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Comment by anonlapwarmer | Hacker News Reader

EEVblog and CodysLab come to mind on an unrelated but annoying scam that YouTube hasn't addressed sufficiently. Shouldn't there be a class-action against YouTube for the scammy gambit of allowing random people to claim content ID of works they don't own and then attack the original creators? This scam alone threatens to kick thousands of legitimate content creators off while enriching shady corporations and outright criminals. It seems like the only way to get YT to get their act together regarding measurably improving "who owns what."

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> It seems like the only way to get YT to get their act together regarding measurably improving "who owns what."

The problem is fundamentally that this isn't really possible. What you have is one person claiming they have a right to use something and another claiming they don't.

To know who is right you need to know who created the work, who they licensed it to under what terms, whether the copyright has expired, etc. YouTube has none of that information, nor any reasonable way to obtain it. They're not a court.

But they do have a bunch of large media companies who like to sue them over anything they can, wanting them to solve this by magic. So their choice is to either screw over their users or defend them in court. One of those is much less expensive.

The alternative would be to fix the law to put the dispute between the user and the claimant into court to begin with and only come to the intermediary once the matter has been adjudicated. The media companies hate that, because it's slower and more expensive than immediately screwing over the users with no effective recourse, but it's what would be necessary for accurate/equitable determinations.

There are plenty of options for the law to fix this.

They could make it illegal or costly to make a false claim based on copyright. Content ID include the world "copyrighted content was found in your video", so just here we could make a first change to the law.

We could also make it illegal to disrupt someones income on advertisement through the means of copyright claim that negligent ignores fair use. You take a judge and have them look at those cases and allow the judge to fine obvious false claims. This create liability which trickle down.

You could create regulations that demand content provider to compensate lost income from false content id or they loose safe harbor protection. This would encourage YT to demand a deposit when a claim is made, and give this deposit to the accused if the claim is challenged.

All this without demanding that YT itself know if the claim is correct or not.

> They could make it illegal or costly to make a false claim based on copyright. Content ID include the world "copyrighted content was found in your video", so just here we could make a first change to the law.

You're not actually solving the underlying problem. So you make filing a false claim illegal -- great, that would legitimately be an improvement over the status quo. We should do that. It would reduce the number of fraudulent claims somewhat.

So after we do that and someone says that a claim is false, what happens then? You still need to adjudicate who is right, so you still need a court. Which means most of the time the victim won't have the resources to enforce it.

What really matters here is the default. What happens when neither party will spend the resources to initiate litigation? Because whatever happens then is what will happen in 99% of cases.

They could simply require the dmca process be used instead and not even get into the middle of it.

Or at least follow the spirit of the DMCA process and allow users to say “no, that’s an invalid claim and I am willing to risk being sued”

The problem with the DMCA safe harbor is that it's just a safe harbor, so the incentive to follow either side of it is limited by the degree of liability one would have to the party against whom it protects you from liability. The takedown process protects you from the purported content owner, who has potentially significant copyright claims against you. The restoration process protects you from the end-user, who you probably have no liability to, because you've written your contract with them to allow you to take anything down for any reason anyway.

The only way a safe harbor would not favor media corps is:

(1) if liability that could not be removed by contract/user-agreement terms existed for a “bad” takedown, or

(2) if it were a non-takedown safe harbor (e.g., instead of the DMCA safe harbor, extend the Section 230 safe harbor to include copyright claims.)

A class action for what reason?

Part of using YouTube as a revenue platform for your content is that you agree to terms that effectively let them boot you for any reason. "Other people fraudulently pretending you stole their content" is thus no different of a reason to kick you off than you liking the color blue, or you actually breaking a rule.

Now, if they punish you further by labeling you falsely as a content thief, then there's likely something you can take them to court over. But I don't know if that would be numerous enough to qualify for a class action.

EEVblog and CodysLab are scams?

Why haven't i heard about this? Do you have any source?

Not GP but they probably mean the opposite - other people are copying EEVBlog/CodysLab videos, and then copystriking them.

Yes... Media they've used, sometimes that they've created themselves or used that's clearly in the public domain, has been content ID'ed by others in an attempt to extort them. It's gotten to the point where on YT one basically has to have a pointless media channel to upload original music / video to content ID before using it in other videos.

No, the OP meant it the other way around. Both channels were copyright striked multiple times by trolls. Both Cody and Dave (eevblog) did multiple videos on it explaining the situation.

Should not the trolls sending fake copyright claims be held responsible then? This doesn't look very legal.

That is also true for patent trolls, but that doesn't stop them.

In the case of youtube the problem is that the strike is done by an automated system, and getting it fixed is a really frustrating experience because you can't talk to a human.

For those who rely on youtube for their income, these copyright strikes are a major concern and source of anxiety.

I cannot agree. The fault is on those who send fake takedown requests, not on Youtube. They should repay the profit that could be lost because of the takedown.

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