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Comment by nailer | Hacker News Reader

Wonder if the attention put on YouTube here will inspire Google to fix the financial and political 'infringement' takedowns.

Eg, during the takedown process, have something like:

> [ ] I understand that satire and political commentary does not in itself consititute copyright infringement, and that I am not filing this notice on the basis of the video satirizing or making commentary on my copywritten content.

> [ ] I understand that incorrectly flagging satirical or commentary videos that mention my trademarks but do not infringe upon my trademark rights may delay response to future infringement filings.

Or something similar. IANAL. Complainants must tick the boxes to be able to submit.

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Your presupposition is that it is in Google's (and Youtube's) best interest to guarantee that videos are correctly allowed or denied based on the balance of copyright, trademark and fair use.

It could very well be that their best interest is in satisfying their big customers, the companies that invest massive amounts of money in advertising, publishing and divulging their products and services through Google platforms.

Hence the existence of Content ID as a tool for takedown as opposed to rely simply the existing tools like DMCA takedown notices.

The later is, in theory, fair as it gives the accused a clear remedy for false accusations (demand reinstatement of the video and wait for the court battle with the video in place) while the former is a process completely in control by Google and it is up to their discretion to fix the situation.

It's amazing how people act like they have the "right" to post some content anywhere.

Youtube, facebook, reddit, hacker news are all private organizations. They are not legally obligated to host your content (in some cases, like copyright infringement, they are legally obligated to NOT host your content).

The only thing that keeps these sites from arbitrarily censoring their users is money. If facebook deleted every article that zuckerberg disagreed with, people would eventually stop using facebook (there might be some speculation about how their "top stories" algorithm "filters" stuff out).

Less users means less ad revenue. But on the flip side, if samsung accounts for a noticeable chunk of ad revenue and that becomes at risk, less ad revenue means less ad revenue too. If blindly DMCA'ing videos yields a loss of 2% of users, but keeping the video up yields a loss of 5% of ad revenue (from samsung's share), then I imagine they will always prefer to side with samsung.

This isn't illegal, this is just one of the truths about capitalism. If a company exists to make money, it will side with money. if a company exists to provide a quality service, it will side with quality service. Quality service often doesn't have the marketing team though.

Funny how people tend to view things like malls and social media as public places. It's a mass illusion we all place on what is inevitably a biased corporate product fully intended to make money.

It would be interesting to see what a municipal social media platform would look like.

There was a pretty famous course case in Canada on this point, on whether a mall could be useful as a public space.

Court decided no, but a dissent lamented that there were no public spaces in many instances.

I just searched, and the US Supreme Court has gone back and forth on this issue.

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/do-you-have-free-speech-...

Capitalism is great, but if it gets out of hand, government intervention is needed. Two good examples are the breakup of Ma Bell and US v. Microsoft (2001). For a present day problem, look no further than ISPs.

Ma Bell and ISPs are odd examples, because their monopoly or quasi-monopoly positions are possible because of government involvement.

> Ma Bell and ISPs are odd examples, because their monopoly or quasi-monopoly positions are possible because of government involvement.

False: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Doesn't enforcement of copyright fall under government intervention?

There is regulation. It's called the DMCA and it actually forces Google to take down any video that Samsung claims to be theirs.

And in this case, it's a false claim. Thus: it's an abuse of the DMCA.

Its amazing how people act like money and short-term metrics are all that the matters, and the the only purpose of money is to accaccumulate it as an end in itself, and that the public shouldn't communicate to applysocila pressure and consequences to bad actors.

OP was just saying that is how most corporations act.

That doesn't make their behavior automatically good or beyond criticism.

Their entire business model of distributing arbitrary uploads is a grant from the government, one which was very controversial until the overton window passed.

edit: We can certainly decide that it's in the public interest to place limits on the editorial control over sites that rely on safe harbor, just as phone companies aren't allowed to censor particular conversations. Things get to be rights because we collectively decide that they are.

-----

edit: Deleted, because it is completely wrong.

[Your libertarianism ignores the law. In order to qualify for safe harbor under DMCA, their ability to exercise arbitrary editorial control is limited. If they want to choose what they host, they are choosing to be legally responsible for what they host.]

That's not actually libertarianism; it's crypto-fascism. There is no distinction between a totalitarian government and a perfectly "libertarian" company which owns all land and property, so true libertarians must be concerned with how power is actually distributed.

Tech giants have scale and effects on par with government, especially as these "independent" companies tend to make decisions in lock step. Thus libertarians should be primarily concerned with the rights of the distributed actors within these ecosystems.

that being said, I think there is probably legal precedent in holding Youtube accountable to the public interest given its breadth and depth. Looking at the typical 1st amendment litmus test re: falsely yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater - even if that theater is private, what is yelled inside becomes public interest if it affects the public welfare.

It's a popular myth that yelling "fire" in a theater is unlawful.

For speech to be unlawful it must incite violence:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time...

http://civil-liberties.yoexpert.com/civil-liberties-general/...

Being trampled to death is fairly violent. I wonder how non-intential violence would be viewed by a court.

Even the incitement or "fighting words" doctrine is limited to specific face to face threats: https://popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-cens...

This is why the Distributed Web is so important. We need to be sharing all our videos/content in a P2P manner so it can't get censored.

Nothing stopping anyone from distributing their videos via torrents (some musicians do this).

That makes content discovery very difficult.

Why?

A centralized directory that hosts no content will be DMCAed or sued just as easily as one that does, so they will have to implement the same kind of result censorship. And decentralized directories are very vulnerable to spam.

Huh? I absolutely have a right to come out and publicly say that YouTube or Facebook is practicing censorship of ideas for political or financial gain on their platforms, and express the fact that this is a bad thing for users. Expressing such an opinion is not tantamount to stating I have any "rights" under their platforms or being entitled; you are connecting those dots in your head without basis just to be snide.

You have the right to say it, but where are you going to say it where it will actually be heard?

All the big platforms are private and could hypothetically block your message without offering you any recourse.

>It's amazing how people act like they have the "right" to post some content anywhere.

It's amazing how, every time a private organization is criticized for how it handles speech on its platform, some tedious rando jumps out of the woodwork to smugly lecture everyone about how private organizations don't have legal obligations to host anything.

Yes. We know. We know, we know, we know, we all know. The First Amendment does not apply. We are not saying that Google is legally required to do anything. We are saying that Google's behavior is not in the spirit of free speech and chills discourse. That's it. Can we take it as read that everyone's up to speed on this and move on without the pointless derail, please?

You are totally right, we should disown whoever posseses the digital main-street. Its outrageous the public, the people of the constitution have to be beggars in some private backyard.

On on the side of, society extends corporations a lot of rights and protection. Stand to reason that demands that they serve the public interest aren't unreasonable. Especially in this case where the claim is corporations are abusing a right; copyright and trademark protection.

Which in this case, just to keep things concrete, would be in the service of compelling people to host objectionable speech against their will.

"objectionable speech" is a pretty melodramatic way of saying "parody videos of a consumer product", on par with "taxation is violence and theft"

They object to the speech and decline to host it. Juggle the words however you like to make it more emotionally palatable to you. My goal is to speak precisely.

If your goal is to be precise, you should double check the definition of objectionable. It means that the common man would deem it offensive, not that a particular party would object to it for a reason like saving face.

You want your common carrier protection or not?

It's amazing how widespread the idea that that, because it's legal for private organisations to take down whatever content they like, no-one should criticise them for it has become. However could this belief that benefits those with immense influence over the public discourse have become so common?

I don't think there's any kind of actual conspiracy going on; it's just that this argument is a convenient political soldier. If these companies were censoring the other side politically, it's the other political side that would be deploying it.

Your tone suggests some sort of nefarious plot, but in the US that idea is widely consistent with fairly prevalent preferences for strong private property rights and a distrust of regulation that predates mass media.

A business owner is seen as more like the average person than is a regulator or other academic "public discourse"-spouting person.

Today they're telling Youtube what to do, tomorrow they're telling your company what to do...

See also positions on NIMBYism vs "it's my land, why can't I build whatever I want?", Uber and AirBNB vs existing regulations, and many others.

Perhaps people at HN know. But I'd argue internet users in general don't. Just look at the outcry that happens when reddit censors stuff.

Outcry is one of the mechanisms that dissuades censorship on privately-owned mediums. Let's have more outcry please.

Going even further, another way to interpret the 1st Amendment is that it is the federal governments responsibility to protect those freedoms, and that it would be well within the power of Congress to enact laws prohibiting the censoring of free speech, even on so called private platforms. This sort of thing has been done in the past, for example by prohibiting discrimination based on race even in private establishments.

Actually, I don't think this is a valid interpretation of the First Amendment, which is written specifically to circumscribe the powers given to Congress, beginning "Congress shall make no law..."

In other words, this is a right to be protected, not just passively allowed.

Many of the safe-harbor laws protect a service only so long as the service is neutral. If they can make a good-faith argument that their mechanisms are used only to neutrally remove content based on good-faith assertions of copyright infringement, OK. If anyone can make a case that it's used as an editorial tool based on the opinions or ideas expressed in the removed content, well, that's the ballgame. YouTube suddenly has a negative value because losing its safe-harbor status will allow it to be pummeled into bankruptcy by lawsuits.

So maybe before you come rushing in to post your "ha-HA! Literally no one in history has ever considered that this is a corporation, or pointed this out, or had exactly this discussion, I must smugly educate them on that fact" lecture next time, you should do your homework first?

Have you ever read the marketing material from those companies? Because they do talk about their mission to host your content.

Ironically, an implication of your words is that a state owned video sharing site would not only adhere to the 1st amendment much better but would also serve consumer interest in a more balanced way.

> Wonder if the attention put on YouTube here will inspire Google to fix the financial and political 'infringement' takedowns.

Man that's funny. Ya, THIS TIME Google's going to care.

Youtube really has terrible discretion here. The optics of banning a cancer patient's channel and sole source of income are not great...

"It's going to take three months to get the strike removed from my channel... I got my live stream taken away," he said in a video. "If I submit a counter-notification to say 'sue me', I wonder what they will do. Will they sue me, the kid that has cancer and just makes money off YouTube playing a video game?" "It really sucks, because I really worked hard on this channel."

edit: spelling

Yes unfortunately copyright trolls will complain about that because "It's not fair" and "dem pirates took our jobs"... They want to be able to use the DMCA to flag anything their employer doesn't like, whether it's actual copyright infringement, criticism under the fair use, or criticism without even using their content... Sad truth about the freedom on the Internet and the DMCA.

>Warner Bros. flags own site for piracy, orders Google to censor pages

http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2016/09/warner-bros-fla...

It would've been hilarious if Google actually blocked those pages out of spite

How about an alternative to YouTube? It's such a pity that online videos have become so centralized ...

It is a money-losing game (free video hosting/streaming), unless you re-appropriate user provided content to extort ad revenue (a la Content ID)?

UPDATE:

Let me add, if somebody would be willing to subsidize such a service (large co, or gov), it would be possible to compete (market share, not ad revenue obviously).

> Let me add, if somebody would be willing to subsidize such a service (large co, or gov)

Except that such a large co or gov would probably not allow certain videos against itself. Can I force them to host it against their wishes?

I don't mean to add this link sarcastically: https://youtu.be/8CMxDNuuAiQ Maybe we have hope with ipfs? It looks promising to me https://www.reddit.com/r/ipfs/comments/4eyc3v/ipfstube_a_pla...

Edit: obligatory sample video https://ipfstube.erindachtler.me/v/QmPCTWTWqrDqRpquM4rqAmgBN...

No, I understood you.

Benevolent 501c3, maybe?

Really, the answer would be in symmetric last-mile internet connections, no? Having the ability to host and distribute/stream video would change many things in these industries.

It will have to be P2P of some sort. Even with full-duplex gagabit fiber, there's no way for one person to stream HD video to thousands of viewers simultaneously on a home or office connection,

This is exactly the sort of implementation I was imagining.

By participating, you would be caching content for other users.

As an aside, why aren't symmetric last-mile Internet connections a thing? Is it a technical, physical capacity thing, is it a customer demand thing, or what? The last time I had symmetric bandwidth was back in the days of ISDN.

Combination of things. For fiber, direct Ethernet connections, etc that have clearly separated channels symmetric is fairly common. In ADSL and cable network the spectrum is shared for up- and download channels, so they have to balance it. And since marketing mostly happens over download speeds and most people don't upload very much, offering eg. 50/10 instead of 30/30 makes more sense.

I don't know why basically all providers don't allow to adjust the ratio, I suspect to much "complexity" for to little demand. (Quite a while back a German ISP had that for their ADSL connections, was popular with web developers and other professionals that needed fast upload occasionally)

People don't upload very often because their upstream sucks.

This is chicken-and-egg bullshit.

I am sure it is not that difficult to provision.

The area I resided in, had only DSL.

Later, a cable company ran FTTP, with a ONT outside, that converted the fiber to coax-DOCSIS, and then requires the usage of a cable modem? The ONT has a RJ-45 port, but the cable company does not know how to enable it.

The DSL was oversubscribed, and provisioned for less than 6Mbps/768kbps. However, it was only $35/mo.

Once the cable company offered service, it was $60 (plus modem rental or purchase) for 6Mbps/1Mbps.

Many people switched to the fake-fiber cable network, freeing up capacity on the DSL, so now the DSL is provisioned at 12Mbps, but upload is still 768kbps, and still $35/mo.

To get 5Mbps upload via the cable company would require a plan costing over $100/mo. That is their upper limit of upload speed. They can do 105Mbps down (closer to $150/mo), but 5Mbps up is the max.

I would love to have even 3Mbps upstream from the DSL provider

For now, I can use LTE for periodic uploading, where I can get 20 to 50Mbps, but I am paying much more for that privilege.

But, when time is money, I cannot afford to wait 3 hours for data to transfer at 768kbps (not considering encapsulation - yes, the DSL is PPPoE).

"Later, a cable company ran FTTP, with a ONT outside, that converted the fiber to coax-DOCSIS, and then requires the usage of a cable modem? The ONT has a RJ-45 port, but the cable company does not know how to enable it."

Not to sound rude, but you don't actually believe that, do you?

No offense taken.

I agree, it sounds like total BS to me. But, I am not surprised considering it is a cable company.

I can see Mozilla doing something like this.

Youtube gets 45% of ad revenue, whether it's content ID or not. And content ID was forced on youtube when they were sued for $1 billion by Viacom.

So, after Google was found guilty, the judge ordered contentID to be created and implemented?

No they created ContentID so they could say "look we're doing the best we can". If they got rid of it all the large copyright holders could sue again.

It was a civil case, so no one is found guilty. It was settled, and part of the settlement was the google made contentid.

You can always host videos on your own website and pay for your own traffic and server costs.

Unlike Facebook, Youtube isn't a monopolic walled garden with such powerful network effects, so for most purposes it's not an awful alternative. Therefore, unlike Facebook, I don't think that Youtube ia under any moral obligation to be a fair playing field.

How about hosting your own videos. Then someone would have to take you to court to have it taken down.

Couldn't they just send you a DMCA takedown request, then if you don't file a counter request and take it down, when it goes to court they can just nuke you for not following DMCA procedure?

Right. You counter their automated boilerplate DCMA notice with your won automated boilerplate DCMA. End result is the same - the have to take you to court.

IANAL, but the DMCA Safe Harbor is for hosting providers that want to keep their hands clean of their user's uploaded content. If you're hosting your own content, the whole procedure doesn't apply to you (though if your content really is infringing, keeping it up after receiving the takedown could be used as evidence of willful infringement).

Vimeo exists and IMO offers a better desktop playback experience than YouTube. That said, they'll never compete, even if they're as good as YouTube as a platform for videos/video discovery because they don't have an entire ecosystem, not to mention name recognition, propping them up (e.g. Android, Google Apps).

There's the Internet Archive. Not a good place for your personal files, but for stuff like this GTA mod, it should work. They have "Gangnam Style" there[0].

[0]: https://archive.org/details/Psy-GangnamStyle_8

Fair use is an affirmative defense, not a get out of trouble free card. The process is right and correct for the rules as written. The rules may be bullshit but that is a different problem, and one that isn't going to be solved by feel good measures.

Has it changed the financial incentives? If not, why would it change the results?

That's why we have 'I understand incorrectly flagging may delay response' which would change the financial incentives.

If Samsung waste Google's time with false takedowns of satirical content, Google won't be able to respond to, eg, companies marketing fake Galaxy phones or similar as fast as they would otherwise.

Likewise if trolls incorrectly flag videos critiquing them Google won't be able to respond as quickly to someone just pirating their material.

I think the person you are responding to's point is what does Google gain by changing its takedown procedure? Does Google really care if they take down some non-infringing content? Is it going to hurt their traffic that much?

Google is working hard to make content creators quit.

Lack of real recourse against false flagging and takedowns, new "advertiser friendly" rules, the new hero system (top 10 or so most downvoted video on youtube, absolutely the worst ratio

If they really start pushing on enforcement of this bullshit there will be nothing for me to watch there, just shitty non-content nonsense.

AvE is not PC, EEVBlog also is not PC, Louis Rossman swears in his videos, singsing streams are full of racial jokes, stereotypes and the like.

Two things (IANAL too, this applies to US only, etc.):

1) As I understand it, parody is not inherently non-infringing, it's just one factor that weighs in favor of a judge finding that a use is non-infringing.

2) I doubt that the DMCA allows a provider to punish copyright owners in this way (though this might be applied to YouTube's mechanisms that go beyond DMCA requirements). The law requires that "the service provider responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing". Intentionally delaying processing is pretty much the exact opposite of "acting expeditiously".

But that's the whole point, this probably wasn't a DMCA complaint. Google and YouTube on the pressure of rights holders have put in place a completely parallel system that offers the accused no legal recourse.

They just need to go back to all DMCA. Then at least someone with pockets deep enough can challenge these fraudulent requests.

In this case the article clearly says the uploader can submit a counter-notice to reinstate the video, so it sounds exactly like a standard DMCA notice to me.

Just because it sounds like it doesn't mean it is. http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/12/19/the-injust...

Not sure how that article is relevant. As I just said, you can submit a counter-notice. Sure the ContentID system might have flaws, but (as the article says) you can still dispute it.

You said "so it sounds exactly like a standard DMCA notice to me." My point was that ContentID isn't the DMCA, or even a legal notice. It exists only within YouTube.

If it was only ContentID and not DMCA-related at all, then there would be no counter-notice.

Why couldn't contentid have it's own counter notice? Your arguing from your assumption, not to.

Because I've received Content ID notices before. The wording is very different. First you "dispute" the Content ID notice, and then the appeal is rejected, and it gives you a separate form to send a "counter-notice", which contains explicit warnings that the copyright holder can then sue you after you send the notice. Sure it's an assumption, but based on the reading of this article, it seems very clear that this was the result of a DMCA notice.

How is Google's behavior even covered under the DMCA (safe harbor - not very hands off)?

Because 'algorithm'?

Most likely Samsung used the Youtube's "Content ID" system. DMCA is not necessary in that case.

That doesn't change anything. The algorithms are broken and they will always be without general AI. Either you have a human inspecting it and seeing that Samsung are trying to be fascists about it, or you use an algorithm and stuff like that happens.

You say AI is stupid, OK, but you strangely assume NI is not

Are you seriously comparing stuff like neural nets and perceptron to human intelligence?

How about huge monetary penalties enforced on these companies by law, instead of hoping that the industry police itself? There is no way anything else is going to work and hell will freeze over before abuses stop voluntarily.

nit: ...copyrighted content.

"Copywrite" and "copyright" are not synonymous.

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