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Comment by jstanley | Hacker News Reader

I used to republish scam marketing videos for binary options trading scams on YouTube.[0]

I recently got an email saying they had received a claim from the copyright holder, which seems strange as it is unlikely that the copyright holder would wish to identify themself.

The so-called "copyright holder" was actually a music publisher, and there was music in the video at various points, so I assumed it must be about that.

But I looked at the identified time section, and there was no music at all. It was just a guy talking. I have no idea why it matched.

I submitted an appeal. It gives you several options for why you want to appeal, but notably absent is "the video does not contain any of the claimant's material", so my "appeal" had to be submitted on the grounds that my (non-)usage of the claimant's audio is fair use...

YouTube's copyright system is laughable.

[0] If you're interested, this is one of my favourites: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BeeUXNF1H8s

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> I recently got an email

"an email". You're lucky.

I got a couple of videos with Creative Commons music. I also contacted the original author and copyright holder about this. Apparently CDBaby just took his songs and files copyright claims on all YouTube videos with his music. He's a poor guy from Australia and has no resources to go against them. So, now, every time I get a copyright claim, I have to challenge it. After giving the evidence, they just let me have it, wait a couple of weeks and submit the same claim again.

What's funny is that if you go to that album's page on CD Baby, you can see that the Creative Commons license and original author's name and copyright are right there next to the option to listen to the songs.

After numerous claims, I finally gave up and just removed the audio track on all the videos myself.

If you read the thing carefully, YouTube doesn't even review the case. Whatever you write there goes directly to people claiming to be the "copyright holder".

YouTube should really have an option "The claimant doesn't have copyright on this material". If you give enough evidence, and if they release the claim on video after that was checked, the claimant should lose the right to claim copyright on that audio match for all videos.

Were those Content ID or manual claims? If manual and you cared about the fight it seems like there might be avenues....

> Were those Content ID or manual claims?

ContentID.

But I feel like that's good. It means that the audio is already in YouTube database, so YouTube could simply remove that audio from that claimant's "library" of protected works.

Or just ignore the claim via YouTube and reupload the video. Then send a letter to CDbaby literally telling them you will continue to reupload it and to fuck off.

You'll just get a copyright strike and be banned from YouTube itself. Any accounts made after that is just breaking YouTube TOS

Yup. It's guilty-until-proven-innocent, autonomous evil. Scammers get away with bloody murder and hurt actual tiny content creators. YT is more and more turning into a platform for megacorps, not individuals to build from viewer one.

So what? You make a new account and who gives a crap about the tos? It's a bunch of words no one reads and can be outright ignored.

Tos is meaningless. You can break it. There is pretty much never going to be any real consequence for doing so.

Totally agree, but that is almost certainly going to require humans to review the complaint. I think that is ultimately why these systems are awful — way too much dependence on laughably immature automation.

Google seems incapable of admitting that humans are still a necessary component in these sorts of things. You see the same thing play out in many other Google services.

> that is almost certainly going to require humans to review the complaint

The solution that I'm proposing does not. At least, not YouTube employees. It would work like this:

1. Offer "the claimant doesn't have copyright for that audio" as one of the options.

2. You supply the proof of this (as it already works)

3. The claimant reviews this proof (as it already works) In my case, it's going to their own website and seeing that they are claiming rights on a public domain music.

4. The claimant releases the claim

5. YouTube marks that the claimant has no rights over that audio and they cannot pester anyone else with that. This would only work if I select that they don't own the copyright in the first step, and they acknowledge it themselves in step 4.

Basically, all it changes is adding one more checkbox when fighting a claim and aftermath that the claimant has confirmed themselves that they don't actually own copyright to that work.

What Youtube really needs is a method of telling them that you're using the content with a valid licence. See this guy for an example of someone who did the right thing and paid for a licence and who got caught in the nightmare of getting YT to recognise that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmYwgqlDolA

That one is even "better"

How my video with 47 million views was stolen on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4AeoAWGJBw

I play the piano and sometimes record and put on YouTube. Over 50% of the time, I get a copyright claim, usually from a big publisher, that my recording of myself that I made myself, of Bach, Chopin, Liszt, etc., is violating their copyright.

And I, too, am angered that there's no option in the contact from YouTube for "this is a fraudulent or false claim. I own this material."

YouTube should tell BMI, Sony, DG, to be more careful when flagging amateur performances of classical works.

YT doesn't care because megacorps and a handful of elite creators butter their bread. The only way around this is just like the problem with ad-driven journalism: content and user-experience corrupted by perverse relationships and motivations... corpo bullshit. User-supported journalism works, so must streaming to break free of megacorp bullshit.

I can only assume YT bends over backward to cater to the copyright claimees so that the major labels keep uploading their copyrighted content to official channels.

Basically, at some point this conversation happened:

Label: We don't want to upload our music to YouTube because we're afraid of piracy.

YouTube: We promise that won't be a problem. We'll work with you to ensure you'll be happy with the state of things on YouTube.

The current system was born of that and nobody gives a hoot about the small/medium players who get screwed over by the insanity.

> The current system was born of that and nobody gives a hoot about the small/medium players who get screwed over by the insanity.

No surprise there. Encouraging small creators may have been necessary at some point, to increase user base, but at this point it's the creators that are compelled to be on YouTube, because that's where the audience is. Meanwhile, as long as the big labels upload their official music videos to YouTube, the userbase is pretty much guaranteed.

It's automated ContentID flagging, right? Classical music is a problem because different (copyrighted) performances have very similar music fingerprints. If you tune the music fingerprinting to distinguish between different performances of the same piece by Chopin, you will probably get false negatives if someone uploads a video with a Taylor Swift song that has some background noise added or slightly sped up or slowed down.

False negatives are a problem, because big content rights holders get upset. False positives rarely matter.

Not to ignore cases of manual copyright flagging abuse, but that's usually done for vindictive or careless reasons; there shouldn't be any reason for anyone to flag a video of someone performing an old classical piece.

It's Google's responsibility to create a system where false positives do matter.

Neither users nor even copyright holders really have that power (at least against automated system). Consequently, it seems like there's nobody in the room pushing for better outcomes for false positives.

This is a really fascinating channel. There is a whole underground network of this stuff most of us are probably not privy to. You can tell it's a successful scam because these are not one-off videos but seemingly tried-and-true formulas.

Edit: also fascinating that scams call out other scams, such as this: https://www.binaryoptions-sentinel.com/the-trader-app-scam-t...

Ah man. That video :/ so awkward. Looks like they used some 3D-rendered backgrounds, too?

I do career coaching and occasionally get clients who have worked for incredibly scammy outfits. It's sad but these businesses can easily grow on the backs of (often really low-paid) employees who are just treading water in their careers, and the employees typically hear similar career-related promises from the principals. "You'll be off the ground floor in no time," etc.

That video is hilarious! The stone-cold act, basement dwelling 'reviews', green screen -- let's get it!

That "professional trader" was over-acting the hell out of that scene. I also love that each consecutive "day", they had the same clothes but slightly more undressed.

He might just really like that style of shirt and have a bunch. Like do you have a 78% success rate?

Also, wears a wig

You should upload some of those videos to https://archive.org

Thanks! I didn't know that was possible.

The only reason I put anything on YouTube is because it's the most convenient video hosting platform. If archive.org can host videos, that is perfect.

That video is hilarious!

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