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I don't believe this is true. Every legitimate YouTube fair use case that I've seen go to court has gone in favor of the fair user.

The biggest name one so far is the H3H3 trial.[1] One that looks to be settled soon is Akilah Hughes suing Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad), where all that Benjamin does is edit together two of Hughes videos with the only original addition being a new title. This is almost certainly going to go in favor of Sargon, yet YouTube's algorithms turned up to the nth degree would almost certainly have blocked it.[2]

If you go outside of YouTube, fair use law in the United States is very broad. Just look at what Richard Prince does with others' art. [3]

edit: added links

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/41037631/youtube-stars...

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LMgGBDZbJY

3. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/18/instagram...

Combining two videos in this way would be unlawful in the UK, where we have the very restricted "Fair Dealing" concessions, because downloading the videos in the first place is a tort[0].

Combining them is another, sharing them is another.

We basically have no concept of personal use in our copyright.

[0] if they were broadcast you can record but only for time-shifting, you can only watch once (alone!) and then are obliged to destroy the copy; you aren't allowed to format shift.

The lack of any remaining semblance of balance in copyright between the rights of the demos and media interests shows how badly distorted our Western democracies have become from representing the rights of people in general above the rights of the rich.

Honestly the lack of balance with copyright law is why I simply ignore copyrights. They have become irrelevant to me.

Compare that to my country, where it's perfectly legal to download whatever music or movies you like from the internet for personal use, pirate websites or not. Also a western democracy. So it's not so bad everywhere.

Though a price for this is that we pay a special tax on every storage device we purchase.

If you don’t mind, where is this?

Could be Czech republic or Slovakia.

It's like this in Poland for sure. You can't share, but can download. Doesn't apply to software of course due to its different licensing schema.

That still makes torrenting illegal

Yes, but how would you prove how many copies of something someone shared?

Not if you just leech, right?

A special tax on storage devices and legal status for downloads matches Russia.

Not a western democracy, though.

My mind jumped to Canada when I read the above comment, but really there are a number of countries that fit the mould. Most western countries have a special levy on blank media, including all EU member states except Luxembourg. I don't know which countries don't prohibit the downloading copyrighted material similarly to how they prohibit sharing that media, but Canada is one of them.

Czech republic

Turkey? We pay TRT license for all audiovisual capable equipment which is able to receive TRT content.

Before this law, I would've retorted that it's not the Western democracies that are broken, just the US, and it's padawan, the UK. Now, however, I have to agree. Even the US-like fearmongering and terrorism of armed forces within EU cities is getting more prevalent lately.

> The real problem lies in the laws it relies on, namely the extremely stringent copyright laws and the weird fair use.

Real problem is the negative incentive to be correct.

The rule penalise you harshly if you serve copyrighted content, but there is nothing if you decide to not serve non-copyrighted content and there is so much content on the internet, that "market pressure" simply isn't going to work. If you are a small publisher of free content, there is a huge risk for content platform to serve your content and no reward if they do.

And that's the best case scenario, where all actors have good intentions. But in the real world we know that large copyright holder are very often bulk claiming bulk content. There is no penalty, so that would be crazy for them no to do it.

The laws is also talking about terrorist content and the need to remove it within 1 hour or risk up to 4% turnover fine ! There is not going to be any manual check done within 1 hour, and anyway the risk is so great you may as well have a blanket no-question ask removal policy.

I fail to see the "good intentions in mind" you mention. MEP are some of the most successful politicians, they would be Olympic level is it was a sport. Their field of expertise is the people and public relation. I can believe they are naive with technology (like encryption or monitoring actual capabilities) but I can't accept they are candid about businesses or individual motivations. Any negative consequence of this law is there on purpose.

> MEP are some of the most successful politicians, they would be Olympic level is it was a sport.

I don't think so. I think MEPs are much closer to members of a state-congress in the US than member of congress. With the equivalent of a member of the US congress being a member of some national parliament.

My criterium here is how fierce the campaign is to get elected. At the very least here in the Netherlands, the campaign for the European Parliament is nearly an afterthought in the news. It ranks far below the campaign for the German parliament, let alone our national parliament.

>> MEPs are much closer to members of a state-congress in the US than member of congress

What's the salary and expenses package like in a state congress?

"[..] expense payments of €4,416 per month are given to MEPs as a lump sum in addition to their regular pre-tax monthly salary of €8,611. They are not required to provide any proof of how the money is spent"

sources: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/about-meps.html and https://www.politico.eu/article/european-parliament-corrupti...

To be Olympic-level says something about how well you compete, not how well you get compensated.

The fact that MEP compensation is so good, whilst public scrutiny on who gets seats is so lax is even worse.

To a first approximation there is no such thing as "non-copyrighted content" except for very old content. If you're the creator you already have to license your creation to the platform.

> you may as well have a blanket no-question ask removal policy

The directive (Article 13(2b)) requires the service providers to provide an "effective and expeditious" complaint mechanism for unjustified removals with human review, though.

> I believe the law is made with good intentions in mind

I disagree, no other utility is blamed for the actions of its users, if I use an electric drill to hurt some one I am at fault not my electricity provider, but if I do something illegal on the internet like piracy its some how my internet providers fault?

I also don't like making excuses for policy makers who "don't understand the internet", its not the 90s, ignorance is no longer an excuse, these people know what the internet is, and they know exactly what they are doing.

if I use an electric drill to hurt some one I am at fault not my electricity provider

The physical equivalent is more like you sending pirated dvd's through the mail to your entire neighborhood. The equivalent law would then require the post office to check all packages upon sending to verify that they contain only content which is not pirated, which for privacy reasons they do in an automated way that sometimes blocks the package with the family movie you're sending to your mom (because your daughter was wearing mickey mouse ears and the automated check thought it was a disney movie).

Oftentimes when you physicalize online legislation it becomes apparent just how invasive and silly it is.

Are you basing this on law in the EU? Because as far as I know, "fair use" is purely a US thing that doesn't even exist in the EU -- although specific countries may have laws that do somewhat similar things.

If rights-holders and/or YouTube had to pay a monetary penalty every time they screwed up (by taking down content that was fair use), perhaps it might level the playing field?

Fair use (in the US) is actually designed to provide for the ability to comment on, or criticize another work. You can’t do that effectively without showing the subject matter you are discussing.

There are absolutely well defined “fair use” exceptions which a stringent filter will block.

> Other than yes, the most frequent answer I get is "I don't know, it depends.

This is the only answer a lawyer will basically ever give you.

> I believe the law is made with good intentions in mind

the first time around? _maybe_

after the enormous backslash and numerous expert opinion pieces decrying the exact problems of the proposal? _hardly_

> I believe the law is made with good intentions in mind.

"He looked down at the broad steps they were climbing. They were something of a novelty; each one was built out of large stone letters. The one he was just stepping on to, for example, read: I Meant It For The Best. The next one was: I Thought You’d Like It. Eric was standing on: For the Sake of the Children. “Weird, isn’t it?” he said. “Why do it like this?” “I think they’re meant to be good intentions,” said Rincewind. This was a road to Hell, and demons were, after all, traditionalists. And, while they are of course irredeemably evil, they are not always bad. And so Rincewind stepped off We Are Equal Opportunity Employers and through a wall, which healed up behind him, and into the world."

That's an interesting point. It's true that the issue wouldn't be quite as terrible if IP laws were more reasonable to begin with. We shouldn't have to wait for literal centuries before a work becomes public domain for instance.

>I may be naive in saying this, but I believe the law is made with good intentions in mind.

I disagree. This law was made with the intention of being selectively enforced. This is never a good intention.

Fair use has a much narrower definition in the EU, in addition to varying from country to country.

>> 2. Fair use almost definitely does not apply to most youtube content : if you use content other people made (video games or music immediately come to mind) you are infringing copyright holder rights.

Have you read the YouTube terms for original content uploaded by individuals? I'm not so sure doing remixes isn't allowed. If you don't want people doing that to your stuff, keep it off YouTube. I could be wrong, it's been many years since I read their ToS.

"but I believe the law is made with good intentions in mind"

The road to hell is paved with good intentions...

Why force the platform to enforce? Shouldn’t the copyright owner be required to protect their own rights rather than having others do it for them?

Copyright owners have successfully lobbied with the argument: "It is soooo much effort to go after each case, and these platforms make it so easy to infringe they are essentially complicit".

And now we are stuck with upload filters.

Just extending your thought farther, why have police then as well? Shouldn't an individual protect themselves? If I am stronger then you and you can't protect your rights does that mean I am now right by taking them away for myself? If everyone was required to protect their own rights things would get messy fast. I do look forward to the day, and I believe it will come, where companies and individuals will be handsomely fined for any false copyright claims.

There is no copyright police. People do defend themselves - they pay the police to do so and so do businesses. EU is not instituting a copyright police- it is asking internet media to set it up and pay for it.