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Comment by cogman10 | Hacker News Reader

Here is what I see happening. Companies stop worrying about the copyright law. Why should they? With youtube they have effectively proved that they can shut down any video they like without any negative repercussions. And now that piracy is way down due to streaming services, what do they gain by maintaining their copyright?

We've extended copyright so long that there isn't even a reason to extend it further. And now, the mechanisms to enforce copyright are so biased towards large corporations that, even without infringing, they can make your life a living hell if you cross them.

Don't believe me? Look at just about any youtube content producer. Basically all of them have stories about their content being pulled because some mega corp hears them mention something that might be theirs.

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> And now that piracy is way down due to streaming services, what do they gain by maintaining their copyright?

I think this is only temporary. The ongoing balkanization of streaming space makes piracy attractive once more. Sure, torrenting or even enduring a bootleg free streaming service isn't as convenient as Netflix or Hulu now in terms of watching (though I haven't used PopcornTime, maybe the experience is similar). But it also doesn't require you to juggle 12 paid subscriptions just to keep up with the movies you like.

Personally, I expect a resurgence of piracy in the coming years.

Netflix DVD subscription plans may also get more subscribers.

Are you saying that you believe corporations will continue to submit DMCA takedown notices on content that is newly found in the public domain, with no liability? It seems as if you are trying to look at the move of some copyrighted works into the public domain through the lens of the DMCA, without considering that a content creator who receives a DMCA takedown of works that are in the public domain has hard evidence to counter said notice, which isn't necessarily the case in the setting of "fair use".

No, I'm saying that, today, copyright holders are submitting DMCA take down notices on content that does not contain copyrighted material at all. Not even under the fair use clause.

There is hard evidence to counter those notices, but ultimately nobody ends up taking it to court because it is too expensive.

See: https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/youtube-copyright-claims-t...

Please note that in your linked article, the very end states:

"Last week, YouTube removed the claim from the flagger who said TheFatRat was using copyrighted material, and less than a day after Johnson filed a dispute on his video, the flagger released that claim. That means both YouTubers shouldn’t have to worry anymore about those specific videos.

Neither TheFatRat nor Johnson returned emails from the Daily Dot to see if they were satisfied with the outcome."

This implies that the content creators resolved their problems before getting traction on the published article. However, I will grant you the obvious point here that these content creators that were able to resolve their problems have a huge following, compared to the majority of content creators that don't have the same voice, so maybe this isn't the same for everyone. derefr who also commented below says that it should be the same for anyone who receives a DMCA takedown notice.

One prevalent issue is that even if on youtube the situation is solved easily (i.e. the counter claim is reviewed and everything put back in place in a timely manner) the channel will usualy have missed most of its monetization window. Especialy if the case goes viral and and everyone looks at some side loaded video in the meantime, almost nobody will go back to watch ads on the restored video.

In that sense just claiming ownership of a track will deter most other creators to make money from it, even if they can use it. Actualy I think during the time the copyright claim is upheld any ad money done at that point goes to the alegde owner and is not reversed even if the claim is debunked, but I might be wrong.

The problem is YouTube heavily prioritizes new content so if your video goes offline for a day you just lost the majority of the profit from it. Its also ridiculous how YouTube presumes guilt. Your video should stay online while a dispute is handled.

That's how the law works. If YouTube were to start leaving the videos up, the complainers would just start sending proper DMCA takedown notices, and YouTube would be forced to take it down promptly.

But then if the takedowns were incorrect, the people sending them would have proper liability.

AFAIK the only DMCA penalty is if you aren't authorized to represent copyright owner, not if your claim isn't valid.

Well naturally showing (rather than necessarily legally sound) it would be fraud and/or libel.

But I understand the USA legal system doesn't automatically award costs to an injured party, so in practice noone cab afford to challenge any large media corp.

You don’t need to “take it to court”; if the recipient of the DMCA complaint says to the host that they disagree with the DMCA takedown notice, the host is required by the DMCA to put the content back up (or, at least, return it to whatever state it would be in if the DMCA takedown notice didn’t happen), and it is then the responsibility of the complainant to take the other party to court.

Which the complainant will never do, in these cases where it’s obvious that it was just an overzealous algorithm flagging things it shouldn’t have—because actually pursuing damages for those situations are exactly the type of thing that make a judge issue contempt-of-court charges.

Who responds to the DMCA complaint if the content uploader is missing, for example if they have died?

It looks trivial to wipe out everything via a DMCA complaint. All you have to do is wait until the uploader is unable to respond. Given enough time, this happens to all human uploaders. Nothing is safe. This part of our cultural history can be wiped from existence.

Most YouTube copyright complaints are not actually DMCA complaints. The complainant is just asking YouTube nicely (whether that be manually, automated on their side, or automated on YouTube's side) and YouTube is complying of its own volition. 4J of their terms: "YouTube reserves the right to discontinue any aspect of the Service at any time."

I'm pretty sure that if YouTube did not "comply if its own volition" for these kinds of claims, they would be in violation of DMCA.

ContentID doesn't operate through DMCA notices. People often conflate the two, but in the case of ContentID there are no legally mandated remedies like there are with DMCA notices.

Yes, but YouTube is being absolutely overzealous for no legal reason. Rather, I think it serves the double purpose of keeping the government (and regulation) very far away, while pandering to big content producers at the same time.

Except that the DMCA troll just repeats the takedown notice. What should happen is that a lawyer making fraudulent DMCA notices should be held liable.

DMCA take down notices on 1923 content will be a thing you say?

I think I agree. The DMCA requires you to attest that you have "a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law." As far as I know, there is no successful caselaw of accusing a takedown sender of acting in bad faith—even when using automated systems like Content ID. (Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. is the closest but there wasn't any actual consequence for Universal, I think.)

The other problem is that the DMCA safe harbor provision does not (AIUI) prevent companies from being stricter than necessary, and things like Content ID filter posts even before the level of a DMCA action. If YouTube "forgets" to update Content ID to change < 1923 to < 1924, I believe there's no legal recourse for an uploader to force them to do so.

(IANAL and I haven't closely kept up with this so pleaee correct me if I'm wrong!)

Lenz v. Universal was ultimately settled under confidential terms. Since the preceding judgement in the 9th Circuit was largely favorable to Lenz, I’d guess those terms probably did include Universal paying at least some trivial amount.

> YouTube "forgets" to update Content ID to change < 1923 to < 1924

This will not affect ContentID as even public domain content is identified.

You might have a point here, but you forgot about the other way around: If I, as a small company, produce copyrighted material, I can still sue or settle with the big corporation that used it.

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