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Comment by kjakm | Hacker News Reader

There needs to be repercussions for these types of incorrect claims. I think it's important that copyright owners have a way to protect their works on YouTube but these larger publishers in particular are so aggressive because there is no reason for them not to be. They face no consequences for getting it wrong. I think YouTube has a '3 strikes' rule for creators who infringe - maybe they need something similar for false claims. If you are found to have made 3 false claims within a 12 month period you are not allowed to manually claim for the next 12 months.

Alternatively a rule similar to the 'challenge' rule in the NFL - you get three claim ' credits'. If you use a credit correctly you get it back. Use it incorrectly and you lose it for the next 12 months.

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The root cause is that 70+ years is laughably high for copyright to last. It should be changed to 10 years with the ability to update every 10 years with a higher cost financially each time.

Of course, the MPAA/RIAA owns our government and has for a while. Not to mention the trade deals the US brokered in the last year made sure to taint the copyright duration of every other country too so this will probably never get fixed until we all decide to practice some Civil Disobedience.

No, the root cause is the DMCA. Copyright is good in most cases and while there is room for improvement, and room for discussion for how it might need to evolve in a different information industry, it is copyright that helps protect even FOSS copyleft for example.

When DMCA was passed I remember the arguments being about this very sort of thing, and most of the hacktivist-types I knew at the time railed against it... but they obviously lost and weren't listened to. I think those who opposed DMCA are being vindicated...

This is the problem when you have a "representative" government that actually doesn't represent you at all.

Note that the DMCA isn’t involved here. YouTube has their own system for copyright claims that allow 3rd parties to take down videos without filing a DMCA takedown.

If the claimant filed a DMCA request, the video owner could file a counter-notice which would put the video back up unless the claimant decides to sue. Since YouTube allows copyright holders to take down a video without going through the DMCA, then the video owner loses the right to file a counter-notice, and the copyright holder gets the final word on whether the video is taken down.

Note that this is dead wrong.

Content ID claims can be disputed, and if the rights owner doesn't convert it to a DMCA claim then the content goes back up.

TIL, thanks. Although, based on https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797454?hl=en, it looks like the rights owner can delay the appeal process for up to 60 days, keeping the video down (since you have to file a dispute which gives them 30 days to respond, and then an appeal which gives them another 30).

Yes.

If they choose to take revenue, then that revenue is held in escrow. If they choose to take the video down or demonetize it, then it appears that the video goes back up but is unmonetized during the dispute process.

"If the policy is set to block (don't allow users to view the video on YouTube) or track (allow users to view the video without advertisements), this policy may be temporarily lifted until your dispute is resolved. Learn more about policy and claim basics. During this time, your video cannot be monetized."

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797454 (click "file a dispute", then "What happens after you dispute?"

> then that revenue is held in escrow

This maybe a translation/different legal point of view, but I really doubt it's being held in escrow.

If it's being held in escrow, google would've provided the other party with the details to check the account with the third party.

I could be mistaken but I really doubt your google escrow assertion. Provide me with a statement of google in which they make that claim and I'll happily retract my statement.

Oh great! Now I get downvoted because I know what escrow means. It would help if those who bothered to downvote me would provide a link where google says they held the money in escrow instead of a link where they said they would just hold on to the money.

dang: It's ok to delete my account i'm done with this bullshit

Google holds it in escrow and doesn't give it to either side until resolved.

See https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7000961?hl=en

Escrow means an independent third party holds on to the money. It's a lot more complex than that, but let's take this simplified position as a starting point.

The things you posted only justified my position. Google holds the money, not an independent party.

If you say you hold something in escrow but actually keep the money for yourself during that time... well, in my region judges really don't appreciate that kind of argument.

Google is independent from the two parties in any dispute. I don't really care about your pedantry about terminology. We're not in court.

OK, I have karma to spare...

Not even google is claiming to put it in escrow otherwise you would've given me a link where they claimed it was.

You have no idea what you're talking about. If you want to say that google holds on to the money... that's fine because they do. But don't claim it's in escrow because you clearly don't even understand what it is.

dang: it's ok to delete my account I'm done with this.

>> The root cause is that 70+ years is laughably high for copyright to last. It should be changed to 10 years with the ability to update every 10 years with a higher cost financially each time.

Sounds like this would just screw the little guy. Warner aren't going to have a problem paying an increasing fee every decade when their works are still bringing in large amounts of money. The people this would hurt are the smaller artists eeking out a living suddenly losing a large chuck of their income.

Maybe the 70 years shouldn't be a fixed number but should vary based on 'sales' each year. Or you lose copyright after a certain 'sales' threshold. That way everyone gets to make a 'fair' amount of money from their works before losing copyright. Easier said than done though.

On the other hand, having to explicitly re-up copyright means no more vaguery on who owns what.

Yes, that would help with that problem.

If it were up to me I would just abolish copyrights and patents. But, another idea I have seen is that copyright lasts 2 years for free, and then after that you have to pay a fee (of your choice) to the government to retain copyright; copyright expires in 14 years. However, anyone can make it public domain early if they pay the copyright holder 100 times the fee for retaining copyright.

I agree that's a good idea, I just don't agree with the increasing financial cost each time you re-up.

The increasing cost is meant to appease entities like Disney, who can't let properties like Mickey Mouse escape their hands. Thus, there is a system for them to retain their copyright indefinitely, though at a cost.

Maybe make it an exponentially increasing cost, such that most people can afford 2-3 renewals, but the cost increases steeply after that. The first $X per renewal could go to the copyright office, and everything above that to the Library of Congress.

> It should be changed to 10 years with the ability to update every 10 years with a higher cost financially each time

So Disney, The Beatles, The Stones (etc) could all afford to stay copyrighted indefinitely, but all my content would enter into public domain (and exploitable by megacorps) after 10 years?

I don't disagree that there are existing issues, but I think you'd just be introducing more.

The financial cost should be exponential in nature with no die off. Maybe the first couple would be affordable like 40 years worth.

    initial         - $         0
    10 year renewal - $        50
    20 year renewal - $       500
    30 year renewal - $     5,000
    40 year renewal - $   500,000
    50 year renewal - $ 5,000,000
    60 year renewal - $50,000,000
     n year renewal - a_{n-1} * 10

Note all of those numbers should be inflation adjusted as needed. Especially considering that most money is made in the first couple of years.

Maybe treat characters and franchises as trademarks instead too. Make it a use it or lose it after the copyright expires.

Nearly every time I sit at my own piano and record a classical piece I'm playing myself (Chopin, Schumann, Mozart, etc.) I get a copyright claim against me within hours of it going up to YouTube.

All DMCA requires is a 'good faith belief' your takedown claim is valid to avoid any consequences of it not being valid..

Deals copyright holders have with YouTube took it as a not good enough starting point and made it worse.

Years and years ago before YouTube let everyone upload videos above ten minutes, I uploaded an episode of a cartoon and it was put on hold for being too long. I didn't do anything after that, though. I just left it alone and it stayed in that state on my account ever since.

Until last month, anyway. I decided to click the "reprocess" button just to see what would happen. To my surprise, it did it, and then my account was immediately hit with a copyright strike. It really seems weird to me that it didn't "count" until it was successfully processed. Surely YouTube could have detected it at pretty much any other time, but they didn't.

Just a weird YouTube copyright anecdote I wanted to share.

>YouTube only grants Content ID to copyright owners who meet specific criteria. To be approved, they must own exclusive rights to a substantial body of original material that is frequently uploaded by the YouTube user community.

>YouTube also sets explicit guidelines on how to use Content ID. We monitor Content ID use and disputes on an ongoing basis to ensure these guidelines are followed.

>Content owners who repeatedly make erroneous claims can have their Content ID access disabled and their partnership with YouTube terminated.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370?hl=en&ref_...

"Content owners who repeatedly make erroneous claims can have their Content ID access disabled and their partnership with YouTube terminated."

I wouldn't mind seeing a list of "Content owners" who have lost their Content ID access due to "erroneous claims", but I get the feeling that this list simple does not exist. Hell, I would be surprised if the "guidelines" for Content ID use even exist.

"Content owners who repeatedly make erroneous claims can have their Content ID access disabled and their partnership with YouTube terminated."

Of course the users are to take all this on good faith.. you know because YouTube is such a reputably moral and ethical company.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2605065

Here's guidelines for content ID.

And they update policy often - here's a major update from last year: https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2019/08/updates-to-m...

Ah they do exist. Interesting:

"You must have exclusive copyright rights to the material in the reference file for the territories where you claim ownership."

apparently not..

"The following examples are ineligible for use in or as a reference:

    Karaoke recordings, remasters, sound-alike recordings, and some dubbed content
    Sound effects, soundbeds, or production loops

Pretty sure a guy replicating music on a keyboard counts as a "sound-alike recording".

"You must provide individual references for each piece of intellectual property."

Warner has provided no references to speak of. I am no lawyer but it doesn't sound to me like Warner did their due diligence in following the rules here...

The reference is what Warner would have to upload to YouTube to show the original content being infringed.

You would think they would have to upload that prior to making the claim.

Which they presumably did - uploaded Dark Horse to the content ID system.

and we are back to square one...

I would bet that this list would have only small content creators that flagged videos.

There's no way that the big media companies would be in it, and they are probably the biggest offenders.

Most of the issues I've seen with big companies are through automated content ID. The relevant comparison is how many valid manual claims someone makes vs invalid. If there's millions of valid claims and, say, hundreds of invalid claims, I don't think they'd take action.

Note that this issue was not flagged by content ID, but manually.

There's only two kinds of claims, content ID (both automatic and manual) and DMCA.

What is false about this claim? Copyrighted material was used in the video and the claimant does own the copyright.

Fair use is a defense against copyright infringement and whether something is fair use can only be decided by a court on a case by case basis. Unless a court has already ruled that the video is fair use then there is nothing false about the claim.

Watch the video please; the exact section that was claimed to be from the song Dark Horse was actually from a different song entirely, which the lawsuit referred to in the original video was about.

And they lost the lawsuit. They cannot claim copyright on that segment because they were found guilty of plagiarism for that exact segment.

On Youtube the rightful owner of any piece of work is whomever has the most lawyers.

> What is false about this claim? Copyrighted material was used in the video and the claimant does own the copyright.

My understanding was that the section of the video they claimed as containing their copyrighted material ACTUALLY contained the melody from the other song - the one they claimed didn't sound like theirs.

Did you watch the video? The claimant lost the copyright to the melody in the court case. Furthermore, the section of the video they flagged wasn't from their song in the first place.

But a large corporation with many in-house lawyers fighting a single person YTer is not symmetric. They can "win" just because the small person cannot afford to fight. There needs to be a level playing ground.

That’s not what happened here. For the seconds specified by the manual identification the melody is not from “Dark Horse” but from “Joyful Noise”. In addition they lost the suit against “Joyful Noise”, so both arguments are moot.

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