13 ms·

You Can't Stop Universal From Removing Your YouTube Videos

133 points by gregpurtell 14y ago

delinka 14y ago
Although the article claims this was for a DMCA takedown notice, I think we've seen the articles explaining the arrangement between Google and The Media Conglomerates whereby aforementioned Conglomerates get to takedown whatever they want, whenever they want. No courts, no perjury, no fair use. Just outright removal. What's a creative professional to do? Pay Vimeo or some other site to host your content. Pay a web developer to get you set up to host this stuff on your own site. Turn it into a podcast. If you think YouTube is the only game "in town," you need to get out more.
- fleitz 14y ago
  Isn't vimeo a wholly owned subsidiary of Youtube?
  - brucehart 14y ago
    No, Vimeo is owned by IAC (Interactive Corp.).
  - lazugod 14y ago
    No, it isn't.
  - sbarre 14y ago
    You might be thinking of VEVO (which is for major label music videos)..
    - btipling 14y ago
      VEVO is not owned by Google or YouTube.
      - sp332 14y ago
        VEVO has a deal with Youtube where they get their own-branded player (with a VEVO logo in the corner instead of Youtube), and I think there's a way to search for only VEVO-brand videos on Youtube or something.
        Nick_C 14y ago
        And a way to search for only non-VEVO videos. (I hate the VEVO player.) In Firefox, click the Searchbar drop-down "Manage Search Engines", and then the link "Get more search engines". Find and install the YouTube search engine. Now edit the $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/<your profile>/searchplugins/youtube-video-search.xml file. Change the os:URL tag template section from "?search_query={searchTerms}&" to "?search_query={searchTerms}+-vevo&". Your Youtube searches will now default to excluding the term "vevo" from any result.
        btipling 14y ago
        You can build your own branded YouTube player by using the API.
- FireBeyond 14y ago
  It does, and the problem is that the new process that was the "final straw" was not a DMCA takedown notice, but instead a policy: ContentID finds a "problem" video, the uploader can explain/deny, and then the copyright owner is allowed by YouTube to make the judgment.
citricsquid 14y ago
filed a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown of the video An attempt to pre-empt some comments: this seems to be a misunderstanding. The DMCA is not involved at all with these private agreements between Youtube and record labels, Youtube is a private company and can remove any content they want for any reason. They have given these companies permission to remove content they believe breaches their copyright. Anyone can file a DMCA notice with Youtube, what Universal etc. do bypasses it entirely. If Universal etc. were doing this using a DMCA notice they would be breaching the terms of the DMCA.
- chewxy 14y ago
  Oh, many people don't understand DMCA at all. They think it's a shortcut to take down content they don't like. It's not only the big companies that are doing it. The DMCA is way too easy to misuse
- gabrielrotbart 14y ago
  Unless the time that sentence is referring to happened prior to any agreements between YouTube and Universal (the article states 2011). Your explanation is still valuable, however. Thanks.
- decklin 14y ago
  "And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are [corporations]. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."
  - sp332 14y ago
    Is that Thatcher?
    - ptaipale 14y ago
      No, it isn't. Thatcher spoke about individuals and families, not corporations. And the sentence is of course a hyperbole which should be seen in the context of a longer speech. Yes, she was a divisive figure, but has nothing to do with this Youtube thing, really.
chewxy 14y ago
Actually, the fact that you cannot appeal for fair use (or at least give rationalization) points to how broken the system is. On the other hand, I can also understand why his appeals fall to deaf ears. When handling the first few DMCAs for Fork the Cookbook, I would contact the user who uploaded the recipe, and talk to the user (and offer the user to post counter notices) It was a time consuming, draining process, having to feel fire from your users, and the copyright holders. It's very draining, and I was very tempted to write an automated DMCA process for Fork the Cookbook. In the end, I decided not to for a few reasons. The way we approach copyright in the information age is broken. I have some ideas to fix it, but you'd have to buy my book (c) Chewxy 2014
tingletech 14y ago
humm, is it still a safe harbor if there are contractual obligations like this in place?
- nwzpaperman 14y ago
  The CDA safe harbor is likely in jeopardy if the right class and attorney got together. This is moving from independent ISP status to discretionary content management. Aka being a publisher.
darkchasma 14y ago
Can a case be made that YouTube is abusing it's effective monopoly on web video? I'm genuinely curious.
- afreak 14y ago
  The case can be made that Google does not have an effective monopoly on web video actually.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  For that matter, what about the labels? Is there not something like copyright misuse that prevents them from leveraging the copyright on music into a contract for the suppression of fair use? Or what about these guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashion_Originators%27_Guild_of_America http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashion_Originators%27_Guild_of...
- signalsignal 14y ago
  Not if someone self hosts their video.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  "abusing its effective monopoly" implies YouTube stands to gain by deleting your videos. In reality, I think they only stand to not lose.
edwardunknown 14y ago
>Now, when a user wanted to file an appeal, the claim would go directly to the copyright holder. I put up a Buddy Holly biography a few years ago, Warner (I think) claimed infringement on a song snippet, I filed an appeal that included a link that showed Paul McCartney owned the Buddy Holly catalog and Youtube put it back up in less than an hour. I doubt if the appeal went straight to Warner Music it would have happened quite like that.
sethbannon 14y ago
Time for some more competition in the online video market.
- onemorepassword 14y ago
  There is already plenty of competition, especially outside the US. Since Google has always heavily "moderated" videos based on American values and American commercial interests, most countries had a viable market for an alternative for a long time. The same also applies to the other end of the market, because YouTube is a bit of a cesspool when it comes to thing Google doesn't want to censor (like racism and homophobia). Many don't want to be associated with that in any way.
- OGinparadise 14y ago
  Time for some more competition in the online video market. Youtube is heavily promoted through Google search for virtually any query. Any competitor was probably hit by Panda so there's a very uphill battle.
OGinparadise 14y ago
The way I understand: Google has entered in private agreements and as a private company it can remove even a video celebrating your mom's bday, for reason or no reason. >> The problem for McKelzey now is that he's picked up a strike in YouTube's two-strike system. According to the site's Terms of Service, YouTube can terminate an account if its found to be in violation of site rules more than once. Does that take Adsense, Adwords, GooglePlay, G+ and everything with it? If so, that's scary.
- MichaelApproved 14y ago
  You get 3 strikes and each strike expires after six months. http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2814000 http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...
  - OGinparadise 14y ago
    So use separate accounts if a Google Account has any value. The problem is that you get the infraction not for "breaking the law" but for breaking whatever private agreement Google signed with big music labels.
    - roel_v 14y ago
      The article states that in this case, the account was not penalized.
      - OGinparadise 14y ago
        Found the answer: "The problem for McKelzey now is that he's picked up a strike in YouTube's two-strike system. According to the site's Terms of Service, YouTube can terminate an account if its found to be in violation of site rules more than once. "Now I'm on their radar even though I don't believe I did anything wrong," McKelzey said."
- ptaipale 14y ago
  Are there still reasons Google cannot use, under U.S. law? At least in many European companies, particularly in matters of employment or offering services, improper reasons are illegal. For instance, you cannot deny service to someone on basis of race, skin colour, religion, etc. If you cannot prove you have any proper reason, a racist reason can be assumed and you're facing trouble.
vpeters25 14y ago
His only recurse might be to sue both Youtube and Universal seeking a declaratory judgement the work doesn't infringe copyright under the fair use doctrine, injunction to have it reinstated and another injunction forbidding both Youtube and Universal from ever removing it again subject to a massive fine/day. A good lawyer could even get slander of title up there against Universal for claiming copyright on a video which they clearly don't own, in which case he could get a nice paycheck out of the lawsuit. They could also stick some RICO act in there. The question is whether suing would be worth the trouble, maybe the EFF would be open to pursue such case to set case law and make an example of them to the rest of the copyright mafia.
- comex 14y ago
  Except that YouTube is under no obligation to host his video and is free to remove it for any or no reason, so it couldn't be forced to reinstate the video.
  - vpeters25 14y ago
    Yeah, but it is removing it because Universal is claiming it owns the copyright of it, that's slander of title afaik.
- roel_v 14y ago
  "under the fair use doctrine," You either didn't read the article or missed the point completely, 'fair use' has no relationship whatsoever to this case. Youtube is free to host the video or not, at their discretion, regardless of copyright law. "A good lawyer could even get slander of title up there against Universal for claiming copyright on a video which they clearly don't own, in which case he could get a nice paycheck out of the lawsuit. They could also stick some RICO act in there." Please don't make uninformed legal claims of things you obviously know nothing about.
malandrew 14y ago
It's stories like this that are the reason I can't wait until P2P video streaming and sharing over WebRTC become commonplace enough to replace YouTube and similar sites. You can't assert copyright via the DMCA against fair use material on a fully distributed P2P network. Ironically, the quality of comments and discourse on a P2P network would probably be an improvement over what can be found on YouTube.
lucb1e 14y ago
I can testify this. It even seems impossible to get in touch with a Youtube official without a lawyer in place or posting on public boards in the hope for an official response.
njharman 14y ago
Perfect example of how Music Companies are in the business of distribution and not content creation. They've co-opted YT into allowing them to control distribution "required to remove specific videos from the site, block specific videos in certain territories," of content regardless if it's something they have copyright over or not. Without absurd efforts to prop up its model the business of distribution of content is near worthless in age of near zero cost, perfect copies and Internet.
acomjean 14y ago
Ultimately self defeating as publicity helps. Especially with Rap that doesn't get a lot of replay (vs say classic rock) Unless the review was negative and thus the take-down (this would be troubling). Youtube seems to have its own music search http://www.youtube.com/disco http://www.youtube.com/disco
sexyalterego 14y ago
This story was syndicated from the Daily Dot. Original link here: http://www.dailydot.com/news/youtube-universal-music-video-takedown-deal/ http://www.dailydot.com/news/youtube-universal-music-video-t...
ijk 14y ago
Music copyright is incredibly messed up, even compared to the rest of copyright. I was doing research for a project I'm working on, and it's nearly impossible to determine if any 20th century recording is in the public domain unless the author explicitly declared it as such. YouTube (and by extension Google) are actively making this worse with automated ContentID. There are many documented cases of author-released public-domain or creative commons work being claimed by other people [1]. Create a false entry in the ContentID database and issue takedown notices to the original creator and anyone else who used the music. Even if you get caught you can drop the claim and still walk away with the money you made off of their videos. [1] See http://incompetech.com/wordpress/category/copyright/ http://incompetech.com/wordpress/category/copyright/ for several examples

133 points by gregpurtell 14y ago

Although the article claims this was for a DMCA takedown notice, I think we've seen the articles explaining the arrangement between Google and The Media Conglomerates whereby aforementioned Conglomerates get to takedown whatever they want, whenever they want. No courts, no perjury, no fair use. Just outright removal. What's a creative professional to do? Pay Vimeo or some other site to host your content. Pay a web developer to get you set up to host this stuff on your own site. Turn it into a podcast. If you think YouTube is the only game "in town," you need to get out more.

fleitz 14y ago
Isn't vimeo a wholly owned subsidiary of Youtube?
- brucehart 14y ago
  No, Vimeo is owned by IAC (Interactive Corp.).
- lazugod 14y ago
  No, it isn't.
- sbarre 14y ago
  You might be thinking of VEVO (which is for major label music videos)..
  - btipling 14y ago
    VEVO is not owned by Google or YouTube.
    - sp332 14y ago
      VEVO has a deal with Youtube where they get their own-branded player (with a VEVO logo in the corner instead of Youtube), and I think there's a way to search for only VEVO-brand videos on Youtube or something.
      - Nick_C 14y ago
        And a way to search for only non-VEVO videos. (I hate the VEVO player.) In Firefox, click the Searchbar drop-down "Manage Search Engines", and then the link "Get more search engines". Find and install the YouTube search engine. Now edit the $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/<your profile>/searchplugins/youtube-video-search.xml file. Change the os:URL tag template section from "?search_query={searchTerms}&" to "?search_query={searchTerms}+-vevo&". Your Youtube searches will now default to excluding the term "vevo" from any result.
      - btipling 14y ago
        You can build your own branded YouTube player by using the API.
FireBeyond 14y ago
It does, and the problem is that the new process that was the "final straw" was not a DMCA takedown notice, but instead a policy: ContentID finds a "problem" video, the uploader can explain/deny, and then the copyright owner is allowed by YouTube to make the judgment.

citricsquid 14y ago

filed a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown of the video An attempt to pre-empt some comments: this seems to be a misunderstanding. The DMCA is not involved at all with these private agreements between Youtube and record labels, Youtube is a private company and can remove any content they want for any reason. They have given these companies permission to remove content they believe breaches their copyright. Anyone can file a DMCA notice with Youtube, what Universal etc. do bypasses it entirely. If Universal etc. were doing this using a DMCA notice they would be breaching the terms of the DMCA.

chewxy 14y ago
Oh, many people don't understand DMCA at all. They think it's a shortcut to take down content they don't like. It's not only the big companies that are doing it. The DMCA is way too easy to misuse
gabrielrotbart 14y ago
Unless the time that sentence is referring to happened prior to any agreements between YouTube and Universal (the article states 2011). Your explanation is still valuable, however. Thanks.
decklin 14y ago
"And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are [corporations]. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."
- sp332 14y ago
  Is that Thatcher?
  - ptaipale 14y ago
    No, it isn't. Thatcher spoke about individuals and families, not corporations. And the sentence is of course a hyperbole which should be seen in the context of a longer speech. Yes, she was a divisive figure, but has nothing to do with this Youtube thing, really.

chewxy 14y ago

Actually, the fact that you cannot appeal for fair use (or at least give rationalization) points to how broken the system is. On the other hand, I can also understand why his appeals fall to deaf ears. When handling the first few DMCAs for Fork the Cookbook, I would contact the user who uploaded the recipe, and talk to the user (and offer the user to post counter notices) It was a time consuming, draining process, having to feel fire from your users, and the copyright holders. It's very draining, and I was very tempted to write an automated DMCA process for Fork the Cookbook. In the end, I decided not to for a few reasons. The way we approach copyright in the information age is broken. I have some ideas to fix it, but you'd have to buy my book (c) Chewxy 2014

tingletech 14y ago

humm, is it still a safe harbor if there are contractual obligations like this in place?

nwzpaperman 14y ago
The CDA safe harbor is likely in jeopardy if the right class and attorney got together. This is moving from independent ISP status to discretionary content management. Aka being a publisher.

darkchasma 14y ago

Can a case be made that YouTube is abusing it's effective monopoly on web video? I'm genuinely curious.

afreak 14y ago
The case can be made that Google does not have an effective monopoly on web video actually.
AnthonyMouse 14y ago
For that matter, what about the labels? Is there not something like copyright misuse that prevents them from leveraging the copyright on music into a contract for the suppression of fair use? Or what about these guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashion_Originators%27_Guild_of_America http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashion_Originators%27_Guild_of...
signalsignal 14y ago
Not if someone self hosts their video.
sliverstorm 14y ago
"abusing its effective monopoly" implies YouTube stands to gain by deleting your videos. In reality, I think they only stand to not lose.

edwardunknown 14y ago

>Now, when a user wanted to file an appeal, the claim would go directly to the copyright holder. I put up a Buddy Holly biography a few years ago, Warner (I think) claimed infringement on a song snippet, I filed an appeal that included a link that showed Paul McCartney owned the Buddy Holly catalog and Youtube put it back up in less than an hour. I doubt if the appeal went straight to Warner Music it would have happened quite like that.

sethbannon 14y ago

Time for some more competition in the online video market.

onemorepassword 14y ago
There is already plenty of competition, especially outside the US. Since Google has always heavily "moderated" videos based on American values and American commercial interests, most countries had a viable market for an alternative for a long time. The same also applies to the other end of the market, because YouTube is a bit of a cesspool when it comes to thing Google doesn't want to censor (like racism and homophobia). Many don't want to be associated with that in any way.
OGinparadise 14y ago
Time for some more competition in the online video market. Youtube is heavily promoted through Google search for virtually any query. Any competitor was probably hit by Panda so there's a very uphill battle.

OGinparadise 14y ago

The way I understand: Google has entered in private agreements and as a private company it can remove even a video celebrating your mom's bday, for reason or no reason. >> The problem for McKelzey now is that he's picked up a strike in YouTube's two-strike system. According to the site's Terms of Service, YouTube can terminate an account if its found to be in violation of site rules more than once. Does that take Adsense, Adwords, GooglePlay, G+ and everything with it? If so, that's scary.

MichaelApproved 14y ago
You get 3 strikes and each strike expires after six months. http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2814000 http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...
- OGinparadise 14y ago
  So use separate accounts if a Google Account has any value. The problem is that you get the infraction not for "breaking the law" but for breaking whatever private agreement Google signed with big music labels.
  - roel_v 14y ago
    The article states that in this case, the account was not penalized.
    - OGinparadise 14y ago
      Found the answer: "The problem for McKelzey now is that he's picked up a strike in YouTube's two-strike system. According to the site's Terms of Service, YouTube can terminate an account if its found to be in violation of site rules more than once. "Now I'm on their radar even though I don't believe I did anything wrong," McKelzey said."
ptaipale 14y ago
Are there still reasons Google cannot use, under U.S. law? At least in many European companies, particularly in matters of employment or offering services, improper reasons are illegal. For instance, you cannot deny service to someone on basis of race, skin colour, religion, etc. If you cannot prove you have any proper reason, a racist reason can be assumed and you're facing trouble.

vpeters25 14y ago

His only recurse might be to sue both Youtube and Universal seeking a declaratory judgement the work doesn't infringe copyright under the fair use doctrine, injunction to have it reinstated and another injunction forbidding both Youtube and Universal from ever removing it again subject to a massive fine/day. A good lawyer could even get slander of title up there against Universal for claiming copyright on a video which they clearly don't own, in which case he could get a nice paycheck out of the lawsuit. They could also stick some RICO act in there. The question is whether suing would be worth the trouble, maybe the EFF would be open to pursue such case to set case law and make an example of them to the rest of the copyright mafia.

comex 14y ago
Except that YouTube is under no obligation to host his video and is free to remove it for any or no reason, so it couldn't be forced to reinstate the video.
- vpeters25 14y ago
  Yeah, but it is removing it because Universal is claiming it owns the copyright of it, that's slander of title afaik.
roel_v 14y ago
"under the fair use doctrine," You either didn't read the article or missed the point completely, 'fair use' has no relationship whatsoever to this case. Youtube is free to host the video or not, at their discretion, regardless of copyright law. "A good lawyer could even get slander of title up there against Universal for claiming copyright on a video which they clearly don't own, in which case he could get a nice paycheck out of the lawsuit. They could also stick some RICO act in there." Please don't make uninformed legal claims of things you obviously know nothing about.

malandrew 14y ago

It's stories like this that are the reason I can't wait until P2P video streaming and sharing over WebRTC become commonplace enough to replace YouTube and similar sites. You can't assert copyright via the DMCA against fair use material on a fully distributed P2P network. Ironically, the quality of comments and discourse on a P2P network would probably be an improvement over what can be found on YouTube.

lucb1e 14y ago

I can testify this. It even seems impossible to get in touch with a Youtube official without a lawyer in place or posting on public boards in the hope for an official response.

njharman 14y ago

Perfect example of how Music Companies are in the business of distribution and not content creation. They've co-opted YT into allowing them to control distribution "required to remove specific videos from the site, block specific videos in certain territories," of content regardless if it's something they have copyright over or not. Without absurd efforts to prop up its model the business of distribution of content is near worthless in age of near zero cost, perfect copies and Internet.

acomjean 14y ago

Ultimately self defeating as publicity helps. Especially with Rap that doesn't get a lot of replay (vs say classic rock) Unless the review was negative and thus the take-down (this would be troubling). Youtube seems to have its own music search http://www.youtube.com/disco http://www.youtube.com/disco

sexyalterego 14y ago

This story was syndicated from the Daily Dot. Original link here: http://www.dailydot.com/news/youtube-universal-music-video-takedown-deal/ http://www.dailydot.com/news/youtube-universal-music-video-t...

ijk 14y ago

Music copyright is incredibly messed up, even compared to the rest of copyright. I was doing research for a project I'm working on, and it's nearly impossible to determine if any 20th century recording is in the public domain unless the author explicitly declared it as such. YouTube (and by extension Google) are actively making this worse with automated ContentID. There are many documented cases of author-released public-domain or creative commons work being claimed by other people [1]. Create a false entry in the ContentID database and issue takedown notices to the original creator and anyone else who used the music. Even if you get caught you can drop the claim and still walk away with the money you made off of their videos. [1] See http://incompetech.com/wordpress/category/copyright/ http://incompetech.com/wordpress/category/copyright/ for several examples