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Comment by dthul | Hacker News Reader

I get that mistakes can happen, but companies filing frivolous DMCA notices should be barred from this avenue in the future. Further, YouTube's appeals process is fundamentally broken if it can't get such obvious cases right.

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Always remember that YouTube is for the most part not using DMCA notices. ContentID has nothing to do with the DMCA and everything to do with the Viacom lawsuit and YouTube’s persistent desire to avoid any further lawsuits of that nature.

It’s a rigged system in favour of traditional copyright holders and anyone who can weasel their way to the other side of the ContentID system to register themselves as a copyright “owner” and are thus blessed by YouTube as special and to be trusted with the task of only making legitimate claims against their own intellectual property… which we all know is bullshit and abused by almost everyone who has access to it. Notable exceptions being companies like Epidemic Sound who have made their access to that system/API into a valuable business differentiator… regardless it’s rigged against the individual content creators that made YouTube into the behemoth it is today.

In this case it was an actual DMCA notice, not ContentID. Real people were involved in this incomprehensible decision.

Which is why it’s all the more important to point out. While this was a DMCA, almost all the normal litany of egregious YouTube copyright stories are from the ContentID program and are beyond any real ability to appeal or legally reconcile. There is no fair use or other affirmative defence… you will bend the knee to YouTube at behest of the so named copyright holder or face the wrath of Google…. All of Google for you never know what else your YouTube account might be connect too… do you dare risk it serf?…

They are quite luck to have the full DMCA process, as unpleasant and costly as it all is for them, at all! Most are not so lucky.

> almost all the normal litany of egregious YouTube copyright stories are from the ContentID program and are beyond any real ability to appeal or legally reconcile

That is factually incorrect.

Content ID claims can be appealed to the claimant. If that appeal is rejected, the person who posted the content can contest the claim. Doing so forces the rights holder to either drop the claim, or file a DMCA takedown.

I am a full-time YouTuber. I have recently done what I just wrote. It's nothing new.

Perhaps slightly hyperbolic… but the perception I had garnered from the content producers I’d seen talk about it, is that the 10 day counter notice period is long enough that the majority of content producers cannot take the risk with time relevant content or live streamed content.

In addition the percentage of people unwilling to risk the legal complications of defending a full fair use court fight, as it is an affirmative defence relying on courts with the USA as the jurisdiction is a widely chilling effect on overseas content producers. If they don’t back down you need to be prepared to deal with American courts and lawyers. Sure they back down some of the time but a lot of people don’t even want to risk it or aren’t even sure how firmly they are in fair use territory and that’s not even brining into the equation how many people misunderstand fair use exemptions and just how might right to reuse content under fair use they actually have and who may be inadvertently risking significant legal exposure should they try to press invalid fair use claims.

I did misspeak, but ContentID is still the bigger evil than the DMCA.

There is some truth to what you wrote, but instead of getting into the weeds on the details, I'd like to take a step back and remind you of something that you might have already considered: creators have a strong incentive to mislead you about this kind of thing. When people think the little guy is getting financially shafted by The Man, they are more likely to do things like sign up for that channel's Patreon page, or join their membership program.

I see a lot of this, including by very large channels who know what they are doing and should know better. And it seems to be an increasing trend. I don't like it.

The first time I became aware of YouTube tightening the screws on Content ID by YouTubers complaining about it was already in 2013 though, Patreon had barely been created by then (though some of its competitors like Flattr, were older).

Telemundo actively did this. Claim copyright of creators' material and file strikes against them.

Then there were the cases of extortion trolls (criminals) who demanded money from creators in exchange for removing strikes.

0. Fuck YouTube and criminals and 1. never depend on it as a primary source of income. (that's what merch is for).

It shouldn't be just the companies that are barred from filling new notices, but that the copyrighted item itself loses its protection. But how could a bunch of old people who don't care about tech have put that into law 20 years ago

How would that have worked in this case? User posts Blender video $X on youtube, $idiotCompany files frivolous DMCA suit claiming copyright on $X, Blender loses its copyright on $X?

If $idiot is being paid by blender or acting at their request, yes, otherwise no

The notice is filed on penalty of perjury. All that should happen is whoever filed the notice actually be tried for perjury.

Perjury is not enforced anywhere but the most egregious cases. Courts are filled with lies told by professional liars and presided over by liars that made a career out of lying. They never eat their own, because it would shine too much light on their own practices.

Perjury based on _belief_ that they own the copyright, as I understand the DMCA. So being an idiot who doesn't understand copyright (or based on an erroneous automated process) is considered a defence.

So, worthless.

Of course. Why can't you answer as many times as you want in an SAT? Because it would defeat the whole purpose. More than that: you need to give points for right answers, and negative points for wrong ones, so the expected value of guessing is 0.

Even in the context of the already fucked up copyright laws, this mechanism is especially broken.

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