A Step Toward Protecting Fair Use on YouTube | Hacker News Reader

A Step Toward Protecting Fair Use on YouTube

googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com

159 pointsjacquesm50 comments

From a comment on the article, http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-step-toward...

"… a far more effective change would be to remove the immediate monetary reward for a false claim. As it stands now, the instant a claim is made, all ad money is diverted to the claimant and is never recoverable by the creator. This is further compounded by the fact appeals go to the claimant, not a 3rd party, for review and along with the conflict of interest can take weeks to a month to be addressed during which time the claimant is still monetizing the creator's work.

A simple change would be once a claim is made against a video to hold (escrow) all revenue until the dispute is resolved or one party fails to respond in the given time. After there is a resolution, the revenue is released to the correct party."

A legitimate problem, but the solution proposed sounds even worse. If Google said they were going to put all the money in a box when there was some dispute over who owned it, I feel that neither creators nor copyright owners would be happy.

I don't have a better solution, of course. I started typing one out and immediately realized how it could be gamed. It's not a simple problem and it doesn't have a simple solution that I can see. But it's good that it's being looked at, at least.

It doesn't seem like that big of a problem to me. Currently, it seems like the claimants are big companies, who should have the cash reserves to absorb a few months delay in the relatively small amount of ad revenue that they are missing out on. Small creators may still face hardship as a result of the delayed income (although if they are cannot absorb this, then I think they are still spread to thin to be sustainable), but under the current system they get nothing from this time period.

>Currently, it seems like the claimants are big companies, who should have the cash reserves to absorb a few months delay in the relatively small amount of ad revenue that they are missing out on.

I've found this parallel really interesting, as Facebook has now been criticized for not having Content ID and those criticisms are led by smaller creators (I guess the big media companies have given up being outspoken about piracy on video platforms that don't have Content ID-like systems).

It's pretty amazing. Facebook whole strategy seems to be encouraging people to rip YouTube videos and put them in the Facebook player. A YouTube embed share on Facebook is just not given the viral weight a Facebook video has, and Facebook is doing nothing to stop piracy. They will of course crack down... when they feel like enough creators have moved from YouTube to Facebook.

Poetic justice for YouTube, who grew off the back of willful ignorance of music copyright for the first few years before cracking down.

Neither side being happy is typical of fair processes for resolving disputes; if one side is happy with a dispute process, its usually because it is biased to their side.

Is YouTube allowed to legally do that?

Can they withhold money from the copyright holder (even though it's not known at the moment who the true copyright holder is) while still showing the video?

I think they consider revenue share payouts as something more akin to a gift than a purchase.

They can do whatever they want if it's in the contract. And the only recourse for an unfavorable ToS change is a boycott - which, as we've seen with YouTube Red, is near impossible even for a change that's gotten significant attention and opposition.

Last year I uploaded some old footage onto Youtube.. the footage was from WW2 that was filmed by US Gov. I saved it from a site that went down in 2000s and wanted to put it up for my cousin who was studying WW2 in HS.

In less than 24 hours, there were 4 different copyright claims by various companies. Over a 20 min clip. They obviously didn't own the copyright but they were claiming the clip as their own and wanted cuts of revenue.

About two years ago I uploaded an animation that I did in Apple Motion and it used stock sounds and music from Apple. Within a day of upload, I received a copyright claim by some company and they demanded I remove audio.

From my brief experience with Youtube/Google's Content ID system and the way they do business, I'm really glad I don't have to deal with this mafia on a daily basis.

Try uploading classical music as played by yourself or a computer. It will be monetized by Sony/BMG nearly instantly.

Seems obvious someone could sue and make money from this.

Though perhaps not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud

"But the U.S. Copyright Act does not expressly provide for any civil actions to remedy claims of copyright on public domain materials, nor does the Act prescribe relief for individuals who refrain from copying or pay for copying permission to an entity that engages in copyfraud."

Okay, how is that obvious? Why would you be likely to succeed?

There clearly committing fraud.

But they also have more money for lawyers than you, and in the US justice is determined by which side can pay more.

you have to prove they are committing fraud

Yep. I uploaded a video of my son playing several hundred year old piano piece and it was within hours "claimed" by someone.

It doesn't seem to hurt Google's business, but I won't upload stuff anymore.

I'm curious how that would be found so quickly - presumably it would have to be the title, because performances are individual.

And why would Google even take such a claim seriously? If you're playing Bach clearly no one has a claim.

It doesn't work like that. You can take down any video instantly just by filing a copyright against it.

It would appear to me that that is a knife that cuts both ways.

Even John McCain's people should know this is true. https://www.eff.org/files/mccain_youtube_copyright_letter_10...

Although their request for special treatment shows they just want YouTube to expedite cases that they care about.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/oct/15/john-mccain-you...

> "But we believe it would consume few resources - and provide enormous benefit - for YouTube to commit to a full legal review of all takedown notices on videos posted from accounts controlled by (at least) political candidates and campaigns."

Nobody at Google looks at the claim, they've got an automatic process where somebody says "I own this." and Google says "OK!"

My understanding is they apply heuristics to the video and audio. They might be Google. Or others, I just don't know.

Just upload to Facebook - they don't check.

Upload that content to archive.org instead of Youtube.

I didn't know (and I'm assuming many people don't) this was even possible! Thanks for the tip.

You're welcome! I'm uploading Bernie Sanders' speech today at Gerogetown University as we speak :D

Archive All The History!

If you aren't there already you should come hang out with the Archive Team[0] in #archiveteam and #archiveteam-bs on EFNet. It seems like you'd fit right in.

[0] http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

I'm bithippo when I drop into #archiveteam, and I live to save digital artifacts of humanity. Thank you for the invite :)

Can archive.org stream videos, or is file download required? Do they have an HTML5 player which can be embedded in other sites?

> stream videos, or is file download required

And what, exactly, is the difference for a server?

The myth that there is something called "streaming" that is in any way different from a "download" needs to die.

> And what, exactly, is the difference for a server?

Off the top of my head:

* "Streaming" could imply a few different files of differing quality that the downloader dynamically changes between.

* Scrubbing to see previews further ahead and back, in order to jump to playback at a particular point.

* Throttling bandwidth to just that required for realtime playback. Most people don't watch the full video, so no need to download too far ahead of where playback is.

* Not downloading too much further if the video is paused.

There are definitely times that you want to download the file, but I definitely think of "streaming" as encompassing the above features. When I'm in a bandwidth constrained environment, in particular, I often prefer the streaming experience.

I don't think "streaming" implies any of that. I don't believe YouTube had any of these features when it first arrived.

All "streaming" really implies is that you can watch as you download. That requires the download to be linear (e.g. traditional BitTorrent downloads aren't streaming), the format to be linear (can't put vital information at the end of the file), and the download speed to be high enough to download at least one second of content for each second of download time.

Everything you describe is nice, but not necessary.

All of those are features that have been supported with various file transfer tools. In the end, you're still opening a TCP socket, doing some management to request the file, and transferring that relevant data. There are numerous ways to accomplish this, but it's still a variation of (request file, receive data).

"Streaming" isn't a technical feature. It's a fiction designed to fool non-technical people (often in management, marketing, or legal). Usually this used as a euphemism for a broken client that doesn't have a "save" button.

At a minimum, beginning download/playback at a time offset.

Downloading files starting at arbitrary offsets was supported in FTP (and probably much earlier). The tools "curl" and "wget" use this to continue broken downloads.

Yes, Archive.org can stream video and it can be embedded.

Just as video uploaders can have strikes placed against their accounts, so should users of the ContentID system.

A potential solution would be adding a "fraudulent claim" response option (requiring a detailed explanation) for people to reply to takedown/monetization notices with. When a ContentID account gets too many of these checks (verified by an actual human being working at youtube) they are cut off from the system for a period of time.

If this response is used incorrectly more than a couple of times by a given account, they would be locked out of using it in the future to prevent flagrant abuse/bogging down of the system.

Potential for liability on false copyright claims will never be added to the law because big entertainment has the government in its pocket. Thus it falls on content hosts/providers to force abusive industries to "play fair".

ContentID itself being a terrible system is beside the point, and an argument for another day.

That sounds like a workable and practical solution and it almost makes you wonder why it isn't there right now, it's that simple.

It's a good start, though I think reviewing their content ID system is far more important at this point. I've seen videos claimed or taken down based on everything from outright fraud (companies and individuals claiming to own songs and video footage they don't have the rights/exclusive rights to) to weird coincidences (like songs being 'claimed' because a song they used was a bit similar to a popular pop song, even if it had nothing to do with it).

It's nice to see them stand up for their users in at least some sense though.

Jim Sterling, who has been the victim of malicious copyright claims on videos which are clearly fair use, has a good video on the implications of the policy: https://youtu.be/w-UgOXP82UI

I remember when Konami tried to silence Super Bunnyhop awhile back via DMCA abuse and Youtube stepped in, I'm glad to see that has in a way evolved into a proper policy, caveats be damned.

The Content ID juggernaut was devised by Google to placate the copyright holders and content creators whose backs YouTube had been built on. As it stands, 90%+ of all music played on YouTube is produced by the oligopoly of the three major music labels, so it is in YouTube's existential interest for the labels to be catered to. That means giving them a portion of the <10% revenue generated by the works of independent creators, and sometimes shutting down videos and channels.

YouTube is popular because it is cheap, user-friendly, and popular. And it is that way thanks to rampant copyright infringement, redeemed by Content ID and the associate policies.

Why would you use YouTube if you care about these issues? The whole business is based on monetizing your effort without compensating you.

Sure, youtube has a big network effect, but that doesn't matter for the use case of using it as a host for videos shared on social networks or embedded in other sites.

You could try something like MediaGoblin instead. Taking these steps help ensure that we never have to worry about YouTube letting some random claimant knock our videos offline again, at least not without them filing a claim against a registrar, VPS host, etc.

From MediaGoblin.org: "MediaGoblin is a free software media publishing platform that anyone can run. You can think of it as a decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud, etc."

So I visit the website, click on the link some of the best examples of fair use on YouTube, and land on this: https://i.imgur.com/ygLwM6S.jpg

Priceless.

Thanks for posting this.

Is it possible to change the link to the non-mobile version?

On mobile it will redirect automatically, but the mobile version is a bit janky to read on desktop. It's a pretty minor thing, and it's not that important, but here it is!

Few years ago I see this video of a YouTube creator that usually uses copyrighted material on fair use. He explain some problems with the current (now updated) system.

YouTube's Content ID System SUCKS (2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuTHhtCyzLg

I just wish they'd help me when there's no copyright infringement at all, so there's no need for a "fair use" argument--but I still get an infringement notice.

This happens, for example, if I sit down at my own piano and record myself playing some unambiguously out-of-copyright work, for example Mozart, Chopin, or Bach.

Just last week I got a notice from a record label because their matching software identified a Beethoven piano piece as being that from one of their copyrighted recordings. It wasn't--it was me playing.

Google should stop allowing companies that do this access to their content match system.

I guess that's their way of telling you that you are so good now that they would like to sign you to their label.

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