Dear Google: Public domain compositions exist | Hacker News Reader

Dear Google: Public domain compositions exist

blog.dbmiller.org

655 pointsmod50ack198 comments

I recommend the excellent video by Youtuber Tom Scott "YouTube's Copyright System Isn't Broken. The World's Is." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU

While I agree with the OP in broad strokes (they clearly have the right to post and profit off their performance), I find that the vast majority of comments on Youtube's copyright claim system fail to even acknowledge major aspects of the problem. Perhaps Youtube's practical monopoly does it a disservice here, and it's hard to separate "big self publishing video platform" problems with Youtube specific problems.

Without a system like YT currently has, it would get absolutely sued into oblivion by rightful copyright complaints. This is in many ways is a problem of copyright law not being designed with modern technology in mind. I think a good first step would be a way for copyright owners to be punished for broadly overreaching with their claims.

I personally think the better solution is going back to how copyright worked pre 1976, where copyright had to be positively asserted to exist and everything else went into the public domain. I'm also of the position that a 'make available' clause needs to be added to ensure that a work is constantly available during its period of copyright; moreover if the rightsholder should fail to make it available for longer than a set period of time it reverts to the public domain permanently. Finally I think the default period for copyright should be 23years (in line with patents) with progressively more expensive renewals based on the annual income of the property, the goal being to encourage people to let things go into the public domain unless they are extremely profitable.

IMO copyright for creative works should last a year, maybe two or three, but no more. The most income something generates is usually when it just gets released. Movies, for example, usually don't even count their revenue from outside of movie theaters.

This is the only way to make copyright mostly work, and make people respect it. Right now it's so long it could as well never expire. On the other hand, if it only lasts several years, many people would have the choice of paying right now or waiting for the copyright to expire and getting it for free. It's also very unfortunate that the entirety of our pop culture is covered by copyright right now.

And second thing to make it work even better: copyright should not be transferable. It should not be possible to sign something to forfeit your exclusive rights to your own work.

> usually don't even count their revenue from outside of movie theaters

I assure you, people are counting revenue. They're not releasing Blurays as a charity.

I meant in publicly available "box office" figures and all that. Box office earnings alone usually cover all the expenses already, many times over.

The industry doesn't exist in a vacuum - movies and TV shows are all financed with the expectation of long tail revenue and the people financing them are the ones who invented Hollywood accounting. A lot of the big budget stuff would be too risky without that revenue and it effects everything from the actor-SAG-studio relationship to licensing deals between major studios.

So we would get smaller but more movies, about real stuff and not generic stuff that can be mass marketed.

I'm fairly sure the only reason for this is to minimize backend payments to actors & directors.

Exactly, it's to not pay anyone that has terms in their contracts that say something like "earns 1% of the film's profits". If all the revenue is paid out to the studio in the form of "consulting fees" then voila: no profits.

> I meant in publicly available "box office" figures and all that. Box office earnings alone usually cover all the expenses already, many times over.

Maybe it covers the expenses for the studio but it's not necessarily sufficient for all artists involved in the creation. Movie tickets (and/or other short term revenue streams) would have to be more expensive if artists (actors, writers, directors, ...) wouldn't be able to get a cut of streaming- and other secondary exhibition revenue for a while after release.

So if I release a book as a small time author, and it is recognised as being good but doesn't do too well commercially, a major publisher with distribution and marketing reach can just republish it a year later when copyright lapses? I'm not sure I enjoy that idea.

Like many things in our society there is a disjoint between small and enormous entities. Yes, Disney can make a lot of money off Frozen in the first year or two. I probably couldn't even if you handed it to me.

I agree lifetime-plus is too much and we need to own our culture, but I think a few years is too little. 5 years, maybe 10, seems more reasonable as it captures the cultural zeitgeist but we all move on. And for smaller creators, it's similar to a change in job role or career every 5-10 years which is fairly typical.

>The most income something generates is usually when it just gets released.

YouTube is still making me pay to see movies (again) that I saw decades ago. Meanwhile, didn't Bob Dylan sell his entire catalogue for $300 million, just last year? David Guetta, $100 million? Paul Simon? I am not saying this is how I want things to work. Just that your statement seems factually... troublesome?

The GP parent said "most" while you're listing obvious outliers.

"Most income." They said the "most income for something" (presumably "anything"), not: "income for most things".

Would moral rights have a longer period in this case? In the current US copyright regime with a long forward, moral rights aren't really considered too much, but with a shorter covered period it might actually happen during the author's lifetime that their art is used in a way that they don't approve.

One or a few years is to short. 25 is about right. Most movies are based on books that are several years old.

> IMO copyright for creative works should last a year, maybe two or three, but no more. The most income something generates is usually when it just gets released.

Errrrrr. No. Not in my experience in music copyright.

A whole bunch of musical works for a specific "group" currently earn waaaaaaay more in copyright royalties than they used to 60 years ago (I shall neither confirm neither deny the name of the band due to the many lawyers they have).

Then there's the musicians who make way more on their works being used in television/film five years after the initial release.

Of course there's the entire library/background music industry, where a random television producer can choose some five year old sting for their hit show. Also see previous point.

Not to mention when a musician samples an old track, accurately credits them in the royalty share (props to you folks) and it turns out the song is a massive hit.

Plus the many myriad of other weird and wonderful things that happen in the imperfect, non narrow thing we call the world.

> This is the only way to make copyright mostly work, and make people respect it. Right now it's so long it could as well never expire.

Most businesses/companies tend to go with the current system (begrudgingly or not) or they get taken to court.

The law is on the copyright holder's side. There is inherent value behind these "works" which society has deemed important enough to require copyright to become law. I can disagree with a law as much as I want, but I'm sure as shit gonna toe the line when the police are walking past.

Hence why YouTube gets cagey about copyright. They don't wanna be sued and go through the whole GEMA takedowns/potential fines/potential jail time thing again [0]. They have a lot more to lose than in 2012.

On a more personal note -- people can choose whether or not they respect copyright. I buy all my music. All of it. I respect musicians and want them to be fairly paid for the valuable work they do for our culture, society and for myself.

If you don't, then go and torrent some stuff. Vote with your wallet.

> On the other hand, if it only lasts several years, many people would have the choice of paying right now or waiting for the copyright to expire and getting it for free.

You're basically asking to make everything free 5 years later.

Totally. Not. Going. To. Happen.

You will have a lot of musicians shouting at UK members of parliament. At a time when they're already having hearings/committees on making royalty payments fairer for musicians and the prime minister is personally getting called out on it [1].

> It's also very unfortunate that the entirety of our pop culture is covered by copyright right now.

I see literally zero copyright happening on Facebook posts, where I assume most of pop culture is still happening (it's still 2013 right?).

> And second thing to make it work even better: copyright should not be transferable. It should not be possible to sign something to forfeit your exclusive rights to your own work.

It's my asset. I should be able to do what I damned well want with my asset.

Maybe I want to sell the rights and go on a 3 week drugs and hookers bender?

Or maybe I need to pay off some debts? People go bankrupt and stuff and have to sell off assets. Copyright is an asset.

Much like anyone who owns a house owns an asset. Again, this comes back to the value that society has placed in musical works.

Reason I'm posting this comment -- every so often I see some "enlightened" person on HN claiming how to fix copyright.

You can't. It's like democracy, it ain't perfect but it's the best we've got right now.

Could it be better? Sure. But don't try and do a full rewrite, cos that's how you completely and utterly destroy s good thing [2].

Source: used to work for the only music PRO in the UK.

Caveat: it was a few years ago and I was drinking a lot at the time, mind

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/20/2962194/youtube-gema-copy...

[1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-57382459

[2]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

I wholly agree with this but the extension period should be forever with exponentially increasing fees not based on the profit of the work which can be gamed like movies are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

Why forever and not terminated at the author’s funeral (or 20 years after publication, whichever is later)?

This is tougher when the work is produced by a team and the copyright is owned by the company.

There also needs to be logic to handle this other case.

Wouldn't help; with Content ID the big companies are positively asserting copyright to things they don't own.

Oh, Tom is right. I've seen his video (actually a fan of his stuff), and I know that there's a real problem here for Google. They need to cover their asses here, and with good reason. And in many cases the problem is with the global copyright system.

But this isn't such a case --- nobody should get flagged for performing Sullivan or Mozart. It's absurd and a much easier problem to solve than the ones involving fair use which Tom discusses.

I think you are probably basically right, but it seems notable that what YouTube does is not just a DMCA by-the-books implementation, but their own policy/structure, right?

That is, they give copyright claimants more flexibilty/power than the DMCA strictly requires; the DCMA "counter-claim" process would let them put the material back up in response to a counter claim the end without the original claimant needing to approve or agree with your counter-claim, which is not how YouTube operates.

Youtube's system resembles the DMCA, but is not the DMCA, and is much more pro-claimant than the actual DMCA.

Woudln't an actual DMCA proess be sufficient to avoiding "suing out of oblivion"?

My guess is that part of is YouTube's current business model, they make money by enforcing copyright, they have no business/profit incentive to let you file a DMCA counter-notice, and plenty to make it even easier than the DMCA specifies to file a claim.

YouTube’s “ContentID” system came about at roughly the same time as Vevo (music videos on demand) became a thing. My guess is that it was implemented to appease the rights holders so they’d put their videos on YouTube.

DMCA doesn't protect someone who makes money directly from the content. Let the lawyers decide what that means, but I guess it could cover advertising and subscriptions if you prove there's a big chunk of copyrighted content. Hence their pseudo-DMCA appeasement process.

There seems to be a gap though. If I make something independently and am not covered by Content ID and want nothing to do with it, they will need to abide by the DMCA. They have been sued over this and I think it's a fair argument. Setup a system and force me to use it without any contractual agreements, waiving my legal rights? Doesn't really seem proper.

> a way for copyright owners to be punished for broadly overreaching with their claims.

That will only harm small businesses and individuals. It doesn't take a huge sum of imagination to draw the situation in the brain. A lawyer hired by a big corporation on one side, and a poor artist on another side, both standing in the same courtroom. You already get the drama about to happen. Lawyers will happily bully those poor souls that they are fully capable of introducing more misery to their opponents, so you should just sign this paper and f** off. A few may resist, and few will survive, but the majority won't even take the case to the court out of fear.

So, no, that's not a solution.

The corporate bullies have been trotting out this argument forever to keep the status quo. But it is not as if it is impossible to craft a law that carves out protections for this exact harm, like fee shifting provisions or a cheaper administrative proceeding available to small business and non-corporate ownership. We are, as a society, capable of changing and writing creative laws.

Specifically here, how do you imagine a punishment for overreach hurting small owners? They are the plaintiffs here, assuming they bring meritorious casee, they are in the driver's seat with no downside over the status quo.

No, I don't get it. When a large corp steals music from a small musician, they already get all this, and copyright doesn't help with the situation. Disney has been ripping off independent artists and musicians for decades with no consequences. Ffs even Robin Williams struggled to get paid by them.

I'm not sure what situation you're describing?

At least, for now, people can resist by suing, without fearing unfairly being punished. However, punishing for making false claims will suppress only the weaks by making it harder to sue powerful entities, as they'll get doubly punished for failing to prove their own rights.

OK. But this is a problem with the legal system then. If you give people legal rights to sue that they can't actually exercise because it costs too much, then that's a different problem from giving them the legal right to sue in the first place.

You're basically saying "no-one should get any legal rights at all because rich people will always win any legal dispute". I'm not saying you're wrong. But it's a different problem.

The DMCA (federal law) already provides a way to punish claimants, both small and large alike. A false claim under the DMCA is perjury (a felony in many locales). YouTube's system isn't the DMCA, which is why it's worse for creators and more generous to fraudulent claimants.

The way to punish someone for a false claim (both for claims filed on youtube and claims filed elsewhere) is to file an expensive lawsuit against the original claimant. It's very burdensome.

If the copyright owners were punished (monetarily) for broad overreach, then the poor artist's lawyers would take the cases on contingency.

No it's not, but it's what DMCA is. And EU is following USA with building broad and abusive copyright protection legislation.

And everytime there's a proposal to make copyright law less abusive and ridiculous, there's a huge pushback from both authors, giant content megacorps and even people on HN who should know better.

I bet Warner/Disney/etc. lawyers are laughing their ass off when Google - due to their crazy incompetence and use of AI - gets blamed for the law they lobbied to accept.

Last I checked DCMA did not require proactive removal like contintID, but to be responsive to claims. Did that change?

No, but the claims are automated as well (there are APIs between content publishers and big content silos which make this distinction pretty unimportant).

Ideally, the law would defend you against content providers and Googles/YouTubes and protect you from frivoulous claims. Instead DMCA codifies this approach (even if it's a bit different than what Google is doing right now).

The codified counter-notice approach in the DMCA is different from YouTube's approach in a very significant way. The difference is clearly felt by creators.

I hated that video. I think he's absolutely wrong.

If that's really the case then how come people on /gif/ and /wsg/ on 4chan haven't been sued? There's tons of copyrighted music on there (the ygyl threads are almost all just commercial music with anime.)

By removing the legal system Google has short circuited the law. There is a protection for individuals here, it's called perjury. If the claimants here pulled the same shit they do on 4chan that they do on youtube they would be perjured and that's why they haven't deployed bots to go suing people.

YouTube was sued by Viacom, and Paramount I believe, with some support given by Universal. Mind you this happened after content ID was in place, but was limited to content that came before. Viacom ended up settling while appealing the decision from the Court of Appeals.

It seems clear from the opinion that Content ID itself was evidence YouTube was actively collaborating with content creators. The court believed creation of that collaboration was the intent of the DMCA takedown process. It doesn’t seem like something they could remove without serious repercussion.

Sue 4chan and members? And garner the focused attention of one of the most vile communities of trolls the world has ever seen? Let me get my popcorn, because that will be an epic shitshow to watch.

>4chan and members

4chan has no members?

Users that bought a 4chan pass could be considered "members" of a sort. Regardless of whatever you choose to call them, be it "users", "members", or "shitposters", I think the point you're trying to make is overly pedantic.

My point is that every other website doesn't appear to have this problem, it's definitely one Google created.

How would you know who to sue? It's not as if 4chan lists real name and address. Past efforts to sue people based on IP address information haven't exactly gone well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_group_efforts_against_fi...

Google has a lot of information on monetized YouTube accounts, as that's a fairly involved process.

They probably could have sued 4can if they wanted.

But they understand that the audience of 4chan is much smaller than YT's, and brings incomparably less money to the 4chan that YT's audience brings to Google.

Please note, their failure to assert their rights does not void their rights. They are free to assert their rights where it makes financial sense. Let's remember that recording industry is not about music, it's about making money on selling music. They are where the money are, or where they think their money may be bleeding, or where a lawsuit can bring in more money. 4chan is not such a place, YT very much is.

The big difference here is 4chan threads are ephemeral, they rarely show on on search engines. Youtube vidoes often rank highly

I don’t understand how perjury applies here.

The DMCA has a (de facto toothless) perjury clause for knowingly submitting a takedown for content that doesn’t violate the copyright of the claimant. That doesn’t apply to YouTube claims that are handled via their internal tools outside of the DMCA process.

>de facto toothless

On YouTube, it appears to work just fine on other sites like GitHub.

When has a corporation been punished for perjury for false DMCA takedown notices on Github?

If you make a false copyright infringemenet claim, you commit perjury.

https://www.newmediarights.org/business_models/artist/what_a...

Isn't the solution to this already there? Creative Commons ( https://creativecommons.org/ )

> One goal of Creative Commons is to increase the amount of openly licensed creativity in “the commons” — the body of work freely available for legal use, sharing, repurposing, and remixing. Through the use of CC licenses, millions of people around the world have made their photos, videos, writing, music, and other creative content available for any member of the public to use.

Choosing a license is easy https://creativecommons.org/choose/ or you can have a look at the entirety of existing 7 CC licenses ( https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ )

It's possible to allow people to use things for free with attribution (CC-BY), shared under the same license / share alike (CC-BY-SA), no commercial uses (CC-BY-NC), no derivatives (CC-BY-ND), and public domain (CC0). There are a mix of those to make up the total 7.

IANAL so I'm not sure about commercial use.

This is as usual a very well done video, and as Tom Scott mentions, there is a gap between the law and what’s happening online.

He argues for how the small guy is protected by the status quo, but glosses over how the big players also massively get away with behaviors that would be prohibitively expensive/labor intensive/turned against them to do without youtube’s system.

> a way for copyright owners to be punished for broadly overreaching

That critically is covered by the law, and removed from the start from Youtube’s system.

ContentID is far beyond what YT needs to do to prevent themselves from being sued by copyright holders. It's a proactive difficult (or impossible) to appeal system. The DMCA requires much less involvement on their part.

> Without a system like YT currently has, it would get absolutely sued into oblivion by rightful copyright complaints.

That's false, the DMCA's safe harbor provision for content hosts has a mechanism in place for handling this.

I've said that in a comment about a similar article recently, and it needs to be repeated here: Google is actually helping big players to harass small groups into submission. And they are using their copyright system as a weapon. But nobody questions the sloppy execution of that self-declared law enforcement. I guess they are deliberately trying what they can get away with, to set the ground for future harassment.

I don't think Google is the main culprit here.

The big players have big lawyers. And they fell on YouTube like vultures the moment Google bought it. Google essentially had no choice if they wanted to keep YouTube alive in a way that isn't a massive loss for them. Small groups don't have what it takes to defend themselves, so it is obvious which way Google is going.

The law is also pushing Google to do what it does. DMCA calls for expeditious removal of taken down content, and there is very little penalties for bogus claims.

Still, I don't think what Google does now is good, and I think it will be their downfall if they don't correct course. It is understandable, but it definitely looks like the company is run by robots running a Monte-carlo simulation. It is a very good way of solving computational problems, but it not really compatible with the way human work.

In the future, I expect tech giants dominance to erode thanks to companies that actually look like they are being run by humans who care about their customers/partners/users. There are stories all over the web about customers being shut down with no reason given. Technically, Google may have excellent security and reliability, but I don't want my business to depend on what is from my point of view, a dice-rolling company.

Let us be clear: what Google does has nothing to do with DMCA. This is entirely out of their own volition.

Google's ContentID came as a result of Viacom's lawsuit in 2007. It's used to hang on to their "safe harbor" status.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_...

One of the provisions is that the service provider isn't directly profiting from infringing content.

A publisher would argue it's unfair for Google/Youtube to be considered a safe harbor if they make money from ad revenue between the time the infringing content is published and taken down by a DMCA claim. They'd also claim Google makes money using infringing content if users know that content is being hosted on Youtube.

Their safe harbor status is maintained through their obligations under the DMCA. Content ID may have come about to placate publishers, but it has nothing to do with section 512 of the DMCA and everything to do with stemming lawsuits.

I think it's entirely the result of trying to get deals with the major record companies to allow YouTube to continue to exist. In it's early days YouTube completely ignored copyright, and the music industry had all the cards when it came to negotiations.

The settlement is inspired by the DMCA, but goes beyond it.

>The law is also pushing Google to do what it does. DMCA calls for expeditious removal of taken down content, and there is *very little penalties for bogus claims.*

I would have to disagree here. The penalty for knowingly filing a DMCA claim is perjury. Since it is typucally used as a weapon against the little guys though, we've never got to see this actually enforced.

My understanding is that it is a bit more subtle than that. For more exact information, consult a lawyer, instead of random non-lawyers on the Interwebz.

If you file a DMCA claim on behalf on entity E, while knowingly not being entity E, or an authorised agent of entity E, you are committing perjury.

If you file a DMCA claim, you must have done a fair assessment that the material is actually under your copyright. If you know that you do not have the rights to the alleged infringing material, you are (I think) committing perjury.

If you file a DMCA claim, you must consider if fair use applies (but, crucially, I don't think there's a requirement that you reach a correct conclusion.

All of this makes cases like "I have licensed a song by creator C, for use as my intro" and a management firm DMCA-claiming all of your videos for using it a bit dodgy, as they really REALLY should check that before they react to any ContentID-originated "this may infringe". In at least one case[0], the management firm apparently thought the onus was on the licensee to proactively register each uploaded video with the management firm, which seems wrong to me. I would like to see one of those instances taken to court, and (preferably) end up with the conclusion that it is on the filer to consider licensing before making DMCA claims.

[0] No, I don't even recall the name of the creator, but I think he was mostly doing gaming content. There's bound to be more, though.

> In at least one case[0], the management firm apparently thought the onus was on the licensee to proactively register each uploaded video with the management firm, which seems wrong to me.

I would have thought that would be a matter for the contract between the management firm and the licensee. It seems reasonable for a management firm to put such a requirement into a license if that's how they want to keep track of who not to file takedowns against.

Google's system for handling copyright claims is largely disconnected from provisions of the DMCA law. Google created its system in order to avoid contact with the legal system.

The problem is that trying to talk to Google, or even have a meaningful dialogue is like trying to talk to a stone wall. You can talk but no one is there to listen. I doubt even there is anyone from Google here on HN who can do anything about this.

Google's AI has gone totally bonkers. I've been routinely getting emails about 'adult content' in my videos and my videos get age restricted. Last one was a simple screen recording I made of an error to send a company with nothing but mostly white screen.

I tried to appeal it but it also got rejected too (I guess that's also automatic?) and a quick search showed that I'm not alone, it is happening a lot.(1)

The email you get from Google is also very scary like my actions may have some negative consequences for my Youtube account.

(1) https://www.google.com/search?q=reddit+YouTube+age+restricte...

I recently had an Android app removed from the Play Store for offensive content in the screenshots.

We're a music site/radio station, and the name of the song playing in the player was 'XXX'. That's all it was. It has been in the store like that for a few years.

Updating the screenshots got it listed again, but it was, as you say, totally bonkers.

Frankly, this was provoking, and was not something you could not reasonably notice. If it felt like an innocent joke, that was a signal enough; robots are devoid of sense of humor.

Remember, only the paranoid survive :-\

Their 'screenshot' bots even sent a copy of the "offending" ones with a little red box drawn around the "XXX" song title in the footer player. (I assume, via CV or similar)

I truly don't understand the point of appeals to an automated process if the handling of that appeal is also going to be automatic.

So you have a number of AI bots running but some take longer and use more computing power than other ones - as you go through the appeals process you get shuffled along to the more and more expensive bots until finally you get denied by every bot and are fresh out of appeals.

Or the appeals are automatic "No, sorry" responses.

I would love to see proof of an AI appeal that was successful.

A comment where I provided some details on English church hymns where such composition/melody claims were made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27004892. Précis: about 20% of the hymns we were using were being illegitimately claimed, almost none of the claimants were acting in good faith (they didn’t review the disputes, but allowed them to lapse in my favour), and successful disputes did not prevent subsequent claims for exactly the same thing.

> we can’t sue just because we got a copyright claim against our video

Um, apparently the underlying problem is that someone claimed a clearly public domain melody in Google's copyright enforcement system. And the public domain status can be proven very easily since sites like IMSLP make early PD editions of classical music readily available to anyone. Wouldn't OP have a claim for tortious interference against whoever claimed this content in a clearly fraudulent way?

Some people on Reddit have the idea that you could do this sort of thing, at least: https://old.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/51457r/is_there_a_...

I'm not a lawyer, and we weren't monetizing our videos anyway. But it's still such BS. While I know that this claim will be thrown out by Google since it was contested (and apparently the claimant won't get any money from monetization --- although we won't either, since we don't monetize), I'm mostly just annoyed that Google's system is definitely letting tons of people make money from those who don't contest the claims. But I can't change that myself --- I don't work for Google, and even if we were to go to court and win (assuming we had grounds to sue in the first place), no court would require Google to change their system in that way (I suspect).

What we need are non-practising entities that let victims pool together rights and go after those who file fraudulent copyright claims.

It might not make financial sense for an individual to sue for any particular infraction, but pooling might result in economics of scale that make it worthwhile to pursue infringers.

So the underlying issue is really that it's "Google's" copyright enforcement system, Google's database. Not a public register of copyright works which could be treated as authoritative, and corrected where necessary. The problem goes back to copyright being assumed, not requiring registration.

No, the underlying issue is the US DMCA assuming that a takedown claimant holds valid copyright until disputed by the alleged copyright infringer, and absolutely zero real risk of liability for invalid takedown claims by copyright holders.

Google is “complicit” (at least in the moral sense, not sure about the legal sense) by providing a broken service that appears to be unable to distinguish different performances of public domain works.

But the principal legal and moral burden is still on the takedown claimant to represent that a certain video is indeed copyright infringement and not another performance altogether or fair use of copyrighted works. They should not be able to get away with large-scale false statements. Even for claims that relate to actual copyright infringement, they could not have a “good faith belief” of copyright infringement because they are simply relying on a known broken system (of Google) without appropriately verifying their claims, even after many successful disputes relating to the same issue.

Google's claim system is far more pro-takedown than DMCA requires.

If they were actually following the process in the DMCA, then as soon as the original poster made a counter-claim, Google could put it back up and the claimant's only recourse would be to take legal action against the poster.

It seems like this case has nothing to do with the DMCA. Google’s content ID and claim system is not related to that at all.

Not sure a public register alone would solve the issues. There were already cases in the past where TV shows registered copyright on their episodes and it resulted in automated strikes against youtube videos featured in these episodes.

So for any registry to work you would have to go through every video and mark exactly what parts you claim copyright for, which parts you do not claim copyright for and who else might hold copyright. Basically you would end up killing the automation, which would most likely piss of the movie and music cartels/lobbyists.

With a public register, if a TV show registers copyright incorrectly, that could then be corrected once, rather than the current situation, which requires it to be corrected on every claim.

> So for any registry to work you would have to go through every video and mark exactly what parts you claim copyright for, which parts you do not claim copyright for and who else might hold copyright. Basically you would end up killing the automation, which would most likely piss of the movie and music cartels/lobbyists.

That would be a feature, not a bug.

If it were the DMCA, yes. YouTube created a custom system that isn't the DMCA which means you can't punish fraudulent claimants and also don't have the protections of the counter-notice system.

> which means you can't punish fraudulent claimants

Tortious interference applies quite generally, it doesn't require anything as specific as the DMCA. These compositions were entered into Content ID, which means someone has clearly made a false claim to being the holder of publishing rights wrt. melodies that were actually in the public domain.

Or correctly added a recent performance (the performance/recording is copyrighted, the underlying composition is not) to the database.

I guess another way of getting around that would be to get multiple copyrighted performances of a public domain composition added to ContentID.

What keeps bugging me with the whole copyright dilemma on Youtube and Twitch is that it very much feels like a "guilty upon accusation, only innocent when proven otherwise" situation.

In my opinion it's fine that an algorithm _detects_ usage of copyrighted material, but it should not automatically issue strikes of any kind.

For copyright claims (false or valid) content producers should be treated "innocent unless proven otherwise", as in, the copyright holder has to prove that usage does not fall under fair-use.

Note that it doesn't issue strikes, it only either blocks the video or directs ad revenue to the (alleged) copyright owner. You could get 100 content ID detections and not lose your account (although YouTube might suspend you for abuse if you just continuously upload hundreds of hours of copyrighted material).

Thanks for clarifying that. Yes, I mixed up the strike and content ID thing.

Still you loose money, something that should (IMHO) not happen just because a system / copyright holder _thinks_ you _might_ be infringing.

After watching Tom Scott's video linked somewhere here, I get where this comes from and that it is more of a problem with copyright in itself and the way entities with money can leverage that.

Three copyright strikes and Google may delete your entire YT channel, while they continue to allow (and support via their "content id" service) an unlimited number of patently fraudulent claims from accounts that are obviously just spamming claims to see how much ad revenue they can steal. This imbalance is at the core of this issue. Google will severely punish creators for alleged copyright violations, but allows fraudulent claims.

If creators have to work under a "3 copyright strikes" Sword of Damocles[1], the accounts of people making copyright claims need similar restriction. If you submit 3 fraudulent copyright claims, you lose your account. You cannot submit any more claims, "content id" no longer flags your works, and you no longer receive payments from any ad revenue claims on other videos. This may sound harsh, but so is deleting someone's channel after 3 copyright claims.

[1] 17 U.S. Code § 512 (i) (1) ...The limitations on liability established by this section shall apply to a service provider only if the service provider (A) has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network of, a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network who are repeat infringers

Google does not have that kind of superior legal negotiating position. Copyright owners use ContentID and revenue sharing in lieu of suing Google for knowingly participating in copyright infringement. If Google locks out a copyright owner from their alternative to legal disputes, the next step is the copyright owner sending large quantities of mail to Google's legal department to get handled manually. Complete non-starter, Google needs to have a highly automated system with copyright owner participation, and as I understand it copyright owners are forced to opt-in if it is provided.

Google can use the automated system while also cracking down on false copyright claims, using a strikes system for them too, and by not just handing the video revenue to the claim maker just because they make it. They can stash the revenue in a sort of escrow bucket until the copyright claim is actually resolved in either party's favor.

Google cannot categorically ignore copyright claims without opening themselves up to potential legal liability. If you've made a hundred bogus copyright complaints to Google and they cut off your access, and you send in another complaint, they still have to either A) shove it into a DMCA safe-harbor exception, or B) risk knowingly continuing to violate your copyright. Option B is straight up not happening when the risk is that high, not without expensive lawyers reviewing the situation.

There isn't and will never be a "strikes" system for false copyright claims.

they can deny access to content ID, and require manually submitted claims (providing a postal address and requiring hard copy notifications still meets the DMCA requirement's AFAIK)

so while they cant just ignore a claim, they can make it harder to make a claim.

The DMCA provides for a counter claim that would require Google to restore the alleged infringer's content unless the alleged owner promptly shows proof of a court filing against the alleged infringer. This is automatable, fair and allows Google to avoid litigation.

Google needs an automated system, but not this goes far beyond what the automated system needs to do.

> large quantities of mail to Google's legal department to get handled manually. Complete non-starter,

Why is it an acceptable excuse for trillion-dollar-companies that compliance and manual oversight would incur costs? Like, it costs Ford tens of thousands to make each truck. Why shouldn't Google have to hire some people to oversee their program?

I think a challenge is that the law provides much needed protections to YT if they protect copyright holders. Distinguishing between real and fraudulent claimants would need to be done very carefully; could accidentally denying a legitimate claim cause them to lose liability protections?

If so, they'd need lawyers in the loop for any decision about denying a fraudulent copyright claim. The cost of that is likely enough to make them prefer the current setup.

I've posted this before, but I think it needs to look like this:

1. Claimant files a copyright claim with Google against a video owner. This immediately causes the video to be taken down / revenue to be redirected.

2. Video owner can contest the claim. This immediately causes the video to go back up / revenue to be refunded (or perhaps escrowed pending further procedures).

3. Claimant can now re-file the claim, but putting up enough money to have a real, trained human actually look at the case (I'm thinking on the order of $1000). Video is again immediately taken down, and revenue redirected.

4. The video owner can now re-contest the claim by putting up the same amount of money.

- If the video owner doesn't re-contest the claim, the money is refunded and the process is over.

- If the video owner contests the claim, they put up the same amount of money. A real, trained copyright lawyer looks at the case and decides. Whoever wins gets their money back.

This is a good idea. Just have the revenue go into escrow immediately after the first claim though. That could reduce the motivation for fraudulent claimants since the payout is delayed. Also, to minimize overall cost, a creator can pay one fee to handle up to N open claims against them.

Overall, I’m not sure all of this addresses the asymmetric impact since it could disrupt the primary income stream of a creator, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

That would be better IMO. As it is, or in GP's example, what happens if the producer dies, or just stops making and caring about YouTube videos?

A shame if the historical ones are no longer available for anyone to enjoy because of spam copyright claims that nobody's present to contest.

So if you can’t put up $1000, but your counterpart can, you’re screwed?

Technically yes; but:

1. It's still better than the current situation, where you're screwed regardless

2. Not even a large corporation is going to be willing to lose $1000 over and over again. The only time it's rational to put up the $1000 is if you're pretty sure you're going to win, or if you're pretty sure the other guy can't pay. I think the chances of any random person being unable to come up with $1000 are reasonably low. So most re-claims should generally be actually valid.

3. Theoretically one could imagine services like bond lenders starting up, which will look at your case and front you the $1000; and if you win you pay them a cut of the refund ($50? $100?). If my predection at the end of #2 turned out to be false, there should be a reasonable market for this sort of thing.

> I think the chances of any random person being unable to come up with $1000 are reasonably low.

I want to live in the world you live in! In the one I live in 1k is a lot of money to a lot of people to gamble on an uncertain process.

We're not talking about mom and pop, here, really. This is presumably a population that is making money on YouTube. Yes, $1000 is a lot to the average person, but as a business expense it's really not much. And getting your channel banned is career (or business) ending.

We are talking about mom and pop though because the complaints are indiscriminate and automated.

Mom and pop have not much to lose on public YouTube content, content creators have.

These all sound great in one's head until you flip around the situation and imagine where the copyright holder is the small time creator and the infringer is the big corp. The big corp can absorb many $1000 claims, but the small creator cannot afford it.

Requiring money up front from either party isn't really a good way to achieve justice.

This is effectively how the normal DMCA works, though. If they file a counter-notice the content goes back up and you have to sue them.

I wonder if that would cause legitimate copyright holders who don't have $1000 to tie up to be blocked. YT blocking legitimate claims could cause them to lose legal protections, which opens them up to liability directly.

The # of content ID rightsholders impacted by this would likely be much smaller than the # of creators right now being impacted by claims (fraudulent or otherwise).

Blocking legit claims also would not threaten legal protections if done correctly. Under normal circumstances if a content creator is subject to a fraudulent claim they can file a DMCA counter notice, and the creator is required to sue to keep the content down. YouTube just asks the claimant 'is this legit'? And then tells the creator to go screw themselves, even though all they did was ask the claimant whether their fraudulent claim is fraudulent. They're not really following the normal process you're required to follow, they're following a special one they made to stop big companies from harassing them.

Parts 1 and 2 are what the DMCA calls for, except that step 2 includes information provided to contact the video poster directly. And Part 3/4 is done in a court of law (using the info supplied in Part 2 to file suit).

Is this proof of stake

Sounds like a cost of running the largest streaming video service on the Internet. Should Google get free electricity to protect their bottom line?

YouTube's system goes far beyond what is required for DMCA Safe Harbor.

Viacom had lawyers and YT creators did not, therefore they did not have a seat at the table when YT's draconian copyright system was created.

No what happened is that YT creators were found to be blatantly and directly infringing on copyright by uploading copyrighted video themselves. As a result they had to accept unbalanced settlement terms negotiated from a position of weakness.

I have never seen any evidence that "they", YT creators, had any input in the YT copyright system. There was no negotiation. YT is afterall a contract of adhesion.

> So, until the 30-day appeal period (appeals are to the claimant!) expires, some copyright troll is making money off of ads running on our new production of a public domain opera.

Can someone explain how the copyright trolls are able to steal the ad revenue? Do they upload a different video with the "copyrighted" material, or make money off of the one uploaded by the defendant?

The troll files a copyright claim against the PD post, then gets the ad revenue from the PD post rather than the post's author.

Since there's no penalty for the troll, and possible upside, why not do if you have no ethics anyway?

Does the ad revenue go to some sort of an escrow until the claim is settled? Otherwise this doesn't seem to make any sense (??)

If Youtube cared they would do something like this excellent idea.

Yes it does, this is one of the recent changes to the system.

Filing the copyright claim requires identifying information from the claimant. If the ad revenue is valuable enough, the posting creator should have a decent case for fraud.

But a few thousand bucks isn't enough to sue, while a robot can mass collect a few thousand bucks from a bunch of victims at one time.

The latter. If a creator uses copyrighted (or allegedly copyrighted) material, ad revenue goes to the copyright owner.

> to the copyright owner

The copyright claimant, which may or may not actually own any such right.

Example: copyright trolls claiming videos that use public domain NASA footage.

Yeah that was implicit in the "allegedly" part.

They make money off the one uploaded and inappropriately claimed until they release the claim (and the money) or decline the counter-claim. They also have an option to claim a strike against the flagged work.

Could you act as your own copyright troll? That is, what happens when you file copyright claims against your own works from a second account?

Also, how many TOS and laws would this violate?

> Could you act as your own copyright troll?

Yes! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz14Ul-r63w

> That is, what happens when you file copyright claims against your own works from a second account?

You split half and half with the copyfraudster. If you make more sockpuppets to copystrike yourself, you get proportionally more and deprive the cf, e.g. 4 puppets vs 1 cf splits 80%/20%.

> Also, how many TOS and laws would this violate?

lolwhocares, I'm with emplemon - no respect for broken tos and laws

I still don't get why large holders aren't getting hit? If you were to file takedowns on Disney's misuse of mythology, or whatever, wouldn't you get 30 days of their income while letting their rebuttal expire?

Disney, other film studios, large record labels and distributers, etc, have the ability to place their content directly into YouTube's ContentID system so a copyright claim will generally be denied immediately by one of youtube's bots.

You'll get thrown in jail for fraud.

There are a different set of laws for the wealthy, including wealthy corporations.

Someone made a video about doing this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ieErnZAN5Eo

There are several more.

> This imbalance is at the core of this issue.

While that was very true 1-2 year ago, I believe the tides have actually shifted and Youtube has done a lot to re-balance this dynamic. Especially since Youtube v Brady [0], which was an exact example of the abuse you described.

From my understanding, the person receiving the copyright claim now has more power to contest it. So much so that there recently was drama from the other side, with a creator claiming their account was in danger because they tried to take down a copied video and the person contested it [1]. Take a look at the email from Youtube in that video for a taste of how the new system works [2].

It's still far from perfect, and as shown above, it can also backfire the other way around, but it does seem like they are providing more tools for creators to defend themselves. Previously the only option was to get a lawyer and go to court. Clearly not ideal.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/man-sued-for-usi...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuF5k4QB_zg

[2] https://ibb.co/4m8fyhJ

> just another evil google thing

Einstein said that "The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything". This probably puts most of passive non-users of google as culprits in their wrong-doings.

But the case of people who voluntarily partake in the perpetration of google services is different. There's no "probably", here; their moral standing is clear-cut. I'm unable to feel any sympathy towards them. Not even to say "it's unfortunate, but they had it coming". If you have a google account or use google services you are directly responsible of their evil deeds. At this point, complaining that they are unfair towards you is hypocritical.

Google is nothing without its users.

> If creators have to work under a "3 copyright strikes" Sword of Damocles[1], the accounts of people making copyright claims need similar restriction.

Since you reference federal law and not a Google-specific policy here, perhaps the issue is Congress, nto Google.

The Google process pre-empts DCMA, that's the real problem. Congress has already considered fraudulent claims, but Google has/will not.

> The Google process pre-empts DCMA, that's the real problem

The reference to federal law wasn't to the DMCA safe harbor, but to the repeat-infringer termination rule. The Google termination process fulfills that requirement rather than preempting it.

> Congress has already considered fraudulent claims, but Google has/will not.

Insofar as the first part is true, its only in the sense that Congress essentially gave carte blanche to fradulent claims since the only consequence for false takedown notices apply only to the assertion of ownership or representation of the owner of some asserted copyright, not the part where you claim that someone is using the copyright protected material in an infringing manner.

The Youtube system is not required by federal law. It's a worse system they created themselves.

It's hard to imagine a scenario where a faulty copyright claim is submitted in good faith. And are the accounts of such bad actors of particular value to them or more likely easily disposable? So, one strike for fraudulent copyright claims? Two?

Edit: OK, ThrustVectoring and thanksforfish already pointed out the flaws in that argument.

I just read a good related story yesterday. Someone on TikTok (in Canada) created an original "song" of them singing along with a cat. The song got really popular. So popular that they put the song on Spotify and made it available for sale.

And then the original got taken down from TikTok Canada with the warning that "This music is not available in your country".

They literally got a copyright notice on their own song with they licensed for sale in US.

His/her unwitting mistake was to put it on Spotify to begin with. The whole point of Spotify is to go where the audience is. The songwriter already had an audience on TT, the next step would be to just link to the song on Dropbox or better yet, on their own website, with a PayPal/Kofi button.

By putting it on Spotify, you now have to play by their rules.

I actually had a copyright claim filed against an US Air Force band of the Pacific composition and recording. Which I got from them directly and had used because it falls outside copyright (and I like their work).

It did get rescinded when I forwarded a response from a surprised representative. But YouTube still immediately flags those works as copyright belonging to a party that reproduces those recordings. regardless of that being impossible.

Google's copyright-recognition AI and how they deal with everything regarding copyright on YouTube should be a heads up for the German court which will be ruling on the Sony Music vs Quad9 case.

One of the biggest companies in the world, the one owning some of the most advanced AI systems, isn't capable to rule internally in a fair way on copyright issues, such that the spirit of how copyright is supposed to work is completely neglected.

Now apply this to DNS, including the fact that Google isn't the only one providing resolvers. What a horrible thing to do from Sony.

The best way to fix Google (or Facebook, or Apple, or Amazon for that matter), is to replace it. Alternatives exist, please use them.

This article mentions that a troll is getting ad revenue. Which makes me assume that the author would like to benefit from ad revenue themselves.

Do any alternatives exist in that space? Facebook's revenue share and copyright detection algorithms are even worse; Patreons work for existing fanbase. Youtube is probably your only choice for public viewing monetisation.

Firstly, it’s not a given everybody wants to monetise everything.

Secondly, advertising is only one form of monetisation. As a classical music fan myself, I am not going to enjoy any video that takes that route - I’d be happier with a sponsorship route or a “click here to buy on music services” (or even “click here to buy tickets for our upcoming performances”), link.

Lastly, yes, other video platforms offer advertising, and they will only get better if content producers make them more competitive with YouTube.

It’s such a crazy small pittance that a creator gets from ad revenue. I watched a video recently of a YouTube channel with 3 million subscribers doing a breakdown of how they make money, and they make $700 a month off the advertising. Luckily they have a Patreon that they make $30,000 a month off of, which they’ve used to make some really amazing content. It’s sort of bizarre that they even run the ads on their videos, honestly, as you’d think not running them would increase appeal leading to more Patreon subscribers.

I watched a video recently of a YouTube channel with 3 million subscribers doing a breakdown of how they make money, and they make $700 a month off the advertising.

What's the channel? This doesn't sound right. At all.

You know, I checked and their breakdown of earnings video is from 4 years ago. My mistake.

Thanks for letting me know because I was shocked at how little money they seemed to be making from ads vs Patreon.

Copyright trolls are parasites, I would have a huge problem with them benefiting off my stuff even if I myself wouldn't make a dime on it. You can easily make arguments in favor of rental housing, usury and such, but there is absolutely no defense for this kind of behavior, I just find it immoral.

Well, maybe is about time to stop feeding the beast. I get it is a fair complaint. But what about not uploading stuff to youutube in the first place if it is so hostile to content creators? Let it be what it is supposed to be, a giant repository of corporate, advertising-based tacky mass culture.

Unfortunately this is a network effect lock-in.

Content creators need to be on YouTube because that's where the audience is. Viewers need to use YouTube because that's where the content is.

There are a lot of very busy bees out there right now looking to change that.

YouTube provides easy, great advertising revenue. But as individual channels develop their subscriber base, YouTube's role diminishes.

Viewers/subscribers find it easy to "juggle" multiple apps. People just needed a reason for alternatives.

Does it really still provide great ad revenue? Hasn't that been declining and increasingly restricted over the last several years?

Viewers largely don't care what platform your content is on as long as they can know it exists (link) and can easily consume it without jumping hurdles.

I don't care if I watch something on Youtube or Vimeo as long as I see what I'm trying to see.

Just a tought experiment:

How about having two Youtube accounts and copyright-flagging your own videos?

Then during the 30 day period your other account gets the ad revenue, oh well.

Quite aside from this almost certainly being against the T&Cs, I'm not sure what happens when multiple parties claim the copyright. It's literally impossible (I think?) for them all to hold the copyright on the same melody, so how does Google resolve it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK8i6aMG9VM

(cw: strong language)

TL;DW - nothing happens, it's an unresolvable deadlock. This "feature" can sometimes be used by deliberately adding many easily claimable works in a video to prevent anybody from monetizing it.

That's incredible - it's from five years ago. Are people still using the technique these days?

> So, until the 30-day appeal period (appeals are to the claimant!) expires, some copyright troll is making money off of ads running on our new production of a public domain opera.

I thought that no one got paid until the claim was upheld/revoked and then the ad money would go to the winner.

> And even more copyright trolls are definitely out there making what is likely a substantial amount of money off of stuff they definitely don’t own from people who don’t contest the claims

The Youtube three copyright strikes and you're out is definitely a cause of this - there needs to be a consequence for people making false claims.

The underlying issue is that 99% of copyright claims are probably valid - youtube is awash with copied video clips and with music they don't own. The solution is for youtube to charge $1 per upload. If you want to make a copyright claim or appeal you have to pay $10+ which you get back if you win - but would pay for a human to review.

The internet brought us the promise that anybody could be a broadcaster.

Well, that promise sure didn't hold up long.

In the constitution you have the 5th amendment due process clause. This is basically your right to good customer service from the government when you are the one charged with a crime. The administration of due process is very expensive, and any good corporate manager driven by OKRs focused on revenue would do away with the process all together in favor of plaintiffs, unless the defendant was a significant taxpayer or something like that.

This does not apply to private corporations. However, now we have these trial like processes going on inside of Google and they are driven by OKRs and quarterly profits, so its 100% plaintiff friendly, because Google knows the defendants are largely powerless and not revenue generators.

File criminal charges for false claim of copyright. It's a criminal offense in the US. While this is very seldom prosecuted, it's worth doing the paperwork to raise the issue and create a paper trail. The Center for New Media Rights might help.[1]

[1] https://www.newmediarights.org/

Many comments have referenced DMCA's perjury safeguards.

Is anyone keeping score? Who are the claimants? How many are trolls? How many claims are adjudicated and how?

Surely YouTube (Google) has metrics. Make it all public.

I couldn't readily find Daniel Benjamin Miller's Trial by Jury. Even then, I don't know if third parties (you and me) can see the claimants.

Edit: Found it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GKsDpu5D60

OC's video had four separate claimants; Surely at least 3 are invalid, right?

Google's DNA is to shirk any responsibility, shifting all administrative burden onto the afflicted.

They absolutely have the means to bat away spurious claims, but simply choose not to bother. They're hiding behind a rigid interpretation of DMCA, "What choice do we have??", because reasons.

There are four claims, on compositions, of four separate songs from the opera. They're all invalid.

Belated reply, sorry: Aha! Thanks, that makes sense. Now occurs to me those 4 claims had some origin.

Okay, evil shower thought: why not actively start abusing this on a massive scale, claim as many copyrights as you can automatically so Google has to address this? If they don't do anything, you put the 'stolen' revenue in a fund for uploaders to access again.

Worst case, nothing happens, and video uploaders still get a payout, best case Google is forced to make some changes.

Maybe we could use deep RNN to produce novel but likely soundbytes that politicians are likely to say to be included in copyright audio tracks, and then hit the politicians' videos themselves.

I'm with you on this. The system is blatantly broken, and one way to get something done about it is to get everyone to abuse the hell out of it so that the system gets removed or fixed.

I'm somewhat surprised that Google doesn't track public domain works and see them as such -- it seems like a perfect honeypot to distinguish copyright trolls (or just over-aggressive studio/record-company algorithms) which they could regulate or push back against.

I.e. public domain works are a good input to their own AI -- why are they leaving that on the table?

A specific performance of a public-domain work may still be copyrighted. The problem is that their algorithms are not really tuned to distinguish different performances of the same song - on the contrary, I think it is safe to assume that their algorithms try to find as many similiar-sounding matches as possible, so that e.g. a song playing in the background on a radio is still recognized, even though it obviously sounds very different compared to a direct recording of a song.

That's decidedly not the problem here. They didn't confuse my recording for a copyrighted performance. The claim was that I used a copyrighted melody in an original performance --- but the melody is public domain.

Out of curiosity, what were those four strikes then, if not for four different copyrighted performances of the work? From my understanding of how ContentID works, matches are always done against recordings provided by copyright holders, and not against abstract melodies.

It's an opera with various songs. For four of these songs, content ID reported a melody match with a composition. Keep in mind that compositions and performances have separate copyrights and often separate owners! Compositions have to be registered separately in content ID. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2822002?hl=en

What happened was that each song was correctly identified by its melody and matched with an entry in the composition database, even though the compositions are clearly public domain.

I got a DMCA claim on a video of me playing a Bach piece on guitar, with my own AFAIK entirely novel arrangement

The consensus here on this kind of issues these days seems to be that it’s not Google’s fault. However if their rights model would make a correct and consistent distinction between works and performance, they would know that there is no right holder to the work (melody) they’ve identified. It’s not impossible that there are copyright trolls spamming their database with performances of public domain works and claiming both type of rights, but than they should have a system to flag those as inconsistent with known public domain material. They have the money to clean up their data, it’s just not as fun as iterating on their audio to performance and audio to work ML systems, which seem to work fine

This. I recorded myself playing some Saint-Saëns on cello with a friend accompanying on the piano, uploaded it to youtube, and the copyright machine decided it's owned BMG. Couldn't believe it.

I don't get it: if Google correctly identified that the melody was from a 100+ years old composition, and that it wasn't a reproduction of copyrighted content, why did it raise a copyright infringement claim in the first place? It sounds like it has already a database of compositions it matches against, and the year of release is probably reported on that database. The solution may be as simple as not raising a copyright infringement claim on any match again compositions that are 70 years old or older.

This all makes me curious what barriers (technical, funding, legal, etc) remain for a decentralized P2P video platform to become highly popular. I'd love to see YouTube bring about it's own demise with both the increasingly intrusive ads and heavy-handed copyright processes.

I find myself wondering if there's any grounds for action based on "unjust enrichment" here, because there are absolutely entities making money they're not entitled to. If there's involuntary monetization then Google is definitely one of those entities.

Today it's certain melodies.

One day it might be certain phrases.

This is the same YouTube that banned any videos contradicting the WHO (the same WHO who said not to wear masks). The same YouTube who takes down videos with evidence of human rights abuses.

Stop donating content to a censorship platform.

I have recently noticed my posts on Youtube that correct inaccuracies in technical videos are vanishing couple of seconds after posted.

It seems Youtube is performing some kind of sentiment analysis and removes posts immediately based on it.

I stopped commenting on Youtube.

The spam filter might be picking up the comment. Then it will require approval from the creator of the video. This filter is incredibly aggressive, because of just how much garbage is spammed.

As an example, YouTube hid this comment and tagged it as "likely spam":

>I saw a Jean Bart video and I thought I might be in it as I went up against you yesterday, glad I was not in the other team in this one lol

However, there also exists some kind of other system that sometimes removes comments. I'm not sure how that one works. Even as the creator of the video I've had my comments disappear, but that might've also just been a bug.

I tried to have fun with comment filter to figure out what causes comments to trigger it but it seem it is implemented so that when you get couple comments removed you are no longer able to put any comment, they are just going to vanish whatever you write.

It was me. I often spend 10 minutes writing a comment, I post it and sooner than later I delete it.

Effort to put my thoughts into coherent words is often more important to me than the comment itself, and thus it had had served it's purpose in the instant I wrote it down.

I am also doing that frequently.

I spend a bunch of time writing comment only to find out it does not improve the discussion one iota, so I delete it.

But having an occasion to think something through lets me organize my thoughts a tiny bit better.

I don't comment in the comment section either, but I sometimes read it and I often see people accusing the channel of deleting comments, and the responses from the channel owners that they don't delete any comments. And these channels don't even have anything to do with politics or any controversial topics.

I sometimes comment in the live chat on livestreams though. I'm sure there is some kind of super clever and sophisticated algorithm to filter out comments, but in practice as far as I can tell, what comment in the live chat gets through is virtually just random.

I believe channel owners. The comments are being removed so regularly that would be practically impossible for somebody to react so perfectly within 2-3s of every comment.

It is just youtube trying to create illusion of functioning community by automatically censoring anything and anybody that can even potentially be negative, divisive or controversial.

And we know the dangers of removing every critical opinion...

Absolutely, in the full context channel owners often have zero incentive to remove any comments and it makes zero sense for them to do so, so I believe them too. Most people are aware of what YouTube is doing by now, but once in a while you have someone who will blame it on the channel.

Well said. Google has become one of the big evil players. So fucking glad I turned down their hiring attempt.

They also enable a business model for countless independent content creators, easy access to free/open video lectures, talks and so on.

I agree with your criticism but there are things at stake here that I very much appreciate as a consumer.

YouTube does not have a monopoly on sending video content via HTTP.

I think this part of youtube should be spun into a separate entity that delivers services to governments who should protect copyrights for which the copyright holder should pay a fee (read "a tax!").

I understand people are trying to make a living but I'm really tired of everyone else having to pay for their copyright though all kinds of "externalizes" like trolling fair use, making it impossible to find some music to add to a video, do a remix, make fan art etc etc etc I think the public is missing out on 99% of the potential creations and the creativity that comes from them. Learning a new skill is hard if you have no access to anything. The economy is compromised here. Then we also have to view advertisements so that copyright enforcement can be paid for? I use to have thousands (seriously) of youtube subscriptions. Every channel worth watching is gone and most of it was over bullshit violations of fair use. Copyright didn't enhance my experience, it ruined it. The best instance was a movie (that I wont name) made from videos endlessly duplicated on the web from which the origin was impossible to trace. After the movie was launched everyone got a take down notice. Accounts got flagged, people got banned. (not just youtube but also their other services like gmail) That the videos had been online for over a decade didn't bother the process at all.

When I play my guitar I hardly feel every string I pull is a wonderful new creation that I should own from now on(???) If I do feel like that I would expect to pay for these services myself. If the creations are not valuable enough to pay for copyright enforcement then they are simply not valuable enough - period. It shouldn't mean other people now have to pay for it.

If you play music (a recording) in public (in your bar, disco, restaurant etc) in the Netherlands you have to pay fees regardless of the artist being registered with the entity. The exception is if you have specific written permission. I'm just playing my guitar, why cant I just have people use my music? Why do I have to do extra work so that some unrelated 4rd party can get paid? Why does google have to pay for it? By what logic should google be the one to decide what shall and shall not pass? They have an elaborate system that took a lot of effort, cost them a lot of money and it doesn't work. Just let government do it and charge the tax for the service and deal with false claims similarly - in court. The recording studios claim to be missing out on hundreds of billions. By that logic governments could make a HUGE profit on these taxes. Lets not make it a flat tax, let it scale to the moon.

The solution is to enforce the penalty of perjury required for these claims.

What incentive does Google have to fix this? There's no viable competition in this space.

Here's the full list of reasons google will act:

1. Will it make them more money?

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