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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

There are no real details at the Reddit link (at the time of posting). As best I can surmise, Gameloft has the exclusive license to mobile Spider-Man games while Sony has the exclusive license to Spider-Man on home consoles. There was probably some automated process either with Gameloft or Youtube that was setup specifically to enforce that exclusive mobile license and accidentally caught the trailer for the Sony game.

This will likely get fixed quickly, but it highlights the stupidity of Youtube's copyright system and how leaving it up to the algorithms generates new problems that can only be fixed by humans. The humans will obviously be quick to react when it is a video uploaded by Sony with 11M views. How quickly will they react when your or my videos are inappropriately taken down?

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What's astounding is that the video has been down for over 12 hours now at least since I first saw it on a large forum. So not even Sony can get Google to act 'quickly' on a major obvious error! There is zero chance any individual will ever get justice in comparison when this happens to them.

A mechanism for regulatory compliance will probably err on the side of less exposure to lawsuits. They're stuck between a rock and a hard place, but the demands imposed by the government for copyright compliance are backed by a bigger stick.

Don't kid yourself, any other commercially successful VOD platform will have the exact same problem. A startup might squeak by under the radar for a while, but as soon as it gets critical mass, it won't be long before it gets encumbered by all this regulatory "fun".

> the demands imposed by the government for copyright compliance are backed by a bigger stick

Youtube's takedown process goes WAY beyond what the DMCA requires. Youtube is the bitch of / in bed with the big media companies.

YouTube's Copyright System Isn't Broken. The World's Is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU

Edit: Oh someone already posted it here, sorry.

A centralised platform might have the same problem. A decentralised or federated one might not, since no one would have the power to remove anything.

Maybe also some blockchain based system where uploads are physically impossible to take down. That's going to be interesting to see the results for court case wise, just like it'll be if illegal content ends up on the Bitcoin one.

A blockchain based storage system means that every participant will need to store every video forever in order to achieve consensus. If the blockchain uses URLs to external resources, then those can be easily be taken down.

Right. But that'd be overkill. Torrents plus streaming apps do a decent job already. Why couldn't that expand to YT scale?

If anyone from Google YT is reading this : when is this ridiculous system going to change?

On a similar note : Why is it so hard to license music for small use, especially if you are willing to pay for small audiences use / non-commercial use?

The system was imposed upon them by 1) licensing agreements with major content companies and 2) EU Copyright Directive Article 17.

Actually, EUCD17 is a bit more insidious: it's a sliding scale of "best practices", which means that when content companies demand a better system of one licensee, every other player in the space (regardless of if they do business with that licensee) loses their liability protection until they meet that licensee's standard. That's how they were able to get away with claiming it didn't have upload filters: they just made it so that a court could point to YouTube and say "why aren't you as good as YouTube in taking things down"?

I built a company in this space, so take my feedback with grain of salt.

Your comment is not correct though.

1) licensing doesn't require them to have the system in place. In fact, YouTube created the system to avoid lawsuits and is imposing it on rightsholders.

2) EUCD is not yet active. It will start 6/7/2021. CID works this way for last 12 years.

Also what you call "best practices" is called "best effort" and is related to licensing not technology. In fact the law explicitly states that filtering technology is not required.

99% of problems on YouTube are caused by the way their system is setup not by the technology itself. For instance, if single rightsholder claims 10s of content in 19 hour video, they get 100% of all money generated by the content. That has nothing to do with any deal nor the technology.

YouTube doesn't want to be in middle of the disputes, so gives the responsibility in hands of rightsholders. That's changing with the EUCD which explicitly requires the platforms to be the arbiter.

YouTube also allows only 9,000 companies and individuals to have access to what they call manual claiming, which allows them manually "overwrite" the system and produces situations like these.

There is so much more. But the problem is truly with YouTube's setup, not the technology they developed, which is quite ok.

Another problem with the YT system (EUCD17) is that it is not a legal system. At least under DCMA (which Content ID pre-empts), you could seek legal damages for false claims.

If Google wants to continue with Content ID, the fix is easy: hold ad money in escrow until their entire dispute process is complete (from the initial flag). This will prevent the ad money piracy that is so rampant on the platform right now.

> Another problem with the YT system (EUCD17) is that it is not a legal system.

You are misinformed. YT System has nothing to do with the EUCD17 which is not yet active. CID was built 12 years ago to get out of the Viacom lawsuit.

EUCD17 (or more precisely its implementations) are laws that you can actually sue under. They have concrete obligations (licensing, alternative dispute resolution, ...) and concrete penalties for misbehavior.

In fact, as it stands, YouTube's Content ID is not going to be complaint with the requirements of the EUCD17.

> You are misinformed.

Thanks for the correction. I was under the impression that it was more in alignment with European legislature.

> On a similar note : Why is it so hard to license music for small use, especially if you are willing to pay for small audiences use / non-commercial use?

The music industry has shown exactly how unwilling they are to change with the times. I know of no examples of where any of their decisions have shown forward thinking.

The music industry want big checks for big licenses, including exclusives for specific media and windowing.

It’s one of the dwindling number of ways for the actual creatives to make some decent money. They don’t have interest in earning $500 (or $50) for a YouTube video if it waters their work down so much that a studio is no longer willing to license it for a national commercial or feature film.

Generally speaking the content ID / claim process works as a de facto licensing agreement (without giving up any right to sue, I believe)

What kind of music are you wanting to license? Do you require a particular piece of music from the big guys for some reason? There are a lot of folks out there capable of composing great music for you for relatively small prices.

Can you monetize the change? Can you build and launch new product (doesnt have to be successful, obviously) on its back? Otherwise whats the point? Pretty much nobody gets promoted at Google for helping users.

As I understand it, and please correct me if I am wrong INAL, this system is only going to change when the legislation changes.

You probably are wrong, because sites like YouTube often operate multiple takedown mechanisms. They have to follow the law in areas where they operate, so for example in the US you have takedown notices under the DMCA, and various other parts of the world have similar provisions. However, there is no reason YouTube cannot also make its own private arrangements with major media companies to provide alternative takedown mechanisms.

Retaining such arrangements might be in YouTube's best interests even if laws are changed, because it doesn't want to pick expensive legal fights with rightsholders, so it may be beneficial to offer the big players a relatively simple way to take down content they don't like even if this isn't strictly a legal requirement.

The only reason this story is entertaining is that for once it was one of the big rightsholders that got hit by a mistake. But that will get fixed very quickly, and since rightsholders like Marvel probably benefit greatly from YouTube's takedown systems, I think it is extremely unlikely that anything else will change because of this.

I think this mistake might be very effective for it.

No, only small independents and consumers want change; the larger firms can all just make special agreements with each other. The fact that there was a blunder here will be deemed the fault of the companies or some hapless employee, not on the system in place.

It's not a problem that the system is automated. The problem is that there is no punishment for bogus claims.

You can see what happened in the official PlayStation blog which is linked by the Reddit post. The blog post lists official YouTube trailers for upcoming PS5 games, including the SpiderMan trailer which was taken down.

https://blog.playstation.com/2020/06/11/playstation-studios-...

That blog post only shows what is already included in the title of this HN post. I was trying to add context of both why this might have happened and why it is important.

Last year F1 official YouTube video was taken down by Start Sports (rights holder in India and other regions)

The sad thing is, the nail in the coffin won't be an individual wrongly getting their revenue stolen from them, but one corporation claiming content owned by another corporation.

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