Game Critic Uses Workaround for YouTube's Copyright System (2016)
kotaku.com
kotaku.com
1: The creator used CD Baby, if you're going to do this, I recommend DistroKid, it is about a zillion times better than CD Baby. Even the CD Baby creator endorses DistroKid.
I’m planning on launching next month and I’m just trying to gauge the market
> For EVERY youtube video, I always open the video and then immediately punch the slider bar to about 30 percent.
> For example, in this video [referenced video of length 1:42], it should have just started at :40. Everything before :40 was a waste. This holds true for nearly every video in the universe.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/kxfxy/and_so_ends_20_...
Unfortunately it was taken down (probably 20+ copyright holders complaining about a single video forced Youtube to do something about it) but can still be found on Vimeo with a simple Google search.
Content ID is a bandaid on the tumor of IP law. Yell at your government not Google for this.
1. Youtube makes money from ads.
2. Jimquisition is funded from Patreon, and despises ads on his content.
3. To resolve this paradox, Jim has found a way to (allegedly) infringe on multiple parties' copyright
4. Youtube's technology doesn't allow multiple monetizers, and therefore in this situation allows none.
If Jim disagrees with the funding stategy of YouTube, why bother with YouTube at all? Is free riding on youtube video distribution that valuable?
The problem is other parties claiming copyright on his videos, placing ads, and getting the payment from those ads.
Sterling's problem is with 3rd parties placing ads on his videos through copyright claims, not Youtube themselves placing ads. I'm sure he'd react differently if it was Youtube themselves mandating the ads.
I'd think so. The only reason I ran into him at all was due to YouTube, and I can't help but think that's for the majority of people (minus those who came to him via The Escapist). I don't know how else I would have discovered him, unless we want to rely on convoluted word of mouth.
But it's precisely because YouTube is a megacorp attached to another megacorp that Jim can even upload videos without paying for distribution.
YouTube and these other companies should follow the law.
And I support strategies, such as this one, that forces these companies to follow the law.
Sure. And if he had infinite time and money, he might even win.
> the Content you submit must not include third-party intellectual property (such as copyrighted material) unless you have permission from that party or are otherwise legally entitled to do so. You are legally responsible for the Content you submit to the Service
> By providing Content to the Service, you grant to YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable licence to use that Content (including to reproduce, distribute, modify, display and perform it) for the purpose of operating, promoting, and improving the Service.
> You also grant each other user of the Service a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to access your Content through the Service, and to use that Content (including to reproduce, distribute, modify, display, and perform it) only as enabled by a feature of the Service.
Once you upload something of yours to Youtube, your only recourse is to take it down again.
Additionally (possibly off-topic) people often misunderstand what sort of abuse the DMCA penalizes.
The DMCA prohibits claiming you own the copyright on some work that you don't. It does NOT prohibit claiming that anything infringes that copyright.
For example, pretend I'm Nintendo. I own the copyright on Mario. Someone posts a video of Mario. I claim that they infringe my copyright on Mario. Valid claim. No perjury penalty.
Someone posts a video of Doom. I claim that they infringe my copyright on Mario. Invalid claim. No perjury penalty! (This is the scenario people think is prohibited.)
Someone posts a video of Doom. I claim that they infringe my copyright on Doom. Invalid claim. Perjury penalty! I don't own any copyright to Doom!
It's the latter (rarely seen) case that the DMCA prohibits. AFAIK YouTube also prohibits that in their ToS.
It is prohibited in some parts of Continental Europe, but not in USA.
DMCA claimants are required to consider whether or not actual copyright infringement is occurring, including whether or not the use of copyrighted material is protected by fair use. See Lenz v. Universal Music Corp.
As far as I know no one has litigated this with respect to the perjury penalty specifically, but civil DMCA penalties for filing false DMCA claims absolutely do apply, and it seems likely that if a prosecutor would actually prosecute this criminal ones (perjury) would too.
(The grandparents point that youtubes copyright system these days doesn't really involve the DMCA is still valid).
IANAL
Nor is this necessarily perjury. The actual statement you make under penalty of perjury is "that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed." If you believe the statement that you own the copyright on Doom to be true, then it is not perjury, even if you do not actually own it. A case where this would matter a great deal would be the Happy Birthday song--Warner/Chappell believed they owned a copyright that they did not, and thus they could send DMCA takedown notices for people singing that song without fear of perjury (at least, until the courts ruled that they did not own the copyright).
Everybody likes shitting on it but it's the best solution to the problem.
It's like Jack Black's band Tenacious D claiming to be the greatest band that ever lived, knowing full well that they aren't, but pretending they are is part of their shtick.
The circles he runs in are all EXTREMELY progressive.
In fact he actively advocates for gay and trans rights.
p.s. Jim Spanfeller is an herb: Slate Web results The Media-Sensational Rise and Fall of “Jim Spanfeller Is a Herb”: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/11/jim-spanfeller-i...
Here's the facts: in almost all cases [0], anyone can easily get rid of any abusive claim by simply disputing it, and filing a counternotice if and when it is elevated to a DMCA notice (copyright strike). The only way for the copyright holder to prevent this is by actually filing a lawsuit, and being as this requires a lawyer to sign off on, is extremely unlikely to happen for frivolous cases. Any article that claims that this can't be easily disputed, or that the burden of proof is on the YouTuber who uploaded the video (outside of the exception discussed below) is wrong, full stop.
[0] there is an exception for a small number of content owners. See https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property/guide-to-yo... and https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/11/casualty-youtubes-cont.... As far as I can tell, the only company known to be part of this is UMG.
1. manually file copyright strikes. If a Content creator has 3 of these at once, their entire channel gets taken offline. The dispute resolution mechanism leaves the video in whatever state the copyright owner chose (for possibly 2 months), and they get to keep the revenue from the dispute period, even if they lose (its possible that youtube has changed this).
2. ContentID. Copyright-Owners just give Youtube a copy of your copyrighted works, and tell it if you'd like videos containing your content to be left alone, monetized for your adsense account, or have the video taken down until the offending content is removed. This can be manual, or automatic. Contesting these is basically impossible (its possible that youtube has changed this).
If disputed within five days, all revenue is escrowed until resolution. And content ID claims can be easily disputed and must be turned into a DMCA claim if not withdrawn. See my post at https://www.reddit.com/r/YoutubeCompendium/comments/aga8yl/h... which goes into extensive detail on the process with sources. See also the eff links in my above comment which has the same information.
Also, the strikes remain until the disputes are resolved entirely, so even if you dispute everything, you can still be taken offline.
As a side note, the revenue escrow is very new. It took YouTube over a decade (Content ID was introduced in 2007) to come to this fairly reasonable middle ground. Just... don't take a vacation, OK?
>Also, the strikes remain until the disputes are resolved entirely, so even if you dispute everything, you can still be taken offline.
Note that per https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2814000?hl=en
>If your channel is in the YouTube Partner Program, you are eligible for a 7 day courtesy period after 3 copyright strikes before your channel is disabled. During this period, your copyright strikes won’t expire and you won’t be able to upload new videos. Your channel will remain live and you will be able to access it to seek a resolution for your strikes. If your strikes are resolved through a retraction, or we forward your counter notifications and they are ultimately successful, your channel will not be disabled.
The Youtube Partner Program is the system that allows for monetization, so everyone that's making money off Youtube ads is in it. I.e., everyone who's making money off Youtube ads has 7 days from receiving the strikes to file counternotices, and by my reading their account will remain active until those are resolved one way or the other. It says the channel won't be disabled if the notices are successful, implying that it isn't disabled even temporarily.
Regarding your examples, yes, if there's actual legal action then the creator will be in trouble. But that's true regardless of whether they got strikes or filed a counternotice. I stand by my claim above that legal action in obvious fair use cases is "astonishingly rare".
> you are eligible for a 7 day courtesy
Seven whole days until your channel is closed forever. How generous. See: Vacation, holidays, natural disasters (or PG&E disasters)
Also, why doesn't the copyright claimants also only have a maximum of 7 days to respond? We're talking about Content ID claims here, as a reminder, not DMCA.
> resolved through a retraction, or we forward your counter notifications and they are ultimately successful
Which can take upwards of 30 days per step in the process, no matter how quickly the creator moves. So, your channel is in hiatus for more 30 days. This is an eternity in a business which relies on consistent and frequent content output to remain soluble.
> there's actual legal action then the creator will be in trouble
Which was not the case in either of the situations I posted. The actions only involved YouTube.
> I stand by my claim above that legal action in obvious fair use cases is "astonishingly rare".
Does that really matter, if Content ID claims alone have devastated the channel's viewerbase?
Jim Sterling from the article has many a horror story of spending between 6 months and 2 years fighting copyright claims and associated from corporations and CEO's. So does sidalpha and Angry Joe. Can we really claim in good faith that they're lying by pointing at Google FAQs?
Anyway, if people are linking articles from 2016 I'm going to point out the current state of the policies.
>Seven whole days until your channel is closed forever. How generous. See: Vacation, holidays, natural disasters (or PG&E disasters)
It's not forever, you can always file a counternotice after it's been taken down. But yes, you should be prepared to defend your business. You want passive income, you can be prepared to check your email at least once a week.
> >Also, why doesn't the copyright claimants also only have a maximum of 7 days to respond? We're talking about Content ID claims here, as a reminder, not DMCA.
That's a fair criticism. Presumably Youtube feels that they need a longer time to satisfy claimants and avoid DMCA filings. Remember, content ID claims do not harm the channel at all, so there's no real rush to get them removed except for getting the ad revenue out of escrow.
>So, your channel is in hiatus for more 30 days.
On my reading you can keep uploading while the counternotice process continues.
>Which was not the case in either of the situations I posted. The actions only involved YouTube.
Looks like Alex Mauer was involved in legal action https://leonardjfrench.com/2017/06/30/imagos-softworks-v-ale.... Not familiar with the other case but looks like it's not obviously fair use to share leaked content, could be wrong.
>Jim Sterling from the article has many a horror story of spending between 6 months and 2 years fighting copyright claims and associated from corporations and CEO's. So does sidalpha and Angry Joe. Can we really claim in good faith that they're lying by pointing at Google FAQs?
What are they claiming? Have they claimed to have submitted a counternotice that was rejected? Can you link me to someone going through a timeline, with dates on what was disputed when, showing that Google FAQs are wrong? Because I've not seen that. I have seen someone posting about getting a counternotice rejected mistakenly and getting it overturned by tweeting at Youtube. And then there's the UMG exception as my first comment noted.
But most horror stories I've seen are people who get a bunch of claims and don't even seem to consider filing a counterclaim, or think it's too risky based in bad info. Or, very very rarely, people who actually get sued.
Yea, you're in the right, and yea, that absolutely sucks - but that's the way YT works right now, in part due to the hilariously terrible DMCA but also due to internal policies to minimize costs.
YT doesn't care if you get banned (unless you're going to lose them a bunch of eyeballs) so they're not going to defend you - and how much money do you think most content creators have to throw around in lawsuits against big corporations?
You don't need to sue: as I explained, it's the company alleging infringement that needs to sue to keep the claim going. This is astonishingly unlikely for a clear case of fair use.
DMCA is a great policy: it's what permits YouTube to reinstate videos after a counternotice is received. Otherwise they'd just keep everything removed for fear of liability.
I'm currently suing a large company [0] for false IP claims against my Amazon account. Those are under trademark law, not copyright law, and so there's no similar ability to send a counternotice and get the claim reversed. I wish there was a similar DMCA framework applied to trademarks, it's just so much better than the status quo.
Also, YouTube has a fund to defend fair use.
[Case is Thimes Solutions Inc v Tp-link et al if you want to follow it]