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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 cop

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...
- derefr 4y ago
  > they've automated _everything_ to the point where it's impossible to escalate to a real person Well, yes, because any place where you can escalate to a human, would be flooded with people trying to step around the whole automated edifice without ever first trying to engage with it. People would post links to it on various forums saying "hey, doing X allows you to get a Google CSR on the line" (even though that person is only empowered to do a very specific thing, and probably doesn't have internal contacts for their equivalents in any other department), and then those CSRs would be demoted-in-practice to level-1 triage, even though level-1 triage is supposed to be the machine's job. As it so happens, Google do offer plenty of ways to engage with them — they just can't "say any of them out loud", or they'll be bombarded and rendered useless, as above. I'll give you a hint for three such side-channels, though: - There are public product discussion and bugs mailing lists (Google Groups) for many Google services. The engineers working on these products monitor these lists. - Some things you'd think Google develops in private, are actually developed in public. Examples: https://github.com/googleapis https://github.com/googleapis; https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform. You can file issues on these repos! - When Google engineers and, especially, Product Managers, put their public @google.com email addresses on conference presentations, they do that for a reason. They want you to reach out with questions/concerns about the thing they've built!
  - ericbarrett 4y ago
    > Well, yes, because any place where you can escalate to a human, would be flooded with people trying to step around the whole automated edifice without ever first trying to engage with it. This is because Google has no culture of human support, so when an agent does become available they're flooded with backlog. If Google started providing it, especially where money is involved, the backlog would eventually be caught up and this would no longer be a big issue. But I suspect they will never do it until forced by law because of the cost.
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
They can sort it out readily simply by implementing the part of the DMCA they don't support yet. If the falsely accused were allowed to submit a counternotice with instant restoration none of this trolling behavior would be happening
- kevinh 4y ago
  The DMCA doesn't support instant restoration for a counter-notice. They have to wait for a ~2 week period for the copyright owner to have time to sue alleged infringer.
SilverBirch 4y ago
Yes they could, hire a team to review every individual claim to a high standard. They just don’t want to pay the costs of running a service correctly.
- nhinck2 4y ago
  That's not how the dmca works.
shkkmo 4y ago
> 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 This wasn't just a DMCA take-down of specific material (which for it's faults, does have an appeal process and some legal remedies.) This was a complete account ban imposed by Google, where the only functioning appeal process is going viral on twitter. While we do need to change the DMCA to hold issuers of fraudulent or abusive take requests more responsible, in this instance we also need to hold Google responsible for choosing to create an automated copyright strike/ban system that is clearly ripe for abuse and that does not have a functional appeal processes for the average user.
bluGill 4y ago
What we need is the ability to face our accuser. YouTube is more or less doing the right thing execpt they are not giving anyone the legal contact information of the accuser. If I post something, and it is reported I should have the option to take my accuser to court for a false accusation.
mirashii 4y ago
Let's pretend for a minute that Google's DMCA system is actually necessary to comply with the law (other commenters below poke a number of holes in that claim, I don't need to repeat them here), and that it's the DMCA that's the primary method by which copyright strikes happen (also questionable and discussed in other comments). Even given those things, Google is complicit in the legal landscape being what it is today. Google has regularly defended the DMCA, and claimed it's working well. They're the largest lobbying organization in the tech world. They've even spent time and money defending other providers (e.g. Hotfile) in court for not implementing filtering, arguing that it's not necessary to receive DMCA's safe harbor provisions, but have implemented content identification and filtering in-spite of that.
- Nasrudith 4y ago
  You miss the context of "in the face of anti Section-230 and worse bills". How is defending /not/ filtering being complicit anyway? That is about as strong a "personal choice" a stance a company can take.
  - mirashii 4y ago
    Section 230 only provides more legal shield, not less. The OP to which I responded did not name other, non-DMCA legislation. A much stronger statement would be defending their right not to do it and then, crucially, not doing it.
tpoacher 4y ago
why do they have a legal responsibility to respond but are somehow exempt from the legal liability from acting in a harmful manner while failing to assert the legality of the claim?
- Nasrudith 4y ago
  Because that is the legal obligation they have. They have an obligation not to host reported infringers. They have no obligation to host you.
akhmatova 4y ago
They haven't sorted it out, but it's also fundamentally not really something that Google can sort out. Sure they can. They choose not to, for obvious reasons. If they were able to confirm, after the outcry, that the takedown claim was "abusive" -- by whatever criteria -- then there's no reason they couldn't have done that before they outcry. But the cost of doing that would start to chip away at, well, you know what.
codewench 4y ago
Also, a DMCA claim has (in theory at least) some recourse for filing false claims. Google's ContentID system however doesn't, at least not in any material sense, so why not file false claims? There is no legal repercussions, and the damage which can be done to your competition is well worth the minor bad press

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...

derefr 4y ago
> they've automated _everything_ to the point where it's impossible to escalate to a real person Well, yes, because any place where you can escalate to a human, would be flooded with people trying to step around the whole automated edifice without ever first trying to engage with it. People would post links to it on various forums saying "hey, doing X allows you to get a Google CSR on the line" (even though that person is only empowered to do a very specific thing, and probably doesn't have internal contacts for their equivalents in any other department), and then those CSRs would be demoted-in-practice to level-1 triage, even though level-1 triage is supposed to be the machine's job. As it so happens, Google do offer plenty of ways to engage with them — they just can't "say any of them out loud", or they'll be bombarded and rendered useless, as above. I'll give you a hint for three such side-channels, though: - There are public product discussion and bugs mailing lists (Google Groups) for many Google services. The engineers working on these products monitor these lists. - Some things you'd think Google develops in private, are actually developed in public. Examples: https://github.com/googleapis https://github.com/googleapis; https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform. You can file issues on these repos! - When Google engineers and, especially, Product Managers, put their public @google.com email addresses on conference presentations, they do that for a reason. They want you to reach out with questions/concerns about the thing they've built!
- ericbarrett 4y ago
  > Well, yes, because any place where you can escalate to a human, would be flooded with people trying to step around the whole automated edifice without ever first trying to engage with it. This is because Google has no culture of human support, so when an agent does become available they're flooded with backlog. If Google started providing it, especially where money is involved, the backlog would eventually be caught up and this would no longer be a big issue. But I suspect they will never do it until forced by law because of the cost.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

They can sort it out readily simply by implementing the part of the DMCA they don't support yet. If the falsely accused were allowed to submit a counternotice with instant restoration none of this trolling behavior would be happening

kevinh 4y ago
The DMCA doesn't support instant restoration for a counter-notice. They have to wait for a ~2 week period for the copyright owner to have time to sue alleged infringer.

SilverBirch 4y ago

Yes they could, hire a team to review every individual claim to a high standard. They just don’t want to pay the costs of running a service correctly.

nhinck2 4y ago
That's not how the dmca works.

shkkmo 4y ago

> 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 This wasn't just a DMCA take-down of specific material (which for it's faults, does have an appeal process and some legal remedies.) This was a complete account ban imposed by Google, where the only functioning appeal process is going viral on twitter. While we do need to change the DMCA to hold issuers of fraudulent or abusive take requests more responsible, in this instance we also need to hold Google responsible for choosing to create an automated copyright strike/ban system that is clearly ripe for abuse and that does not have a functional appeal processes for the average user.

bluGill 4y ago

What we need is the ability to face our accuser. YouTube is more or less doing the right thing execpt they are not giving anyone the legal contact information of the accuser. If I post something, and it is reported I should have the option to take my accuser to court for a false accusation.

mirashii 4y ago

Let's pretend for a minute that Google's DMCA system is actually necessary to comply with the law (other commenters below poke a number of holes in that claim, I don't need to repeat them here), and that it's the DMCA that's the primary method by which copyright strikes happen (also questionable and discussed in other comments). Even given those things, Google is complicit in the legal landscape being what it is today. Google has regularly defended the DMCA, and claimed it's working well. They're the largest lobbying organization in the tech world. They've even spent time and money defending other providers (e.g. Hotfile) in court for not implementing filtering, arguing that it's not necessary to receive DMCA's safe harbor provisions, but have implemented content identification and filtering in-spite of that.

Nasrudith 4y ago
You miss the context of "in the face of anti Section-230 and worse bills". How is defending /not/ filtering being complicit anyway? That is about as strong a "personal choice" a stance a company can take.
- mirashii 4y ago
  Section 230 only provides more legal shield, not less. The OP to which I responded did not name other, non-DMCA legislation. A much stronger statement would be defending their right not to do it and then, crucially, not doing it.

tpoacher 4y ago

why do they have a legal responsibility to respond but are somehow exempt from the legal liability from acting in a harmful manner while failing to assert the legality of the claim?

Nasrudith 4y ago
Because that is the legal obligation they have. They have an obligation not to host reported infringers. They have no obligation to host you.

akhmatova 4y ago

They haven't sorted it out, but it's also fundamentally not really something that Google can sort out. Sure they can. They choose not to, for obvious reasons. If they were able to confirm, after the outcry, that the takedown claim was "abusive" -- by whatever criteria -- then there's no reason they couldn't have done that before they outcry. But the cost of doing that would start to chip away at, well, you know what.

codewench 4y ago

Also, a DMCA claim has (in theory at least) some recourse for filing false claims. Google's ContentID system however doesn't, at least not in any material sense, so why not file false claims? There is no legal repercussions, and the damage which can be done to your competition is well worth the minor bad press