12 ms·

Lofi Girl: YouTube sorry for taking down music stream

204 points by ddpunicorn 4y ago

mirashii 4y ago
From a tweet: https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1546419223466999809#m https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1546419223466999809#m > & thx for your patience as we sorted it out But they haven't really sorted it out, have they? False copyright strike claims have been plaguing creators for years. This is just another case of someone needing social media and a huge reach or an inside connection to Google employees to get human eyes on a situation and "resolve" it, with no recourse on the lost revenue from the time it was down and no real guarantee it won't happen again.
- code51 4y ago
  Exactly. Google is not paying my Admob money even after 5 months has passed (no violation, self-close of account) Through the Kafkaesque maze of non-existent Adsense support, my case (they say) finally got escalated to a payment person at Google. Yet, I didn't hear update for the past month. You can't ask anything about your case and you can't get any time projection on when you'll hear anything back. If you don't have big traffic or huge social reach, you are expendable and can get stuck in a never-ending hell.
  - duped 4y ago
    Have you tried hiring a lawyer to send a letter to their legal team?
    - code51 4y ago
      I think the only letter the legal team expects through google-legal-support@google.com is a notice of sueing them. I really don't have the power to sue them in a US court. Do people have success when they notify (not sue) the legal team about Google acting against their Terms of Service?
      - ecshafer 4y ago
        If the amount is low enough you can sue them in small claims court in the US, which the amount is dependent on the state. Small claims court is geared more towards people self defending.
        code51 4y ago
        I'm not based in US so even contacting a lawyer about this thing is expensive. Lawyers here are not willing to handle international cases except big business cases.
        zdragnar 4y ago
        This may not apply to where you are, but you really don't need a lawyer for small claims courts in the US, since the monetary values are relatively small. That said, I'd be surprised if your court system required you to lawyer up for every (relatively) small contract infringement- contracts essentially become pointless for anything less than 20 hours of billable time from a lawyer.
      - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
        so, why can't you sue them in your country? If you are a citizen of another country doing business with Google it should follow that your country's courts have jurisdiction, if you're in the EU I imagine any EU country has jurisdiction (not because I imagine you are, but just as an example of how you might be able to pick a better jurisdiction - but that of course would be up to talking with a lawyer about)
      - kazinator 4y ago
        That's the mechanism that Youtube copyright claims should go through.
  - somehnguy 4y ago
    Adsense held my funds for 6+ years in a never ending loop of bank account not valid->can’t edit this bank account. Same kafkaesque maze of non-existent support. Beyond frustrating. One day it just suddenly let me fix the issue. No idea why. Your point is spot on, if you don’t have a huge social media following you might as well be invisible. This has to change, hopefully via law. Because it isn’t just a google problem.
    - code51 4y ago
      6+ years... wow. I'm afraid I'll end up like this: - unable to use Adsense/Admob for years - and not getting the money - money becomes basically nothing because of inflation
      - somehnguy 4y ago
        Yeah. I should probably note that I wasn’t continually working on the issue. It was attempted sporadically over that time period - mainly because google’s support maze ..err I mean ‘system’ is so terrible. I would spend ~20 minutes following different resolution paths, get mad at them not helping at all, forget about it because this level of frustration is not worth $100 to me, repeat a few times a year. Don’t get me wrong, $100 is $100 - I just wasn’t in dire need of it I guess.
      - Drakim 4y ago
        I'm banned for life from using adsense because my brother thought it would be a fun prank to repeatedly click the ads on my blog. I reported it myself before the next payout and received a generic "you have violated our policies" and a ban that's still there to this day some 15 years later.
        hn1337 4y ago
    - kazinator 4y ago
      > One day it just suddenly let me fix the issue. No idea why Wild guess: a bugfix was merged and deployed.
  - derefr 4y ago
    In the old days, bigcorps just wouldn't engage with ISVs directly at all. Instead, as an ISV, you'd engage the services of an 'integrator' or 'reseller' — a smaller-scale but still-large entity that you'd have a support contract with — where the integrator would then have a support contract with the bigcorp. If you were having an issue with the bigcorp's product, you'd complain to the reseller, and then they'd complain to the bigcorp. And because the bigcorp only had a few such resellers as clients, each reseller would actually be able to get the bigcorp on the line. This was (and still is) the IBM model for B2B software; and it was also the industry-standard model for game developers (interacting with the platform owner through a "publisher" — essentially taking the role here of an integrator.) It's probably still the industry-standard model for musicians to engage with big record labels. I'm honestly not sure why Google doesn't push for this model. Their focus on "scaling services as much as possible using as few human support staff as possible" means this model is essentially perfect for them. But they ignore it. Maybe because they think it'd make them look like a dinosaur? (I know they do do it in some places — we use GCP, and apparently, to be able to switch from card-based billing to invoice-based billing, we're required to also switch from direct GCP support, to a support-contract with a GCP reseller. So we'd be paying the reseller — the invoices would be riding as accounts-receivable on the reseller's books, rather than on Google's!)
    - zimpenfish 4y ago
      > I'm honestly not sure why Google doesn't push for ['integrator' or 'reseller' — a smaller-scale but still-large entity that you'd have a support contract with] model. Isn't this kinda what multi-channel networks are?
      - derefr 4y ago
        Kind of, but not really. YouTube MCNs are more like book publishers: none of them are very large in number of supply-side entities aggregated. Some of them have "popular" talent that could very well get YouTube's attention on their own, but none of them are doing collective bargaining for thousands of creators. So there are still tons of them; so YouTube doesn't really relate to them on a first-name basis. Like book publishers, MCNs mostly offer one of two benefits: either "we do the hard business parts of running a content-creation business for you" (not a lie, though it's a bad deal); or "we have at least one very popular creator, and so by joining with us, you're at-least-theoretically taking advantage of the attention they get." (When that's tenuous, as the popular creators aren't beholden to these groups and might leave at any time, and if they do, there goes your trump card in dealing with YouTube.)
  - aliqot 4y ago
    I have the opposite problem. I changed my payment info without telling Adsense so they send menacing paper letters that threaten the process of escheatment if I don't claim my funds. I decided I don't want their services in my life, and when it came to accepting their money I was fine with leaving that behind as well. Apparently when enough monthly checks stack up it causes problems. I've moved since then, so I hope the new tennant was wise enough to just send them some new payment info.
  - ticviking 4y ago
    I'm not a lawyer and this isn't advice... but it seems to me that kind of non-payment is probably the kind of thing you can resolve pretty quickly with appropriate legal action. A simple letter to legal saying, "your terms say you'll pay me X, it hasn't been paid. I'd like you to do so or I'll have to look at taking all appropriate steps to get paid." Will often get the right person to look at the issue. And if that fails actually filing the appropriate action almost always does.
- aetherson 4y ago
  They haven't sorted it out, but it's also fundamentally not really something that Google can sort out. They have a legal responsibility to respond to these copyright claims, with major penalties if they don't -- this is from DMCA and its successors, from an era of... I don't want to say "copyright maximalism," but something closer to copyright maximalism than the balance is today. We need to reform the legal responsibilities of sites like Youtube to enable them to take a more considered approach.
  - jerjerjer 4y ago
    We just need to fine copyright holders who abuse the system. Currently they are free to file as many false DMCA notices as they want, with zero drawbacks or consequences or costs for the filer and the burgen of proof on their victims. If every false DMCA notice resulted in a fine for copyright holder, or even better, filing X false DMCA notices resulted in a copyright holder's ban from filing more DMCA notices, then I think the problem would resolve itself in short order.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
      I agree with this. I have heard that some folks use DMCA as, basically, a "protection racket." Not sure why they would do that, because there are probably easier (and less risky) ways. But, as long as there's no penalty for filing a false DMCA claim, there's nothing stopping the "blunderbuss approach," which is hugely popular, with lawyers.
      - ticviking 4y ago
        It seems to me like a reasonable starting point for a solution is to allow hosts to bill claimants for "reasonable costs" (I assume that's legally well defined) for false claims. That provides an incentive for companies to respond to the screaming demand from their users to have better review.
  - richbell 4y ago
    > They haven't sorted it out, but it's also fundamentally not really something that Google can sort out. This isn't really true. The main grievance people have with Google is that they've automated _everything_ to the point where it's impossible to escalate to a real person. They enable this type of abuse because they make it easy for people to abuse the DMCA system with impunity. Even massive channels and companies have a hard time fighting back. A recent example: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/bungie-slams-youtubes-dmca-system-in-lawsuit-against-destiny-takedown-fraudsters/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/bungie-slams-you...
- guerrilla 4y ago
  I saw a whole long thread on Twitter of screenshots of (big) creators themselves getting copyright strikes for their own work and being like WTF. It seems a lot more rampant than people may be aware...
  - visarga 4y ago
    Just a couple of days ago there was a Noam Chomsky interview on the Machine Learning Street Talk channel. The whole video is almost 4h long, including a long intro. The MLST crew worked for months on it, posted it, and it got promptly banned. https://mobile.twitter.com/danbri/status/1545760855052193792 https://mobile.twitter.com/danbri/status/1545760855052193792 The reason - they quoted a small Richard Feynman clip from an archive BBC show. After fixing it took 12 more hours to unblock the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axuGfh4UR9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axuGfh4UR9Q Way to go BBC, protect your rights, make sure nobody cites any of your precious videos. /s
    - guerrilla 4y ago
      Damn that opening was beautiful. Like this format, never heard of this show. Noam is so old now though... Still listening, a lot more philosophical than I was expecting. He really quoted Bakunin? :) Thanks for sharing.
  - diob 4y ago
    I'm absolutely convinced that copyright is holding back progress at this point. It's only ever wielded by giant corporations, despite folks arguing it's to protect the little folks.
- SapporoChris 4y ago
  Yes, they absolutely have not sorted it out. However, currently when you're working for a social media company this sort of behavior while not normal, has to be accounted for. I wish I could be more sympathetic, there are people sharing information and entertainment on youtube that is priceless. But they're working for a faulty employer with a poor history of worker rights. Worker beware.
metadat 4y ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32049137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32049137 (1 day ago; 94 points, 16 comments)
- buildsjets 4y ago
  Not dupe. That article is about the stream being taken down. This article is about the stream being restored, and YouTube's reaction.
  - metadat 4y ago
    Oh, thanks! I've updated accordingly.
lucakiebel 4y ago
There has to be a way to make copyright takedowns less harmful to creators. It’s crazy that mostly anyone can take down a stream like this that easily
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  There is: don't rely on a single hosting provider for your material. Use Youtube as a CDN for material originating from a self-hosted Peertube instance and you're protected. Add some patronage/sponsorship/subscription options to replace or enhance any lost income from Youtube and you're set on that front as well. Centralised services are fine to use as content delivery networks but they are not reliable as single sources for your material. Self-hosting - i.e. where you own the domain through which the material is distributed, you can choose to leave the actual hosting to a hosting provider since you always have the option of redirecting the domain to another address should the hosting provider fold in some way - gives control over a far larger part of the distribution chain, if the copyright police wants to block you they'll have to move down in the protocol stack to take down your internet access. We're not there yet and should it ever come that far there are ways around that as well (IPFS, I2P etc.).
tmountain 4y ago
It's a pretty terrible situation for folks that build their livelihood curating a channel to have to accept the risk that their channel could be taken down at any moment due to a false positive regarding copyright violation. Making matters worse, it sounds like there's no real recourse beyond taking your grievance onto social media and hoping your channel has enough clout to get Youtube's attention. In this case, it sounds like it was a malicious action by an actual human being, but I've seen a lot of great content creators say things like, "I'm only going to play you 3 seconds of this song to avoid having my channel removed." Seems like there's gotta be a better way.
- corrral 4y ago
  > Seems like there's gotta be a better way. Video "channels" should be like podcasts: hosting and discovery largely separate. Subscription, client-side. YouTube shouldn't exist.
  - deltree7 4y ago
    Only a seriously out-of-touch elite dude will claim that something which organically became popular shouldn't exist. By your brilliant logic, Hacker News shouldn't exist.
    - corrral 4y ago
      People are upset about Spotify trying to own the podcast market. Meanwhile Web video is already in the position everyone dreads podcasts reaching, and has been for its entire existence. Assuming folks aren't wrong about RSS-based host-anywhere podcasts being better than having the entire market controlled by one provider, seems obvious video'd be better with the same model.
      - Nasrudith 4y ago
        The why is obvious - the bandwidth involved isn't quite so hospitible to small scales as podcasting. Either we need to revive Moore's law or start flogging electrons and photons for not going fast enough.
buzzwords 4y ago
YT couldn't care less if creators are unhappy with anything at the moment. There is no real competition, so creators have to just deal with it. I hope for a real competition, where there will be a mass exodus.
- BudaDude 4y ago
  This is becoming less true, TikTok is a major competitor. Yeah there is Youtube shorts, but its largely just reuploaded TikTok videos.
  - sillysaurusx 4y ago
    I’m delighted to see that people are recognizing what a threat tiktok poses. I don’t blame people for being skeptical. It’s easy to forget that big companies die due to being transcended, not replaced. The YouTube killer won’t look anything like YouTube, and tiktok fits that bill nicely. Case in point: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR2KUDn8/?k=1 https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR2KUDn8/?k=1 Google is realizing how bad it is that they can’t index TikToks, the same way they realized how bad it is they couldn’t index tweets in 2015 or so.
    - lovehashbrowns 4y ago
      Oh damn, that’s something I’ve never even considered before. I didn’t even think of using TikTok as a search engine. Damn, I was legitimately trying to not sign up for TikTok but if it can actually beat out Google in a search for terms like that, that’s actually huge
    - antifa 4y ago
      I missed the beginning of the video because it autoplayed while muted. Then I couldn't go back to the beginning because there are no video controls. Tiktok does not fit the bill. Tiktoks not being indexed is a win for content and UI quality.
  - ziddoap 4y ago
    Maybe for certain segments/formats, but TikTok doesn't do long-form videos, does it? Most of my YouTube watching is things like Anton Petrov's 15+ minute science videos, PBS Space Time, hour+ live streams, DefCon/Blackhat/Other Conference talks, and a hundred other things that I don't think are available or desired on TikToks platform (and maybe not even supported? I'm not sure what the max video length is on TikTok).
gravitate 4y ago
I downloaded this with YouTube -DLP which is a (working) fork of YouTube-DL, so I have a local copy I can play when coding & can play it in offline environments without needing a YouTube tab open in my browser which gets in the way of web development. It plays in VLC which isn’t as distracting. I love that kind of music for getting in the zone. It’s clear that many people have a tab open listening to this due to the way YouTube shows all the active listeners in the stream. I prefer my local copy though.
ComputerCat 4y ago
Isn't the saying "innocent until proven guilty"?
- ProAm 4y ago
  This isnt a court of law, it's a third party platform and you are subject to their whims and TOS.
- npteljes 4y ago
  In this current context, it's the claims that are innocent (valid), until they are proven guilty (fraudulent).
rasz 4y ago
Here is a video capture of recorded apology: https://imgur.com/gallery/i2NpK https://imgur.com/gallery/i2NpK
- AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
  That's not at all accurate. It was more like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4
deelowe 4y ago
yep. A big WTF from me when this happened. lofi streams have replaced SomaFM for me for several years now.
toolz 4y ago
I wish these creators with other social media presence would use their platforms to move their audience to something besides youtube (they can even keep their youtube presence). Content creators are the only ones with the power to build up a competing platform such that youtube has to stop hurting the creators or risk losing their monopoly status as the de-factor video hosting platform. Imagine if this content creator chose an alternative and linked to it in this tweet and everyone else started doing similarly. At the rate youtube is harming content creators, doesn't seem like it'd take long before users instinctively checked the competitions site anytime content gets taken down which might eventually turn into overthrowing their monopoly if they don't fix their issues.
- StewardMcOy 4y ago
  I think it's a really, really tough sell to move people off YouTube. The network effects are just too good. I might be projecting my preferences onto the masses here, but I suspect this is a common feeling. I've been watching quite a few videos from a fairly popular Youtube channel, tldrnews. At the beginning of a lot of their videos, they've been advertising an alternate video platform, Nebula, with exclusive and more in-depth videos. Thing is, even though I might want to watch those videos, I've never been tempted to even click on the link. It's not that Nebula costs money. Even if it were free, I don't really want to be watching videos on other services. I hate the way YouTube is run. I hate ContentID, I hate the copyright strike system, I hate the recommendation algorithm, I hate how difficult it is to get a real human to deal with the issues on the site. But everything's there, and that's what I want most of all. It's a strange position to take, especially when I wish everyone would go back to having their own sites rather than just post on social media, but when it comes to video content, I want it to be like Star Trek. I want to be able to search in one place and be able to find exactly what I'm looking for. I know it's greedy and irrational, but I want everything centralized into one service so I don't have to think about where to go to watch a thing. I want a monopoly, but without the problems that come with a monopoly, and I suspect a large enough percentage of users feel the same way that other platforms just can't get off the ground.
  - corrral 4y ago
_23sd 4y ago
The abuse of this system is only going to get worse as high profile cases like Bungie's [1] highlight how exploitable it is, even against big companies. It seems to me, as an outsider to YouTube's systems, that the system of "copyright strikes" (which is not prescribed by the DMCA, it's a more recent demand concocted by MPAA and RIAA lawyers) has caused a lot of harm to good faith creators while determined infringers simply make a new account when one gets banned. Is there any real helpful effect of using strikes that copyright owners couldn't get from just taking action on individual videos? [1] https://torrentfreak.com/digital-trails-how-bungie-identified-a-mass-sender-of-fake-dmca-notices-220624/ https://torrentfreak.com/digital-trails-how-bungie-identifie...
- lom888 4y ago
  The company I work for builds websites for small and medium sized businesses throughout the US. For a period of about two years we would host a copy of a video that we made for the customer on YouTube and use it on customer websites. There came a point where a handful dissatisfied customers claimed infringement for some of these videos and our YouTube channel (thousands of videos) was terminated without appeal, even though the customer had always provided authorization and the contents for these videos. Fortunately we'd decided to self-host our videos before the channel was terminated but there were cases where we lost content that we'd created.
- judge2020 4y ago
  > the system of "copyright strikes" (which is not prescribed by the DMCA, it's a more recent demand concocted by MPAA and RIAA lawyers) The Bungie case was regarding actual DMCA takedown requests. So was the Lofi girl stream given "takedown notice" and how it contributes to the 3-strike system: https://twitter.com/lofigirl/status/1546058721792507906?s=20 https://twitter.com/lofigirl/status/1546058721792507906?s=20
batmaniam 4y ago
The DMCA has provisions that is supposed to protect against copyright false claims. But every article I read about false claims always ends with some kind of definition of copyright. Like in this article, 'What is Copyright?'. It never goes beyond that ever. What about restitution to the people who were wrongly taken down? Why is false DMCA takedowns so prevalent if it's illegal per DMCA? Turns out NO ONE has ever been convicted of a false DMCA claim, and that's by design. In fact, the phenomenon has its own name: Copyfraud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud That's what happens when we let businessmen write our laws. A fix to how Google handles DMCA isn't enough, DMCA is fundamentally user hostile. We need to fix this at the political level.
- econnors 4y ago
  Bungie is seeking damages against false claims: https://www.engadget.com/bungie-sues-destiny-2-youtuber-lord-nazo-fake-dmca-notices-000022846.html https://www.engadget.com/bungie-sues-destiny-2-youtuber-lord...
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    Great, Bungie is a big corporation that can pay lawyers for things like this. Individual creators are not in an equivalent position and cannot reasonably seek damages for false claims, unless additional legal framework is added to support them.
nafizh 4y ago
There should be remuneration for people whose material is wrongfully taken down, even if temporarily. I bet that will force these platforms to deliberate more before taking any action.
Cyberdog 4y ago
That poor kid has been studying for two and a half years now. I really hope she's able to pass that test; it seems like a real nightmare. That aside, do we know the claim was really bogus? The article doesn't seem to mention that. It does seem like a rather easy grift to just nab a bunch of MP3 files plus some artwork from DeviantArt, throw them into IceCast or whatever, and go live on YouTube. I've listened to a few similar streams (not this one in particular since the "lo-fi hip-hop" genre isn't my thing) and just kinda always assumed the whole YT meta was basically a bunch of pirate radio stations.
- cjbconnor 4y ago
  Lofi girl is part of Lofi Records (https://lofigirl.com https://lofigirl.com), and I think they only play their own songs.
  - Cyberdog 4y ago
    Oh, okay, interesting. I didn't realize there was a whole record label behind it.
mrkramer 4y ago
After all this publicity Lofi Girl will become even more popular.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
0xbadcafebee 4y ago
YouTube screws content creators over, and content creators complain, and then go right back to YouTube, so that YouTube has no incentive to fix anything. "Oh, you don't like it? Are you going to leave? No? K then." YouTube makes its money because there are eyeballs on screens. As long as somebody is making content for those eyeballs, and the eyeballs remain on YouTube, there is literally z e r o incentive for them to change.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Lofi girl legit had a massive community. My teenage cousins use the live chat as a hangout zone.

204 points by ddpunicorn 4y ago

From a tweet: https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1546419223466999809#m https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1546419223466999809#m > & thx for your patience as we sorted it out But they haven't really sorted it out, have they? False copyright strike claims have been plaguing creators for years. This is just another case of someone needing social media and a huge reach or an inside connection to Google employees to get human eyes on a situation and "resolve" it, with no recourse on the lost revenue from the time it was down and no real guarantee it won't happen again.

code51 4y ago
Exactly. Google is not paying my Admob money even after 5 months has passed (no violation, self-close of account) Through the Kafkaesque maze of non-existent Adsense support, my case (they say) finally got escalated to a payment person at Google. Yet, I didn't hear update for the past month. You can't ask anything about your case and you can't get any time projection on when you'll hear anything back. If you don't have big traffic or huge social reach, you are expendable and can get stuck in a never-ending hell.
- duped 4y ago
  Have you tried hiring a lawyer to send a letter to their legal team?
  - code51 4y ago
    I think the only letter the legal team expects through google-legal-support@google.com is a notice of sueing them. I really don't have the power to sue them in a US court. Do people have success when they notify (not sue) the legal team about Google acting against their Terms of Service?
    - ecshafer 4y ago
      If the amount is low enough you can sue them in small claims court in the US, which the amount is dependent on the state. Small claims court is geared more towards people self defending.
      - code51 4y ago
        I'm not based in US so even contacting a lawyer about this thing is expensive. Lawyers here are not willing to handle international cases except big business cases.
        zdragnar 4y ago
        This may not apply to where you are, but you really don't need a lawyer for small claims courts in the US, since the monetary values are relatively small. That said, I'd be surprised if your court system required you to lawyer up for every (relatively) small contract infringement- contracts essentially become pointless for anything less than 20 hours of billable time from a lawyer.
    - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
      so, why can't you sue them in your country? If you are a citizen of another country doing business with Google it should follow that your country's courts have jurisdiction, if you're in the EU I imagine any EU country has jurisdiction (not because I imagine you are, but just as an example of how you might be able to pick a better jurisdiction - but that of course would be up to talking with a lawyer about)
    - kazinator 4y ago
      That's the mechanism that Youtube copyright claims should go through.
- somehnguy 4y ago
  Adsense held my funds for 6+ years in a never ending loop of bank account not valid->can’t edit this bank account. Same kafkaesque maze of non-existent support. Beyond frustrating. One day it just suddenly let me fix the issue. No idea why. Your point is spot on, if you don’t have a huge social media following you might as well be invisible. This has to change, hopefully via law. Because it isn’t just a google problem.
  - code51 4y ago
    6+ years... wow. I'm afraid I'll end up like this: - unable to use Adsense/Admob for years - and not getting the money - money becomes basically nothing because of inflation
    - somehnguy 4y ago
      Yeah. I should probably note that I wasn’t continually working on the issue. It was attempted sporadically over that time period - mainly because google’s support maze ..err I mean ‘system’ is so terrible. I would spend ~20 minutes following different resolution paths, get mad at them not helping at all, forget about it because this level of frustration is not worth $100 to me, repeat a few times a year. Don’t get me wrong, $100 is $100 - I just wasn’t in dire need of it I guess.
    - Drakim 4y ago
      I'm banned for life from using adsense because my brother thought it would be a fun prank to repeatedly click the ads on my blog. I reported it myself before the next payout and received a generic "you have violated our policies" and a ban that's still there to this day some 15 years later.
      - hn1337 4y ago
  - kazinator 4y ago
    > One day it just suddenly let me fix the issue. No idea why Wild guess: a bugfix was merged and deployed.
- derefr 4y ago
  In the old days, bigcorps just wouldn't engage with ISVs directly at all. Instead, as an ISV, you'd engage the services of an 'integrator' or 'reseller' — a smaller-scale but still-large entity that you'd have a support contract with — where the integrator would then have a support contract with the bigcorp. If you were having an issue with the bigcorp's product, you'd complain to the reseller, and then they'd complain to the bigcorp. And because the bigcorp only had a few such resellers as clients, each reseller would actually be able to get the bigcorp on the line. This was (and still is) the IBM model for B2B software; and it was also the industry-standard model for game developers (interacting with the platform owner through a "publisher" — essentially taking the role here of an integrator.) It's probably still the industry-standard model for musicians to engage with big record labels. I'm honestly not sure why Google doesn't push for this model. Their focus on "scaling services as much as possible using as few human support staff as possible" means this model is essentially perfect for them. But they ignore it. Maybe because they think it'd make them look like a dinosaur? (I know they do do it in some places — we use GCP, and apparently, to be able to switch from card-based billing to invoice-based billing, we're required to also switch from direct GCP support, to a support-contract with a GCP reseller. So we'd be paying the reseller — the invoices would be riding as accounts-receivable on the reseller's books, rather than on Google's!)
  - zimpenfish 4y ago
    > I'm honestly not sure why Google doesn't push for ['integrator' or 'reseller' — a smaller-scale but still-large entity that you'd have a support contract with] model. Isn't this kinda what multi-channel networks are?
    - derefr 4y ago
      Kind of, but not really. YouTube MCNs are more like book publishers: none of them are very large in number of supply-side entities aggregated. Some of them have "popular" talent that could very well get YouTube's attention on their own, but none of them are doing collective bargaining for thousands of creators. So there are still tons of them; so YouTube doesn't really relate to them on a first-name basis. Like book publishers, MCNs mostly offer one of two benefits: either "we do the hard business parts of running a content-creation business for you" (not a lie, though it's a bad deal); or "we have at least one very popular creator, and so by joining with us, you're at-least-theoretically taking advantage of the attention they get." (When that's tenuous, as the popular creators aren't beholden to these groups and might leave at any time, and if they do, there goes your trump card in dealing with YouTube.)
- aliqot 4y ago
  I have the opposite problem. I changed my payment info without telling Adsense so they send menacing paper letters that threaten the process of escheatment if I don't claim my funds. I decided I don't want their services in my life, and when it came to accepting their money I was fine with leaving that behind as well. Apparently when enough monthly checks stack up it causes problems. I've moved since then, so I hope the new tennant was wise enough to just send them some new payment info.
- ticviking 4y ago
  I'm not a lawyer and this isn't advice... but it seems to me that kind of non-payment is probably the kind of thing you can resolve pretty quickly with appropriate legal action. A simple letter to legal saying, "your terms say you'll pay me X, it hasn't been paid. I'd like you to do so or I'll have to look at taking all appropriate steps to get paid." Will often get the right person to look at the issue. And if that fails actually filing the appropriate action almost always does.
aetherson 4y ago
They haven't sorted it out, but it's also fundamentally not really something that Google can sort out. They have a legal responsibility to respond to these copyright claims, with major penalties if they don't -- this is from DMCA and its successors, from an era of... I don't want to say "copyright maximalism," but something closer to copyright maximalism than the balance is today. We need to reform the legal responsibilities of sites like Youtube to enable them to take a more considered approach.
- jerjerjer 4y ago
  We just need to fine copyright holders who abuse the system. Currently they are free to file as many false DMCA notices as they want, with zero drawbacks or consequences or costs for the filer and the burgen of proof on their victims. If every false DMCA notice resulted in a fine for copyright holder, or even better, filing X false DMCA notices resulted in a copyright holder's ban from filing more DMCA notices, then I think the problem would resolve itself in short order.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    I agree with this. I have heard that some folks use DMCA as, basically, a "protection racket." Not sure why they would do that, because there are probably easier (and less risky) ways. But, as long as there's no penalty for filing a false DMCA claim, there's nothing stopping the "blunderbuss approach," which is hugely popular, with lawyers.
    - ticviking 4y ago
      It seems to me like a reasonable starting point for a solution is to allow hosts to bill claimants for "reasonable costs" (I assume that's legally well defined) for false claims. That provides an incentive for companies to respond to the screaming demand from their users to have better review.
- richbell 4y ago
  > They haven't sorted it out, but it's also fundamentally not really something that Google can sort out. This isn't really true. The main grievance people have with Google is that they've automated _everything_ to the point where it's impossible to escalate to a real person. They enable this type of abuse because they make it easy for people to abuse the DMCA system with impunity. Even massive channels and companies have a hard time fighting back. A recent example: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/bungie-slams-youtubes-dmca-system-in-lawsuit-against-destiny-takedown-fraudsters/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/bungie-slams-you...
guerrilla 4y ago
I saw a whole long thread on Twitter of screenshots of (big) creators themselves getting copyright strikes for their own work and being like WTF. It seems a lot more rampant than people may be aware...
- visarga 4y ago
  Just a couple of days ago there was a Noam Chomsky interview on the Machine Learning Street Talk channel. The whole video is almost 4h long, including a long intro. The MLST crew worked for months on it, posted it, and it got promptly banned. https://mobile.twitter.com/danbri/status/1545760855052193792 https://mobile.twitter.com/danbri/status/1545760855052193792 The reason - they quoted a small Richard Feynman clip from an archive BBC show. After fixing it took 12 more hours to unblock the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axuGfh4UR9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axuGfh4UR9Q Way to go BBC, protect your rights, make sure nobody cites any of your precious videos. /s
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    Damn that opening was beautiful. Like this format, never heard of this show. Noam is so old now though... Still listening, a lot more philosophical than I was expecting. He really quoted Bakunin? :) Thanks for sharing.
- diob 4y ago
  I'm absolutely convinced that copyright is holding back progress at this point. It's only ever wielded by giant corporations, despite folks arguing it's to protect the little folks.
SapporoChris 4y ago
Yes, they absolutely have not sorted it out. However, currently when you're working for a social media company this sort of behavior while not normal, has to be accounted for. I wish I could be more sympathetic, there are people sharing information and entertainment on youtube that is priceless. But they're working for a faulty employer with a poor history of worker rights. Worker beware.

metadat 4y ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32049137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32049137 (1 day ago; 94 points, 16 comments)

buildsjets 4y ago
Not dupe. That article is about the stream being taken down. This article is about the stream being restored, and YouTube's reaction.
- metadat 4y ago
  Oh, thanks! I've updated accordingly.

lucakiebel 4y ago

There has to be a way to make copyright takedowns less harmful to creators. It’s crazy that mostly anyone can take down a stream like this that easily

the_third_wave 4y ago
There is: don't rely on a single hosting provider for your material. Use Youtube as a CDN for material originating from a self-hosted Peertube instance and you're protected. Add some patronage/sponsorship/subscription options to replace or enhance any lost income from Youtube and you're set on that front as well. Centralised services are fine to use as content delivery networks but they are not reliable as single sources for your material. Self-hosting - i.e. where you own the domain through which the material is distributed, you can choose to leave the actual hosting to a hosting provider since you always have the option of redirecting the domain to another address should the hosting provider fold in some way - gives control over a far larger part of the distribution chain, if the copyright police wants to block you they'll have to move down in the protocol stack to take down your internet access. We're not there yet and should it ever come that far there are ways around that as well (IPFS, I2P etc.).

tmountain 4y ago

It's a pretty terrible situation for folks that build their livelihood curating a channel to have to accept the risk that their channel could be taken down at any moment due to a false positive regarding copyright violation. Making matters worse, it sounds like there's no real recourse beyond taking your grievance onto social media and hoping your channel has enough clout to get Youtube's attention. In this case, it sounds like it was a malicious action by an actual human being, but I've seen a lot of great content creators say things like, "I'm only going to play you 3 seconds of this song to avoid having my channel removed." Seems like there's gotta be a better way.

corrral 4y ago
> Seems like there's gotta be a better way. Video "channels" should be like podcasts: hosting and discovery largely separate. Subscription, client-side. YouTube shouldn't exist.
- deltree7 4y ago
  Only a seriously out-of-touch elite dude will claim that something which organically became popular shouldn't exist. By your brilliant logic, Hacker News shouldn't exist.
  - corrral 4y ago
    People are upset about Spotify trying to own the podcast market. Meanwhile Web video is already in the position everyone dreads podcasts reaching, and has been for its entire existence. Assuming folks aren't wrong about RSS-based host-anywhere podcasts being better than having the entire market controlled by one provider, seems obvious video'd be better with the same model.
    - Nasrudith 4y ago
      The why is obvious - the bandwidth involved isn't quite so hospitible to small scales as podcasting. Either we need to revive Moore's law or start flogging electrons and photons for not going fast enough.

buzzwords 4y ago

YT couldn't care less if creators are unhappy with anything at the moment. There is no real competition, so creators have to just deal with it. I hope for a real competition, where there will be a mass exodus.

BudaDude 4y ago
This is becoming less true, TikTok is a major competitor. Yeah there is Youtube shorts, but its largely just reuploaded TikTok videos.
- sillysaurusx 4y ago
  I’m delighted to see that people are recognizing what a threat tiktok poses. I don’t blame people for being skeptical. It’s easy to forget that big companies die due to being transcended, not replaced. The YouTube killer won’t look anything like YouTube, and tiktok fits that bill nicely. Case in point: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR2KUDn8/?k=1 https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR2KUDn8/?k=1 Google is realizing how bad it is that they can’t index TikToks, the same way they realized how bad it is they couldn’t index tweets in 2015 or so.
  - lovehashbrowns 4y ago
    Oh damn, that’s something I’ve never even considered before. I didn’t even think of using TikTok as a search engine. Damn, I was legitimately trying to not sign up for TikTok but if it can actually beat out Google in a search for terms like that, that’s actually huge
  - antifa 4y ago
    I missed the beginning of the video because it autoplayed while muted. Then I couldn't go back to the beginning because there are no video controls. Tiktok does not fit the bill. Tiktoks not being indexed is a win for content and UI quality.
- ziddoap 4y ago
  Maybe for certain segments/formats, but TikTok doesn't do long-form videos, does it? Most of my YouTube watching is things like Anton Petrov's 15+ minute science videos, PBS Space Time, hour+ live streams, DefCon/Blackhat/Other Conference talks, and a hundred other things that I don't think are available or desired on TikToks platform (and maybe not even supported? I'm not sure what the max video length is on TikTok).

gravitate 4y ago

I downloaded this with YouTube -DLP which is a (working) fork of YouTube-DL, so I have a local copy I can play when coding & can play it in offline environments without needing a YouTube tab open in my browser which gets in the way of web development. It plays in VLC which isn’t as distracting. I love that kind of music for getting in the zone. It’s clear that many people have a tab open listening to this due to the way YouTube shows all the active listeners in the stream. I prefer my local copy though.

ComputerCat 4y ago

Isn't the saying "innocent until proven guilty"?

ProAm 4y ago
This isnt a court of law, it's a third party platform and you are subject to their whims and TOS.
npteljes 4y ago
In this current context, it's the claims that are innocent (valid), until they are proven guilty (fraudulent).

rasz 4y ago

Here is a video capture of recorded apology: https://imgur.com/gallery/i2NpK https://imgur.com/gallery/i2NpK

AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
That's not at all accurate. It was more like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4

deelowe 4y ago

yep. A big WTF from me when this happened. lofi streams have replaced SomaFM for me for several years now.

toolz 4y ago

I wish these creators with other social media presence would use their platforms to move their audience to something besides youtube (they can even keep their youtube presence). Content creators are the only ones with the power to build up a competing platform such that youtube has to stop hurting the creators or risk losing their monopoly status as the de-factor video hosting platform. Imagine if this content creator chose an alternative and linked to it in this tweet and everyone else started doing similarly. At the rate youtube is harming content creators, doesn't seem like it'd take long before users instinctively checked the competitions site anytime content gets taken down which might eventually turn into overthrowing their monopoly if they don't fix their issues.

StewardMcOy 4y ago
I think it's a really, really tough sell to move people off YouTube. The network effects are just too good. I might be projecting my preferences onto the masses here, but I suspect this is a common feeling. I've been watching quite a few videos from a fairly popular Youtube channel, tldrnews. At the beginning of a lot of their videos, they've been advertising an alternate video platform, Nebula, with exclusive and more in-depth videos. Thing is, even though I might want to watch those videos, I've never been tempted to even click on the link. It's not that Nebula costs money. Even if it were free, I don't really want to be watching videos on other services. I hate the way YouTube is run. I hate ContentID, I hate the copyright strike system, I hate the recommendation algorithm, I hate how difficult it is to get a real human to deal with the issues on the site. But everything's there, and that's what I want most of all. It's a strange position to take, especially when I wish everyone would go back to having their own sites rather than just post on social media, but when it comes to video content, I want it to be like Star Trek. I want to be able to search in one place and be able to find exactly what I'm looking for. I know it's greedy and irrational, but I want everything centralized into one service so I don't have to think about where to go to watch a thing. I want a monopoly, but without the problems that come with a monopoly, and I suspect a large enough percentage of users feel the same way that other platforms just can't get off the ground.
- corrral 4y ago

_23sd 4y ago

The abuse of this system is only going to get worse as high profile cases like Bungie's [1] highlight how exploitable it is, even against big companies. It seems to me, as an outsider to YouTube's systems, that the system of "copyright strikes" (which is not prescribed by the DMCA, it's a more recent demand concocted by MPAA and RIAA lawyers) has caused a lot of harm to good faith creators while determined infringers simply make a new account when one gets banned. Is there any real helpful effect of using strikes that copyright owners couldn't get from just taking action on individual videos? [1] https://torrentfreak.com/digital-trails-how-bungie-identified-a-mass-sender-of-fake-dmca-notices-220624/ https://torrentfreak.com/digital-trails-how-bungie-identifie...

lom888 4y ago
The company I work for builds websites for small and medium sized businesses throughout the US. For a period of about two years we would host a copy of a video that we made for the customer on YouTube and use it on customer websites. There came a point where a handful dissatisfied customers claimed infringement for some of these videos and our YouTube channel (thousands of videos) was terminated without appeal, even though the customer had always provided authorization and the contents for these videos. Fortunately we'd decided to self-host our videos before the channel was terminated but there were cases where we lost content that we'd created.
judge2020 4y ago
> the system of "copyright strikes" (which is not prescribed by the DMCA, it's a more recent demand concocted by MPAA and RIAA lawyers) The Bungie case was regarding actual DMCA takedown requests. So was the Lofi girl stream given "takedown notice" and how it contributes to the 3-strike system: https://twitter.com/lofigirl/status/1546058721792507906?s=20 https://twitter.com/lofigirl/status/1546058721792507906?s=20

batmaniam 4y ago

The DMCA has provisions that is supposed to protect against copyright false claims. But every article I read about false claims always ends with some kind of definition of copyright. Like in this article, 'What is Copyright?'. It never goes beyond that ever. What about restitution to the people who were wrongly taken down? Why is false DMCA takedowns so prevalent if it's illegal per DMCA? Turns out NO ONE has ever been convicted of a false DMCA claim, and that's by design. In fact, the phenomenon has its own name: Copyfraud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud That's what happens when we let businessmen write our laws. A fix to how Google handles DMCA isn't enough, DMCA is fundamentally user hostile. We need to fix this at the political level.

econnors 4y ago
Bungie is seeking damages against false claims: https://www.engadget.com/bungie-sues-destiny-2-youtuber-lord-nazo-fake-dmca-notices-000022846.html https://www.engadget.com/bungie-sues-destiny-2-youtuber-lord...
- nerdponx 4y ago
  Great, Bungie is a big corporation that can pay lawyers for things like this. Individual creators are not in an equivalent position and cannot reasonably seek damages for false claims, unless additional legal framework is added to support them.

nafizh 4y ago

There should be remuneration for people whose material is wrongfully taken down, even if temporarily. I bet that will force these platforms to deliberate more before taking any action.

Cyberdog 4y ago

That poor kid has been studying for two and a half years now. I really hope she's able to pass that test; it seems like a real nightmare. That aside, do we know the claim was really bogus? The article doesn't seem to mention that. It does seem like a rather easy grift to just nab a bunch of MP3 files plus some artwork from DeviantArt, throw them into IceCast or whatever, and go live on YouTube. I've listened to a few similar streams (not this one in particular since the "lo-fi hip-hop" genre isn't my thing) and just kinda always assumed the whole YT meta was basically a bunch of pirate radio stations.

cjbconnor 4y ago
Lofi girl is part of Lofi Records (https://lofigirl.com https://lofigirl.com), and I think they only play their own songs.
- Cyberdog 4y ago
  Oh, okay, interesting. I didn't realize there was a whole record label behind it.

mrkramer 4y ago

After all this publicity Lofi Girl will become even more popular.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

0xbadcafebee 4y ago

YouTube screws content creators over, and content creators complain, and then go right back to YouTube, so that YouTube has no incentive to fix anything. "Oh, you don't like it? Are you going to leave? No? K then." YouTube makes its money because there are eyeballs on screens. As long as somebody is making content for those eyeballs, and the eyeballs remain on YouTube, there is literally z e r o incentive for them to change.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

Lofi girl legit had a massive community. My teenage cousins use the live chat as a hangout zone.