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Comment by donkeyd | Hacker News Reader

I had a similar thing happen with gameplay videos containing wind noise. The videos were uploaded in 2014, but I get copyright claims from a song that was released in 2017. This seems like a major oversight in Content ID, it should force the claimant to provide a release date for the song and exclude videos that were uploaded before that date.

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> This seems like a major oversight in Content ID, it should force the claimant to provide a release date for the song and exclude videos that were uploaded before that date.

The major oversight rather lies in the fact that the law does not introduce huge penalties/indemnification for false copyright claims - if these existed, copyright holders would be a lot more cautious with potentially false claims.

The law does in the form of perjury charges for false DMCA claims; content ID is intentionally operates outside the DMCA legal framework.

The perjury coverage is weak, but they at least provide something.

EDIT: Perjury comes into play as part of a permanent takedown request, not the initial temporary takedown request. Just a clarification.

The perjury charges are in respect to the claim that you are authorized to enforce the copyrights on the work you claim is being infringed.

If you own the rights to a 2013 advertising jingle for yo-yo wax, and you assert that you own the rights to it while making a DMCA takedown claim against a birthday party video posted in 2010, there is no perjury. The claim that the work is infringing is not the part covered by the perjury threat.

This is why the DMCA is broken. There is no reason whatsoever for legitimate copyright holders to avoid making frivolous claims, and the burden lies entirely on their victims to prove their innocence.

(I am not a lawyer. I might be wrong about this. Don't mistake this comment for legal advice.)

The perjury claims come into play with the permanent takedown. There's no burden of proof on the initial takedown, as there is no burden of proof for the request to have it put back up. It's after those two steps that the takedown can become permanent, which is where the legalities and associated penalties come into play, and where the claim can go to court.

As I said, weak, but it's there.

Wouldn't even that go away if the claimant had a legitimate reason to believe the subject was infringing? ...maybe if an automated matching algorithm flagged it as such?

If the algorithm returns false positives more than 5% of the time, does the claimant truly have a legitimate reason for such a belief?

Yes. Which is why it only prevents false claims (the original concern), and why I label it as a weak protection. Of course, it's also only really going to come into play during the lawsuit phase of the notice and takedown process, a process unlikely to be automated.

IANAL, of course.

You should make a copyright claim against the song that was released in 2017 because they clearly sampled your work without permission and without payment.

This is exactly what I was going to say -- but it is worse! Since they (2017 song) already claim a violation, they are essentially admitting to a violation (except, on themselves!)

I would actually consider doing this if I were in the same position. You'd have to wonder what the consequences were, considering that by filing a claim against someone you are establishing that you believe there to be a violation. If the claimant then is shown to have the newer work by several years, I wonder how such a claim would be taken?

DMCA would be establishing that you believe there to be a violation, but ContentID is just automated matching YouTube does on the behalf of artists - so no such claim exists.

surely, by enrolling to have ContentID match a work which you claim is yours against others, you are initiating the chain of events which leads to the automated claim of infringement being made? This implies (to me) that you are the one making the claim?

That's exactly what I was thinking: by making the claim they've admitted that both the number and your video are using the same music. Only you have proof that your video existed first, ergo they stole your work :)

LOL! I thought that too, but I do not own the copyright on the game or the sound effect.

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