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1) Feed a computer with MIDI files of public domain music and render it as audio 2) Upload to YouTube 3) File copyright dispute to YouTube for any (future?) u

1) Feed a computer with MIDI files of public domain music and render it as audio 2) Upload to YouTube 3) File copyright dispute to YouTube for any (future?) uploaded video which contains the music which used to be in the public domain 4) Have Google reject the videos 5) Create a site or an app which allows you to license that public domain music for a fee. 6) Notify YouTube who has licensed this public domain music. Ok. that's the way Google thinks is the way it should work. Or maybe they just recognize that their AI is causing more harm than good. -- Two days ago I uploaded a video which was a screen recording to demonstrate a bug in the Android app "Komoot". It was unlisted, the link was attached to the bug report I sent to the company. It was just a short video showing how the caching (or something in that direction) of uploaded images in the app seemed to be broken. The content in the video was 100% adhering to all the guidelines, specially to those of "for all ages". The content was nothing else but scrolling photos of an MTB-trail with a bit of UI. If your video is flagged or you mark it as "for 18+", then it can only be viewed by logged in persons. After uploading the video I got an email that it was not complying with the "for all ages" requirements, which is kind of bad, because now the support team must log-in with a Google account to YouTube in order to see the harmless but useful video. But then again, videos related to Instagram celebrities or Chinese ASMR-binge eating are totally ok for them.

Iv 6y ago
> Ok. that's the way Google thinks is the way it should work. Or maybe they just recognize that their AI is causing more harm than good. Let's be clear. It is not Google that wants it. Actually Google is on the side of calling all of this retarded. It is the state of copyright laws, of the DMCA, of the lobbying by the RIAA. The day the whole copyright ecosystem is updated to accept that computers exist and that people share files on internet easily, Youtube will be VERY happy to unplug all these terrible bots that are there to provide a bad solution to a problem we should not have.
- qwertox 6y ago
  > Actually Google is on the side of calling all of this retarded. Google has the means to make this stop.
  - Iv 6y ago
    How so?
    - withinboredom 6y ago
      They just stop and wait for the DMCA take downs and copyright owners have to make their own claims? I guess.
    - azornathogron 6y ago
      Add friction to the process of submitting copyright claims. Reduce friction in the process of appealing copyright claims. Relax draconian rules like the copyright strike system leading to account closure. Adjust the content ID system to reduce false positives (assuming no magical improvement to the system this will come at the cost of increased false negatives; that seems like an entirely reasonable trade-off)
    - rndgermandude 6y ago
      For starters, they should actually follow the DMCA. The DMCA gives affected people a defined way to counter-notice, and then the entity who filed the initial DMCA notice can either sue within 14 days or the content gets restored. Instead Google chose to evaluate "disputes" themselves, with algorithms and "AI", and reject disputes. Rejecting counter-notices is absolutely NOT something the DMCA mandates or even suggests. Moreover Youtube essentially used to allow (probably still does) alleged rights owners to reject disputes in essentially one click, while the DMCA would require them to bring a law suit. Some copyright owners therefore created bots doing the clicking for them. They could also be more lenient to "established" players as a first step, especially when it comes to counter-notices/disputes. Factor in previous history google has with an alleged infringer (alleged by their own algorithm by the way, not even by a third party) when considering a dispute, like account age, channel age, number of previous videos without problems, "we do know the customer" e.g. to pay out ad money, etc. And then maybe not outright reject it, but leave it to the alleged copyright owner to file a law suit (as the DMCA states) or at least refer it to actual human beings for further evaluation. Of course, Google could hire people to check up on their own algorithms and decide on disputes instead of machines. Youtube had $6 BILLION in ad revenue in the last quarter (not year), so they could certainly afford to hire some people. In the end it might even be a profitable investment, as fewer good content is pruned from Youtube for wrong copyright issues, leading to more ad revenue. Youtube right now seems pretty content with their quasi-monopoly, to their own detriment in my opinion. As unlikely as it may seem that people will create competitors, it can happen, ask mighty MySpace about it.
- p49k 6y ago
  Parent comment was also referring to YouTube's AI marking a benign video as 18+. Google is willing to wrongly punish people via excessive/unfair false positives in the interest of trying to be more advertiser friendly. It's just about money.
  - eru 6y ago
    Well, false positives result in fewer scandals than false negatives here. So guilty until proven innocent seems like a perfectly reasonable, if very annoying, stance.
    - DreamScatter 6y ago
      It's not reasonable to screw innocent people over.
      - Nextgrid 6y ago
        It's reasonable for a for-profit company that has a monopoly.
        eru 6y ago
        No monopoly necessary to make this commercially reasonable stance to take. (And, there's no monopoly situation here in any case.)
- LudwigNagasena 6y ago
  I don't think the laws are so harsh. It seems like YouTube caved in to the music industry interests so that popular artists continue to premiere their videos on YouTube.
  - sofixa 6y ago
    And otherwise they'd get sued for hosting copyrighted content, which will result in hefty fines and jail( didn't the US want to get Kim Dotcom from NZ precisely for that?)
    - LudwigNagasena 6y ago
      They won’t get sued if they follow the DMCA process which is very different from what they are doing.
      - slavik81 6y ago
        They were sued [1]. The lawsuit lasted 7 years and ended in a settlement. The terms were not public, but I think it's likely they promised to institute a process that goes above and beyond what the DMCA requires. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._YouTube,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y....
    - MereInterest 6y ago
      So long as they respond to actual DMCA reports, no. ContentID goes far, far beyond what is required by the DMCA to have safe harbor.
    - tzs 6y ago
      Dotcom got in trouble because he was intentionally hosting infringing content, going so far as to try to hide that material from the copyright owners by making it look like he had taken it down when notified of its presence when in fact he just made the URL that the owners knew about stop working. Employees that went too far and actually took down infringing material got reprimanded. Go dig up a copy of the indictment. It includes a bunch of internal emails from Dotcom and other running his site where they talk about all this stuff. It was basically a site whose intent and business model was hosting pirated movies. That you could also use it to host your own photos or whatever was there to try to provide cover.
- tehwebguy 6y ago
  Ehh, Google has gone to great lengths to ensure that the largest holders of copyright have their content libraries available to check against new uploads and apparently no lengths to ensure that public domain content is available for the same purpose.
  - techdragon 6y ago
    The public domain doesn’t threaten to sue them.
    - Robotbeat 6y ago
      It ought to.
      - ddingus 6y ago
        Who has standing?
        aaron-santos 6y ago
        The public. It's ours.
        ddingus 6y ago
        Mskes sense, but how does that work? Can any of us initiate a case and it becomes a class, or?
        aaron-santos 6y ago
        I'm open to having a conversation about it. What does the space look like between "no the public does not have standing", and "the public has standing individually or as a class"? What are the tradeoffs at those boundaries, and how can we work towards creative solutions that exist in the space between those extremes?
- mlang23 6y ago
  I dont believe this in the slightest. Besides, the false-positives which regularily pop up around YouTube claims are not a result of any law, or lobbying. They are the result of googles sloppy implementation of the cliam system.
anticensor 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eBB1ZzvFoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eBB1ZzvFoI
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ozim 6y ago
There are disputes over "white noise" videos so it is already as bad as it gets.
- teachingassist 6y ago
  Given that white noise is random, a recorded copy of white noise is its own perfect watermark.
  - Guest42 6y ago
    Does it depend on seeding that would eventually have tendencies for replication? Or could that be pushed out until practically forever?
    - someguyorother 6y ago
      If the white noise is based on a random number generator, the pattern would restart after a full cycle. If the random number generator's period is 2^32 and you use one integer per sample, then at 44 kHz, you would have about a million seconds, or twelve days, before the RNG has gone through a full period. Most RNGs have periods much higher than this. xorshift128 has a period of 2^128-1 and the Mersenne Twister's period is 2^19937-1. So you could push it out until practically forever.
      - nitrogen 6y ago
        So you could push it out until practically forever. But, there will still be repeated sections.
        aranchelk 6y ago
        Knowing nothing of the YouTube algorithm, I’d still wager it’ll take you longer than the lifetime of the copyright to produce conflicting noise works.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
treesprite82 6y ago
> which is kind of bad, because now the support team must log-in with a Google account to YouTube in order to see the harmless but useful video. Not only this, but in the EU* it requires verifying your age with a credit card or ID photo: https://i.imgur.com/gP20dXi.png https://i.imgur.com/gP20dXi.png
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  Since you van have a credit card when you are 13 yo, the check is more or less useless.
  - envp 6y ago
    It's it effectively doxxing people under 13? That's a concerning implication if I'm understanding this correctly.
slothtrop 6y ago
Honestly, the only way things will change is through grass roots abuse of the system like this. You have to force them to change.
- guerrilla 6y ago
  Sounds like good material for a Defcon talk: "How I Own A Quarter of Content on YouTube"
havernator 6y ago
http://spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html http://spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html TL;DR copyright becomes absurd surprisingly fast when you have a large population, widely-available authoring/recording tools, and a way to store/search all of them, indefinitely. Like, indefensible absurd.
- Baeocystin 6y ago
  That was a good read. Thanks for sharing it.
- Anther 6y ago
  This is a fantastic story. Thank you for the link.
moron4hire 6y ago
You have YouTube's content rating system backwards. It's not "racey content gets marked special" with "suitable for children" being a catch-all category. YouTube's "content developed for children", is the special case. It's explicitly content meant for and marketed to children, or content that children would be particularly attracted to, like nature documentaries. All other content should be marked "not intended for children", even if it's not "adult"--aka restricted to 18+--content. This is stated pretty clearly in YouTube's documentation. They have a link to it in a contextual pop-up right next to the form field asking you to self-rate the video.
- qwertox 6y ago
  This was the email I got: > We wanted to let you know that our team has reviewed your content and we don't think it's in line with our Community Guidelines. As a result, we've age-restricted the following content: > Video: Komoot Bug > We haven't applied a strike to your channel, and your content is still live for some users on YouTube. Keep reading for more details on what this means and steps you can take if you'd like to appeal this decision. > What "age-restricted" means > We age-restrict content when we don't think it's suitable for younger audiences. This means it will not be visible to users who are logged out, are under 18 years of age, or have Restricted Mode enabled. It also won't be eligible for ads. Learn more about age restrictions. When I click on appeal I get a popup titled "Submit an appeal" with the body text of "Appealing this violation is not available" ---- EDIT: Ah. I see. I actually did set it to "Is made for kids" thinking that this means that through this option I express that it does have no content which would be against the community guidelines. I've now changed it to "Not made for kids" but also "Not age restricted". Thanks for pointing this out.
- johnnyanmac 6y ago
  >or content that children would be particularly attracted to, like nature documentaries. maybe times have changed, but you could not pay me to sit through a nature documentary back when I was 8. nature content is a very weird gray area of content in terms of age ratings. It's technically just, well, nature. But then there can definitely be "just nature" content you don't want a kid to see.
contravariant 6y ago
Unless they've changed this you can get around this by sending the 'embedded' link: https://www.youtube.com/embed/<videoid> https://www.youtube.com/embed/<videoid> instead of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<videoid> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<videoid>.
T-hawk 6y ago
> Or maybe they just recognize that their AI is causing more harm than good. Google recognizes that these flaws in their AI aren't worth caring about. Google doesn't have any mission or obligation to help the world share videos. Google cares about Google's profits. And they've found that the expedient way to do that is just let the AI be overzealous with rejecting, because the cost of a false positive is infinitesimally tiny and the cost of a false negative (real copyright violation) is so much higher. How do we fix this? Competition. We need a Google/Youtube competitor so that users will choose the platform that does copyright recognition better.
ChefGabe 6y ago
What if someone exploited this to such an extent that Google could no longer ignore the issue? All someone needs to do is write an open source library that automates this. Almost like exposing a security flaw to the public to force the company to fix it. Sure it would enable bad actors but it would subvert them in the long run. I feel this may be the only way to force the company's hand as an individual.

Iv 6y ago

> Ok. that's the way Google thinks is the way it should work. Or maybe they just recognize that their AI is causing more harm than good. Let's be clear. It is not Google that wants it. Actually Google is on the side of calling all of this retarded. It is the state of copyright laws, of the DMCA, of the lobbying by the RIAA. The day the whole copyright ecosystem is updated to accept that computers exist and that people share files on internet easily, Youtube will be VERY happy to unplug all these terrible bots that are there to provide a bad solution to a problem we should not have.

qwertox 6y ago
> Actually Google is on the side of calling all of this retarded. Google has the means to make this stop.
- Iv 6y ago
  How so?
  - withinboredom 6y ago
    They just stop and wait for the DMCA take downs and copyright owners have to make their own claims? I guess.
  - azornathogron 6y ago
    Add friction to the process of submitting copyright claims. Reduce friction in the process of appealing copyright claims. Relax draconian rules like the copyright strike system leading to account closure. Adjust the content ID system to reduce false positives (assuming no magical improvement to the system this will come at the cost of increased false negatives; that seems like an entirely reasonable trade-off)
  - rndgermandude 6y ago
    For starters, they should actually follow the DMCA. The DMCA gives affected people a defined way to counter-notice, and then the entity who filed the initial DMCA notice can either sue within 14 days or the content gets restored. Instead Google chose to evaluate "disputes" themselves, with algorithms and "AI", and reject disputes. Rejecting counter-notices is absolutely NOT something the DMCA mandates or even suggests. Moreover Youtube essentially used to allow (probably still does) alleged rights owners to reject disputes in essentially one click, while the DMCA would require them to bring a law suit. Some copyright owners therefore created bots doing the clicking for them. They could also be more lenient to "established" players as a first step, especially when it comes to counter-notices/disputes. Factor in previous history google has with an alleged infringer (alleged by their own algorithm by the way, not even by a third party) when considering a dispute, like account age, channel age, number of previous videos without problems, "we do know the customer" e.g. to pay out ad money, etc. And then maybe not outright reject it, but leave it to the alleged copyright owner to file a law suit (as the DMCA states) or at least refer it to actual human beings for further evaluation. Of course, Google could hire people to check up on their own algorithms and decide on disputes instead of machines. Youtube had $6 BILLION in ad revenue in the last quarter (not year), so they could certainly afford to hire some people. In the end it might even be a profitable investment, as fewer good content is pruned from Youtube for wrong copyright issues, leading to more ad revenue. Youtube right now seems pretty content with their quasi-monopoly, to their own detriment in my opinion. As unlikely as it may seem that people will create competitors, it can happen, ask mighty MySpace about it.
p49k 6y ago
Parent comment was also referring to YouTube's AI marking a benign video as 18+. Google is willing to wrongly punish people via excessive/unfair false positives in the interest of trying to be more advertiser friendly. It's just about money.
- eru 6y ago
  Well, false positives result in fewer scandals than false negatives here. So guilty until proven innocent seems like a perfectly reasonable, if very annoying, stance.
  - DreamScatter 6y ago
    It's not reasonable to screw innocent people over.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      It's reasonable for a for-profit company that has a monopoly.
      - eru 6y ago
        No monopoly necessary to make this commercially reasonable stance to take. (And, there's no monopoly situation here in any case.)
LudwigNagasena 6y ago
I don't think the laws are so harsh. It seems like YouTube caved in to the music industry interests so that popular artists continue to premiere their videos on YouTube.
- sofixa 6y ago
  And otherwise they'd get sued for hosting copyrighted content, which will result in hefty fines and jail( didn't the US want to get Kim Dotcom from NZ precisely for that?)
  - LudwigNagasena 6y ago
    They won’t get sued if they follow the DMCA process which is very different from what they are doing.
    - slavik81 6y ago
      They were sued [1]. The lawsuit lasted 7 years and ended in a settlement. The terms were not public, but I think it's likely they promised to institute a process that goes above and beyond what the DMCA requires. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._YouTube,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y....
  - MereInterest 6y ago
    So long as they respond to actual DMCA reports, no. ContentID goes far, far beyond what is required by the DMCA to have safe harbor.
  - tzs 6y ago
    Dotcom got in trouble because he was intentionally hosting infringing content, going so far as to try to hide that material from the copyright owners by making it look like he had taken it down when notified of its presence when in fact he just made the URL that the owners knew about stop working. Employees that went too far and actually took down infringing material got reprimanded. Go dig up a copy of the indictment. It includes a bunch of internal emails from Dotcom and other running his site where they talk about all this stuff. It was basically a site whose intent and business model was hosting pirated movies. That you could also use it to host your own photos or whatever was there to try to provide cover.
tehwebguy 6y ago
Ehh, Google has gone to great lengths to ensure that the largest holders of copyright have their content libraries available to check against new uploads and apparently no lengths to ensure that public domain content is available for the same purpose.
- techdragon 6y ago
  The public domain doesn’t threaten to sue them.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    It ought to.
    - ddingus 6y ago
      Who has standing?
      - aaron-santos 6y ago
        The public. It's ours.
        ddingus 6y ago
        Mskes sense, but how does that work? Can any of us initiate a case and it becomes a class, or?
        aaron-santos 6y ago
        I'm open to having a conversation about it. What does the space look like between "no the public does not have standing", and "the public has standing individually or as a class"? What are the tradeoffs at those boundaries, and how can we work towards creative solutions that exist in the space between those extremes?
mlang23 6y ago
I dont believe this in the slightest. Besides, the false-positives which regularily pop up around YouTube claims are not a result of any law, or lobbying. They are the result of googles sloppy implementation of the cliam system.

anticensor 6y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eBB1ZzvFoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eBB1ZzvFoI

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ozim 6y ago

There are disputes over "white noise" videos so it is already as bad as it gets.

teachingassist 6y ago
Given that white noise is random, a recorded copy of white noise is its own perfect watermark.
- Guest42 6y ago
  Does it depend on seeding that would eventually have tendencies for replication? Or could that be pushed out until practically forever?
  - someguyorother 6y ago
    If the white noise is based on a random number generator, the pattern would restart after a full cycle. If the random number generator's period is 2^32 and you use one integer per sample, then at 44 kHz, you would have about a million seconds, or twelve days, before the RNG has gone through a full period. Most RNGs have periods much higher than this. xorshift128 has a period of 2^128-1 and the Mersenne Twister's period is 2^19937-1. So you could push it out until practically forever.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      So you could push it out until practically forever. But, there will still be repeated sections.
      - aranchelk 6y ago
        Knowing nothing of the YouTube algorithm, I’d still wager it’ll take you longer than the lifetime of the copyright to produce conflicting noise works.
- dredmorbius 6y ago

treesprite82 6y ago

> which is kind of bad, because now the support team must log-in with a Google account to YouTube in order to see the harmless but useful video. Not only this, but in the EU* it requires verifying your age with a credit card or ID photo: https://i.imgur.com/gP20dXi.png https://i.imgur.com/gP20dXi.png

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
BrandoElFollito 6y ago
Since you van have a credit card when you are 13 yo, the check is more or less useless.
- envp 6y ago
  It's it effectively doxxing people under 13? That's a concerning implication if I'm understanding this correctly.

slothtrop 6y ago

Honestly, the only way things will change is through grass roots abuse of the system like this. You have to force them to change.

guerrilla 6y ago
Sounds like good material for a Defcon talk: "How I Own A Quarter of Content on YouTube"

havernator 6y ago

http://spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html http://spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html TL;DR copyright becomes absurd surprisingly fast when you have a large population, widely-available authoring/recording tools, and a way to store/search all of them, indefinitely. Like, indefensible absurd.

Baeocystin 6y ago
That was a good read. Thanks for sharing it.
Anther 6y ago
This is a fantastic story. Thank you for the link.

moron4hire 6y ago

You have YouTube's content rating system backwards. It's not "racey content gets marked special" with "suitable for children" being a catch-all category. YouTube's "content developed for children", is the special case. It's explicitly content meant for and marketed to children, or content that children would be particularly attracted to, like nature documentaries. All other content should be marked "not intended for children", even if it's not "adult"--aka restricted to 18+--content. This is stated pretty clearly in YouTube's documentation. They have a link to it in a contextual pop-up right next to the form field asking you to self-rate the video.

qwertox 6y ago
This was the email I got: > We wanted to let you know that our team has reviewed your content and we don't think it's in line with our Community Guidelines. As a result, we've age-restricted the following content: > Video: Komoot Bug > We haven't applied a strike to your channel, and your content is still live for some users on YouTube. Keep reading for more details on what this means and steps you can take if you'd like to appeal this decision. > What "age-restricted" means > We age-restrict content when we don't think it's suitable for younger audiences. This means it will not be visible to users who are logged out, are under 18 years of age, or have Restricted Mode enabled. It also won't be eligible for ads. Learn more about age restrictions. When I click on appeal I get a popup titled "Submit an appeal" with the body text of "Appealing this violation is not available" ---- EDIT: Ah. I see. I actually did set it to "Is made for kids" thinking that this means that through this option I express that it does have no content which would be against the community guidelines. I've now changed it to "Not made for kids" but also "Not age restricted". Thanks for pointing this out.
johnnyanmac 6y ago
>or content that children would be particularly attracted to, like nature documentaries. maybe times have changed, but you could not pay me to sit through a nature documentary back when I was 8. nature content is a very weird gray area of content in terms of age ratings. It's technically just, well, nature. But then there can definitely be "just nature" content you don't want a kid to see.

contravariant 6y ago

Unless they've changed this you can get around this by sending the 'embedded' link: https://www.youtube.com/embed/<videoid> https://www.youtube.com/embed/<videoid> instead of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<videoid> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<videoid>.

T-hawk 6y ago

> Or maybe they just recognize that their AI is causing more harm than good. Google recognizes that these flaws in their AI aren't worth caring about. Google doesn't have any mission or obligation to help the world share videos. Google cares about Google's profits. And they've found that the expedient way to do that is just let the AI be overzealous with rejecting, because the cost of a false positive is infinitesimally tiny and the cost of a false negative (real copyright violation) is so much higher. How do we fix this? Competition. We need a Google/Youtube competitor so that users will choose the platform that does copyright recognition better.

ChefGabe 6y ago

What if someone exploited this to such an extent that Google could no longer ignore the issue? All someone needs to do is write an open source library that automates this. Almost like exposing a security flaw to the public to force the company to fix it. Sure it would enable bad actors but it would subvert them in the long run. I feel this may be the only way to force the company's hand as an individual.