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Comment by geerlingguy | Hacker News Reader

This morning I got a copyright claim for a video I published in 2015 which had a brief bit of background music, using a royalty-free song I got as a perk for being an iTools user from FreePlay in _2003_.

I can choose to combat the copyright claim (and during this process you check a box that says "you agree that you could have your account deleted if you don't win this claim" (something like that)), or I can give the $1/year revenue I got from that video to the scummy company that files these claims.

To me that's $1/year lost revenue (no big deal, right?) but that company now gets the revenue from this video—and millions of other videos... so they're making mint and gambling that most users won't even try to appeal.

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> I can choose to combat the copyright claim (and during this process you check a box that says "you agree that you could have your account deleted if you don't win this claim" (something like that)), or I can give the $1/year revenue I got from that video to the scummy company that files these claims.

Obviously the problem is that it's completely unbalanced. Do people making copyright claims have the same threat? "By disputing this counter-claim, you agree that you could have your right to file any copyright claims revoked."

If not, then yeah, it's absolutely unfair.

But filing claim is protected by law, you ability to have content on YouTube is not. There is a fundamental asymmetry.

Filing claims by suing is protected by law; filing claims on YouTube is not.

Under the DMCA that isn't the case. Platforms, including YouTube, are required to react to your claims if properly submitted.

These aren't being properly submitted under DMCA, Youtube is proactively matching audio to submitted samples.

These are not DMCA claims.

It would be entirely reasonable for Youtube to block them from submitting the current style of claims and require them to submit actual, proper DMCA claims which open the claimant to all kinds of counterclaims, require the claimant to assert under the penalty of perjury that they own that content, etc.

That's an idea for sure. I should have clarified my point that while these aren't DMCA claims, YouTube is required to handle DMCA claims, and their current process essentially preempts them. So that's how they're choosing to effectively 'handle' what would otherwise presumably be large numbers of DMCA claims.

But yeah, maybe requiring claimants to actually go through the official process would be better (albeit more work for YouTube).

Youtube has it's own system that is not actually DMCA, so they don't need to get pesky lawyers involved.

> But filing claim is protected by law, you ability to have content on YouTube is not. There is a fundamental asymmetry.

Filing a claim automatically and conveniently is not protected by law. They could just as well say, "We have an automated system with a convenient interface for good-faith actors. If you show yourself to be acting in bad faith, you can exercise your legal claim in writing by sending it to this address: X. The postal system to that office is pretty bad, loses stuff all the time, so you'd better send it FedEx."

I am sick of this and thinking about canceling youtube premium...

To be honest this doesn't seem that hard. write an application that crawls youtube videos in some order, grab the audio and stream it to something like echonest, then strike if it hits on anything?

Doesn't that mean they need to be sending a hundred of these out per hour, 40 hours a week, just to make payroll?

A machine (script) can send out a lot more than a hundred/hr.

Remember, they don't have to be true.

The person clicking the button just needs to think it's true.

They upload the sound clips, YouTube finds the matching videos and sends them a list, then a human reviews the list(haha just kidding) and activates the revenue stealing. I'm sure some of those videos are earning a lot more than $1/year.

And somehow the user is the one that might get banned in this scenario?

It's fully automated.

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