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...even the remotest chance that a content creator might sue YouTube for enabling copyright infringement. Does this happen often? Ever? How does one sue a firm

...even the remotest chance that a content creator might sue YouTube for enabling copyright infringement. Does this happen often? Ever? How does one sue a firm that never has humans available for interaction with the public? One suspects this is the motivation they'd like us to credit, because they have other, less defensible, motivations.

tehjoker 6y ago
Fwiw, you sue in public courts where Google loses by default if they don't appear. Google does not yet run its own parallel court system and star chamber. EDIT: On second thought, if their services require binding arbitration, they do. Arbitration in contracts of adhesion should be flatly illegal.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  Would a copyright owner who doesn't use YouTube be subject to such binding arbitration? Presumably such an owner could hire a third party to discover hypothetically infringing content?
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    All parties involved would have to have agreed in writing to binding arbitration, so yes any non-party can do whatever they want. EDIT: IANAL and this is not financial advice. ;)
- hellbannedguy 6y ago
  I don’t think people realize how companies/people use binding arbitration to their advantage? These companies pay the arbitrators. It’s usually done by mail, and their usually is no investigation into your case. The little guy wins only in egregious situations, and I have never met anyone who won especially going up against a big company? I get arbitration agreements for small companies, but not for huge monopolies, and scummy high interest rate card it cards. I had a run in with Columbia Credit Services, and still have a judgement following me over a credit card. Someone decided to look into the arbitration process of this company, and something like 99.9 percent of the time the customer lost. Even hired process servers whom would lie about serving the papers. All over a credit card sent in the mail. (Judgements last 10 years, and can be renewed. They tick away at 10% per year, if the creditor can’t immediately your life miserable, and take your stuff with a warrant.)
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    I think it can be okay with companies large or small if the contract is something that is negotiated with real opportunity for making changes like removing such agreements. Arbitration when done with the real consent of both parties and with the choice of a neutral party that isn't expecting more business from one of them can save time and money. However, it's tyrannical for both large and small companies to just force these things on people regardless of how vulnerable their business model is. I'd note that it has never occurred to me that arbitration would ever have been in my own interest.
jandrese 6y ago
Are you asking if a Record Company would sue someone on the Internet for copyright infringement? They are rather famous for doing so, and more than that, for asking for extremely large settlements. Sometimes calculating the "damages" in completely ridiculous ways like multiplying every view by $50,000. Don't forget what happened to cdrom.com. Literally sued out of existence because they allowed people to upload their own music to the cloud. They couldn't even share it, it was just uploaded to the cloud. Business completely destroyed.
- derekp7 6y ago
  The way cdrom.com worked is you would upload a fingerprint of your music. Then if they already had a track that matched the fingerprint, they would link that to your account and not require you to upload the whole track. So this was technically not within the scope of what is allowed by copyright law, which is why they got in trouble. Which is kind of strange how when something is "technically" a violation, even if it is within the spirit of the law (or equiv. to what is allowed), the copyright hammer comes down. Whereas when something is "technically" NOT a copyright violation, the hammer still comes down (such as that company that used a bunch of tiny TV antennas to stream broadcast TV over the internet to other markets -- each customer was "renting" one of the dedicated TV antennas and using the internet as a "long cable". Or the company that would dedicate a DVD player to each customer and stream movies across the internet, again claiming the internet was just a "very long cable". They both got shut down hard even though they weren't "technically" in violation).
  - jandrese 6y ago
    The whole "they're not physically your bits" argument never made a lick of sense. They never would be after you uploaded them over the Internet. The whole case depended on the Doctrine of First Sale not applying to CDs, so that's what the courts agreed to. The record companies could have gone after second hand record stores, at least the ones that sold CDs, if they wanted to at that point but it was kind of unnecessary because they were already dying.
  - AdamJacobMuller 6y ago
devrand 6y ago
Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc. is basically what caused Content ID to come into existence, despite being ruled in Youtube's favor. It was going to go to appeal but a non-monetary settlement was agreed upon, which is why it's believed that Content ID came from that. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._YouTube,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y....
mhh__ 6y ago
The copyright owners are terrified by a new medium they don't understand for the most part so they extract their rents the way you know how. I made a dumb mashup containing spoken words and a song, I'm not sure whether that is fair use or not, but it got copyright striked for infringing upon something like "test song #3" by some record label. I couldn't even find out what that was.
tablespoon 6y ago
> How does one sue a firm that never has humans available for interaction with the public? You don't sue a company by contacting customer service. I'm pretty sure they need to have some official representative on file somewhere, and you could probably serve them the lawsuit by sending a certified letter to their official address. The bigger barrier is Google/Youtube almost certainly have an arbitration clause in their terms of service.

tehjoker 6y ago

Fwiw, you sue in public courts where Google loses by default if they don't appear. Google does not yet run its own parallel court system and star chamber. EDIT: On second thought, if their services require binding arbitration, they do. Arbitration in contracts of adhesion should be flatly illegal.

jessaustin 6y ago
Would a copyright owner who doesn't use YouTube be subject to such binding arbitration? Presumably such an owner could hire a third party to discover hypothetically infringing content?
- tehjoker 6y ago
  All parties involved would have to have agreed in writing to binding arbitration, so yes any non-party can do whatever they want. EDIT: IANAL and this is not financial advice. ;)
hellbannedguy 6y ago
I don’t think people realize how companies/people use binding arbitration to their advantage? These companies pay the arbitrators. It’s usually done by mail, and their usually is no investigation into your case. The little guy wins only in egregious situations, and I have never met anyone who won especially going up against a big company? I get arbitration agreements for small companies, but not for huge monopolies, and scummy high interest rate card it cards. I had a run in with Columbia Credit Services, and still have a judgement following me over a credit card. Someone decided to look into the arbitration process of this company, and something like 99.9 percent of the time the customer lost. Even hired process servers whom would lie about serving the papers. All over a credit card sent in the mail. (Judgements last 10 years, and can be renewed. They tick away at 10% per year, if the creditor can’t immediately your life miserable, and take your stuff with a warrant.)
- tehjoker 6y ago
  I think it can be okay with companies large or small if the contract is something that is negotiated with real opportunity for making changes like removing such agreements. Arbitration when done with the real consent of both parties and with the choice of a neutral party that isn't expecting more business from one of them can save time and money. However, it's tyrannical for both large and small companies to just force these things on people regardless of how vulnerable their business model is. I'd note that it has never occurred to me that arbitration would ever have been in my own interest.

jandrese 6y ago

Are you asking if a Record Company would sue someone on the Internet for copyright infringement? They are rather famous for doing so, and more than that, for asking for extremely large settlements. Sometimes calculating the "damages" in completely ridiculous ways like multiplying every view by $50,000. Don't forget what happened to cdrom.com. Literally sued out of existence because they allowed people to upload their own music to the cloud. They couldn't even share it, it was just uploaded to the cloud. Business completely destroyed.

derekp7 6y ago
The way cdrom.com worked is you would upload a fingerprint of your music. Then if they already had a track that matched the fingerprint, they would link that to your account and not require you to upload the whole track. So this was technically not within the scope of what is allowed by copyright law, which is why they got in trouble. Which is kind of strange how when something is "technically" a violation, even if it is within the spirit of the law (or equiv. to what is allowed), the copyright hammer comes down. Whereas when something is "technically" NOT a copyright violation, the hammer still comes down (such as that company that used a bunch of tiny TV antennas to stream broadcast TV over the internet to other markets -- each customer was "renting" one of the dedicated TV antennas and using the internet as a "long cable". Or the company that would dedicate a DVD player to each customer and stream movies across the internet, again claiming the internet was just a "very long cable". They both got shut down hard even though they weren't "technically" in violation).
- jandrese 6y ago
  The whole "they're not physically your bits" argument never made a lick of sense. They never would be after you uploaded them over the Internet. The whole case depended on the Doctrine of First Sale not applying to CDs, so that's what the courts agreed to. The record companies could have gone after second hand record stores, at least the ones that sold CDs, if they wanted to at that point but it was kind of unnecessary because they were already dying.
- AdamJacobMuller 6y ago

devrand 6y ago

Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc. is basically what caused Content ID to come into existence, despite being ruled in Youtube's favor. It was going to go to appeal but a non-monetary settlement was agreed upon, which is why it's believed that Content ID came from that. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._YouTube,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y....

mhh__ 6y ago

The copyright owners are terrified by a new medium they don't understand for the most part so they extract their rents the way you know how. I made a dumb mashup containing spoken words and a song, I'm not sure whether that is fair use or not, but it got copyright striked for infringing upon something like "test song #3" by some record label. I couldn't even find out what that was.

tablespoon 6y ago

> How does one sue a firm that never has humans available for interaction with the public? You don't sue a company by contacting customer service. I'm pretty sure they need to have some official representative on file somewhere, and you could probably serve them the lawsuit by sending a certified letter to their official address. The bigger barrier is Google/Youtube almost certainly have an arbitration clause in their terms of service.