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Comment by abdias | Hacker News Reader

How will you deal with fair-use?

Since there is no algorithmic way of defining fair use, it can only really be dealt with by lawyers in court.

Hi abdias, thanks for your question! At this stage we only inform our users where the uploaded video is online. Do you think we should deal with fair-use?

You don't have to, fair-use is a defence only applicable in court, the easiest way is to sue everyone and let their lawyers assert fair-use. AFAIK it's not unlawful, nor will you incur any fines, if you sue someone for using your copyrighted material if it ends up being declared fair-use. Additionally, I think youtube is even more lenient than that towards people asserting unlawful use of their copyrighted material. In short, fair-use does not exist outside of the courtroom and no amount of "I own no copyrights" or "No copyright intended" tags, or citing the copyright code on your videos can summon it.

YouTube already does an absolutely horrible job with handling take-downs and fair use. I have zero interest in seeing any systems or algorithms built that would aid the sloppy, lazy, and greedy organizations shot gunning take downs, even on their own material and channels (always funny).

This amuses me greatly, got any tangible examples?

jwz posted a thing about his long saga fighting a takedown of horror movie reviews.

>even on their own material and channels (always funny).

I was referring specifically to this? Am I right to infer that DMCAs are so scatter gun that publishers have managed to DMCA themselves?

>Am I right to infer that DMCAs are so scatter gun that publishers have managed to DMCA themselves?

Yes this has happened multiple times. Notable one that's somewhat recent that comes to mind: https://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-flags-website-piracy-po...

I posted an unlisted video of my daughter at a noisy indoor theme park. It got automatically removed because the venue had a song playing in the background.

> sue everyone and let their lawyers assert fair-use

YouTube would turn into a tumbleweed landscape overnight!

I've often thought YT should just add "No copyright intended" et al as a ContentID trigger though.

"No copyright intended" always makes me laugh. What does that even mean?

It means the average person has no idea how copyright law works. It means lots of average people think there is nothing wrong with non-commerical usage of copyrighted works so long as you don't try to pass something off as your own. It means the legal definition of copyright infringement is out of step of what most people think of as right and wrong.

Your line of thinking is why we need anti-SLAPP style laws protecting Fair Use.

Strategic lawsuits against Fair Use are a form of stifling protected speech.

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