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Why can’t both be true? That both the world’s copyright system and YouTube’s is fundamentally broken. YouTube assumes “guilty until proven innocent” because th

Why can’t both be true? That both the world’s copyright system and YouTube’s is fundamentally broken. YouTube assumes “guilty until proven innocent” because that’s cheaper. It’s cheaper because properly following the chain of what constitutes free speech and whether a claim is legitimate are costly questions. So it just ignores all of that and takes action because otherwise copyright trolls like the RIAA would attack them. And that’s a big part of the problem, real world copyright laws and the DMCA are mostly used to protect large corporations. In the US it used to be 20+5 for copyright. The Founding Fathers reasoned that an artist deserved that long to profit off their successes, but that they should still innovate and create beyond that initial creation. Nowadays it’s death of the author + 75 years, or for anything produced before 1978, + 67. Walt Disney’s death was 66 years ago, with Mickey Mouse due to enter the public domain in 2024. We’re already hearing talks of Disney “losing Mickey Mouse”, so expect some intense lobbying and a bipartisan copyright bill to extend it to 100 and 87. And beyond the Death of Public Domain, we have laws such as the DMCA which are heavily abused across the entire Internet. Censoring information left and right, even when it’s perfectly legal and would be found so under the law. It’s a completely draconian idea with no balance at all. So yes, the copyright system in general is broken, but so is YouTube. And shifting the blame does not absolve YouTube of killing off the ability to have a human review the process, especially at their profit levels. Instead, it just shows Tom Scott is an apologist for YouTube, which makes sense considering that’s where his paycheck comes from.

jjoonathan 3y ago
> YouTube assumes “guilty until proven innocent” because that’s cheaper. It’s cheaper because properly following the chain of what constitutes free speech and whether a claim is legitimate are costly questions. My impression was that the law itself was fine in this respect -- a claim could be met with a counterclaim (requiring legal commitment from the alleged offender -- signatures, identity, jurisdiction) and YouTube could then restore the media pending actual litigation. In other words, Legal Entity vs Anonymous defaults to a takedown, but Legal Entity vs Legal Entity defaults to keep up. That sounds reasonable to me, and the fact that youtube doesn't work that way is not a consequence of law but rather a corporate choice to put luxurious accommodation of large copyright holders ahead of basic decency towards content creators. > [Copyright creep is corporate welfare] Yep. Gross.
- hakfoo 3y ago
  I think the secondary risk factor is that access to the legal system is expensive and time-consuming, especially for an individual. A counterclaim process, even if as streamlined and fully supported as possible, is still a legal operation which involves time and money that many people are not going to have, especially for small-scale and legitimate fair-use scenarios. If you copyright claim some video from Sony or IBM, they've got a legal team on retainer to get it back up. A top-tier "content creator" who's earned six or seven figures and his career depends on the video staying up might hire a lawyer and fight for it. But the guy who's using a video clip as a fair-use part of a non-commercial discussion is probably going to fold instead of going out of pocket to defend himself. So we'd see the system falling back to "no response/takedown" for many important real-world use cases anyway. If DMCA spam had a cost to it-- perhaps a deposit that had to be filed with the court, refundable if there is no counterclaim, or actual prosecution of bad-faith actors for perjury, that might help make it a tradeoff rather than a wholesale giveaway to the copyright industry.
- jorams 3y ago
  > Legal Entity vs Legal Entity defaults to keep up. Note that it only does so after a waiting period of 10-14 days after the counterclaim. There's plenty of cases where a bullshit takedown is enough to destroy the value of the material taken down.
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    I can't think of any legitimate video upload scenario that has it's value 'destroyed' by being unavailable for 10-14 days. Can you name some examples?
- mindslight 3y ago
  No, the DMCA itself is a terribly one-sided law, from the same place as every other law unilaterally written and forced on us by moneyed interests. It only seems halfway reasonable because its passing happened so long ago, like the CFAA. The DMCA makes the target spill their real world identity, submit to US jurisdiction, requires a one day deadline for takedown but a two week waiting period for something to be put back up, and carries effectively no penalty for incorrect/fraudulent takedowns. Never mind its draconian "anti-circumvention" provisions that continue to plague basic interoperability. It might as well have been called the Sonny Bono Fuck Computers Act.
kemotep 3y ago
Small correction, the original Copyright Act of 1790 was a 14 year term, with the option to renew it once more for another 14 year term or 28 years total. The Copyright Act of 1831 was an extension of the original copyright term from 14 years to 28 years, with the same option to renew once for another 14 years, or 42 years. It takes until 1976 for copyright to start to extend into incredibly long lengths of time. The last update to Copyright law 24 years ago was also post DMCA being established. Seems hardly a coincidence that both go hand in hand as being unwieldy to non corporate entities.
musicale 3y ago
> Mickey Mouse due to enter the public domain in 2024 Good luck avoiding Disney's trademark lawsuits.

jjoonathan 3y ago

> YouTube assumes “guilty until proven innocent” because that’s cheaper. It’s cheaper because properly following the chain of what constitutes free speech and whether a claim is legitimate are costly questions. My impression was that the law itself was fine in this respect -- a claim could be met with a counterclaim (requiring legal commitment from the alleged offender -- signatures, identity, jurisdiction) and YouTube could then restore the media pending actual litigation. In other words, Legal Entity vs Anonymous defaults to a takedown, but Legal Entity vs Legal Entity defaults to keep up. That sounds reasonable to me, and the fact that youtube doesn't work that way is not a consequence of law but rather a corporate choice to put luxurious accommodation of large copyright holders ahead of basic decency towards content creators. > [Copyright creep is corporate welfare] Yep. Gross.

hakfoo 3y ago
I think the secondary risk factor is that access to the legal system is expensive and time-consuming, especially for an individual. A counterclaim process, even if as streamlined and fully supported as possible, is still a legal operation which involves time and money that many people are not going to have, especially for small-scale and legitimate fair-use scenarios. If you copyright claim some video from Sony or IBM, they've got a legal team on retainer to get it back up. A top-tier "content creator" who's earned six or seven figures and his career depends on the video staying up might hire a lawyer and fight for it. But the guy who's using a video clip as a fair-use part of a non-commercial discussion is probably going to fold instead of going out of pocket to defend himself. So we'd see the system falling back to "no response/takedown" for many important real-world use cases anyway. If DMCA spam had a cost to it-- perhaps a deposit that had to be filed with the court, refundable if there is no counterclaim, or actual prosecution of bad-faith actors for perjury, that might help make it a tradeoff rather than a wholesale giveaway to the copyright industry.
jorams 3y ago
> Legal Entity vs Legal Entity defaults to keep up. Note that it only does so after a waiting period of 10-14 days after the counterclaim. There's plenty of cases where a bullshit takedown is enough to destroy the value of the material taken down.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  I can't think of any legitimate video upload scenario that has it's value 'destroyed' by being unavailable for 10-14 days. Can you name some examples?
mindslight 3y ago
No, the DMCA itself is a terribly one-sided law, from the same place as every other law unilaterally written and forced on us by moneyed interests. It only seems halfway reasonable because its passing happened so long ago, like the CFAA. The DMCA makes the target spill their real world identity, submit to US jurisdiction, requires a one day deadline for takedown but a two week waiting period for something to be put back up, and carries effectively no penalty for incorrect/fraudulent takedowns. Never mind its draconian "anti-circumvention" provisions that continue to plague basic interoperability. It might as well have been called the Sonny Bono Fuck Computers Act.

kemotep 3y ago

Small correction, the original Copyright Act of 1790 was a 14 year term, with the option to renew it once more for another 14 year term or 28 years total. The Copyright Act of 1831 was an extension of the original copyright term from 14 years to 28 years, with the same option to renew once for another 14 years, or 42 years. It takes until 1976 for copyright to start to extend into incredibly long lengths of time. The last update to Copyright law 24 years ago was also post DMCA being established. Seems hardly a coincidence that both go hand in hand as being unwieldy to non corporate entities.

musicale 3y ago

> Mickey Mouse due to enter the public domain in 2024 Good luck avoiding Disney's trademark lawsuits.