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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.

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.

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.

Is this proof of stake

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

> 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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

Someone made a video about doing this:

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

There are several more.

> 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?

You'll get thrown in jail for fraud.

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

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.

> 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.