end result would effectively be the same. >For always taking side of the IP Owner? For deleting the channel instead of some other mechanism? For not actually fighting for reasonable IP laws for this kind of video? No, that part is not something I'd necessarily blame them for. You're asking them to go through a world of trouble for content that's not even theirs. When you create a Youtube account you're not entitled to Google's legal team. You're not a partner in this relationship, you're arguably not even a customer unless you buy ads. >I don't know why people come out to defend the shitty actions of a Fortune 50 company and explain why the underdog had it coming. The relative size of these entities is frankly irrelevant in this case. I could spend all day bashing Google for various things (and do on occasions, as my comment history shows) but in this case I'm not sure that the guy uploading unlicensed song covers while claiming fair use and getting copyright struck to death is really the best showcase of Google's abusive practices.

hrktb 6y ago

> What choice do you reasonably have ? They are the ones providing the tools and also set a number of rules (following the law mostly) to use it. Are you arguing that they can’t improve their tools to add even surface validation, or go deeper and force the filling party to provide enough information for the claims to be reviewable by a human (the receiving party)? Would the copyright owner sue Youtube for forcing them in the interface to provide evidence of the claims ?

vorpalhex 6y ago

> When you get thousands of videos uploaded at any given moment and probably a huge amount of DMCA takedown requests what choice do you reasonably have? Legally following the DMCA process. The DMCA process allows a response and does not demand channel deletion. Also the DMCA complaints are supposed to be forwarded. > That guy makes song covers. He claims it's non-profit, he claims it's fair use. The IP owner disagrees, issues a takedown. Automated takedown software issues the takedown because it's crappy software that can't tell a cover from infringement. Covers are not new, they are very well protected and very common. This isn't some kind of new internet thing, covers date back to like the dawn of radio. > I'm not entirely convinced that his "non-profit fair-use" defense would even hold up in court That he makes money from the cover isn't infringement, anymore than other covers are infringement when they were sold on physical CDs. > Focusing on big bad google is a bit simplistic here IMO. Yet other services are capable of handling the DMCA process correctly. Instead Google didn't even forward the DMCA notices, list the specific infringements or give him the legally required ability to respond. Google is choosing to not follow DMCA and instead just delete channels because it's more cost effective. That's it - this is about a few dollars of profit margin that they're destroying someone else's business they've spent a decade building. So yeah, they're the big bad in this situation.

s1artibartfast 6y ago
>That he makes money from the cover isn't infringement, anymore than other covers are infringement when they were sold on physical CDs. The law is clear that both are valid infringement and subject to DMCA takedown, unless the songs have been licensed. Not saying a like it, but there is a long list of cases upholding it. Edit for sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_version#U.S._copyright_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_version#U.S._copyright_l... https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/posting-cover-songs-on-youtube-what-you-need-to-know https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/posting-cover-songs-on-yo... https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/question-when-mechanical-royalty-due-28002.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/question-when-mechan...

labcomputer 6y ago

> BTW, IANAL and all that but I'm not entirely convinced that his "non-profit fair-use" defense would even hold up in court. Surely he monetizes his videos on top of asking for donations and putting ads on his website. Given his number of subscribers he probably makes a significant amount of money from these videos. Also not a lawyer (and I think that Google sucks for not disclosing what is allegedly being infringed and what is allegedly infringing), but I suspect this is not a slam-dunk case of fair use. Running through the 4-factor test (https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/fairuse/fourfactor https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/fairuse/fourfactor), it really feels like a fair-use claim would hinge on how transformative the work is: 1. The fact that he's monetizing it at all (even if not in a quid-pro-quo exchange of content for money) I suspect undermines the "non-profit" argument, even if the purpose is educational. 2. Music is pretty clearly in the "imaginative or highly creative" bucket. 3. He states that he "uses no more of the original subject matter than is necessary". Which implies that he might be using more than just a little (or even all of it). But that kinda seems to contradict what he says elsewhere in the video, which that he "doesn't use any resources or materials which are distributed or sold at a premium" and "every thing I've ever created has been 100% self-generated". 4. The website (https://www.goliathguitartutorials.com/ https://www.goliathguitartutorials.com/) he mentions in the video has guitar tabs and (broken) links to Youtube videos which share names of popular artists and their songs. Without seeing the videos, I would infer that his lessons teach how to play popular commercial songs, which do have an established market for licenses he is avoiding. It's hard to judge because we can't see the videos... but it kinda looks like this falls firmly under "not fair use" unless he's writing music that is only very loosely inspired by the songs it is named after.

athms 6y ago
Covers need a license. This is established in copyright law. There is no fair use defense for this. It makes no difference that a person is playing covers for educational or non-profit purposes. Doing cover songs for free still requires a license. A person needs a mechanical license for audio distribution, whether it be physical or digital, and a synchronization license if there is video distribution. Most established streaming sites already have a synchronization license that covers (pun intended) covers, whereas the site will divert ad revenue. However, it is up to the performer to make sure a synchronization license is available from the site for all the songs they will be covering. Some publishers or copyright holders refuse to issue synchronization licenses as there isn't an obligation and there isn't a fixed rate, each license is negotiated separately. The current mechanical rate is $0.091 for songs five minutes or less and $0.0175 per minute or fraction thereof for songs over five minutes. This rate is set by the Copyright Royalty Board, part of the Library of Congress, and for United States territories only.