One data point: I tried submitting "His Girl Friday", one of the most famous movies to have fallen into public domain, from the copy hosted on archive.org:
As soon as it was finished uploading, I was notified that a copyright owner (Sony Pictures, which I guess owns the remnants of the defunct studio that produced His Girl Friday) had issued a takedown notice. Amusingly, a minute later, I received the usual "Congratulations, your video is now on YouTube!" email that you get when successfully publishing a video.
After getting a takedown notice, you have the option to dispute it, which I did, providing evidence that His Girl Friday is indeed in the public domain. A short time later, I got a note saying that my dispute was rejected, and that I could choose to fight it -- but that the decision would be up to the rights holder (Sony). However, if the rights owner chose again to deny me, my YouTube account would be penalized and I could possibly lose uploading capabilities.
I didn't really care enough to fight it (though I've kept the screenshots and emails to document the process)...anyone else get to this stage and succeed (or fail)?
This is exactly the fundamental problem with YouTube's ContentID system as compared to the DMCA system (and I never thought I'd be observing a case where the DMCA is an improvement). On sites relying on the DMCA notice and counter-notice mechanism, you can file a counter-notice and your content will go back up. The site can rely on that, and the party making a claim over your content has to go after you rather than the site.
With that system, if you're confident something is public domain, or fair use, or any number of other reasons why a claim is invalid, you can just say "put it back up". There's no option for the claimant to "reject" your "dispute".
Content ID is possibly the worst thing about YouTube. It's stifling. It's an incessant pain for anyone who produces any type of review, analysis or critique of popular media, particularly combined with YouTube's 3 strikes system and lack of decent appeals process. Content creators frequently see their channels disappear entirely from YouTube without explanation or means of recourse, only having them restored by fans mass-emailing Google in protest.
While you're right that Google's implementation of Content ID doesn't handle fair use well, Content ID is critical for indie creators. Facebook's lack of protections lead to tons of lost revenue for them (and for indies, it matters!).
Or, from another perspective, Content ID is one of the best things about YouTube. Rather than all videos with copyrighted content being taken down, many get to stay up and viewable, and the owner of the content is happy because they can still get paid.
The "three strikes" system isn't Content ID, that's the DMCA process, which are the laws that YouTube has operate within. One of the great things that about Content ID is that it provides a better appeals system than the DMCA provides, so that things can be fixed before the DMCA process kicks in and the video is taken down.
Content ID exists so YouTube can ease big partners. I am not sure about the three strikes being a part of DMCA. Are you sure? This YouTube help page does not elaborate whether YouTube is legally required to terminate an account three strikes. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2814000
> If you receive three copyright strikes, your account will be terminated. All the videos uploaded to your account will be removed. Users with terminated accounts aren’t able to create new accounts.
An possibly unrelated side note about automated complaints: I have a video created using YouTube Video Editor. The video includes song "1812 Op. 49: Overture" by Philharmonia Slavonica, Henry Adolph using YouTube's audio mixer. Someone made a claim that on a video. Being a video created on YouTube, it should be obvious that the claim is frivolous. Yet, the claim went through. Automated copyright complaints whether content id or not is bad because they place a burden on people who upload videos and it seems there is no penalty for being indiscriminate.
> Content ID exists so YouTube can ease big partners.
It's probably more to ease their own burden. YouTube likely receives a huge number of takedown requests daily, but with Content ID a lot more can be automated. Also, without Content ID, there would probably be a lot more companies just doing poorly-scripted takedown requests, which would make the experience of everyone on YouTube a lot worse. See: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/absurd-automated-notic...
> I am not sure about the three strikes being a part of DMCA. Are you sure?
The DMCA includes a clause about the termination of "repeat infringers"; I assume that YouTube's strike system is their easy-to-understand-and-apply way of addressing that. From the DMCA:
"The limitations on liability established by this section shall apply to a service provider only if the service provider has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network of, a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network who are repeat infringers"
As for your last point, that does sound broken. Perhaps the content owner of the song you used decided that they didn't want people using it on YouTube after all?
> As for your last point, that does sound broken. Perhaps the content owner of the song you used decided that they didn't want people using it on YouTube after all?
Can one revoke a copyright license like that? If one did, would that song still be available on YouTube Video Creator for new videos? Also, how does one be certain in the case of classical music whether one owns performance copyright to it without introducing a certain deviation from the score (defect or flaw if you will) in the musical piece as a fingerprint? I'd imagine if YouTube used an audio score in its tool, it has obtained some sort of a global, perpetual, irrevocable blah blah license don't you think?
It seems like a missed opportunity that leaves money on the table. ContentID should be implemented so that anybody can use anything as long as it's IDed, then the rightsowner gets a sliver of the ad revenue along with anybody else used in the video, if any. Just a list of assets in the video that receive some chunk of the pie. NC is NC and OK.
Another good resource discussing abuse of DMCA on YouTube is Jim Sterling's rant on the subject: https://youtu.be/d9mTOq6mP2I
What the EFF article doesn't discuss deeply is that YouTube doesn't provide much assistance when a YouTuber counterclaims; which is particularly odd since YouTube has inventive in keeping their content creators happy.
Lax copyright enforcement one of the reasons Blip.tv was popular (and the site Doug Walker used) until its closing. Now, YouTube has a functional monopoly in video hosting (No, Vimeo does not count) and no reason to play nice.
What's telling is that Google / YouTube will use this technology to defend the copyrights of big media companies, but won't do anything about homemade, viral videos uploaded by individual users which get blatantly copied, re-uploaded, and monetized. If they wanted to, they could easily make it so that the "original" version of any given video was the only one users ever saw, but they don't. They know which side their bread is buttered on.
How do you determine which video is the "original" version? That is, how do you tell which uploader owns the content? There isn't really a way to know until the content owner makes a compliant (anyone can file a DMCA takedown, not just big media companies).
The system is stacked in favour of the entity making claim against the video and there is no attempt to curtail bad actors on that side of the table. The system was built with large entities like the movie studios in mind and even those movie studios overstep their bounds.
How many "mistaken" claims will it take for (e.g.) Universal Music to have their ContentID access revoked? I posit that they would have to be VERY egregious to get kicked out of the system. Same thing for other larger corporations.
I'm not saying that Google won't kick small-time abusers out of the system, but the big players would have to do something really bad to get kicked out of the system.
I uploaded a video to youtube, it got stolen by other people, I reported it, and the copy got taken down in about a day. They stole it again several more times, and then it was taken down in about 30 minutes after reporting. I can't really complain.
First to upload to youtube does not mean owner. What if something was uploaded to vimeo, or to a person's own website, then someone steals it and uploads it to youtube. Does that give the thief the right to take down all other copies? Or what if something is CC licensed like Big Buck Bunny, does that give the first person to upload to youtube the right to stop all other people uploading to youtube?
This video claims that Facebook's lack of a content ID system is harmful to individual / small content creators as their videos are copied and go viral with no compensation to the content creator.
If bandwidth was symmetric, this would never have happened.
Technically YouTube and other services like it are not needed. People need a means to distribute their videos on the internet —possibly starting with a link from the web. With symmetric bandwidth and a suitable peer-to-peer protocol, there would be no need for a centralised service. Just serve your videos from your home router and be done with it.
Now that there's millions of authors instead of a single YouTube, copyright notices and subsequent takedowns suddenly becomes much harder. No more automated process, they have to (e)mail you a legal notice.
Sure, they could still go after your ISP, have it spy on your communications, and take down your very internet connection. However that would cause even more obvious human rights problems (the internet is the only medium through which freedom of speech is a reality —journals, TV, are much too guarded and centralised for the people to actually speak in them), and it would be solved just as easily as the bandwidth problem: stop the monopoly on the internet connections: we need more providers. Hundreds, thousands of them.
It's not hard either: to encourage the existence of many small providers, we just have to take down economies of scales in pricing. One solution would have the state build the lines (such as the fibre), and lease the resulting bandwidth to providers (without bulk offers).
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That way, takedowns becomes prohibitively expensive. As it should be. Now we can concentrate on taking down the real bad guys.
The article conflates ContentID (which is not the DMCA notice/counternotice process) with the DMCA process. ContentID, AFAICT, doesn't follow the DMCA rules, and doesn't provide either side of the DMCA safe harbor -- OTOH, since its more favorable to the participants (who are the copyright holders most likely to file costly suits) it is just as good for the infringement liability side of the safe harbor, and, for the counternotice side, losing the safe harbor against users isn't important, because Google has structured there terms of service (like every other provider) to minimize the possibility that there would ever be liability to a user for taking down content or even shuttering an account, so there is no need for that side of the safe harbor.
I strongly suspect Youtube no longer wants to be a general purpose streaming site. They want to be a curated distributor, the next Netflix with a strong social component. Of course they have a paid tier now, but the next step in their transition is to encourage high-risk, low-value channels to leave.
Obviously, Youtube's claim system is intentionally designed to favor rights-holders, they would probably have half a dozen Viacom lawsuits on their hands if it weren't as aggressive as possible. But I believe the dispute resolution system is designed poorly on purpose so that channels that receive numerous takedowns will be encouraged to disappear, or to no longer use copyrighted content regardless of whether or not it's covered by fair use.
Youtube wants that content to only be distributed by the rights-holders through official or approved channels, and eventually only through the paid tier, and they want to prove to media companies that they're capable of exerting that degree of control over digital distribution. Which means they also couldn't care less about Doug Walker, Jim Sterling or GradeAUnderA. They do care about Sony and Disney and what will make money in the future.
This is just speculation on my part, but it feels true. Given their recent debacle with G+ integration, they seem to regard Youtube as a problem to be solved, rather than a service that deserves to stand on its own.
I think that Fair Use can be outscored to robots if it's done right.
Doing it right means that they should think like economists. If mass sending sending false positive DCMA requests has very small cost to the sender, it's profitable to do so and let the receiving end pay the price.
Invalid takedown request should have a cost. It could be waiting period of X days before new takedown request can be send, or it could be money needed to lift the waiting period. Google has big enough volumes that they can afford to hire few people who review cases based on statistical sampling. It should be possible to find equilibrium that minimizes the harm caused by incorrect DCMA request.
Just because a video is fair use doesn't mean that youtube has to host it. It is a reasonable business decision for them to make to just block all of it.
So you think youtube should be required to host all content that isn't illegal? I am not saying you can't be mad or boycott youtube for removing fair use content, I am just saying it is well within their rights to decide to so so.
The answer to all this is to simply post nothing but obnoxious gruel at all times. Spam endless amounts of sarcastic nothingness shot through with zombified imitation teenage drivel.
Nonsense so unbearable that it enrages humans on the other end, so they consider suicide, as they wade through this drek which they must now consider as possible violation in a civil dispute.
There are humans in this loop. Bet on it. And make them pay.
IMO Content ID is essential for a healthy video creator ecosystem. Google's implementation may give the big media companies too much power, but for indie creators it is crucial. Facebook, on the other hand, seems to not care about video piracy at all and as a result small creators suffer.
My primary reaction is that I'm not going to click on a link that you've posted three times in a 20 message comments section. Just posting it once will be quite sufficient, and less likely to cause the spam avoidance instinct of readers to kick in.
https://archive.org/details/his_girl_friday
As soon as it was finished uploading, I was notified that a copyright owner (Sony Pictures, which I guess owns the remnants of the defunct studio that produced His Girl Friday) had issued a takedown notice. Amusingly, a minute later, I received the usual "Congratulations, your video is now on YouTube!" email that you get when successfully publishing a video.
After getting a takedown notice, you have the option to dispute it, which I did, providing evidence that His Girl Friday is indeed in the public domain. A short time later, I got a note saying that my dispute was rejected, and that I could choose to fight it -- but that the decision would be up to the rights holder (Sony). However, if the rights owner chose again to deny me, my YouTube account would be penalized and I could possibly lose uploading capabilities.
I didn't really care enough to fight it (though I've kept the screenshots and emails to document the process)...anyone else get to this stage and succeed (or fail)?