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From a tweet: https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1546419223466999809#m https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1546419223466999809#m > & thx for your patien

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.

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.