8 ms·

YouTuber won DMCA fight with fake Nintendo lawyer by detecting spoofed email

264 points by isaacfrond 2y ago

pavel_lishin 2y ago
> No one knows how much copyright abuse occurs on YouTube. According to YouTube, about 6 percent of removals from July to December 2023 were abusive, along with 10 times more attempted abusive removals. But if a significant number of users never flag abuse—out of fear they could be sued for contributing to copyright infringement—then the true figure could be higher. Sounds like the YouTuber won a DMCA fight with YouTube, as well.
_t4za 2y ago
How does detecting the emails were fake address the DMCA claim on his YouTube channel? It’s my understanding that YouTube won’t intervene in DMCA claims even if the claims were false.
- notatoad 2y ago
  the most important thing here seems to be that the fraudulent claims were retracted by the person who sent them, and the statement from nintendo that the claims were not legitimate. but it's not true that youtube won't do anything about false claims. both the DMCA and youtube's pseudo-dmca takedown process care that about the identity of the person making the claim. if you claim "i am an authorized agent for Nintendo of America" and that's not true, then they'll throw out your claim. as long as you are who you say you are and are an authorized representative of the company you claim to represent, then google tends to trust you even if you're claiming ownership of content you don't actually own.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    If you claim to be an agent of Nintendo and are not that is criminal - as in jail or even prison.
    - nullc 2y ago
      Virtually no one is prosecuted for perjury generally, much less in the context of DMCA abuse.
      - bluGill 2y ago
        Which is the problem. I'm no sure how to get somd more but they seem needed in this case
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  It didn't really. What actually solved it was contacting Nintendo directly. A spoofed email in and of itself is meaningless.
xmodem 2y ago
> According to YouTube, about 6 percent of removals from July to December 2023 were abusive, along with 10 times more attempted abusive removals I uploaded the recording of my father's funeral to youtube, to share as an unlisted video. It attracted two copyright claims - for hymns written in the 18th century. These were claims - not takedown requests - but I didn't think it was appropriate to share a link to the family that was unable to attend in person that would serve them ads. So I instead made the video private and shared it a different way. But if I don't contest the claims, how can youtube possibly count them as abusive?
- onemoresoop 2y ago
  What I don’t understand is how can they ransack through unlisted and private videos?
  - equestria 2y ago
    Google does the "ransacking" for them - ContentID.
    - itronitron 2y ago
      Funny how the companies doing the scanning to enforce copyright are also the same ones building generative AI capabilities off the copyrighted data.
      - kube-system 2y ago
        Not really, considering the origins of ContentID. It's just the same story over again. Google/YouTube didn't really want to build ContentID. It was a concession as a result of lawsuits from Viacom (and others) from the early days of YouTube, where they were about to be sued out of existence for having a platform, which at the time, was filled with blatantly pirated content.
      - lmpdev 2y ago
        Laws for thee but not for me
cactusplant7374 2y ago
Who is behind the fake takedowns? Other YouTubers?
- daghamm 2y ago
  Yes. There is a lot of money in this, and not really any regulations. There are some documented cases where youtubers have been caught red handed doing this against competition
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Unfortunately even though the scam is illegal nobody goes to jail for it.
- thecrash 2y ago
  Or semi-automated scammers trying to claim the ad revenue from videos for themselves.
  - tapatio 2y ago
    How does that work? Ownership of the YT video is transferred to the scammer? Even if just a part of it contains "copyright"?
    - bluGill 2y ago
      Ads are automatically applied to the video and the scammer gets the ad money
    - jeroenhd 2y ago
      When a claim is filed through content-ID, the claiming company basically gets two options: disable all ads (taking out any revenue for the uploader), or run ads and get paid out. They also get to pick how many ads to run, which means a three second segment can insert minutes of ads into a video. They can also mute audio during infringing sections, or block videos in certain countries. Stephanie Sterling famously came up with a trick to make their videos run without ads, even when including fair use content: by intentionally including content from multiple companies, each with different preferred monetisation preferences, introducing a conflict in the Youtube content-ID system that didn't get resolved automatically. Their videos were intentionally run without ads, being supported by Patreon and all, and companies kept claiming sections for themselves and inserting ads into videos. Bizarre that to shield oneself from content ID bullshit (like including a three second snippet of a Ninendo trailer blocking an entire video), one needs to intentionally infringe on more copyright, but that was the Youtube system of yesteryear. I don't know if the system still works like that, but based on the seemingly random snippets included in Sterling's videos I'm guessing they're still applying this trick. In theory one could take this further, uploading parts of one's own video to content-ID so the system hands over some partial control over the content, but I feel like Youtube wouldn't take too kindly to that method.
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42521873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42521873
kyledrake 2y ago
If a provider does nothing and they're wrong, they become legally liable for lawsuits. So they default to accepting the request because it is legally safer to do so. Unfortunately, improving this will probably require changes to the DMCA, and given the general state of politics I would honestly prefer to let sleeping dogs lie on this one.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Dmca is under prejury laws. However content id has no legal protection. You can sue google for false accusation if you want (good luck winning since their terms of service allow this - you would have to also argue the terms of service should not apply)
- immibis 2y ago
  Or we host everything on onion services.
benatkin 2y ago
To me it seems he didn’t win, he just lived to fight another day. Winning would be if YouTube would treat him as if or better than if this never happened, or if the guy got in trouble, or if it would be harder to do this in the future.
sneak 2y ago
Censorship platforms are a dead-end for society and the web. The sooner we can engineer around them, the better off we will be.
hirako2000 2y ago
Some comments are wondering how DCMA claims work and where ads revenue go to. So here is the gist. The current YouTube DCMA system is broken. Here's how it (mal)functions: - Creator uploads video, gets ad revenue. - First valid claimant gets ad revenue. - Subsequent claimants are ignored, first claimant keeps all revenue. This leads to a first-come, first-served system where the first claimant wins all, regardless of the actual IP ownership. Would need to implement proportional revenue allocation and a more transparent with arbitrage claiming process, e.g moderators with subject expertise chiming in. That's if YouTube wants to fix this. But they are rather worried about a/ being accused of copyright infringement for not taking "some" action and b/ aggravating their profit making distribution agreements with major content owners. To note there is also an automated id system which applies primarily on audio fingerprints, to a degree visual frames as well. - Creator uploads video, id system finds matching fingerprint against a large DB of copyrighted content and send ads revenue to whoever owns the match. Also to note, that applies to largely most audio content at this point. Not much to big films (studios are still onto trying to keep distribution via their own streaming platform, to be platform or preferred partner platform). We are in this mess, not because YouTube is dragging its feet, but because the IP laws simply aren't reconcilable with the way we create and consume content these days. A brick needed to build a more fair revenue distribution system could be to revise legislations, e.g banning distribution exclusivity. That would give incentive for innovation, a startup could build an engine that redistribute somewhat fairly. Ultimately, creators own their arts and can pretty much dictate how their works can be used, and call out their licensing fees. But when intermediaries step in and figure out exclusivity would milk more cash from consumers, it goes all the way to effectively lobby for the laws to remain crooked to their advantage.
- noname120 2y ago
  If the first-come first-serve is true, what prevents a creator from self DMCA-ing all his videos so as to get all the revenue? Possibly by embedding a copyrighted sound that belongs to a company they create just for that purpose.
  - everforward 2y ago
aussieguy1234 2y ago
Top comment: What on earth could be the motivation for this not-lawyer? A malicious thrill? "The goal is to take the monetization of videos. You get enough 200k+ videos under your belt for a form letter and bot writing in requests. For little work you can get in the 100K per year income, providing you don't get shutdown." Hopefully this type of blatant abuse of the law will motivate some changes. If not, expect whole offices to pop up in developing countries with fake lawyers pulling off this scam en-masse.
philipwhiuk 2y ago
Obligatory long-form video overview of why YouTube's system works the way it does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU
underseacables 2y ago
I think the only way YouTube is ever going to change its policy is if someone sues them and wins.
emmelaich 2y ago
Still bugs me that this Australian skateboarding video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nod5q7OHAF4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nod5q7OHAF4 has a note of "music from Youth Group song Forever Young" There is not a single note of that song in the video. The opposite in fact, the video was used for the song. With no attribution. The video/film is from the Australian ABC afternoon show GTK, which way predates the song.
rootsudo 2y ago
Detecting spoofed email = "See email from protonmail.com domain." Does that count as spoofing? It wasn't spoofing the domain, it was just outright fraud.

264 points by isaacfrond 2y ago

> No one knows how much copyright abuse occurs on YouTube. According to YouTube, about 6 percent of removals from July to December 2023 were abusive, along with 10 times more attempted abusive removals. But if a significant number of users never flag abuse—out of fear they could be sued for contributing to copyright infringement—then the true figure could be higher. Sounds like the YouTuber won a DMCA fight with YouTube, as well.

_t4za 2y ago

How does detecting the emails were fake address the DMCA claim on his YouTube channel? It’s my understanding that YouTube won’t intervene in DMCA claims even if the claims were false.

notatoad 2y ago
the most important thing here seems to be that the fraudulent claims were retracted by the person who sent them, and the statement from nintendo that the claims were not legitimate. but it's not true that youtube won't do anything about false claims. both the DMCA and youtube's pseudo-dmca takedown process care that about the identity of the person making the claim. if you claim "i am an authorized agent for Nintendo of America" and that's not true, then they'll throw out your claim. as long as you are who you say you are and are an authorized representative of the company you claim to represent, then google tends to trust you even if you're claiming ownership of content you don't actually own.
- bluGill 2y ago
  If you claim to be an agent of Nintendo and are not that is criminal - as in jail or even prison.
  - nullc 2y ago
    Virtually no one is prosecuted for perjury generally, much less in the context of DMCA abuse.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      Which is the problem. I'm no sure how to get somd more but they seem needed in this case
bongodongobob 2y ago
It didn't really. What actually solved it was contacting Nintendo directly. A spoofed email in and of itself is meaningless.

xmodem 2y ago

> According to YouTube, about 6 percent of removals from July to December 2023 were abusive, along with 10 times more attempted abusive removals I uploaded the recording of my father's funeral to youtube, to share as an unlisted video. It attracted two copyright claims - for hymns written in the 18th century. These were claims - not takedown requests - but I didn't think it was appropriate to share a link to the family that was unable to attend in person that would serve them ads. So I instead made the video private and shared it a different way. But if I don't contest the claims, how can youtube possibly count them as abusive?

onemoresoop 2y ago
What I don’t understand is how can they ransack through unlisted and private videos?
- equestria 2y ago
  Google does the "ransacking" for them - ContentID.
  - itronitron 2y ago
    Funny how the companies doing the scanning to enforce copyright are also the same ones building generative AI capabilities off the copyrighted data.
    - kube-system 2y ago
      Not really, considering the origins of ContentID. It's just the same story over again. Google/YouTube didn't really want to build ContentID. It was a concession as a result of lawsuits from Viacom (and others) from the early days of YouTube, where they were about to be sued out of existence for having a platform, which at the time, was filled with blatantly pirated content.
    - lmpdev 2y ago
      Laws for thee but not for me

cactusplant7374 2y ago

Who is behind the fake takedowns? Other YouTubers?

daghamm 2y ago
Yes. There is a lot of money in this, and not really any regulations. There are some documented cases where youtubers have been caught red handed doing this against competition
- bluGill 2y ago
  Unfortunately even though the scam is illegal nobody goes to jail for it.
thecrash 2y ago
Or semi-automated scammers trying to claim the ad revenue from videos for themselves.
- tapatio 2y ago
  How does that work? Ownership of the YT video is transferred to the scammer? Even if just a part of it contains "copyright"?
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Ads are automatically applied to the video and the scammer gets the ad money
  - jeroenhd 2y ago
    When a claim is filed through content-ID, the claiming company basically gets two options: disable all ads (taking out any revenue for the uploader), or run ads and get paid out. They also get to pick how many ads to run, which means a three second segment can insert minutes of ads into a video. They can also mute audio during infringing sections, or block videos in certain countries. Stephanie Sterling famously came up with a trick to make their videos run without ads, even when including fair use content: by intentionally including content from multiple companies, each with different preferred monetisation preferences, introducing a conflict in the Youtube content-ID system that didn't get resolved automatically. Their videos were intentionally run without ads, being supported by Patreon and all, and companies kept claiming sections for themselves and inserting ads into videos. Bizarre that to shield oneself from content ID bullshit (like including a three second snippet of a Ninendo trailer blocking an entire video), one needs to intentionally infringe on more copyright, but that was the Youtube system of yesteryear. I don't know if the system still works like that, but based on the seemingly random snippets included in Sterling's videos I'm guessing they're still applying this trick. In theory one could take this further, uploading parts of one's own video to content-ID so the system hands over some partial control over the content, but I feel like Youtube wouldn't take too kindly to that method.

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[dupe] Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42521873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42521873

kyledrake 2y ago

If a provider does nothing and they're wrong, they become legally liable for lawsuits. So they default to accepting the request because it is legally safer to do so. Unfortunately, improving this will probably require changes to the DMCA, and given the general state of politics I would honestly prefer to let sleeping dogs lie on this one.

bluGill 2y ago
Dmca is under prejury laws. However content id has no legal protection. You can sue google for false accusation if you want (good luck winning since their terms of service allow this - you would have to also argue the terms of service should not apply)
immibis 2y ago
Or we host everything on onion services.

benatkin 2y ago

To me it seems he didn’t win, he just lived to fight another day. Winning would be if YouTube would treat him as if or better than if this never happened, or if the guy got in trouble, or if it would be harder to do this in the future.

sneak 2y ago

Censorship platforms are a dead-end for society and the web. The sooner we can engineer around them, the better off we will be.

hirako2000 2y ago

Some comments are wondering how DCMA claims work and where ads revenue go to. So here is the gist. The current YouTube DCMA system is broken. Here's how it (mal)functions: - Creator uploads video, gets ad revenue. - First valid claimant gets ad revenue. - Subsequent claimants are ignored, first claimant keeps all revenue. This leads to a first-come, first-served system where the first claimant wins all, regardless of the actual IP ownership. Would need to implement proportional revenue allocation and a more transparent with arbitrage claiming process, e.g moderators with subject expertise chiming in. That's if YouTube wants to fix this. But they are rather worried about a/ being accused of copyright infringement for not taking "some" action and b/ aggravating their profit making distribution agreements with major content owners. To note there is also an automated id system which applies primarily on audio fingerprints, to a degree visual frames as well. - Creator uploads video, id system finds matching fingerprint against a large DB of copyrighted content and send ads revenue to whoever owns the match. Also to note, that applies to largely most audio content at this point. Not much to big films (studios are still onto trying to keep distribution via their own streaming platform, to be platform or preferred partner platform). We are in this mess, not because YouTube is dragging its feet, but because the IP laws simply aren't reconcilable with the way we create and consume content these days. A brick needed to build a more fair revenue distribution system could be to revise legislations, e.g banning distribution exclusivity. That would give incentive for innovation, a startup could build an engine that redistribute somewhat fairly. Ultimately, creators own their arts and can pretty much dictate how their works can be used, and call out their licensing fees. But when intermediaries step in and figure out exclusivity would milk more cash from consumers, it goes all the way to effectively lobby for the laws to remain crooked to their advantage.

noname120 2y ago
If the first-come first-serve is true, what prevents a creator from self DMCA-ing all his videos so as to get all the revenue? Possibly by embedding a copyrighted sound that belongs to a company they create just for that purpose.
- everforward 2y ago

aussieguy1234 2y ago

Top comment: What on earth could be the motivation for this not-lawyer? A malicious thrill? "The goal is to take the monetization of videos. You get enough 200k+ videos under your belt for a form letter and bot writing in requests. For little work you can get in the 100K per year income, providing you don't get shutdown." Hopefully this type of blatant abuse of the law will motivate some changes. If not, expect whole offices to pop up in developing countries with fake lawyers pulling off this scam en-masse.

philipwhiuk 2y ago

Obligatory long-form video overview of why YouTube's system works the way it does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU

underseacables 2y ago

I think the only way YouTube is ever going to change its policy is if someone sues them and wins.

emmelaich 2y ago

Still bugs me that this Australian skateboarding video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nod5q7OHAF4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nod5q7OHAF4 has a note of "music from Youth Group song Forever Young" There is not a single note of that song in the video. The opposite in fact, the video was used for the song. With no attribution. The video/film is from the Australian ABC afternoon show GTK, which way predates the song.

rootsudo 2y ago

Detecting spoofed email = "See email from protonmail.com domain." Does that count as spoofing? It wasn't spoofing the domain, it was just outright fraud.