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Comment by Laremere | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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