4 ms·

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

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 6y 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 6y ago
  It's only sisyphean because Google actively hides their catalog from copyright enforcers. Responsibility flows from their self-imposed exclusivity.
  - hakfoo 6y 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 6y 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.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  Some relevant discussion in the piece: > “Once a pirated movie was found, Mr. Vasallo and Plaintiff would send YouTube a takedown notice. YouTube would then remove the pirated video movie in its entirety. However, YouTube would not remove all matching videos, as YouTube would specifically only remove the one video from the one infringer related to the single infringing upload identified in the takedown notice. > “The same infringer would be free to upload the video again until three takedown notices were filed against him within a ninety-day period. Then and only then, would YouTube cancel the infringer’s username. The same infringer could then create a new username and begin the process of posting the pirated videos all over again,” the complaint notes. > Over the past several years, the law firm sent over 10,000 takedown notices for pirated films that were viewed more than 500 million times on YouTube. The video service maintains that this is how the DMCA works, but the movie tycoon argued that the company should do more. This (that is, uselessly) is also how YouTube used to handle domestic copyright claims. It is the process the law specifies. But they moved to their ContentID system despite not having to. Why? Whatever reasons applied there may also apply here.
  - Laforet 6y ago
    Assuming YouTube does dedup on their backend then this is the same issue that megaupload has to deal with before they were taken offline. Namely, if an infringing file has multiple links pointing to it, is the platform obliged to take down all of them when presented with a DMCA notice? If so, is the platform then obliged to take down every slightly different version of the same infringing content? Where do their duties end? As much as we malign content it is still more workable than having YouTube manually purging all videos that appears to be infringing based on very little information. And most content creators who sample copyrighted media under fair use have learned to cope. The more egregious issues are more concentrated around misattributed licenses and musical performance.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      > Assuming YouTube does dedup on their backend then this is the same issue that megaupload has to deal with before they were taken offline. This is not an assumption I would make. MegaUpload was a file transfer site. Videos on YouTube do not tend to be duplicates of other videos on YouTube.
extropy 6y ago
He's asking for Google to go into the censorship area of proactively not allowing to publish content. Google will fight nail and tooth against it. This is the opposite what US gov is calling for - to provide more transparency in the existing takedown practices. It seems that content platforms are cought between a rock and hard place here. And the innovation needed is not a technical one - we have implemented the current laws to their full extent and they don't seem to fix the problem. We need to move the law forward now.
- chongli 6y ago
  It seems that content platforms are cought between a rock and hard place here That’s because they chose to use technology to push growth above all other concerns. They’ve reached such a scale that it’s not feasible for humans to moderate the content users are posting. This is a problem of each platform’s own making. We need to move the law forward now. That’s one position. Another one is to argue that not every business model has a right to exist. These days I tend to find myself leaning towards the latter. I think we walk a dangerous road when we give too much power (and too little responsibility) to big tech companies like Google.
  - lupire 6y ago
    > Another one is to argue that not every business model has a right to exist. That what "move the law forward" means.

Arainach 6y 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 6y ago
It's only sisyphean because Google actively hides their catalog from copyright enforcers. Responsibility flows from their self-imposed exclusivity.
- hakfoo 6y 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 6y 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.

thaumasiotes 6y ago
Some relevant discussion in the piece: > “Once a pirated movie was found, Mr. Vasallo and Plaintiff would send YouTube a takedown notice. YouTube would then remove the pirated video movie in its entirety. However, YouTube would not remove all matching videos, as YouTube would specifically only remove the one video from the one infringer related to the single infringing upload identified in the takedown notice. > “The same infringer would be free to upload the video again until three takedown notices were filed against him within a ninety-day period. Then and only then, would YouTube cancel the infringer’s username. The same infringer could then create a new username and begin the process of posting the pirated videos all over again,” the complaint notes. > Over the past several years, the law firm sent over 10,000 takedown notices for pirated films that were viewed more than 500 million times on YouTube. The video service maintains that this is how the DMCA works, but the movie tycoon argued that the company should do more. This (that is, uselessly) is also how YouTube used to handle domestic copyright claims. It is the process the law specifies. But they moved to their ContentID system despite not having to. Why? Whatever reasons applied there may also apply here.
- Laforet 6y ago
  Assuming YouTube does dedup on their backend then this is the same issue that megaupload has to deal with before they were taken offline. Namely, if an infringing file has multiple links pointing to it, is the platform obliged to take down all of them when presented with a DMCA notice? If so, is the platform then obliged to take down every slightly different version of the same infringing content? Where do their duties end? As much as we malign content it is still more workable than having YouTube manually purging all videos that appears to be infringing based on very little information. And most content creators who sample copyrighted media under fair use have learned to cope. The more egregious issues are more concentrated around misattributed licenses and musical performance.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > Assuming YouTube does dedup on their backend then this is the same issue that megaupload has to deal with before they were taken offline. This is not an assumption I would make. MegaUpload was a file transfer site. Videos on YouTube do not tend to be duplicates of other videos on YouTube.

extropy 6y ago

He's asking for Google to go into the censorship area of proactively not allowing to publish content. Google will fight nail and tooth against it. This is the opposite what US gov is calling for - to provide more transparency in the existing takedown practices. It seems that content platforms are cought between a rock and hard place here. And the innovation needed is not a technical one - we have implemented the current laws to their full extent and they don't seem to fix the problem. We need to move the law forward now.

chongli 6y ago
It seems that content platforms are cought between a rock and hard place here That’s because they chose to use technology to push growth above all other concerns. They’ve reached such a scale that it’s not feasible for humans to moderate the content users are posting. This is a problem of each platform’s own making. We need to move the law forward now. That’s one position. Another one is to argue that not every business model has a right to exist. These days I tend to find myself leaning towards the latter. I think we walk a dangerous road when we give too much power (and too little responsibility) to big tech companies like Google.
- lupire 6y ago
  > Another one is to argue that not every business model has a right to exist. That what "move the law forward" means.