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Worse: according to YouTube policies, you are not even allowed to even use public domain material that is not created by you or a nation-state government in the

Worse: according to YouTube policies, you are not even allowed to even use public domain material that is not created by you or a nation-state government in the first place. For YouTube purposes, you have to assume as if copyright is a perpetual, irrevocable, fully transferrable right. Yes, you read it right: fair use is allowed in YouTube, reuse of public domain is material is not.

chrismorgan 3y ago
Could you elucidate and source this? (Because it makes no sense to me. Fair use is allowed by most jurisdictions’ legal systems, but in practice not allowed by YouTube because they grant way too much power to copyright holders. Meanwhile, I find no grounds on which YouTube could legally or practically prevent or even hinder reusing public domain resources. Again, they’ve granted way too much power to people that claim to hold copyright on things, but really that’s just “putting anything on YouTube is risky”.)
- anticensor 3y ago
  > I find no grounds on which YouTube could legally or practically prevent or even hinder reusing public domain resources. They are totally allowed. YouTube is not a public utilty. ContentID, the software that enforces copyright and dissimilarity on YouTube, is coded based on the specific assumption that every piece of content has been uploaded to YouTube eventually originates from a uniquely determineable single origin. In fact, single-origin assumption is required for similarity checking software of this kind to work reliably (copyright&plagiarism enforcement).
hilbert42 3y ago
"...reuse of public domain is material is not." Uh? No doubt you're correct but from what I have experienced I'm still not clear about the details. It's years since I've posted anything on YouTube but there was one instance where I received a copyright infringement notice from YouTube. The 'infringing' material involved was a 78 audio recording over 80 years old that was in the public domain which I'd downloaded from the Internet Archive then posted to YouTube. The only reason I did this was because there were many of the artist's recordings already on YouTube and I posted it to help complete the artist's collection. Much later YouTube sent me a somewhat ambiguous note to the effect that there had been a copyright complaint but it was not taking any action however I could lodge an objection in case the matter escalated (it may not have used those exact words but that was my understanding of the matter). I chose to ignore it. In my post I made it clear† where the recording had originated from and whilst YouTube would not allow me to post its download URL as plaintext I embedded it into the accompaning image where it was fully legible. That was some years back and the recording is still there. Thus YouTube was well aware it was a public domain recording but did nothing about it. Those who posted the other recordings must have had a similar experience. Also, there are hundreds of old documentaries, newsreel footage etc. on YouTube that are in the public domain that havn't been taken down. If this is a violation then why hasn't YouTube taken action to remove them? † Edit: here's the link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yWoEanmuolQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yWoEanmuolQ

chrismorgan 3y ago

Could you elucidate and source this? (Because it makes no sense to me. Fair use is allowed by most jurisdictions’ legal systems, but in practice not allowed by YouTube because they grant way too much power to copyright holders. Meanwhile, I find no grounds on which YouTube could legally or practically prevent or even hinder reusing public domain resources. Again, they’ve granted way too much power to people that claim to hold copyright on things, but really that’s just “putting anything on YouTube is risky”.)

anticensor 3y ago
> I find no grounds on which YouTube could legally or practically prevent or even hinder reusing public domain resources. They are totally allowed. YouTube is not a public utilty. ContentID, the software that enforces copyright and dissimilarity on YouTube, is coded based on the specific assumption that every piece of content has been uploaded to YouTube eventually originates from a uniquely determineable single origin. In fact, single-origin assumption is required for similarity checking software of this kind to work reliably (copyright&plagiarism enforcement).

hilbert42 3y ago

"...reuse of public domain is material is not." Uh? No doubt you're correct but from what I have experienced I'm still not clear about the details. It's years since I've posted anything on YouTube but there was one instance where I received a copyright infringement notice from YouTube. The 'infringing' material involved was a 78 audio recording over 80 years old that was in the public domain which I'd downloaded from the Internet Archive then posted to YouTube. The only reason I did this was because there were many of the artist's recordings already on YouTube and I posted it to help complete the artist's collection. Much later YouTube sent me a somewhat ambiguous note to the effect that there had been a copyright complaint but it was not taking any action however I could lodge an objection in case the matter escalated (it may not have used those exact words but that was my understanding of the matter). I chose to ignore it. In my post I made it clear† where the recording had originated from and whilst YouTube would not allow me to post its download URL as plaintext I embedded it into the accompaning image where it was fully legible. That was some years back and the recording is still there. Thus YouTube was well aware it was a public domain recording but did nothing about it. Those who posted the other recordings must have had a similar experience. Also, there are hundreds of old documentaries, newsreel footage etc. on YouTube that are in the public domain that havn't been taken down. If this is a violation then why hasn't YouTube taken action to remove them? † Edit: here's the link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yWoEanmuolQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yWoEanmuolQ