Game Critic Uses Workaround for YouTube's Copyright (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Game Critic Uses Workaround for YouTube's Copyright (2016)

kotaku.com

145 pointspavel_lishin44 comments

Google’s engine also doesn’t seem to understand basic copyright law. Simply having a brief clip of someone else’s content doesn’t, under many ‘fair use’ cases, constitute a copyright violation. The whole system is also grossy a “guilty until proven innocent” setup. There’s little penalty for people just putting out bogus claims so content creators tend to get flooded with “content claims” even when a 2 second human review clearly shows the claim to be bogus (see earlier posting about guy’s white noise video getting slammed with content claims).

Google’s crappy AI tech combined with crappy policies are creating a living hell for many content creators.

Of course here Google is basically just making up its own laws for their own world. As a private platform they can basically do whatever they want. Does that violate their “don’t be evil” mantra? We report, you decide.

I'm hoping the EU's General Data Protection Regulation is going to bite Google's arse for this (among many other things).

Its Article 22 pretty much says that you cannot impede the rights of a person based on an automated decision.

Obviously there's exceptions for that rule, which Google is going to cling on as much as possible, but hopefully something comes out of it either way.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/

What is the cost for doing this? eg. false copyright claims "My white noise video has copyright claims" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16075325

It often comes with demonetization. It's especially a problem for people who make YouTube content for a living. Much, or possibly even most, of the income for these videos comes in a short burst when the video is first uploaded. This initial time can make up huge portions of a person's income.

Are there no businesses which promote "back catalogs" for YouTube content?

Since Google is just a host I don't think a court would consider a right to post, Google gets to pick what they host, perhaps the court would however consider a charge on anticompetitive behavior.

I think, that's more of a US thing that people don't have a right to an offer. In Europe, it usually rather goes that it's a public offer, therefore anyone in principle has a right to take this offer, you can especially not exclude them because you dislike their skin color or sexual orientation etc., but they can forfeit this right under certain circumstances, for example if someone repeatedly steals from your grocery store, then you can ban them from entering your store, but you generally do need a judge to confirm that.

Then again, the article actually specifies "...or similarly significantly affects him or her". So, it doesn't even need to be a right to upload to YouTube. Of course, it's up for debate if it "significantly affects" someone when they cannot upload YouTube-videos, but at the very least with the many people making their living off of YouTube, this should be a pretty clear case.

Most of EU also has the equivalent of right to refuse service. You only can't chose to refuse service because of the customer belonging to a legally protected class. But they also still have to prove that was the cause, you can still just claim you simply don't like them.

> Google’s crappy AI tech combined with crappy policies are creating a living hell for many content creators.

Unfortunately, as I understand it, they're somewhat forced to by US law and the quirks of safe harbor provisions, by which they have to show that they've done everything they reasonably could to stop infringement. The law in this case is focussed heavily on the copyright holders, and end user experience doesn't even enter in to it.

If they don't respond quickly and effectively to copyright infringement, they lose their safe harbor protections and become liable for the copyright infringement themselves as well.

The whole Content-ID stuff came out from the "Viacom vs Youtube" court case, and while the case came out in Google's favour the writing was clearly on the wall. Putting in Content ID ensured that Google stopped being sued by every major copyright holder and their mother.

It sure sucks for end users, the system is god awful, but I'm not convinced Google has any real choice here.

> Putting in Content ID ensured that Google stopped being sued by every major copyright holder and their mother

I think it's also important to remember that YouTube wants to be a LOT more than just a place for cute kitty videos. Video rentals, event streaming, PPV events, content-channels, paid services...

ContentID is a lot about the DMCA and handling 'pirate' uploads, but the overall positioning is to keep the platform competitive for the various media producers to (hopefully), monetize YouTube.

The Content ID system has nothing to do with enforcing copyright, and everything to do with enforcing an internal ruleset that has to do with monetization, and how much cash Google pays out to YouTube video creators.

Here's an exercise for the reader. Record a short video of anything, and ensure that the soundtrack is of you playing random notes on any instrument of your choosing. Then, upload the video to YouTube, and count the number of minutes before you receive the inevitable copyright infrignement claim.

If they're just some platform provider, thats one thing. If they're a monopoly, then that's something completely different. It's not illegal to be a monopoly, but its hard to operate as one because every decision (rightfully) gets much more scrutiny.

They don't say, "Don't Be Evil" anymore. If Google's mantra is anything, it's "Don't Hire People". It seems to me their Content ID system would be an excellent way to winnow down the massive amount of upload traffic YouTube receives to a manageable amount for more complete, human review, to obviate false-positives. But they would rather have false-positives than hire anyone.

Fair Use is a right[0], so Google is regularly and massively violating its users' rights.

[0] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150222/16392430108/remin...

Fair use is a right, and free speech is a right, but there's no right to have Google host your videos.

> Freedom of expression is a right that may not be abridged by the government

Key word, the government.

Key word: monopoly.

When you are big enough to control a market and de facto become a new layer of government, new rules apply.

You don't have a right to have your videos hosted by the government either.

The government isn't in the video hosting business. I do have a right to equal access to the services the government does provide.

You can't sign your rights away under contract

Their manta is definitely not "don't hire people."

24,000 employees to 78,000 employees in seven years.

One of the greatest hiring binges in the history of technology businesses.

It's not an unwillingness to hire. It's a foundational belief that technology can be leveraged to solve the problem in question. That has always existed inside of Google. They disagree with you that the best solution is to hire a mass of people (content reviewers etc) and throw them at the problem.

Are they fundamentally wrong or is the technology approach embryonic yet? If they've got an army of people doing that job in another 5-10 years, that'll be telling.

> If they've got an army of people doing that job in another 5-10 years, that'll be telling.

That started about a month ago:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/05/technology/google-youtube-hi...

Ironically, trying to play the embedded video throws an error saying the content is owned by WMG and can't be viewed outside of YouTube.

This should be labeled as 2016 content.

The timing of this article is important to note because Youtube has since put in place major revisions to their monetization policies known colloquially as “Adpocalypse” that may impact the strategy.

Jim's strategy isn't about getting youtube monetization though - it's about avoiding others monetizing the videos (which has not changed in adpocalypse as far as I can tell).

His income stream is pateron iirc.

Copyright was hatched back when the act of copying was laborious and mechanical, meaning that the copier likely had deep pockets and financial backing (and there were few of them in the neighborhood).

This logic falls flat when we get a device that is basically built for copying, the computer. A major part of how it operates is to copy data in and out of memory.

Anyways, even before the computer various nations had exceptions in place for copying between friends and relatives. This because even policing the likes of cassette based copying was virtually impossible without a permanent copyright cop in every home.

These days however said copyright cop is being implemented in the form of DRM and the kind of content fingerprinting talked about in the article.

Since when have computers been “basically built for copying”? Computers are designed for computing, from the Turing Machine onwards storage and duplication have merely been instruments and steps (respectively) towards achieving universality. The idea of a computer as a communication device came relatively late in the game (most of Shannon's Information Theory's applicability to computation was to infra-computer communication between circuits, or transmission “down time”, meaning storage and delay loops), and not to intra-computer communication.

Yes, modern computers are effective communication devices and the idea of networking has become almost indelibly welded to the idea of computation, but on a theoretical level they are absolutely distinct, and it's probably an accident of history that the two concepts ended up entwined. That's why there's lambda calculus for making statements about computing and pi calculus for making statements about process communication.

> Since when have computers been “basically built for copying”

Digital computers (i.e. Shannon's Information Theory) was a solution for the S/N getting worse every time the signal was amplified. Shannon's solution of digital circuits allowed information to be copied without the limit. An important consequence of this was the marginal cost for copying information falling very close to zero. Or, stated in economic terms, information ws no longer scarce.

> computer

You're using a very narrow definition of "computer". Colloquial use of the word obviously includes a variety of technologies and concepts - such as Shannon's digital circuits - not just model of computation (Turing or otherwise).

> modern computers are effective communication device

You don't even need to consider {,inter}networking; the modern devices commonly called "computers" spend most of their time managing data. Very little time is spent doing any actual computation. I recommend this[1] lecture by Feynman, where he explains how what we call "computers" are are really closer to a filing system that stores and copies data (including the store program and most of the mechanics of computation).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWGGDXe5MA

> You’re using a very narrow definition of ”computer”

Yes, I am, and that’s because I have a mathematical background. I’m quite comfortable in my knowledge that the common-parlance item is actually a ’computer’ as I intend it (narrowly) fused with a communicator that allows it to internetwork with other similarly compound devices.

The point is that to produce content requires investment and/or valuable skill. You've clearly never had a livelihood that depends on knowledge, experience, or skills that took you years to develop and then has someone copy it and profit from it. That's what copyright is for.

TL;DR: guy splices random scenes into his videos that are owned by multiple large corporations so that the firms fight each other over royalties.

Is this a "Brilliant Workaround"? I report, you decide.

The whole point is to keep the videos ad-free; it really is a clever solution for that.

I think I'd call it more of a reductio ad absurdum. The money quote from Jim Sterling in the article: "you have to actively try and 'infringe copyright' to exercise your fair use rights."

Has it been done before?

According to the article, the goal was to keep his videos ad-free, since they are being funded by Patreon.

Clever, at least.

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