7 ms·

More phony copyright claims for YouTube creators

78 points by relwin 4y ago

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
Wouldn't it be great if, for every false copyright claim, the person/entity making the claim received strikes and had to compensate the person subjected to the false claim? Make abusing the system costly? Attempt to compensate victims of the copyright claim system abuse? Maybe?
- pifm_guy 4y ago
  Even $50 would probably be decent compensation for most YouTubers. It would probably reign in false claims dramatically, and reduce the numbers of appeals enough that real humans can check each one.
  - cyberphobe 4y ago
    Yeah probably, but wouldn’t really be sufficiently punitive to really deal with the problem. It should be a % of the abuser’s revenue
- endisneigh 4y ago
  This would only work if a successful claim resulted in the YouTuber having to pay, otherwise such an asymmetric situation would never be sustainable. Given how many popular videos sit on the edge of copyright abuse it’s not really in Google’s interest to do this anyway.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
    I would agree with this. It should work both ways. There may be a few edge cases where it really wasn't clear if it was or was not copyright infringement; both cases were reasonable. These would be the exception where neither party may be fined.
    - Mindwipe 4y ago
      And how do you figure out what these cases are without spending $2 million in court fees each time?
  - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
    This is how the DMCA, as written, is supposed to work. Step 1: Alice uploads some media to Bob's website Step 2: Charlie decides Alice's upload violates his copyright Step 3: Charlie sends Bob a DMCA takedown notice. Step 4: Bob takes down Alice's media, issues Alice a notice that he's received a claim, and is now protected from being sued by Charlie. Step 5: Alice disagrees that her upload violates Charlie's copyright, and issues a counter-claim to Bob. Step 6: Bob reinstates Alice's upload, notifies Charlie that Alice has contested his claim, and is now protected from being sued by Alice. Step 7: Charlie sues Alice, because he still believes the content to be in violation of his copyright, or gives up Step 8: Court case / counter suit decides damages between Charlie and Alice The problem is not the DMCA system, which if anything is too generous to the media host. The problem is YouTube's added bullshit layer, which goes something like "Charlie hints that he might send a DMCA takedown, Bob takes down Alice's video and threatens to ban her from the platform"
    - endisneigh 4y ago
      Given how the DMCA works and the liability involved, why would it work any differently?
- GregWWalters 4y ago
  If a claimant makes a bad-faith claim or the claim is done by undersupervised automation? Sure. But I think some of these claims are false positives by YouTube's ContentID system. In those cases, does YouTube pay? I agree there needs to be a disincentive to over-claiming (including but not limited to holding ad revenue in escrow and returning it to the video's owner if the claims are false) but in practice, I don't know how it needs to work.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
    If its an automated system, then yes I think youtube should have to compensate users when the system youtube created, screws over an innocent user. If the government, who is almost as powerful as google, similarly created a system where they falsely arrest huge swaths of innocent people, then they too should have to compensate their victims. The goal here is to get youtube to do better, and the only way to do that is economics.
- cyanydeez 4y ago
  This system was setup to make the DMCA easy for copyright holders. There's zero consideration about whose holding. Before YouTube, I was getting takedown notices from Qwest internet and when I wrote them demanding proof, they ignored me and just flipped the switch back on. Eventually they just automated the takedown system so you had to go through some isolated dcma system. They have no cares about consumers because consumers present zero legal threat.
  - Tagbert 4y ago
    And remember that YouTube’s system is not DMCA. DMCA rules do not apply nor do any protections. The YouTube system is designed to favor copyright holders and those who claim copyright.
- GuB-42 4y ago
  > Attempt to compensate victims of the copyright claim system abuse? Maybe? It is called following the law! DMCA Section 512(f) basically says that if you issue a false claim, you are liable for all damage you caused, including attorney fees. I don't know what lawyers have to say, but it looks like easy money for a law firm if DMCA false claims are so common and so obvious.
  - lesuorac 4y ago
    > (f)Misrepresentations.—Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section— (1)that material or activity is infringing, or (2)that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it. 512f is currently unenforced by the courts. Judges are not state machines, it matters not what the technically correct decision may be, they are not required to make it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_v._Universal_Music_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_v._Universal_Music_Corp.
    - Mindwipe 4y ago
      > 512f is currently unenforced by the courts. It's not unenforced. It's just that there are basically no counterclaims because they're not worth doing.
      - lesuorac 4y ago
        > It's not unenforced. It's just that there are basically no counterclaims because they're not worth doing. Right, they're not worth doing because the cost of doing them won't be reimbursed. Unsure if you read the above link for the other court case, but moving in a different direction. There have been plenty of DMCA requests for 127.0.0.1 [1], there is no argument that those are in good faith. It would be easy money to get reimbursement for dealing with them but you won't because the courts do not have to give you it. [1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=DMCA+request+for+127.0.0.1&oq=DMCA+request+for+127.0.0.1 https://www.google.com/search?q=DMCA+request+for+127.0.0.1&o...
placatedmayhem 4y ago
YouTube's copyright controls have been a constant sore spot for creators for years at this point. YouTube/Google seems uninterested in addressing the problems. It seems that improvement is either imperceptibly small or just outright doesn't exist. What will it actually take for this to improve? Copyright legislation (e.g., DMCA) roll back or alteration? Content creators and/or viewers leaving the platform over it? Something else?
- ninth_ant 4y ago
  As long as there is no viable alternative to YouTube, Google has zero incentive of improving the situation. The current system works for Google, with no downside for them thanks to their monopolistic grasp on the market.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  >What will it actually take for this to improve? People willing to pay for content. One one extreme, you will have YouTube and it’s user generated content and ads and the huge moderation costs. On the other is professionally produced content, like Comcast, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Disney, etc. It may or may not be economically viable to have an option in the middle, or at least it has not been so far. Vimeo is the only one that came close to making it work, as far as I know.
- vezycash 4y ago
  >What will it actually take for this to improve? Mass, coordinated DCMA takedown notices against disney and other parties that designed DCMA. For max impact, a mix of legit & fake DCMA notices should be used.
- jandrese 4y ago
  Many-trillion dollar lawsuits similar to what media cartels threaten them with if they don't implement highly abusive mass takedown systems with little to no oversight.
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  It might be enough to just have a class action lawsuit against Google requiring them to actually follow the actual DMCA process.
commandlinefan 4y ago
I don't know what the solution is, but with every year it's becoming more and more apparent that the entire concept of copyright is incompatible with a global communications network.
nostromo 4y ago
Twitter really needs to move into the longer form video space to give YouTube some competition. YouTube has gotten very lazy with their near monopoly on long form video and now only innovates by increasing the number of ads every quarter to show revenue growth and desperately copying TikTok.
- GregWWalters 4y ago
  I'd welcome competition. Vimeo is the closest thing I can think of and it differentiated itself. But I don't think Twitter is the right one to do it. IMO, these services are best when they're narrowly focused. YouTube branching into shorts, Facebook and Instagram branching into... well, everything... has made those services cluttered, and makes their once core features worse.
- atty 4y ago
  I don’t see how Twitter could afford to compete with YouTube financially. YouTube has the larger audience (3x MAU) so they get the best advertising deals, and they STILL don’t break out YouTube’s profit/loss individually, suggesting it’s probably either low margin or a loss leader for alphabet.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Reads like an argument for breaking up Google, so they can't dominate and suppress markets by funding unprofitable units indefinitely.
    - gfaster 4y ago
      I absolutely understand that argument, but this seems like one of the few cases where this tremendous consolidation provides a net public benefit. Despite its flaws, YouTube is still an excellent platform and resource, and it seems that video streaming is still impossible to do well without Google-level resources. I honestly think there isn't a good solution here. If Google didn't prop up YouTube, we would lose the utility of free* video streaming and hosting. Other than Google, it seems like the only organizations in the world with the resources to maintain YouTube would be far worse (i.e. governments). This isn't to say Google shouldn't be broken up, but YouTube's existence is perhaps the best argument against it.
pityJuke 4y ago
> Actually, probably the majority of You Tubers don’t use any music This just isn't true. YouTube music falls into two camps: 1) Licensed music from paid royalty sources. AudioJunkie, Epidemic, etc. 2) Video game music, because that isn't in ContentID because otherwise you'd claim people playing their games (it can absolutely be manually claimed, but creators just take the risk here). I suspect Pond5 here aren't a great service. I also keep on re-parsing this article because of the English, but > and for many of those who do, the more ads the better as the reason for uploading a video is to make money and they really don’t care about quality. If you get copyright claimed for music, you don't get the money from the video? More ads won't help? I'm so confused at to what this person is getting at, as they've meddled a diatribe about advertising with a diatribe about music copyright claims.
SoftTalker 4y ago
Fair use is another one. I'm not a musician, but like listening to music. I recently discovered Rick Beato's YouTube videos where he breaks down "what makes this song great" He plays snips of songs, analyzes them, talks about the chord progressions, the key changes, melodies, drum fills, bass lines, solos, and sometimes gets pretty deep into technical/music theory analysis. Then he'll play a bit more and then talk about that part of the song. It's clearly fair use, and if anything it promotes interest in the artist and their music, but (according to him) he's constantly getting videos blocked or copyright claims.
reaperducer 4y ago
Considering how cheap bandwidth is, and how good compression is, are we yet approaching point where it makes sense for content creators to host their own videos? 99% of what's on YT doesn't need to be in HD, anyway.
- kevingadd 4y ago
  One of the main reasons creators put content on YouTube is the discovery algorithm. It's much easier to grow an audience for videos on YT compared to hosting it yourself.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  1) People won't find the content if it's not on Youtube. 2) You will struggle (even more) to monetize the views you do get, if you're not on YouTube. 3) Bandwidth is sorta cheap when you're getting a little bit of it bundled with other things that have high margins (say, cloud VM hosting) but video hosting can exceed what you can get with that kind of "free" bandwidth pretty quickly. It begins to really add up, after that.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  I think bandwidth hasn't been cheap since up till very recently. Cloudflare's R2 seems like a game changer here, before that you'd be paying a hefty fee to host your videos if you have a decent size following. There's also the network effect: nobody will find your personal site without some kind of cross-site interaction. ActivityPub and friends try to change that, but I haven't seen it take off yet because nobody seriously considers switching to such a model. I'm watching what Floatplane is doing for the video hosting landscape; they seem to run a pretty bare bones operation (though they often run into limitations in practice, i.e. routing problems with some networks, transcoding equipment, dynamic quality, etc)
j16sdiz 4y ago
I would argue this is a problem that can’t be solved. At the scale of youtube, it is virtually impossible to provide quality customer services. Some have proposed to break it into multiple entries, but it couldn’t help either. Each entities still have to deal with the complexity of international copyright laws.
- maeil 4y ago
  Maybe I'm naive but I don't see how that's impossible. Does there not exist an integer number below 7 billion which represents the number of people required to manually validate each of the claims? Or is this number so high that Youtube's $20+ billion revenue could not pay for those people? Unfortunately Google doesn't reveal net profit but it's well known that Youtube has been profitable for years and it's hard to imagine it being less than 10% of revenue. If it really is that extreme it sounds like more of an issue with Youtube's systems.

78 points by relwin 4y ago

Wouldn't it be great if, for every false copyright claim, the person/entity making the claim received strikes and had to compensate the person subjected to the false claim? Make abusing the system costly? Attempt to compensate victims of the copyright claim system abuse? Maybe?

pifm_guy 4y ago
Even $50 would probably be decent compensation for most YouTubers. It would probably reign in false claims dramatically, and reduce the numbers of appeals enough that real humans can check each one.
- cyberphobe 4y ago
  Yeah probably, but wouldn’t really be sufficiently punitive to really deal with the problem. It should be a % of the abuser’s revenue
endisneigh 4y ago
This would only work if a successful claim resulted in the YouTuber having to pay, otherwise such an asymmetric situation would never be sustainable. Given how many popular videos sit on the edge of copyright abuse it’s not really in Google’s interest to do this anyway.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  I would agree with this. It should work both ways. There may be a few edge cases where it really wasn't clear if it was or was not copyright infringement; both cases were reasonable. These would be the exception where neither party may be fined.
  - Mindwipe 4y ago
    And how do you figure out what these cases are without spending $2 million in court fees each time?
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  This is how the DMCA, as written, is supposed to work. Step 1: Alice uploads some media to Bob's website Step 2: Charlie decides Alice's upload violates his copyright Step 3: Charlie sends Bob a DMCA takedown notice. Step 4: Bob takes down Alice's media, issues Alice a notice that he's received a claim, and is now protected from being sued by Charlie. Step 5: Alice disagrees that her upload violates Charlie's copyright, and issues a counter-claim to Bob. Step 6: Bob reinstates Alice's upload, notifies Charlie that Alice has contested his claim, and is now protected from being sued by Alice. Step 7: Charlie sues Alice, because he still believes the content to be in violation of his copyright, or gives up Step 8: Court case / counter suit decides damages between Charlie and Alice The problem is not the DMCA system, which if anything is too generous to the media host. The problem is YouTube's added bullshit layer, which goes something like "Charlie hints that he might send a DMCA takedown, Bob takes down Alice's video and threatens to ban her from the platform"
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    Given how the DMCA works and the liability involved, why would it work any differently?
GregWWalters 4y ago
If a claimant makes a bad-faith claim or the claim is done by undersupervised automation? Sure. But I think some of these claims are false positives by YouTube's ContentID system. In those cases, does YouTube pay? I agree there needs to be a disincentive to over-claiming (including but not limited to holding ad revenue in escrow and returning it to the video's owner if the claims are false) but in practice, I don't know how it needs to work.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  If its an automated system, then yes I think youtube should have to compensate users when the system youtube created, screws over an innocent user. If the government, who is almost as powerful as google, similarly created a system where they falsely arrest huge swaths of innocent people, then they too should have to compensate their victims. The goal here is to get youtube to do better, and the only way to do that is economics.
cyanydeez 4y ago
This system was setup to make the DMCA easy for copyright holders. There's zero consideration about whose holding. Before YouTube, I was getting takedown notices from Qwest internet and when I wrote them demanding proof, they ignored me and just flipped the switch back on. Eventually they just automated the takedown system so you had to go through some isolated dcma system. They have no cares about consumers because consumers present zero legal threat.
- Tagbert 4y ago
  And remember that YouTube’s system is not DMCA. DMCA rules do not apply nor do any protections. The YouTube system is designed to favor copyright holders and those who claim copyright.
GuB-42 4y ago
> Attempt to compensate victims of the copyright claim system abuse? Maybe? It is called following the law! DMCA Section 512(f) basically says that if you issue a false claim, you are liable for all damage you caused, including attorney fees. I don't know what lawyers have to say, but it looks like easy money for a law firm if DMCA false claims are so common and so obvious.
- lesuorac 4y ago
  > (f)Misrepresentations.—Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section— (1)that material or activity is infringing, or (2)that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it. 512f is currently unenforced by the courts. Judges are not state machines, it matters not what the technically correct decision may be, they are not required to make it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_v._Universal_Music_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_v._Universal_Music_Corp.
  - Mindwipe 4y ago
    > 512f is currently unenforced by the courts. It's not unenforced. It's just that there are basically no counterclaims because they're not worth doing.
    - lesuorac 4y ago
      > It's not unenforced. It's just that there are basically no counterclaims because they're not worth doing. Right, they're not worth doing because the cost of doing them won't be reimbursed. Unsure if you read the above link for the other court case, but moving in a different direction. There have been plenty of DMCA requests for 127.0.0.1 [1], there is no argument that those are in good faith. It would be easy money to get reimbursement for dealing with them but you won't because the courts do not have to give you it. [1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=DMCA+request+for+127.0.0.1&oq=DMCA+request+for+127.0.0.1 https://www.google.com/search?q=DMCA+request+for+127.0.0.1&o...

placatedmayhem 4y ago

YouTube's copyright controls have been a constant sore spot for creators for years at this point. YouTube/Google seems uninterested in addressing the problems. It seems that improvement is either imperceptibly small or just outright doesn't exist. What will it actually take for this to improve? Copyright legislation (e.g., DMCA) roll back or alteration? Content creators and/or viewers leaving the platform over it? Something else?

ninth_ant 4y ago
As long as there is no viable alternative to YouTube, Google has zero incentive of improving the situation. The current system works for Google, with no downside for them thanks to their monopolistic grasp on the market.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
>What will it actually take for this to improve? People willing to pay for content. One one extreme, you will have YouTube and it’s user generated content and ads and the huge moderation costs. On the other is professionally produced content, like Comcast, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Disney, etc. It may or may not be economically viable to have an option in the middle, or at least it has not been so far. Vimeo is the only one that came close to making it work, as far as I know.
vezycash 4y ago
>What will it actually take for this to improve? Mass, coordinated DCMA takedown notices against disney and other parties that designed DCMA. For max impact, a mix of legit & fake DCMA notices should be used.
jandrese 4y ago
Many-trillion dollar lawsuits similar to what media cartels threaten them with if they don't implement highly abusive mass takedown systems with little to no oversight.
OkayPhysicist 4y ago
It might be enough to just have a class action lawsuit against Google requiring them to actually follow the actual DMCA process.

commandlinefan 4y ago

I don't know what the solution is, but with every year it's becoming more and more apparent that the entire concept of copyright is incompatible with a global communications network.

nostromo 4y ago

Twitter really needs to move into the longer form video space to give YouTube some competition. YouTube has gotten very lazy with their near monopoly on long form video and now only innovates by increasing the number of ads every quarter to show revenue growth and desperately copying TikTok.

GregWWalters 4y ago
I'd welcome competition. Vimeo is the closest thing I can think of and it differentiated itself. But I don't think Twitter is the right one to do it. IMO, these services are best when they're narrowly focused. YouTube branching into shorts, Facebook and Instagram branching into... well, everything... has made those services cluttered, and makes their once core features worse.
atty 4y ago
I don’t see how Twitter could afford to compete with YouTube financially. YouTube has the larger audience (3x MAU) so they get the best advertising deals, and they STILL don’t break out YouTube’s profit/loss individually, suggesting it’s probably either low margin or a loss leader for alphabet.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Reads like an argument for breaking up Google, so they can't dominate and suppress markets by funding unprofitable units indefinitely.
  - gfaster 4y ago
    I absolutely understand that argument, but this seems like one of the few cases where this tremendous consolidation provides a net public benefit. Despite its flaws, YouTube is still an excellent platform and resource, and it seems that video streaming is still impossible to do well without Google-level resources. I honestly think there isn't a good solution here. If Google didn't prop up YouTube, we would lose the utility of free* video streaming and hosting. Other than Google, it seems like the only organizations in the world with the resources to maintain YouTube would be far worse (i.e. governments). This isn't to say Google shouldn't be broken up, but YouTube's existence is perhaps the best argument against it.

pityJuke 4y ago

> Actually, probably the majority of You Tubers don’t use any music This just isn't true. YouTube music falls into two camps: 1) Licensed music from paid royalty sources. AudioJunkie, Epidemic, etc. 2) Video game music, because that isn't in ContentID because otherwise you'd claim people playing their games (it can absolutely be manually claimed, but creators just take the risk here). I suspect Pond5 here aren't a great service. I also keep on re-parsing this article because of the English, but > and for many of those who do, the more ads the better as the reason for uploading a video is to make money and they really don’t care about quality. If you get copyright claimed for music, you don't get the money from the video? More ads won't help? I'm so confused at to what this person is getting at, as they've meddled a diatribe about advertising with a diatribe about music copyright claims.

SoftTalker 4y ago

Fair use is another one. I'm not a musician, but like listening to music. I recently discovered Rick Beato's YouTube videos where he breaks down "what makes this song great" He plays snips of songs, analyzes them, talks about the chord progressions, the key changes, melodies, drum fills, bass lines, solos, and sometimes gets pretty deep into technical/music theory analysis. Then he'll play a bit more and then talk about that part of the song. It's clearly fair use, and if anything it promotes interest in the artist and their music, but (according to him) he's constantly getting videos blocked or copyright claims.

reaperducer 4y ago

Considering how cheap bandwidth is, and how good compression is, are we yet approaching point where it makes sense for content creators to host their own videos? 99% of what's on YT doesn't need to be in HD, anyway.

kevingadd 4y ago
One of the main reasons creators put content on YouTube is the discovery algorithm. It's much easier to grow an audience for videos on YT compared to hosting it yourself.
yamtaddle 4y ago
1) People won't find the content if it's not on Youtube. 2) You will struggle (even more) to monetize the views you do get, if you're not on YouTube. 3) Bandwidth is sorta cheap when you're getting a little bit of it bundled with other things that have high margins (say, cloud VM hosting) but video hosting can exceed what you can get with that kind of "free" bandwidth pretty quickly. It begins to really add up, after that.
jeroenhd 4y ago
I think bandwidth hasn't been cheap since up till very recently. Cloudflare's R2 seems like a game changer here, before that you'd be paying a hefty fee to host your videos if you have a decent size following. There's also the network effect: nobody will find your personal site without some kind of cross-site interaction. ActivityPub and friends try to change that, but I haven't seen it take off yet because nobody seriously considers switching to such a model. I'm watching what Floatplane is doing for the video hosting landscape; they seem to run a pretty bare bones operation (though they often run into limitations in practice, i.e. routing problems with some networks, transcoding equipment, dynamic quality, etc)

j16sdiz 4y ago

I would argue this is a problem that can’t be solved. At the scale of youtube, it is virtually impossible to provide quality customer services. Some have proposed to break it into multiple entries, but it couldn’t help either. Each entities still have to deal with the complexity of international copyright laws.

maeil 4y ago
Maybe I'm naive but I don't see how that's impossible. Does there not exist an integer number below 7 billion which represents the number of people required to manually validate each of the claims? Or is this number so high that Youtube's $20+ billion revenue could not pay for those people? Unfortunately Google doesn't reveal net profit but it's well known that Youtube has been profitable for years and it's hard to imagine it being less than 10% of revenue. If it really is that extreme it sounds like more of an issue with Youtube's systems.