29 ms·

Piano teacher gets copyright claim for Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata [video]

922 points by bitcharmer 6y ago

bitcharmer 6y ago
She actually decided to quit YouTube after this completely unfair treatment. I think it's high time these platforms saw some regulation. It's ridiculous what they are allowed to get away with.
- swiley 6y ago
  Good for her, it's the sustained highly creative output of skilled people that makes Youtube interesting beyond music piracy and memes. They have the power to collectively do the same to any other platform and shouldn't tolerate abuse like this.
- eru 6y ago
  You know that Google's behaviour here is a reaction to regulation? It's tempting to answer failures in regulation with cries for more regulation..
  - banbanbang 6y ago
    It’s a good point but regulators (ie politicians) are nowhere near up to the tasks. They often leave the legislative details to industry “experts” often tied to big corporations. I frankly think our government is broken and outdated to accommodate the complexities and speed of modern society. It also doesn’t help that politicians refuse to retire and hold onto their seats often until death.
  - manquer 6y ago
    Hardly, dmca is straight forward law, take down notice and counter notice has no three strikes. There are penalties for incorrect claims to deter such claims This is Google's poorly implemented system to satisfy big studio creators to publish on YouTube.
  - CRConrad 6y ago
    This seems more a failure in Google's reaction than in the legislation they're reacting to.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Quitting will just get people to use the next best teacher on youtube that they can find. She can just get the music muted and create a link to her patreon, and tell that Google muted it. Google will lose out on revenue that way for now.
intricatedetail 6y ago
The current copyright law is unsustainable. Pretty much every melody you can think of is copyrighted and as an artist you can be anxious that anything you make can be claimed by someone else. Copyright laws need urgent change as they are not fit for purpose...
- tapland 6y ago
  In this case that's not the problem. Beethoven isn't copyrighted, but public.
  - atoav 6y ago
    Yeah but certain Beethoven recordings are copyrighted. Legally you are totally allowed to play his works on an instrument, while you could still break someones copyright by e.g. using their 2019 recording of the work which they sell on CD or whatnot. How will sonic fingerprinting be able to decide whether it is that copyrighted work, or whether it is somwonw playing it live? It just won't
    - polytely 6y ago
      The problem is that Youtube is pretending that their shoddy sonic fingerprinting system works and is fine with 3rd parties using their dumb system to defraud their users
      - atoav 6y ago
        Yeah, I think they should mark recordings where the melody is public domain and review these cases manually.
  - genezeta 6y ago
    It's still related to copyright law. If the law promotes, say by making it a default, that one side can easily benefit from a certain behaviour, then people, companies will assume that as the behaviour to favour. And then these are the consequences: that going around claiming rights on whatever you feel like is not only not punished by Youtube but carelessly accepted. Because it's just easier, less effort.
bluesign 6y ago
This is fraud. They claim they have right to something they don't, when you dispute, YouTube just directing them the dispute and they reject. As you don't want to risk 3 strike, you agree to share revenue. Basically Youtube doing nothing.
- intricatedetail 6y ago
  Have you ever tried to report fraud to authorities? Even if you show overwhelming evidence, details of perpetrator, chances are LE will laugh you out and say it is a civil matter.
  - bitcharmer 6y ago
    With law enforcement at least you get to talk to people. With YouTube/Google all your complaints go straight to /dev/null
    - globular-toast 6y ago
      Only if you're a big enough company and/or have to the right contacts. Do you think regular people could get the police to raid a data centre or something on grounds of copyright infringement?
      - johnnyanmac 6y ago
        no, but a 10YO troll in Brazil sure can get the FBI to raid the home of an American streamer they don't like. Not saying it's even by any means, but it's better than zero human response. There will at least be some case in a govt. record should some bad actor keep getting reported, unlike Google.
  - spacemanmatt 6y ago
    LE might also decide they look funny and launch a frivolous prosecution against you.
- matsemann 6y ago
tsp 6y ago
This is really bad! YouTube should find ways to respond to misclaimed tracks as a creator. Also companies / individuals that claim public domain music should be banned from the platform.
- paulmd 6y ago
  you're fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose of the copyright claim system: it doesn't exist to determine the legitimate owner of a work, it exists to keep youtube from being sued. Since there is no legal penalty for a "false positive", even if the creator can prove that it's a false positive, while there is a penalty for a false negative, the system will always lean to aggressive removal and demonetization, because that's where youtube's interests lie. the legal answer here is that if you don't like youtube's copyright system then distribute your content on another platform. Otherwise, push for there to be a penalty for an excessive removal of copyright, because that's the only thing that's going to tilt youtube's scales back to the center.
  - bertil 6y ago
    > Since there is no legal penalty for a "false positive", I’m really confused by that part: YouTube lawyers must know that there’s a significant risk they’ll piss of a someone like a law professor and that they’ll use all their faculty to go after what is essentially fraud: there are provisions in the CDMA precisely for that, and the platform is liable for indulging those in systematic cases. Even if it’s not, they are risking a change in law. Compared that PR nightmare to having an engineer spend a few days to hack a “public domain” user that automatically accepts re-use, or re-train to distinguish interpretations from copies… I feel like I’m missing something — and I’m not missing a cynical take on how Google is too big to care. God knows that I’ve been arguing that some problems are harder than one expects, but public domain sheet music isn’t a hard one for YouTube.
    - dkarras 6y ago
      The nuance with "public domain sheet music" is that while the instructions of how to play that music is public domain, the recorded performance of such music is not. So when you play moonlight sonata, you have the copyright to that particular performance (recording) and someone else cannot use that without permission. It is somewhat harder to distinguish between recordings of thousands of performances of the same musical piece. The thing though is that youtube decided not to care. Actually, that is not about caring - the youtube we knew when it first launched was killed because it was an impossible business model if they themselves had the liability for uploaded possibly copyrighted content. So now they say "sort it out between yourselves, go to courts if you want but I will take it down while you do that to not be liable in the worst case".
trinovantes 6y ago
I don't understand why YouTube doesn't use their content id system to detect these obvious public domain disputes.
- Mordisquitos 6y ago
  Probably because it would cost them time and effort, but they have no incentive to do so. Why would they? At most, when cases such as this come to the public's attention, all that YouTube suffers is inconsequential reputational damage. This is easily and cheaply mitigated in PR terms if it gets bad enough by just handling the incident with a quick "Oops, sorry, our bad" and reinstating the removed material. Meanwhile, the uncountable cases of illegitimate copyright takedowns which never make the news don't matter. What are the victims going to do about it? Sue? Use a YouTube competitor?
  - durnygbur 6y ago
    > YouTube suffers is inconsequential reputational damage No such thing exists. Using "reputation damage" in context of YouTube, or any Google service really doesn't make any sense.
  - ziftface 6y ago
    Even the marketing you mentioned isn't really necessary. That's what happened when you're a monopoly, bad reputation doesn't really hurt the bottom line.
  - kzrdude 6y ago
    The only defender of the rights holders without money would be the court system, so a court needs to suspend youtube's copyright strike system.
gekkonier 6y ago
It's google. I can live without it. Do you?
- lovelyviking 6y ago
  What about copyright it self? If they have manage to abuse it even with google what are chances that they would not find a way to abuse it on smaller platforms?
  - gekkonier 6y ago
    In this situation here google is not willing to check if an automatism failed. I do not think that problem applies to selfhostetd content. But who knows, its a world where everything is possible....
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    They would. That's why you should avoid platforms, they go against the principles of the decentralized World Wide Web.
Jyaif 6y ago
I believe this is the video/music that claims the copyright of Moonlight Sonata (notice the downvotes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ThyLB6bakk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ThyLB6bakk
- h0l0cube 6y ago
  The 2015 album is on Spotify too: https://open.spotify.com/album/1eMRlKHhUiVQRncGQRBBmH?si=K3eYwFwqR6GlwVgtPURl0A https://open.spotify.com/album/1eMRlKHhUiVQRncGQRBBmH?si=K3e... Just seems like the artist played a slowed down Moonlight Sonata with some effects on top and the algorithm now thinks it's theirs. Hard to know if they know that they are blocking/leaching from other content creators.
- shirleyquirk 6y ago
  it makes it worse that its a hamfisted, soulless rendition. perhaps Mx Molland has other superior tracks but this one is particularly egregious.
jeffwass 6y ago
Summary for those that don’t want to watch the video : - Pianist creates YouTube video demonstrating how to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata - part of this video includes her playing Moonlight Sonata (of course) - YouTube has a new ‘feature’ that scans submitted videos prior to publication to identify potentially copyrighted material - her video is found to include copyrighted material. She is certain this is a mistake that will be rectified by disputing the copyright claim - she agrees the only person who’s content she is reproducing is Beethoven himself - her copyright dispute is rejected. She is found to be violating the copyright of a piece called “Wicca Moonlight” - she can appeal the dispute but the appeal process is limited, and she risks getting a feared “copyright strike” on her account, wherein three such strikes would mean permanent closure of the account - she says nearly anyone can file copyright claims against published YouTube videos, including bots, and is worried about all the time she’s putting in to create content being usurped by a few bad actors
- Black101 6y ago
  Even if that piece was copyright, is it a copyright violation to play it yourself and publish it?
  - qayxc 6y ago
    Potentially, yes. There are different types of licences [0] and depending on your use of copyrighted material, it may require a license to publish it legally. [0] https://www.bmi.com/licensing/entry/types_of_copyrights https://www.bmi.com/licensing/entry/types_of_copyrights
  - SeanLuke 6y ago
    Yes. Because music is both composed and performed, it has three primary copyright scenarios. 1. Print rights protect sheet music etc. from being copied. 2. Performance rights control whether your composed music can be performed. 3. Mechanical rights control whether your performance can be copied (onto mp3 say). Also related to these are "synchronization" issues and licenses.
- jeffwass 6y ago
anoncow 6y ago
Being able to access real people for support should be a mandatory requirement for big corporations offering services to the public directly.
- vidarh 6y ago
  In the UK you have a right to have automated decisions on e.g. loan applications reviewed by a human. Broadening a right like that would certainly be worth considering.
  - Symbiote 6y ago
    The GDPR has exactly this provision. https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/
- exporectomy 6y ago
  No. Mandating real people won't help. I've dealt with real support people who are exactly as useless as the website's FAQ. They're powerless to make any special exceptions to the predefined process or even to escalate to someone who can. As an example, I can't use my main email address for an Apple ID account because apparently somebody else set it as their backup email and I may have carelessly clicked the accept link when I got the confirmation. I talked to a human Apple support person and his higher level colleague and was told that's probably what happened but they can't know for sure and even if they did, they can't fix it. The end. Bye.
  - plasma 6y ago
    You could try doing an account recovery (leverage that email) and just change it to something else.
    - exporectomy 6y ago
      I think I lost the email which was many years prior, and also I would need to know the actual email of the account it's linked to, which I don't.
swiley 6y ago
What a horribly broken platform. Thankfully Peertube appears to be gaining some traction due to its compatibility with Mastodon.
- stirlo 6y ago
  Yes, it expect it will have a near monopoly in the year desktop Linux goes mainstream…
  - ziftface 6y ago
    Funny but I can actually see peertube appealing to big YouTubers, especially if there's an ecosystem around it, like apps and fully hosted servers.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kossTKR 6y ago
  Really? Interesting as i am looking for a video hosting platform. Looking at their front page and it looks dead and weird to me. A mix of my little pony videos, scantily clad women and 5 second long videos of grass, bugs etc. Absurd curation.
mcv 6y ago
This sort of thing happens way too often on Youtube, and it's far worse than merely violating copyright; here artists get denied ownership of their own expression of public domain music. Unlike mere copyright violation, this is actual copyright theft that Youtube is enabling here. It should be punished harder than merely copying someone else's work usually is, but instead this sort of direct theft seems to be allowed by governments and copyright institutes.
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
  > here artists get denied ownership of their own expression of public domain music Hell why stop there, music artists get their own original music stolen by Youtube who then proceeds to hand it to someone else, for anyone interested in a popular example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4AeoAWGJBw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4AeoAWGJBw
- meepmorp 6y ago
  YouTube's automatic system exists to keep the company from getting sued and it's going to work like anything else at Google and be as automated as possible. The necessary result is a black box ML system to score content, and biasing ambiguous output in favor of the side more likely to have lawyers on retainer.
durnygbur 6y ago
How come this video is not interrupted by ads?! Something is fishy here.
- rchaud 6y ago
  I think uploaders can choose whether to include ads in their videos.
markvdb 6y ago
This kind of absurd copyright trouble is all over the place in the world of music education. I advised my boss to choose a video hosting platform between: - a paid video upload account in a place where we're not the product (vimeo) - self hosting (PeerTube)
mlang23 6y ago
One of the first uploads I did to YouTube, a recording of me playing BWV 1034-3 (Andante) got a copyright claim. This was the day I realized youtube is in fact helping big corporations to supress individuals. "We might delete your account if you raise an objection against this claim and we find your objection is invalid." That was pretty much around the time YT decided that it can now be as evil as it wants.
NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
That is the reason these guys decided to Copyrighting all the melodies to avoid accidental infringement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJtm0MoOgiU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJtm0MoOgiU TED talk
- lovelyviking 6y ago
  did it help?
enriquto 6y ago
Youtubers have it coming. They have accepted obviously unacceptable terms of service. The problems of Youtube are very old, and people have been consistently proposing alternatives that solve these problems. Yet they willingly chose to fatten the beast in the hopes that they will get spared of its cruelty. I say good riddance!
chrismorgan 6y ago
Along the same lines, I was publishing church services each Sunday between May and December of last year, with three English hymns in each, mostly old ones well-known across denominations. In total, I got 23 Content ID claims (about 20% of the hymns), claiming ownership of the melody. Every single one was for a work in the public domain. I disputed each, providing the name and date of death of the composer. Two were released (one after three days, the other after 27), the rest were allowed to lapse in my favour (which happens after 30 days). A few of these claims were duplicates (same claimer, same hymn). This showed that even though I had successfully disputed their claim in the past in the grounds of the work being in the public domain, YouTube had not revoked their ability to claim the melody in question. If any of the liars claiming they owned these works had rejected my dispute, it could have become a strike, &c. and there would of course be no recourse, because Google generally refuses to arbitrate. Also, an insidious aspect of the claims system was that YouTube basically didn’t tell you about the copyright claim at all when publishing; you had to close the edit page for the video and return to the list, and see if the Restrictions column for the video said “Copyright claim”. If you didn’t do that, the video would probably be being monetised by the claimer in at least some of the world (and if you disputed it, I guess Google would happily take the lot for the period while they had monetised it—though now that they’re putting ads on everything, this lot isn’t so different from the usual situation; depends on whether you hate the balance of the ad money going to the copyright liars or Google more). (There was also one amusing case where some music being played at a nearby temple was audible during a quiet time in the service, and so I found out the name of the music being played. I claimed fair use on that one, because I didn’t even want that music in it, and it was quiet. That claim was released after ten days.)
- thraway123412 6y ago
  I don't think I'm ever going to approve of any sort of automated copyright claim system but if Google wanted to make it one bit fair, they should use the same concept of three strikes against the accounts that make false claims and ban them.
  - idrios 6y ago
    Too easy for bad actors to create multiple accounts or game this system. I think this would end up hurting genuine claimants of actual pirated works more that it would help the wrongly accused.
brailsafe 6y ago
Susan Wojcicki on the case again. The freedom of expression pillar would crumble without her support.
verytrivial 6y ago
I can't be certain, but I think this video might be the "original" that the algorithm matched: https://youtu.be/-ThyLB6bakk https://youtu.be/-ThyLB6bakk What is to stop bad actors pumping out a stream of interpretations of public domain melodies to prime the matching algorithm then using the robotic nature of the appeal process to extort ad revenue? Nothing, apparently!
RyJones 6y ago
I used to have a bunch of time lapses on YouTube- my office for a few years was above the ferry docks in Seattle. I chose music from the YouTube collection of free music for background music. I have copyright claims on all of them now; I’ve taken almost all of them down. https://youtu.be/TgzqOvTvWzw https://youtu.be/TgzqOvTvWzw As an example
- lovelyviking 6y ago
  btw I loved your video and I would prefer to see them even without music. I can play guitar while watching or play some other music in background.
  - RyJones 6y ago
    thanks - I appreciate that.
egao1980 6y ago
My daughter plays guitar and violin and this is a very common issue. Moreover Youtube automatically labels some original performances as if they use third-party soundtrack. Both annoying and flattering.
gabrielblack 6y ago
I can't understand why Youtube has no procedure to flag companies as "Wicca Moonlight” like scammer / troll so, after a certain number of infractions like that one ( pretending to be the rightful owner of the rights on BEETHOVEN music !), they are sanctioned in some way or banned. That to add some symmetry to the procedure to fight trolls trying to steal other peoples hard job.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Maybe "Wicca Moonlight" has previously been flagged as a scammer/troll and are now on their tenth account they've been doing this with? It could be whack-a-mole on all ends. It's not particularly hard to spin up another LLC, register, and start filing claims.
- eru 6y ago
  They might have such a system, but the scale is so big, that we are still seeing the false negatives?
- rainbowzootsuit 6y ago
  It seems like the claimers have little invested into the persuit compared to the people making videos and could relatively easily make a new scam account. It certainly wouldn't hurt to add a little more friction to someone making frivolous claims as it would likely kill off a number of them that are low effort.
- bredren 6y ago
  Alphabet gets paid either way.
- mistercow 6y ago
  I think the problem is that the whole system they have is to appease copyright holders so that they don’t get sued for individual videos. They’ve productized it and made it all look very official, but the underlying fact that this is about appeasement puts them on a bad footing for banning trolls. If they ban someone, they’re basically saying “sue us instead”, which is exactly what they don’t want.
- 6y ago
redis_mlc 6y ago
Before HNers waste a lot of time debating pointlessly, here's the facts about how Youtube works: Youtube has a 2-level copyright complaint scheme: 1) Youtube Content ID system - almost all complaints are handled by Youtube with their internal process. Essentially most musical performances are demonetized unless you're the music publisher, and occasionally for legit uploaders a copyright claim is made. The Content ID system was very likely developed as part of the settlement agreement with labels, where Google spent about $1 billion in legal fees. If you don't follow YT's instructions and instead protest, then you risk having your account locked. So most uploaders back off. Fair use is not respected by YT normally, because they don't have to under their internal system. (What's interesting is that after a famous rock song by a Youtube-famous cover artist was blocked, it was unblocked a few months later with the original view count also restored. That one was weird - very hmmm.) 2) US federal copyright legal process - rarely used for Youtube because #1. Fair use is a defense if you file a lawsuit and win. (Using less than 10 seconds approx. for educational purposes.) Source: I advise a famous Youtube artist on US publishing issues.
ajuc 6y ago
IP is such a scam.
Normille 6y ago
I don't know what I find more annoying; the ridiculous US copyright system that allows people to copyright almost 'anything'... or the unfathomably stupid people employed by the likes of Amazon, YouTube et al whose policies seem to be "Ban first. Ask questions later... Bu let's not bother with the questions" It doesn't surprise me that a 200 years dead composer's works are considered subject to copyright when, apparently, even referring to the name of a 1200 year old mediaeval manuscript violates copyright: https://stiobhart.net/2021-04-8-bubble-trouble/ https://stiobhart.net/2021-04-8-bubble-trouble/
- Iv 6y ago
  The policies are directly caused by the laws. If google does not react swiftly, it is considered guilty of copyright infringement. Remove the laws, the policies are instantly removes as well.
  - masklinn 6y ago
    Exactly. Benefiting from Safe Harbor provisions is usually predicated on taking the claimant at their word and implementing restrictions as fast as possible. No such requirements exist on the release side. Therefore it is no surprise that platform policies will heavily favor claimants, that is very strong incentivised if not an explicit requirement.
  - Normille 6y ago
    >If google does not react swiftly, it is considered guilty of copyright infringement. Only if a copyright infringement has actually taken place. The problem is that none of these companies ever apply a gramme of logic or examine the merits of the claim, when someone cries 'copyright infringement'. They just automatically remove the 'offending' article and refuse to countenance any counter-arguments from the person accused. It's this supine attitude which, I reckon, is fuelling all these ridiculous claims. I just wish that the likes of Amazon, Google, YouTube, RedBubble... etc. would call the copyright trolls' bluff occasionally and not just instantly cave. Every. Single. Time.
    - 6y ago
tomcooks 6y ago
You publish on a proprietary, commercial,centralised platform and are surprised that said platform behaves like that? Use peertube or any other decent video platform. AHH, but you want the sweet YT cash.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
disillusioned 6y ago
I used the YouTube studio editor to add a piece from YouTube's library of music in the public domain to a small video of no real consequence, and then, ten years later, received a copyright claim on that audio. The system is really truly fucked.
plmu 6y ago
Google might be doing this to show the negative aspects of the current copyright system. Maybe they want to annoy enough people so that something might change.
kroeckx 6y ago
For music copyright is split in 2 types: composition and recording. The copyright on the composition is probably expired, but on a recording most likely isn't. The automated system most likely claims it's a copy of a copyrighted recording. Since it's a popular piece, it can be hard to tell recordings apart. Note that the composition might also still have a copyright because it's not the original composition but a derived work, but that seems unlikely in this case.
mullikine 6y ago
There should be some kind of law to forbid this type of unilateral model training. What great lapse of judgement to not also train the same model that is used to blacklist music to also whitelist music that is in the public domain -- and to use AI in this way, to suppress the creative freedoms of billions of human beings as the robot revolution edges closer to automate us out of existence. AI should not be used this way, but if you're going to do it you may as well be honest about it. How this algorithm could be deployed without first even acknowledging the existence of music outside of what is proprietary is disturbing
wazoox 6y ago
This is the evil of monopoly. Monopolies destroy freedom and will bring back feudalism. The GAFAM must be broken up. Yannis Varoufakis discusses this in this (oh the irony) youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlkuA1mx0pc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlkuA1mx0pc
Waterluvian 6y ago
Is this all because of bad American law, or is youtube proactively being bad in their moderation process?
- qayxc 6y ago
  It's a problem of scale. It's perfectly possibile to manage a few hundred disputes on a daily basis, but with >5000 uploads per minute, it becomes impossible to do manually. The worst part is the asymmetry between claimants and creators. But that's the fucked up nature of civil law - the burden of proof is reversed.
  - SeanLuke 6y ago
    > It's a problem of scale. It's perfectly possibile to manage a few hundred disputes on a daily basis, but with >5000 uploads per minute, it becomes impossible to do manually. Nonsense. Assuming the revenue to Google increases linearly with uploads, so does their ability to hire content moderators.
    - anonuser123456 6y ago
      Revenue is a function of views, not uploads.
politician 6y ago
Why don’t people upload the video from one account, and then claim copyright infringement from another account, and then intentionally drag out the appeals process as a form of defense against baseless claims?
lovelyviking 6y ago
Actually I doubt that you can avoid abusing current copyright laws. Also because there is no such "right" in nature. If you wish monopoly call it for what it is and have laws in accordance. Such "right" shouldn't exist in the first place or at least in the current form. Copy process is the way people learn and progress. Copy process is essential for spreading knowledge and development. When you learn you copy. When you sing you copy. When you speak you copy. When you teach you copy. When you think you copy. People copy their parents. You are the mixed copy of your parents plus mixed copy of other things and factors. When you show to others what you did you copy too. I give you a concrete example. I was dancing Argentinian tango in a charity event and wanted to show record of it to other people. I've got copyright claim on YouTube. I was not even demonstrating music - I was demonstrating Dancing! The music played in the background was created somewhere in 1930-1940. The music played at the event was not even original composition. It was a cover done by local artist. And it was played live during the event with improvisations. Unfortunately I couldn't show this event to anyone else because I've got copyright claim on YouTube channel. I couldn't even share the record with my friends as private link. I couldn't even show the video to my partner for goodness sake. If this is not idiocy resulting from so called "copyright" then what is? Unlimited copy process is crucial to arts especially because you should feel free to express yourself and only this way something new can appear. Copy is a natural process and any attempt to regulate it or regulate it too much can and will create more problems than it solves! Perhaps it's time to start listening RMS more carefully. This is one about copyright: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eginMQBWII4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eginMQBWII4
- redwall_hp 6y ago
  Better terms for copyright include "imaginary property" and "bourgeoise pseudocapital." Not only does copyright hinder creativity and infringe upon your natural right to copy, but it doesn't even benefit artists so much as companies who pay them a pittance while wielding the law as a cudgel to protect their imaginary fiefdom. The world needs less ownership, not more.
  - cdot2 6y ago
    People will complain about copyright precisely until they have some creative work of theirs sold by someone else. Professional authors cannot exist without copyright.
shirleyquirk 6y ago
https://youtu.be/-ThyLB6bakk https://youtu.be/-ThyLB6bakk is the referenced "Wicca moonlight" performed by Alice violet molland
savrajsingh 6y ago
In this case, a solution is to match against obviously known public domain first, and failing that, check copyright claims. I’d imagine google has or can quickly build the necessary db of all public domain music, starting with music from 100+ years ago. Also identify copyright claims that conflict with that db ahead of time.
fortran77 6y ago
This is widely known among the classical musician community. Nearly every time I upload a YouTube video of me sitting at my piano playing something written 150+ years ago, I'll get a copyright strike. In the past, I'd simply affirm it was mine and it would go away. It looks like the new system isn't so forgiving. This probably won't change until the right person gets a claim and hires the right lawyer who thinks of a good argument to win a massive judgement.
barkingcat 6y ago
This has been happening for decades. Almost all musicians playing classical music has had bans, 3 strikes, blocks, etc on social media, youtube, live streaming sites. Often times Hilary Hahn (one of the great violinists of our times) gets copyright claims on her own practice streams because they sound literally like her concerts and solo albums. Basically, the more refined and the better you are as a classical musician, the more likely you'll get a ban for streaming live music (that you play) because ... the composers are all long dead and there's thousands, if not tens of thousands of previous interpretations of the same music (literally note by note the same) floating around in the algorithms of the RIAA ban bots.
seaman1921 6y ago
YouTube's Copyright System Isn't Broken. The World's Is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU
- manquer 6y ago
  As much I love tom scott, he is ignoring the choices that YouTube made along the way were that precisely that choices. They didn't have to become this kind of platform. Tom himself is owning/promoting nebula an alternative platform with quality curated content. Youtube either could have become a pure user generated platform not engaging with big biz, and strictly following DMCA only : counter notice is not for Google's to review merit , claims like above are penalized, you have to take it court if there is a counter notice, no three strikes nonsense, no flawed content ID system - all of this is placate big biz. Alternatively they could have become a curated content platform (like nebula) them wanting to do everything is why we are here. Every other user content platform in video or otherwise is working perfectly fine with DMCA framework, they all have considerably less resources than Google. P.S. Google's inability to put people to support content creators and this dispute process even for creators with 100' of millions of views is simply about Google culture of not believing in user/creater support (product) , big biz sure gets human support.
jarek83 6y ago
Google - you are becoming the most dump entity in the internet. Laughable level of work you are providing in recent years. Maybe consider laundry business if you can't grasp technology for people.
analog31 6y ago
The irony is that Beethoven probably stole it. Even to this day, music composition has always involved "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue," to quote Duke Ellington.
banbanbang 6y ago
If you look at Google’s (Alphabet’s) margins you will know why. We are allowing these monopoly tech companies to extract value without bare min investments. Google is one of the biggest violators. I think all SV companies are at fault to some degree. Some still operate with “startup” budget for support. I know Paypal does this for example. There’s gotta be a wake up moment where if you are going to be in the consumer facing business you have to invest in minimal support infrastructure or face fines.
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Symbiose 6y ago
I made a Moonlight Sonata cover myself a few years ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIbBcJ7EkxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIbBcJ7EkxQ) and had countless copyright claims since then. I had to manually dispute every single claims over the years and prove again and again that no copyright were infringed. It can get tiring when you get a copyright claim finally lifted after weeks of dispute, only to get a new claim the next month.
- nobodyandproud 6y ago
  I wonder if small claims court could assist, for each infraction and claim. Time lost, etc. IANAL
ThrustVectoring 6y ago
YouTube's system has some massive design flaws. One of which is that the default way copyright holders get treated varies based off whether you're doing automated ContentID type claims vs whether you merely own the copyright to your own work you created. As a result, you get better outcomes if you own a piece of content-ID'd work that you include in your videos, which is completely silly. Basically, if you copyright claim your own work automatically, if someone else comes along and tries to do the same, worst-case you split the advertising revenue among all the copyright claimants. If you just upload it normally, you get zero if someone claims it.
rchaud 6y ago
If this is Google being proactive about avoiding lawsuits, how come the same issue doesn't affect Patreon? A number of 'reaction' channels have copyrighted content (full music videos) that is clipped on Youtube to avoid strikes. The full versions of these videos are on the uploader's Patreon.
tonystride 6y ago
I’ve been working on a project converting my piano curriculum into a 42 week YouTube series (currently on week 34, almost there!) and one of the first challenges I ran into, other than sucking a video production, was what to do about teaching repertoire so as not to run into copyright claims. I decided to compose my own material each week and it has turned out to be the best thing about producing the series. At first the idea of writing a new intermediate level piece each week seemed daunting but it’s actually been quite liberating. Also when I’m finished with the series I’ll be able to publish the collection as my own book of repertoire. If you’ve been teaching for a while (like 10 years) I would highly recommend going beyond the safety net of pre published teaching repertoire and try making some yourself. Find the deeper connection to what you teach about music by encoding into, well, music! New music, that reflects your unique relationship with the craft.
croes 6y ago
This will get worse in the EU when the upload filters are in place.
imperistan 6y ago
Could we fix this (partially) by writing software that generates every possible piece of music and then upload it to YouTube? If you never claim copyright on the pieces, No one else could claim them in the future cause you uploaded it first. Now we only need a way to filter out all existing copyrighted music I guess
BooneJS 6y ago
My daughter got her first content claim when she was a 7 year old violinist. Proud father moment. Dispute was allowed to lapse. I’m on day 22 or so of another dispute from my son’s violin performance. I don’t see this going anywhere either.
crazypython 6y ago
Upload to a decentralized service like PeerTube or Odysee instead.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
I feel like the fundamental issue here with these giant tech companies is their scale has outgrown the capabilities of their AI. They've all basically bowed down to the mantra of "AI will solve everything", and indeed they are so big that getting human customer support at the scale they need would be a huge financial hit, even for them. But here is a situation where any rational human can say "this is crazy, anyone with sense knows that Moonlight Sonata is in the public domain", but Google has created a Kafkaesque nightmare because (as has been lamented a million times on HN) it takes an act of God (or Twitter outrage) to actually connect with a human support person is you're not a paying customer.
- noobermin 6y ago
  This entire episode is a great example of how the SV crowd really is full of groupthink and ideology despite their veneer of being rational. Everyone who isn't in the SV RDF can see the limits of AI today for example youtube copyright strikes, failures of AVs to take over the streets, and so on and so on. AI is useful but it clearly has limitations but the industry can't recognize it because they're high on their own supply.
- modzu 6y ago
  the ai is built to deal with the peasant class. the ai occassionaly abuses them, because the peasants have no power. but nobody cares about the peasants except other peasants. the peasants are fed enough (you tube mostly works for them) just enough to keep them content and any sort of uprising is quelled. content enough in their toil (creating content), the ai grows stronger.
  - kecupochren 6y ago
    what a world to live in
blacklight 6y ago
I've already stated this many times, I'll state it again. Get your shit out of YouTube and any other Google product. Google is a dumb, faceless, fully automated company only interested in extracting as much data as possible from its users, force them to swallow as many ads as possible, all without caring about listening to them (both consumers and creators), under the faulty assumption that they're too big for users and consumers to live without them. They simply don't deserve anybody using their shitty products anymore. The error in this case is quite obvious. YouTube's scanner incorrectly identified the teacher's recording of Moonlight Sonata as a copyrighted reinterpretation of the same piece of music originally written by a guy who actually died 200 years ago. And I can't completely put the blame on Google's AI: the notes are technically the same, the beat might also be the same, if you calculate an FFT of the audio you'll probably also come up with similar spectral signatures. But a human listener will IMMEDIATELY notice that was played by the teacher IS NOT the the same as the copyrighted piece of music. The problem is: who is accountable for these mistakes? Who shall I reach out to if Google's foggy algorithms make a mistake? And, in the case of educators and creators who actually do that for a job, who will compensate them for the revenue they have lost because of algorithmic errors? Until Google can provide an answer to these questions, I repeat: keep your ass away from anything that has their name on it. They are not reliable, the risk of losing your data, your account or your followers because of random automated decision is very high, and the probability of getting a real human to assist you is very low.
- bcrescimanno 6y ago
  I agree with your assessment of Google; however, what is a reasonable alternative for a content creator who wants to publish their videos and be able to build an audience? You kinda have to go where the audience will be if you don't already have one and I'm not aware of any video discovery platforms with anywhere near the reach of YouTube. I've managed to get out of Google products almost entirely--YouTube remains the exception. Moreover, let's say a new site comes along and dethrones YouTube. Remember that this whole mess started because of lawsuits that were ultimately ruled (or settled) in favor of copyright holders. Any player in this space will need a method for handling vast quantities of copyrighted material scanning and, like Google, will be heavily incentivized by legal precedent to have that system "err on the side of caution." I'm not a fan of Google; but, the villain of this story is the horribly outdated and corporate-lobbied copyright system that will push any player in the video space to this kind of draconian approach.
aspectmin 6y ago
Someone needs for form a defense association which indie artists and content producers can join/pay into. Use this structure and funds to defend artists against these claims.
cronix 6y ago
Rick Beato explains a lot of this very well. He's even testified in congress about this subject. Here's a good explanatory video of his on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5lY_DbUsok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5lY_DbUsok It's slightly different as the music he uses actually has existing copyright, but along the same lines. "You can't teach people music without giving examples. I can't do something like, 'well you know, this is like Led Zeppelin, or like Bach'...this is something I created and you're going to learn from it... No, you have to learn from the actual sources."
squid32 6y ago
Copyright is broken, time to overhaul the whole system. edit: Every. single. video I uploaded to youtube has been copyright claimed. If you know a reasonable alternative to youtube, please let me know.
deleted 6y ago
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rurban 6y ago
Maybe the adequate counteraction is to file DMCA claims against Google itself. Like the German newspapers did. Google News copies their headlines and intro. And fotos. Or Australian news. Google News copies everything. Or Google Search. Googles copies everything. Text, fotos, original work, derivative work. Nobody needs to go into museums anymore. Google has it. Nobody needs go into cinemas anymore. Google has it. Youtube is full of copyright violations, and has no adequate support mechanism to handle claims and violations, as we saw in this example. They are policing themselves, the biggest thieve of all.
mykowebhn 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDcvPf78g1k&t=12s&ab_channel=FreedomForum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDcvPf78g1k&t=12s&ab_channel... The irony and hypocrisy of this are incredible.
lurquer 6y ago
YouTube is an advertising company. Period. The problem won’t be fixed as it’s not a problem... who cares if some piano teacher gets silenced? It matters not one iota to the revenue. You could ban 10% of ‘content creators’ and it wouldn’t matter: people watch YouTube like they used to watch TV: it doesn’t matter what’s on or how crappy it is. You’ll keep watching. Your favorite show got cancelled? You’ll grouse and watch something else... your consumption of pharmaceutical and insurance ads will not be affected at all. There will be no competitor emerge in this medium... just as no ‘competitor’ ever emerged in the established newspaper domain. There may be a new medium that emerges that nukes YouTube. Can’t imagine what it would be.
raarts 6y ago
In ten, maybe twenty years I predict storage and cpu will be so cheap that everyone can just host their own data in their own router, and provide some universal API to it. Many problems solved, including privacy.
- tcgmu 6y ago
  We've already had the capability to do this for many years. See Napster or BitTorrent. The thorny issue is that legitimate copyright holders lose out when anyone can freely host and share their work. That leads to discussions about whether there should be copyright at all, whether digital creators have a right to charge for their work, etc. Those are the problems that need to be solved, not the technical issues.
strange_things 6y ago
https://youtu.be/-ThyLB6bakk https://youtu.be/-ThyLB6bakk Here is the “wicka moonlight”. Already 6.1K dislikes. I wonder why...
lsiebert 6y ago
Well remember when they scanned a bunch of books? Like all the books in a bunch of libraries? That was physically turning pages, photographing them, doing OCR and then correcting that. By comparison create a library of public works in terms of audio to test copyright claims, and reject or put greater requirements on ones for public domain works would be relatively easy.
WmyEE0UsWAwC2i 6y ago
This should bear consequences for YouTube as they have enabled such brutal treatment on this woman and many others.
TrackerFF 6y ago
I can think of one possible quick-fix solution to this: They make a library/catalog of public domain media, and whenever a claim is raised, the offending media is compared to the library of public domain. Of course, it's far from perfect. For example - even though a piece of music is public domain, it doesn't mean that the interpretation is public domain. For example, if you cover a public domain song, you can claim copyright for that performance. This is where the automated claims system goes haywire - you actually need people (for now) to distinguish between original piece and a cover piece.
natch 6y ago
I sometimes wish HN had a way to summon one of the apparently very few sane and effective people at companies like Google, so that they could at least feed stuff like this into the internal task list for future attention. One can hope it happens, but it would be nice to know, and facts indicate it does not happen enough.
Tucanix 5y ago
YouTube being hostile towards their creators as usual.

922 points by bitcharmer 6y ago

She actually decided to quit YouTube after this completely unfair treatment. I think it's high time these platforms saw some regulation. It's ridiculous what they are allowed to get away with.

swiley 6y ago
Good for her, it's the sustained highly creative output of skilled people that makes Youtube interesting beyond music piracy and memes. They have the power to collectively do the same to any other platform and shouldn't tolerate abuse like this.
eru 6y ago
You know that Google's behaviour here is a reaction to regulation? It's tempting to answer failures in regulation with cries for more regulation..
- banbanbang 6y ago
  It’s a good point but regulators (ie politicians) are nowhere near up to the tasks. They often leave the legislative details to industry “experts” often tied to big corporations. I frankly think our government is broken and outdated to accommodate the complexities and speed of modern society. It also doesn’t help that politicians refuse to retire and hold onto their seats often until death.
- manquer 6y ago
  Hardly, dmca is straight forward law, take down notice and counter notice has no three strikes. There are penalties for incorrect claims to deter such claims This is Google's poorly implemented system to satisfy big studio creators to publish on YouTube.
- CRConrad 6y ago
  This seems more a failure in Google's reaction than in the legislation they're reacting to.
xiphias2 6y ago
Quitting will just get people to use the next best teacher on youtube that they can find. She can just get the music muted and create a link to her patreon, and tell that Google muted it. Google will lose out on revenue that way for now.

intricatedetail 6y ago

The current copyright law is unsustainable. Pretty much every melody you can think of is copyrighted and as an artist you can be anxious that anything you make can be claimed by someone else. Copyright laws need urgent change as they are not fit for purpose...

tapland 6y ago
In this case that's not the problem. Beethoven isn't copyrighted, but public.
- atoav 6y ago
  Yeah but certain Beethoven recordings are copyrighted. Legally you are totally allowed to play his works on an instrument, while you could still break someones copyright by e.g. using their 2019 recording of the work which they sell on CD or whatnot. How will sonic fingerprinting be able to decide whether it is that copyrighted work, or whether it is somwonw playing it live? It just won't
  - polytely 6y ago
    The problem is that Youtube is pretending that their shoddy sonic fingerprinting system works and is fine with 3rd parties using their dumb system to defraud their users
    - atoav 6y ago
      Yeah, I think they should mark recordings where the melody is public domain and review these cases manually.
- genezeta 6y ago
  It's still related to copyright law. If the law promotes, say by making it a default, that one side can easily benefit from a certain behaviour, then people, companies will assume that as the behaviour to favour. And then these are the consequences: that going around claiming rights on whatever you feel like is not only not punished by Youtube but carelessly accepted. Because it's just easier, less effort.

bluesign 6y ago

This is fraud. They claim they have right to something they don't, when you dispute, YouTube just directing them the dispute and they reject. As you don't want to risk 3 strike, you agree to share revenue. Basically Youtube doing nothing.

intricatedetail 6y ago
Have you ever tried to report fraud to authorities? Even if you show overwhelming evidence, details of perpetrator, chances are LE will laugh you out and say it is a civil matter.
- bitcharmer 6y ago
  With law enforcement at least you get to talk to people. With YouTube/Google all your complaints go straight to /dev/null
  - globular-toast 6y ago
    Only if you're a big enough company and/or have to the right contacts. Do you think regular people could get the police to raid a data centre or something on grounds of copyright infringement?
    - johnnyanmac 6y ago
      no, but a 10YO troll in Brazil sure can get the FBI to raid the home of an American streamer they don't like. Not saying it's even by any means, but it's better than zero human response. There will at least be some case in a govt. record should some bad actor keep getting reported, unlike Google.
- spacemanmatt 6y ago
  LE might also decide they look funny and launch a frivolous prosecution against you.
matsemann 6y ago

tsp 6y ago

This is really bad! YouTube should find ways to respond to misclaimed tracks as a creator. Also companies / individuals that claim public domain music should be banned from the platform.

paulmd 6y ago
you're fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose of the copyright claim system: it doesn't exist to determine the legitimate owner of a work, it exists to keep youtube from being sued. Since there is no legal penalty for a "false positive", even if the creator can prove that it's a false positive, while there is a penalty for a false negative, the system will always lean to aggressive removal and demonetization, because that's where youtube's interests lie. the legal answer here is that if you don't like youtube's copyright system then distribute your content on another platform. Otherwise, push for there to be a penalty for an excessive removal of copyright, because that's the only thing that's going to tilt youtube's scales back to the center.
- bertil 6y ago
  > Since there is no legal penalty for a "false positive", I’m really confused by that part: YouTube lawyers must know that there’s a significant risk they’ll piss of a someone like a law professor and that they’ll use all their faculty to go after what is essentially fraud: there are provisions in the CDMA precisely for that, and the platform is liable for indulging those in systematic cases. Even if it’s not, they are risking a change in law. Compared that PR nightmare to having an engineer spend a few days to hack a “public domain” user that automatically accepts re-use, or re-train to distinguish interpretations from copies… I feel like I’m missing something — and I’m not missing a cynical take on how Google is too big to care. God knows that I’ve been arguing that some problems are harder than one expects, but public domain sheet music isn’t a hard one for YouTube.
  - dkarras 6y ago
    The nuance with "public domain sheet music" is that while the instructions of how to play that music is public domain, the recorded performance of such music is not. So when you play moonlight sonata, you have the copyright to that particular performance (recording) and someone else cannot use that without permission. It is somewhat harder to distinguish between recordings of thousands of performances of the same musical piece. The thing though is that youtube decided not to care. Actually, that is not about caring - the youtube we knew when it first launched was killed because it was an impossible business model if they themselves had the liability for uploaded possibly copyrighted content. So now they say "sort it out between yourselves, go to courts if you want but I will take it down while you do that to not be liable in the worst case".

trinovantes 6y ago

I don't understand why YouTube doesn't use their content id system to detect these obvious public domain disputes.

Mordisquitos 6y ago
Probably because it would cost them time and effort, but they have no incentive to do so. Why would they? At most, when cases such as this come to the public's attention, all that YouTube suffers is inconsequential reputational damage. This is easily and cheaply mitigated in PR terms if it gets bad enough by just handling the incident with a quick "Oops, sorry, our bad" and reinstating the removed material. Meanwhile, the uncountable cases of illegitimate copyright takedowns which never make the news don't matter. What are the victims going to do about it? Sue? Use a YouTube competitor?
- durnygbur 6y ago
  > YouTube suffers is inconsequential reputational damage No such thing exists. Using "reputation damage" in context of YouTube, or any Google service really doesn't make any sense.
- ziftface 6y ago
  Even the marketing you mentioned isn't really necessary. That's what happened when you're a monopoly, bad reputation doesn't really hurt the bottom line.
- kzrdude 6y ago
  The only defender of the rights holders without money would be the court system, so a court needs to suspend youtube's copyright strike system.

gekkonier 6y ago

It's google. I can live without it. Do you?

lovelyviking 6y ago
What about copyright it self? If they have manage to abuse it even with google what are chances that they would not find a way to abuse it on smaller platforms?
- gekkonier 6y ago
  In this situation here google is not willing to check if an automatism failed. I do not think that problem applies to selfhostetd content. But who knows, its a world where everything is possible....
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  They would. That's why you should avoid platforms, they go against the principles of the decentralized World Wide Web.

Jyaif 6y ago

I believe this is the video/music that claims the copyright of Moonlight Sonata (notice the downvotes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ThyLB6bakk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ThyLB6bakk

h0l0cube 6y ago
The 2015 album is on Spotify too: https://open.spotify.com/album/1eMRlKHhUiVQRncGQRBBmH?si=K3eYwFwqR6GlwVgtPURl0A https://open.spotify.com/album/1eMRlKHhUiVQRncGQRBBmH?si=K3e... Just seems like the artist played a slowed down Moonlight Sonata with some effects on top and the algorithm now thinks it's theirs. Hard to know if they know that they are blocking/leaching from other content creators.
shirleyquirk 6y ago
it makes it worse that its a hamfisted, soulless rendition. perhaps Mx Molland has other superior tracks but this one is particularly egregious.

jeffwass 6y ago

Summary for those that don’t want to watch the video : - Pianist creates YouTube video demonstrating how to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata - part of this video includes her playing Moonlight Sonata (of course) - YouTube has a new ‘feature’ that scans submitted videos prior to publication to identify potentially copyrighted material - her video is found to include copyrighted material. She is certain this is a mistake that will be rectified by disputing the copyright claim - she agrees the only person who’s content she is reproducing is Beethoven himself - her copyright dispute is rejected. She is found to be violating the copyright of a piece called “Wicca Moonlight” - she can appeal the dispute but the appeal process is limited, and she risks getting a feared “copyright strike” on her account, wherein three such strikes would mean permanent closure of the account - she says nearly anyone can file copyright claims against published YouTube videos, including bots, and is worried about all the time she’s putting in to create content being usurped by a few bad actors

Black101 6y ago
Even if that piece was copyright, is it a copyright violation to play it yourself and publish it?
- qayxc 6y ago
  Potentially, yes. There are different types of licences [0] and depending on your use of copyrighted material, it may require a license to publish it legally. [0] https://www.bmi.com/licensing/entry/types_of_copyrights https://www.bmi.com/licensing/entry/types_of_copyrights
- SeanLuke 6y ago
  Yes. Because music is both composed and performed, it has three primary copyright scenarios. 1. Print rights protect sheet music etc. from being copied. 2. Performance rights control whether your composed music can be performed. 3. Mechanical rights control whether your performance can be copied (onto mp3 say). Also related to these are "synchronization" issues and licenses.
jeffwass 6y ago

anoncow 6y ago

Being able to access real people for support should be a mandatory requirement for big corporations offering services to the public directly.

vidarh 6y ago
In the UK you have a right to have automated decisions on e.g. loan applications reviewed by a human. Broadening a right like that would certainly be worth considering.
- Symbiote 6y ago
  The GDPR has exactly this provision. https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/
exporectomy 6y ago
No. Mandating real people won't help. I've dealt with real support people who are exactly as useless as the website's FAQ. They're powerless to make any special exceptions to the predefined process or even to escalate to someone who can. As an example, I can't use my main email address for an Apple ID account because apparently somebody else set it as their backup email and I may have carelessly clicked the accept link when I got the confirmation. I talked to a human Apple support person and his higher level colleague and was told that's probably what happened but they can't know for sure and even if they did, they can't fix it. The end. Bye.
- plasma 6y ago
  You could try doing an account recovery (leverage that email) and just change it to something else.
  - exporectomy 6y ago
    I think I lost the email which was many years prior, and also I would need to know the actual email of the account it's linked to, which I don't.

swiley 6y ago

What a horribly broken platform. Thankfully Peertube appears to be gaining some traction due to its compatibility with Mastodon.

stirlo 6y ago
Yes, it expect it will have a near monopoly in the year desktop Linux goes mainstream…
- ziftface 6y ago
  Funny but I can actually see peertube appealing to big YouTubers, especially if there's an ecosystem around it, like apps and fully hosted servers.
deleted 6y ago
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kossTKR 6y ago
Really? Interesting as i am looking for a video hosting platform. Looking at their front page and it looks dead and weird to me. A mix of my little pony videos, scantily clad women and 5 second long videos of grass, bugs etc. Absurd curation.

mcv 6y ago

This sort of thing happens way too often on Youtube, and it's far worse than merely violating copyright; here artists get denied ownership of their own expression of public domain music. Unlike mere copyright violation, this is actual copyright theft that Youtube is enabling here. It should be punished harder than merely copying someone else's work usually is, but instead this sort of direct theft seems to be allowed by governments and copyright institutes.

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
> here artists get denied ownership of their own expression of public domain music Hell why stop there, music artists get their own original music stolen by Youtube who then proceeds to hand it to someone else, for anyone interested in a popular example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4AeoAWGJBw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4AeoAWGJBw
meepmorp 6y ago
YouTube's automatic system exists to keep the company from getting sued and it's going to work like anything else at Google and be as automated as possible. The necessary result is a black box ML system to score content, and biasing ambiguous output in favor of the side more likely to have lawyers on retainer.

durnygbur 6y ago

How come this video is not interrupted by ads?! Something is fishy here.

rchaud 6y ago
I think uploaders can choose whether to include ads in their videos.

markvdb 6y ago

This kind of absurd copyright trouble is all over the place in the world of music education. I advised my boss to choose a video hosting platform between: - a paid video upload account in a place where we're not the product (vimeo) - self hosting (PeerTube)

mlang23 6y ago

One of the first uploads I did to YouTube, a recording of me playing BWV 1034-3 (Andante) got a copyright claim. This was the day I realized youtube is in fact helping big corporations to supress individuals. "We might delete your account if you raise an objection against this claim and we find your objection is invalid." That was pretty much around the time YT decided that it can now be as evil as it wants.

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago

That is the reason these guys decided to Copyrighting all the melodies to avoid accidental infringement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJtm0MoOgiU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJtm0MoOgiU TED talk

lovelyviking 6y ago
did it help?

enriquto 6y ago

Youtubers have it coming. They have accepted obviously unacceptable terms of service. The problems of Youtube are very old, and people have been consistently proposing alternatives that solve these problems. Yet they willingly chose to fatten the beast in the hopes that they will get spared of its cruelty. I say good riddance!

chrismorgan 6y ago

Along the same lines, I was publishing church services each Sunday between May and December of last year, with three English hymns in each, mostly old ones well-known across denominations. In total, I got 23 Content ID claims (about 20% of the hymns), claiming ownership of the melody. Every single one was for a work in the public domain. I disputed each, providing the name and date of death of the composer. Two were released (one after three days, the other after 27), the rest were allowed to lapse in my favour (which happens after 30 days). A few of these claims were duplicates (same claimer, same hymn). This showed that even though I had successfully disputed their claim in the past in the grounds of the work being in the public domain, YouTube had not revoked their ability to claim the melody in question. If any of the liars claiming they owned these works had rejected my dispute, it could have become a strike, &c. and there would of course be no recourse, because Google generally refuses to arbitrate. Also, an insidious aspect of the claims system was that YouTube basically didn’t tell you about the copyright claim at all when publishing; you had to close the edit page for the video and return to the list, and see if the Restrictions column for the video said “Copyright claim”. If you didn’t do that, the video would probably be being monetised by the claimer in at least some of the world (and if you disputed it, I guess Google would happily take the lot for the period while they had monetised it—though now that they’re putting ads on everything, this lot isn’t so different from the usual situation; depends on whether you hate the balance of the ad money going to the copyright liars or Google more). (There was also one amusing case where some music being played at a nearby temple was audible during a quiet time in the service, and so I found out the name of the music being played. I claimed fair use on that one, because I didn’t even want that music in it, and it was quiet. That claim was released after ten days.)

thraway123412 6y ago
I don't think I'm ever going to approve of any sort of automated copyright claim system but if Google wanted to make it one bit fair, they should use the same concept of three strikes against the accounts that make false claims and ban them.
- idrios 6y ago
  Too easy for bad actors to create multiple accounts or game this system. I think this would end up hurting genuine claimants of actual pirated works more that it would help the wrongly accused.

brailsafe 6y ago

Susan Wojcicki on the case again. The freedom of expression pillar would crumble without her support.

verytrivial 6y ago

I can't be certain, but I think this video might be the "original" that the algorithm matched: https://youtu.be/-ThyLB6bakk https://youtu.be/-ThyLB6bakk What is to stop bad actors pumping out a stream of interpretations of public domain melodies to prime the matching algorithm then using the robotic nature of the appeal process to extort ad revenue? Nothing, apparently!

RyJones 6y ago

I used to have a bunch of time lapses on YouTube- my office for a few years was above the ferry docks in Seattle. I chose music from the YouTube collection of free music for background music. I have copyright claims on all of them now; I’ve taken almost all of them down. https://youtu.be/TgzqOvTvWzw https://youtu.be/TgzqOvTvWzw As an example

lovelyviking 6y ago
btw I loved your video and I would prefer to see them even without music. I can play guitar while watching or play some other music in background.
- RyJones 6y ago
  thanks - I appreciate that.

egao1980 6y ago

My daughter plays guitar and violin and this is a very common issue. Moreover Youtube automatically labels some original performances as if they use third-party soundtrack. Both annoying and flattering.

gabrielblack 6y ago

I can't understand why Youtube has no procedure to flag companies as "Wicca Moonlight” like scammer / troll so, after a certain number of infractions like that one ( pretending to be the rightful owner of the rights on BEETHOVEN music !), they are sanctioned in some way or banned. That to add some symmetry to the procedure to fight trolls trying to steal other peoples hard job.

CydeWeys 6y ago
Maybe "Wicca Moonlight" has previously been flagged as a scammer/troll and are now on their tenth account they've been doing this with? It could be whack-a-mole on all ends. It's not particularly hard to spin up another LLC, register, and start filing claims.
eru 6y ago
They might have such a system, but the scale is so big, that we are still seeing the false negatives?
rainbowzootsuit 6y ago
It seems like the claimers have little invested into the persuit compared to the people making videos and could relatively easily make a new scam account. It certainly wouldn't hurt to add a little more friction to someone making frivolous claims as it would likely kill off a number of them that are low effort.
bredren 6y ago
Alphabet gets paid either way.
mistercow 6y ago
I think the problem is that the whole system they have is to appease copyright holders so that they don’t get sued for individual videos. They’ve productized it and made it all look very official, but the underlying fact that this is about appeasement puts them on a bad footing for banning trolls. If they ban someone, they’re basically saying “sue us instead”, which is exactly what they don’t want.
6y ago

redis_mlc 6y ago

Before HNers waste a lot of time debating pointlessly, here's the facts about how Youtube works: Youtube has a 2-level copyright complaint scheme: 1) Youtube Content ID system - almost all complaints are handled by Youtube with their internal process. Essentially most musical performances are demonetized unless you're the music publisher, and occasionally for legit uploaders a copyright claim is made. The Content ID system was very likely developed as part of the settlement agreement with labels, where Google spent about $1 billion in legal fees. If you don't follow YT's instructions and instead protest, then you risk having your account locked. So most uploaders back off. Fair use is not respected by YT normally, because they don't have to under their internal system. (What's interesting is that after a famous rock song by a Youtube-famous cover artist was blocked, it was unblocked a few months later with the original view count also restored. That one was weird - very hmmm.) 2) US federal copyright legal process - rarely used for Youtube because #1. Fair use is a defense if you file a lawsuit and win. (Using less than 10 seconds approx. for educational purposes.) Source: I advise a famous Youtube artist on US publishing issues.

ajuc 6y ago

IP is such a scam.

Normille 6y ago

I don't know what I find more annoying; the ridiculous US copyright system that allows people to copyright almost 'anything'... or the unfathomably stupid people employed by the likes of Amazon, YouTube et al whose policies seem to be "Ban first. Ask questions later... Bu let's not bother with the questions" It doesn't surprise me that a 200 years dead composer's works are considered subject to copyright when, apparently, even referring to the name of a 1200 year old mediaeval manuscript violates copyright: https://stiobhart.net/2021-04-8-bubble-trouble/ https://stiobhart.net/2021-04-8-bubble-trouble/

Iv 6y ago
The policies are directly caused by the laws. If google does not react swiftly, it is considered guilty of copyright infringement. Remove the laws, the policies are instantly removes as well.
- masklinn 6y ago
  Exactly. Benefiting from Safe Harbor provisions is usually predicated on taking the claimant at their word and implementing restrictions as fast as possible. No such requirements exist on the release side. Therefore it is no surprise that platform policies will heavily favor claimants, that is very strong incentivised if not an explicit requirement.
- Normille 6y ago
  >If google does not react swiftly, it is considered guilty of copyright infringement. Only if a copyright infringement has actually taken place. The problem is that none of these companies ever apply a gramme of logic or examine the merits of the claim, when someone cries 'copyright infringement'. They just automatically remove the 'offending' article and refuse to countenance any counter-arguments from the person accused. It's this supine attitude which, I reckon, is fuelling all these ridiculous claims. I just wish that the likes of Amazon, Google, YouTube, RedBubble... etc. would call the copyright trolls' bluff occasionally and not just instantly cave. Every. Single. Time.
  - 6y ago

tomcooks 6y ago

You publish on a proprietary, commercial,centralised platform and are surprised that said platform behaves like that? Use peertube or any other decent video platform. AHH, but you want the sweet YT cash.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

disillusioned 6y ago

I used the YouTube studio editor to add a piece from YouTube's library of music in the public domain to a small video of no real consequence, and then, ten years later, received a copyright claim on that audio. The system is really truly fucked.

plmu 6y ago

Google might be doing this to show the negative aspects of the current copyright system. Maybe they want to annoy enough people so that something might change.

kroeckx 6y ago

For music copyright is split in 2 types: composition and recording. The copyright on the composition is probably expired, but on a recording most likely isn't. The automated system most likely claims it's a copy of a copyrighted recording. Since it's a popular piece, it can be hard to tell recordings apart. Note that the composition might also still have a copyright because it's not the original composition but a derived work, but that seems unlikely in this case.

mullikine 6y ago

There should be some kind of law to forbid this type of unilateral model training. What great lapse of judgement to not also train the same model that is used to blacklist music to also whitelist music that is in the public domain -- and to use AI in this way, to suppress the creative freedoms of billions of human beings as the robot revolution edges closer to automate us out of existence. AI should not be used this way, but if you're going to do it you may as well be honest about it. How this algorithm could be deployed without first even acknowledging the existence of music outside of what is proprietary is disturbing

wazoox 6y ago

This is the evil of monopoly. Monopolies destroy freedom and will bring back feudalism. The GAFAM must be broken up. Yannis Varoufakis discusses this in this (oh the irony) youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlkuA1mx0pc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlkuA1mx0pc

Waterluvian 6y ago

Is this all because of bad American law, or is youtube proactively being bad in their moderation process?

qayxc 6y ago
It's a problem of scale. It's perfectly possibile to manage a few hundred disputes on a daily basis, but with >5000 uploads per minute, it becomes impossible to do manually. The worst part is the asymmetry between claimants and creators. But that's the fucked up nature of civil law - the burden of proof is reversed.
- SeanLuke 6y ago
  > It's a problem of scale. It's perfectly possibile to manage a few hundred disputes on a daily basis, but with >5000 uploads per minute, it becomes impossible to do manually. Nonsense. Assuming the revenue to Google increases linearly with uploads, so does their ability to hire content moderators.
  - anonuser123456 6y ago
    Revenue is a function of views, not uploads.

politician 6y ago

Why don’t people upload the video from one account, and then claim copyright infringement from another account, and then intentionally drag out the appeals process as a form of defense against baseless claims?

lovelyviking 6y ago

Actually I doubt that you can avoid abusing current copyright laws. Also because there is no such "right" in nature. If you wish monopoly call it for what it is and have laws in accordance. Such "right" shouldn't exist in the first place or at least in the current form. Copy process is the way people learn and progress. Copy process is essential for spreading knowledge and development. When you learn you copy. When you sing you copy. When you speak you copy. When you teach you copy. When you think you copy. People copy their parents. You are the mixed copy of your parents plus mixed copy of other things and factors. When you show to others what you did you copy too. I give you a concrete example. I was dancing Argentinian tango in a charity event and wanted to show record of it to other people. I've got copyright claim on YouTube. I was not even demonstrating music - I was demonstrating Dancing! The music played in the background was created somewhere in 1930-1940. The music played at the event was not even original composition. It was a cover done by local artist. And it was played live during the event with improvisations. Unfortunately I couldn't show this event to anyone else because I've got copyright claim on YouTube channel. I couldn't even share the record with my friends as private link. I couldn't even show the video to my partner for goodness sake. If this is not idiocy resulting from so called "copyright" then what is? Unlimited copy process is crucial to arts especially because you should feel free to express yourself and only this way something new can appear. Copy is a natural process and any attempt to regulate it or regulate it too much can and will create more problems than it solves! Perhaps it's time to start listening RMS more carefully. This is one about copyright: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eginMQBWII4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eginMQBWII4

redwall_hp 6y ago
Better terms for copyright include "imaginary property" and "bourgeoise pseudocapital." Not only does copyright hinder creativity and infringe upon your natural right to copy, but it doesn't even benefit artists so much as companies who pay them a pittance while wielding the law as a cudgel to protect their imaginary fiefdom. The world needs less ownership, not more.
- cdot2 6y ago
  People will complain about copyright precisely until they have some creative work of theirs sold by someone else. Professional authors cannot exist without copyright.

shirleyquirk 6y ago

https://youtu.be/-ThyLB6bakk https://youtu.be/-ThyLB6bakk is the referenced "Wicca moonlight" performed by Alice violet molland

savrajsingh 6y ago

In this case, a solution is to match against obviously known public domain first, and failing that, check copyright claims. I’d imagine google has or can quickly build the necessary db of all public domain music, starting with music from 100+ years ago. Also identify copyright claims that conflict with that db ahead of time.

fortran77 6y ago

This is widely known among the classical musician community. Nearly every time I upload a YouTube video of me sitting at my piano playing something written 150+ years ago, I'll get a copyright strike. In the past, I'd simply affirm it was mine and it would go away. It looks like the new system isn't so forgiving. This probably won't change until the right person gets a claim and hires the right lawyer who thinks of a good argument to win a massive judgement.

barkingcat 6y ago

This has been happening for decades. Almost all musicians playing classical music has had bans, 3 strikes, blocks, etc on social media, youtube, live streaming sites. Often times Hilary Hahn (one of the great violinists of our times) gets copyright claims on her own practice streams because they sound literally like her concerts and solo albums. Basically, the more refined and the better you are as a classical musician, the more likely you'll get a ban for streaming live music (that you play) because ... the composers are all long dead and there's thousands, if not tens of thousands of previous interpretations of the same music (literally note by note the same) floating around in the algorithms of the RIAA ban bots.

seaman1921 6y ago

YouTube's Copyright System Isn't Broken. The World's Is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU

manquer 6y ago
As much I love tom scott, he is ignoring the choices that YouTube made along the way were that precisely that choices. They didn't have to become this kind of platform. Tom himself is owning/promoting nebula an alternative platform with quality curated content. Youtube either could have become a pure user generated platform not engaging with big biz, and strictly following DMCA only : counter notice is not for Google's to review merit , claims like above are penalized, you have to take it court if there is a counter notice, no three strikes nonsense, no flawed content ID system - all of this is placate big biz. Alternatively they could have become a curated content platform (like nebula) them wanting to do everything is why we are here. Every other user content platform in video or otherwise is working perfectly fine with DMCA framework, they all have considerably less resources than Google. P.S. Google's inability to put people to support content creators and this dispute process even for creators with 100' of millions of views is simply about Google culture of not believing in user/creater support (product) , big biz sure gets human support.

jarek83 6y ago

Google - you are becoming the most dump entity in the internet. Laughable level of work you are providing in recent years. Maybe consider laundry business if you can't grasp technology for people.

analog31 6y ago

The irony is that Beethoven probably stole it. Even to this day, music composition has always involved "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue," to quote Duke Ellington.

banbanbang 6y ago

If you look at Google’s (Alphabet’s) margins you will know why. We are allowing these monopoly tech companies to extract value without bare min investments. Google is one of the biggest violators. I think all SV companies are at fault to some degree. Some still operate with “startup” budget for support. I know Paypal does this for example. There’s gotta be a wake up moment where if you are going to be in the consumer facing business you have to invest in minimal support infrastructure or face fines.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Symbiose 6y ago

I made a Moonlight Sonata cover myself a few years ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIbBcJ7EkxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIbBcJ7EkxQ) and had countless copyright claims since then. I had to manually dispute every single claims over the years and prove again and again that no copyright were infringed. It can get tiring when you get a copyright claim finally lifted after weeks of dispute, only to get a new claim the next month.

nobodyandproud 6y ago
I wonder if small claims court could assist, for each infraction and claim. Time lost, etc. IANAL

ThrustVectoring 6y ago

YouTube's system has some massive design flaws. One of which is that the default way copyright holders get treated varies based off whether you're doing automated ContentID type claims vs whether you merely own the copyright to your own work you created. As a result, you get better outcomes if you own a piece of content-ID'd work that you include in your videos, which is completely silly. Basically, if you copyright claim your own work automatically, if someone else comes along and tries to do the same, worst-case you split the advertising revenue among all the copyright claimants. If you just upload it normally, you get zero if someone claims it.

rchaud 6y ago

If this is Google being proactive about avoiding lawsuits, how come the same issue doesn't affect Patreon? A number of 'reaction' channels have copyrighted content (full music videos) that is clipped on Youtube to avoid strikes. The full versions of these videos are on the uploader's Patreon.

tonystride 6y ago

I’ve been working on a project converting my piano curriculum into a 42 week YouTube series (currently on week 34, almost there!) and one of the first challenges I ran into, other than sucking a video production, was what to do about teaching repertoire so as not to run into copyright claims. I decided to compose my own material each week and it has turned out to be the best thing about producing the series. At first the idea of writing a new intermediate level piece each week seemed daunting but it’s actually been quite liberating. Also when I’m finished with the series I’ll be able to publish the collection as my own book of repertoire. If you’ve been teaching for a while (like 10 years) I would highly recommend going beyond the safety net of pre published teaching repertoire and try making some yourself. Find the deeper connection to what you teach about music by encoding into, well, music! New music, that reflects your unique relationship with the craft.

croes 6y ago

This will get worse in the EU when the upload filters are in place.

imperistan 6y ago

Could we fix this (partially) by writing software that generates every possible piece of music and then upload it to YouTube? If you never claim copyright on the pieces, No one else could claim them in the future cause you uploaded it first. Now we only need a way to filter out all existing copyrighted music I guess

BooneJS 6y ago

My daughter got her first content claim when she was a 7 year old violinist. Proud father moment. Dispute was allowed to lapse. I’m on day 22 or so of another dispute from my son’s violin performance. I don’t see this going anywhere either.

crazypython 6y ago

Upload to a decentralized service like PeerTube or Odysee instead.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

I feel like the fundamental issue here with these giant tech companies is their scale has outgrown the capabilities of their AI. They've all basically bowed down to the mantra of "AI will solve everything", and indeed they are so big that getting human customer support at the scale they need would be a huge financial hit, even for them. But here is a situation where any rational human can say "this is crazy, anyone with sense knows that Moonlight Sonata is in the public domain", but Google has created a Kafkaesque nightmare because (as has been lamented a million times on HN) it takes an act of God (or Twitter outrage) to actually connect with a human support person is you're not a paying customer.

noobermin 6y ago
This entire episode is a great example of how the SV crowd really is full of groupthink and ideology despite their veneer of being rational. Everyone who isn't in the SV RDF can see the limits of AI today for example youtube copyright strikes, failures of AVs to take over the streets, and so on and so on. AI is useful but it clearly has limitations but the industry can't recognize it because they're high on their own supply.
modzu 6y ago
the ai is built to deal with the peasant class. the ai occassionaly abuses them, because the peasants have no power. but nobody cares about the peasants except other peasants. the peasants are fed enough (you tube mostly works for them) just enough to keep them content and any sort of uprising is quelled. content enough in their toil (creating content), the ai grows stronger.
- kecupochren 6y ago
  what a world to live in

blacklight 6y ago

I've already stated this many times, I'll state it again. Get your shit out of YouTube and any other Google product. Google is a dumb, faceless, fully automated company only interested in extracting as much data as possible from its users, force them to swallow as many ads as possible, all without caring about listening to them (both consumers and creators), under the faulty assumption that they're too big for users and consumers to live without them. They simply don't deserve anybody using their shitty products anymore. The error in this case is quite obvious. YouTube's scanner incorrectly identified the teacher's recording of Moonlight Sonata as a copyrighted reinterpretation of the same piece of music originally written by a guy who actually died 200 years ago. And I can't completely put the blame on Google's AI: the notes are technically the same, the beat might also be the same, if you calculate an FFT of the audio you'll probably also come up with similar spectral signatures. But a human listener will IMMEDIATELY notice that was played by the teacher IS NOT the the same as the copyrighted piece of music. The problem is: who is accountable for these mistakes? Who shall I reach out to if Google's foggy algorithms make a mistake? And, in the case of educators and creators who actually do that for a job, who will compensate them for the revenue they have lost because of algorithmic errors? Until Google can provide an answer to these questions, I repeat: keep your ass away from anything that has their name on it. They are not reliable, the risk of losing your data, your account or your followers because of random automated decision is very high, and the probability of getting a real human to assist you is very low.

bcrescimanno 6y ago
I agree with your assessment of Google; however, what is a reasonable alternative for a content creator who wants to publish their videos and be able to build an audience? You kinda have to go where the audience will be if you don't already have one and I'm not aware of any video discovery platforms with anywhere near the reach of YouTube. I've managed to get out of Google products almost entirely--YouTube remains the exception. Moreover, let's say a new site comes along and dethrones YouTube. Remember that this whole mess started because of lawsuits that were ultimately ruled (or settled) in favor of copyright holders. Any player in this space will need a method for handling vast quantities of copyrighted material scanning and, like Google, will be heavily incentivized by legal precedent to have that system "err on the side of caution." I'm not a fan of Google; but, the villain of this story is the horribly outdated and corporate-lobbied copyright system that will push any player in the video space to this kind of draconian approach.

aspectmin 6y ago

Someone needs for form a defense association which indie artists and content producers can join/pay into. Use this structure and funds to defend artists against these claims.

cronix 6y ago

Rick Beato explains a lot of this very well. He's even testified in congress about this subject. Here's a good explanatory video of his on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5lY_DbUsok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5lY_DbUsok It's slightly different as the music he uses actually has existing copyright, but along the same lines. "You can't teach people music without giving examples. I can't do something like, 'well you know, this is like Led Zeppelin, or like Bach'...this is something I created and you're going to learn from it... No, you have to learn from the actual sources."

squid32 6y ago

Copyright is broken, time to overhaul the whole system. edit: Every. single. video I uploaded to youtube has been copyright claimed. If you know a reasonable alternative to youtube, please let me know.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rurban 6y ago

Maybe the adequate counteraction is to file DMCA claims against Google itself. Like the German newspapers did. Google News copies their headlines and intro. And fotos. Or Australian news. Google News copies everything. Or Google Search. Googles copies everything. Text, fotos, original work, derivative work. Nobody needs to go into museums anymore. Google has it. Nobody needs go into cinemas anymore. Google has it. Youtube is full of copyright violations, and has no adequate support mechanism to handle claims and violations, as we saw in this example. They are policing themselves, the biggest thieve of all.

mykowebhn 6y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDcvPf78g1k&t=12s&ab_channel=FreedomForum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDcvPf78g1k&t=12s&ab_channel... The irony and hypocrisy of this are incredible.

lurquer 6y ago

YouTube is an advertising company. Period. The problem won’t be fixed as it’s not a problem... who cares if some piano teacher gets silenced? It matters not one iota to the revenue. You could ban 10% of ‘content creators’ and it wouldn’t matter: people watch YouTube like they used to watch TV: it doesn’t matter what’s on or how crappy it is. You’ll keep watching. Your favorite show got cancelled? You’ll grouse and watch something else... your consumption of pharmaceutical and insurance ads will not be affected at all. There will be no competitor emerge in this medium... just as no ‘competitor’ ever emerged in the established newspaper domain. There may be a new medium that emerges that nukes YouTube. Can’t imagine what it would be.

raarts 6y ago

In ten, maybe twenty years I predict storage and cpu will be so cheap that everyone can just host their own data in their own router, and provide some universal API to it. Many problems solved, including privacy.

tcgmu 6y ago
We've already had the capability to do this for many years. See Napster or BitTorrent. The thorny issue is that legitimate copyright holders lose out when anyone can freely host and share their work. That leads to discussions about whether there should be copyright at all, whether digital creators have a right to charge for their work, etc. Those are the problems that need to be solved, not the technical issues.

strange_things 6y ago

https://youtu.be/-ThyLB6bakk https://youtu.be/-ThyLB6bakk Here is the “wicka moonlight”. Already 6.1K dislikes. I wonder why...

lsiebert 6y ago

Well remember when they scanned a bunch of books? Like all the books in a bunch of libraries? That was physically turning pages, photographing them, doing OCR and then correcting that. By comparison create a library of public works in terms of audio to test copyright claims, and reject or put greater requirements on ones for public domain works would be relatively easy.

WmyEE0UsWAwC2i 6y ago

This should bear consequences for YouTube as they have enabled such brutal treatment on this woman and many others.

TrackerFF 6y ago

I can think of one possible quick-fix solution to this: They make a library/catalog of public domain media, and whenever a claim is raised, the offending media is compared to the library of public domain. Of course, it's far from perfect. For example - even though a piece of music is public domain, it doesn't mean that the interpretation is public domain. For example, if you cover a public domain song, you can claim copyright for that performance. This is where the automated claims system goes haywire - you actually need people (for now) to distinguish between original piece and a cover piece.

natch 6y ago

I sometimes wish HN had a way to summon one of the apparently very few sane and effective people at companies like Google, so that they could at least feed stuff like this into the internal task list for future attention. One can hope it happens, but it would be nice to know, and facts indicate it does not happen enough.

Tucanix 5y ago

YouTube being hostile towards their creators as usual.