5 ms·

Movie Tycoon Sues YouTube over Piracy and Exposes Content-ID ‘Caveat’

105 points by curmudgeon22 5y ago

gumby 5y ago
This guy Vasallo sounds like an entitled, self-righteous prick. YT offered him a fix but he didn’t want it.
- lmz 5y ago
  Yet you often hear in this forum about how content-id is bad and is too easily (ab)used to take down content. The reality is without content-id most rights holders would be as screwed as Vasallo.
  - simonh 5y ago
    I don’t think Content-ID is bad, it’s just a tool and I can see how useful it is. My problem is with the process it is a part of. Google seems to treat Content-ID as basically the whole answer, when the process clearly needs more informed discretionary moderation. The recent upheld infringement action against someone playing Moonlight Sonata is a classic example of a failure. I’ve got no problem with Content-ID matching the piano piece with the scammy upload that claimed copyright. I do have a problem with Google sticking to to guns in such an egregiously obvious case of a spurious claim of copyright. Fortunately that specific issue has now been resolved.
    - tremon 5y ago
      Google seems to treat [their automated processes] as basically the whole answer, when the process clearly needs more informed [human effort] Isn't this basically their entire company policy?
      - chongli 5y ago
        You’re exactly right. Google resists hiring human moderators at every turn. I think they (reasonably) believe that it’s a slippery slope. As soon as they agree to moderate in some narrow part of their business then people will use that as a precedent to argue they should moderate elsewhere. At the end of this road is a place with so much moderation that their business model is no longer viable. We as a society have some difficult questions to face over the coming years. Do we want to surrender control over our lives to algorithms owned entirely by big tech companies?
        selfhoster11 5y ago
        If their business model is not viable without human moderation, then perhaps it shouldn't exist. Surrendering control to "algorithms" sufficiently deeply is indistinguishable from Kafka's The Trial.
        chongli 5y ago
        Yeah I more-or-less made this point in my other reply to this thread. I yearn for the web of my childhood (mid 90’s) when web pages were small and highly personal. People formed communities via web rings. Search was very basic but largely unnecessary because the web was so small.
        selfhoster11 5y ago
        The Indie Web and Small Web movements (I count them as distinct) have done a good job of sparking the conversation so far, plus I guess Mastodon/ActivityPub helped to some extent. I think we'll see a mini-revival of the kind of content you're looking for.
        anchpop 5y ago
        Why shouldn’t it? Youtube has hundreds of millions of users and most of them don’t care the slightest bit about human moderation. If you only want to use platforms that have extensive human moderation systems, they exist (HN is one, I believe dang reads every comment).
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    Why "yet"? Those two ideas don't conflict at all. It's not like it's a binary choice between the current version of content id or no content detection at all. It is easily abused, and biased toward claimers. The fact that contentid would go too far in solving his problem wouldn't be a reason for him to complain!
  - anonymoushn 5y ago
    It's not reassuring to read that our only choices are two different ways for small creators to constantly be robbed
  - simion314 5y ago
    IMO the content ID stuff is not the problem but the entire system, like before you take any drastic measure have a person check, also put as input in your stupid algorithm the channel information , a 5 years old channel with many subscribers would cause a lot of noise if your stupid algorithm causes issue so even from a lazy,selfish, stupid Google dev you would put a if(channelReputition> x) ...be more careful. After working a lot with angular1 I have a really low opinion about Google devs, maybe they have some stars in their team but this does not mean that the products are good OR we can argue the devs are great but they were required intentional to build crap.
  - polytely 5y ago
    Well content ID is bad for some cases like classical music where if you perform a piece that is in the public domain it will get claimed because the system apparently finds it really hard to distinguish different performances of the same piece.
- sircastor 5y ago
  In a lot of ways, I think he’s smarter than a lot of people and companies. He’s not giving up his legal rights. I feel like we’ve all given YouTube permission to sidestep the law and do whatever the heck they want. We’ve empowered them at the loss of our own state-secured rights.
  - Arainach 5y ago
    If you don't want to sign away those rights, you can manually track content and file DMCA requests. Per the article, YouTube is responding to those promptly. Vasallo isn't entitled to have his cake and eat it too - he can either opt into the automated system with all that implies, or take on the Sisyphean task of identifying infringing videos himself.
    - lupire 5y ago
      It's only sisyphean because Google actively hides their catalog from copyright enforcers. Responsibility flows from their self-imposed exclusivity.
      - hakfoo 5y ago
        There's an adversarial relationship there. We have ample evidence that rightsholders often overstep their legal bounds, demanding takedowns for fair use or even stuff they literally don't own. Giving them an easier way to browse their catalog could well increase the number or scale of bad-faith removal requests. I could frankly see some firms that imagine if they got the right tools, they could legal-DoS YouTube to death, and obviously all the former viewers would come running to their $15-per-month walled-gardens.
  - ohazi 5y ago
    It looks like he's the "too smart for his own good" kind of smart. The only thing this lawsuit will do is instigate a careful review of every DMCA complaint he ever filed to make sure they were handled correctly. Those are the only "state-secured rights" he actually has. The whole point of the DMCA is the safe-harbor clause that indemnifies Google/Youtube from the claimed liabilities as long as they followed the DMCA process correctly. From a legal perspective, it doesn't matter one whit that the DMCA process is so broken that it's basically useless.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Yes If he was slightly smarter he would have put his content on YT, content-id'd it and have it monetized by the ads by either what he or somebody else posts. Instead he wants to fight it "the old way" which will not make him more money. Why do you think the artists are "selling their catalogs" now? Most of them are too old-fashioned to know how to make money in the new platforms.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- mrweasel 5y ago
  There is sort of a weird point buried in the story. YouTube have Content-ID, so why don't they just use it to ID the same videos across the platform when a DMCA take down notice is issued? Why only remove the one specific video? Surely a rights holder would be able to tell YouTube: Hey, these videos are mine. I don't want them on your platform. Why does he have to excuse YouTube from any past copyright violation in order to have them use Content-ID to remove his films? I don't understand YouTube logic here. Sure a waiver would be nice, but it's not required for Content-ID to work. As I read it, Vasallo want YouTube to use a tool they already have to police their platform.
  - chris11 5y ago
    Copyright is probably YouTube's biggest legal risk. ContentID was developed in response to lawsuits over copyright. The DMCA has major problems, but I think the safe harbor provision is extremely important. So does Google have liability for past copyright infringement when they quickly responded to his takedown requests? I don't think so. I'm not a lawyer, but if that's correct, signing a waiver won't cost anything. I understand why Google doesn't want to do more for someone who wants to sue them over their biggest legal risk.
    - Beldin 5y ago
      I am not a lawyer, but i think there is a substantial difference. specifically, if you issue a takedown and they don't take every copy down, you can't sue them for that. Basically, to me it reads as if any failures of the Content-ID system to protect your copyright are no longer youtube's problem, but yours. I can see why someone would not be okay with such a waiver. Mind, I could very well be wrong about the legal interpretation - but if the copyright owner made the same reasoning, he'd still end up at this conclusion. Even if it turns out to be legally incorrect.
    - finnthehuman 5y ago
      >but if that's correct, signing a waiver won't cost anything. If that's correct, it also doesn't cost YouTube anything to remove it from the contract. Obviously youtube thinks those terms do something, otherwise they wouldn't mind taking them out of the agreement. I see this all the time when it comes to contract negotiation. If one party has significantly less negotiation power, they're expected to immediately cave on ancillary terms under tortuous logic that they're unimportant. It's fine to accept terms on a "I'm not losing anything, because I don't care about losing it" basis, but never on a "I'm not losing anything, because it doesn't change anything" basis.
pjc50 5y ago
This is pushing "notify and staydown", and if anyone thinks youtube's current copyright takedown system is over-broad this will be even worse. A whole new category of things you'll be rejected at the upload phase.
- xhkkffbf 5y ago
  The thing is that "staydown" is something that Google has already implemented. They could easily track YouTube uploaders as they do, say, accounts accessing Google Cloud Platform. You can bet that people who abuse the GCP don't get to keep creating fake accounts. They could also turn on Content-ID for any video that is taken down through a legit request. The video is already on the servers. It doesn't need more processing. Indeed, I would guess that Google has pretty good technology for picking up duplicate copies. I rarely see the same video listed in a search with YouTube. It's almost as if they want people to create the fake account and keep uploading. I've seen this kind of game in other industries where someone has a wink-wink, nudge-nudge agreement with lawbreakers. Scrap metal processors, for instance, used to be very good at not asking questions. That wink-wink stuff changed when people got too fed up. Now the scrap metal processors are overburdened with plenty of regulation. It would be smart of Google to embrace some of simple techniques for blocking the very low-grade piracy described in the article. It will save them (and all of us) from overly broad regulation.
spacemanmatt 5y ago
Former Google fanboi here. If it causes YouTube some grief, I'm all for it. If they weren't profiting from piracy their policy of asking for indemnity to use Content-Id wouldn't be so skeezy.
- spacemanmatt 5y ago
  They're benefiting from the DMCA coming and going. It's exactly skeezy.
  - spacemanmatt 5y ago
    In legal terms jargon, they're using the DMCA as both sword and shield. It is expressly forbidden in many legal contexts by U.S. law, and as citizen-observers, we should condemn Google for this kind of policy.
- t-writescode 5y ago
  Be careful not to cut your own nose off to spite someone else’s face. Bad for Google and bad for everyone is still bad.
  - spacemanmatt 5y ago
    How is anyone but Google harmed by a lawsuit brought on fair terms, that exposes Google's leveraging of Content-Id to obtain indemnity for past actions which Google very likely profited from?

105 points by curmudgeon22 5y ago

gumby 5y ago

This guy Vasallo sounds like an entitled, self-righteous prick. YT offered him a fix but he didn’t want it.

lmz 5y ago
Yet you often hear in this forum about how content-id is bad and is too easily (ab)used to take down content. The reality is without content-id most rights holders would be as screwed as Vasallo.
- simonh 5y ago
  I don’t think Content-ID is bad, it’s just a tool and I can see how useful it is. My problem is with the process it is a part of. Google seems to treat Content-ID as basically the whole answer, when the process clearly needs more informed discretionary moderation. The recent upheld infringement action against someone playing Moonlight Sonata is a classic example of a failure. I’ve got no problem with Content-ID matching the piano piece with the scammy upload that claimed copyright. I do have a problem with Google sticking to to guns in such an egregiously obvious case of a spurious claim of copyright. Fortunately that specific issue has now been resolved.
  - tremon 5y ago
    Google seems to treat [their automated processes] as basically the whole answer, when the process clearly needs more informed [human effort] Isn't this basically their entire company policy?
    - chongli 5y ago
      You’re exactly right. Google resists hiring human moderators at every turn. I think they (reasonably) believe that it’s a slippery slope. As soon as they agree to moderate in some narrow part of their business then people will use that as a precedent to argue they should moderate elsewhere. At the end of this road is a place with so much moderation that their business model is no longer viable. We as a society have some difficult questions to face over the coming years. Do we want to surrender control over our lives to algorithms owned entirely by big tech companies?
      - selfhoster11 5y ago
        If their business model is not viable without human moderation, then perhaps it shouldn't exist. Surrendering control to "algorithms" sufficiently deeply is indistinguishable from Kafka's The Trial.
        chongli 5y ago
        Yeah I more-or-less made this point in my other reply to this thread. I yearn for the web of my childhood (mid 90’s) when web pages were small and highly personal. People formed communities via web rings. Search was very basic but largely unnecessary because the web was so small.
        selfhoster11 5y ago
        The Indie Web and Small Web movements (I count them as distinct) have done a good job of sparking the conversation so far, plus I guess Mastodon/ActivityPub helped to some extent. I think we'll see a mini-revival of the kind of content you're looking for.
        anchpop 5y ago
        Why shouldn’t it? Youtube has hundreds of millions of users and most of them don’t care the slightest bit about human moderation. If you only want to use platforms that have extensive human moderation systems, they exist (HN is one, I believe dang reads every comment).
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Why "yet"? Those two ideas don't conflict at all. It's not like it's a binary choice between the current version of content id or no content detection at all. It is easily abused, and biased toward claimers. The fact that contentid would go too far in solving his problem wouldn't be a reason for him to complain!
- anonymoushn 5y ago
  It's not reassuring to read that our only choices are two different ways for small creators to constantly be robbed
- simion314 5y ago
  IMO the content ID stuff is not the problem but the entire system, like before you take any drastic measure have a person check, also put as input in your stupid algorithm the channel information , a 5 years old channel with many subscribers would cause a lot of noise if your stupid algorithm causes issue so even from a lazy,selfish, stupid Google dev you would put a if(channelReputition> x) ...be more careful. After working a lot with angular1 I have a really low opinion about Google devs, maybe they have some stars in their team but this does not mean that the products are good OR we can argue the devs are great but they were required intentional to build crap.
- polytely 5y ago
  Well content ID is bad for some cases like classical music where if you perform a piece that is in the public domain it will get claimed because the system apparently finds it really hard to distinguish different performances of the same piece.
sircastor 5y ago
In a lot of ways, I think he’s smarter than a lot of people and companies. He’s not giving up his legal rights. I feel like we’ve all given YouTube permission to sidestep the law and do whatever the heck they want. We’ve empowered them at the loss of our own state-secured rights.
- Arainach 5y ago
  If you don't want to sign away those rights, you can manually track content and file DMCA requests. Per the article, YouTube is responding to those promptly. Vasallo isn't entitled to have his cake and eat it too - he can either opt into the automated system with all that implies, or take on the Sisyphean task of identifying infringing videos himself.
  - lupire 5y ago
    It's only sisyphean because Google actively hides their catalog from copyright enforcers. Responsibility flows from their self-imposed exclusivity.
    - hakfoo 5y ago
      There's an adversarial relationship there. We have ample evidence that rightsholders often overstep their legal bounds, demanding takedowns for fair use or even stuff they literally don't own. Giving them an easier way to browse their catalog could well increase the number or scale of bad-faith removal requests. I could frankly see some firms that imagine if they got the right tools, they could legal-DoS YouTube to death, and obviously all the former viewers would come running to their $15-per-month walled-gardens.
- ohazi 5y ago
  It looks like he's the "too smart for his own good" kind of smart. The only thing this lawsuit will do is instigate a careful review of every DMCA complaint he ever filed to make sure they were handled correctly. Those are the only "state-secured rights" he actually has. The whole point of the DMCA is the safe-harbor clause that indemnifies Google/Youtube from the claimed liabilities as long as they followed the DMCA process correctly. From a legal perspective, it doesn't matter one whit that the DMCA process is so broken that it's basically useless.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
raverbashing 5y ago
Yes If he was slightly smarter he would have put his content on YT, content-id'd it and have it monetized by the ads by either what he or somebody else posts. Instead he wants to fight it "the old way" which will not make him more money. Why do you think the artists are "selling their catalogs" now? Most of them are too old-fashioned to know how to make money in the new platforms.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mrweasel 5y ago
There is sort of a weird point buried in the story. YouTube have Content-ID, so why don't they just use it to ID the same videos across the platform when a DMCA take down notice is issued? Why only remove the one specific video? Surely a rights holder would be able to tell YouTube: Hey, these videos are mine. I don't want them on your platform. Why does he have to excuse YouTube from any past copyright violation in order to have them use Content-ID to remove his films? I don't understand YouTube logic here. Sure a waiver would be nice, but it's not required for Content-ID to work. As I read it, Vasallo want YouTube to use a tool they already have to police their platform.
- chris11 5y ago
  Copyright is probably YouTube's biggest legal risk. ContentID was developed in response to lawsuits over copyright. The DMCA has major problems, but I think the safe harbor provision is extremely important. So does Google have liability for past copyright infringement when they quickly responded to his takedown requests? I don't think so. I'm not a lawyer, but if that's correct, signing a waiver won't cost anything. I understand why Google doesn't want to do more for someone who wants to sue them over their biggest legal risk.
  - Beldin 5y ago
    I am not a lawyer, but i think there is a substantial difference. specifically, if you issue a takedown and they don't take every copy down, you can't sue them for that. Basically, to me it reads as if any failures of the Content-ID system to protect your copyright are no longer youtube's problem, but yours. I can see why someone would not be okay with such a waiver. Mind, I could very well be wrong about the legal interpretation - but if the copyright owner made the same reasoning, he'd still end up at this conclusion. Even if it turns out to be legally incorrect.
  - finnthehuman 5y ago
    >but if that's correct, signing a waiver won't cost anything. If that's correct, it also doesn't cost YouTube anything to remove it from the contract. Obviously youtube thinks those terms do something, otherwise they wouldn't mind taking them out of the agreement. I see this all the time when it comes to contract negotiation. If one party has significantly less negotiation power, they're expected to immediately cave on ancillary terms under tortuous logic that they're unimportant. It's fine to accept terms on a "I'm not losing anything, because I don't care about losing it" basis, but never on a "I'm not losing anything, because it doesn't change anything" basis.

pjc50 5y ago

This is pushing "notify and staydown", and if anyone thinks youtube's current copyright takedown system is over-broad this will be even worse. A whole new category of things you'll be rejected at the upload phase.

xhkkffbf 5y ago
The thing is that "staydown" is something that Google has already implemented. They could easily track YouTube uploaders as they do, say, accounts accessing Google Cloud Platform. You can bet that people who abuse the GCP don't get to keep creating fake accounts. They could also turn on Content-ID for any video that is taken down through a legit request. The video is already on the servers. It doesn't need more processing. Indeed, I would guess that Google has pretty good technology for picking up duplicate copies. I rarely see the same video listed in a search with YouTube. It's almost as if they want people to create the fake account and keep uploading. I've seen this kind of game in other industries where someone has a wink-wink, nudge-nudge agreement with lawbreakers. Scrap metal processors, for instance, used to be very good at not asking questions. That wink-wink stuff changed when people got too fed up. Now the scrap metal processors are overburdened with plenty of regulation. It would be smart of Google to embrace some of simple techniques for blocking the very low-grade piracy described in the article. It will save them (and all of us) from overly broad regulation.

spacemanmatt 5y ago

Former Google fanboi here. If it causes YouTube some grief, I'm all for it. If they weren't profiting from piracy their policy of asking for indemnity to use Content-Id wouldn't be so skeezy.

spacemanmatt 5y ago
They're benefiting from the DMCA coming and going. It's exactly skeezy.
- spacemanmatt 5y ago
  In legal terms jargon, they're using the DMCA as both sword and shield. It is expressly forbidden in many legal contexts by U.S. law, and as citizen-observers, we should condemn Google for this kind of policy.
t-writescode 5y ago
Be careful not to cut your own nose off to spite someone else’s face. Bad for Google and bad for everyone is still bad.
- spacemanmatt 5y ago
  How is anyone but Google harmed by a lawsuit brought on fair terms, that exposes Google's leveraging of Content-Id to obtain indemnity for past actions which Google very likely profited from?