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Comment by acidburnNSA | Hacker News Reader

I've been getting 1960s public domain Atomic Energy Commission films scanned from 16mm reels at the National Archives and posting on YouTube. I noticed they were running a lot of ads even though I had monetization off. Turns out, each one got a few copyright claims from people who apparently release "remastered" old music in the 2010s. I got annoyed and disputed them all and as of yesterday the claims have all been released. What a pain.

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Yeah copyright is a mess even if you’re trying to do it legitimately. I don’t even know how you’re supposed to use licensed music without getting a strike.

You're not. Nothing about this system was designed for regular people, it was designed for media firms and Hollywood. It's absolutely archaic and the fact that the only update to it in broad terms has been the DMCA explains why it's such an unmitigated disaster.

@PhilosophyTube on Twitter had a great thread (now deleted, I think she deletes her old Tweets) about how she spent weeks getting an actual license for a track for YouTube (and paid for it!), only to get copyright striked anyways, and the resulting delays and lost revenue that followed because of it. It is effectively impossible for normal people, even ones who have significant resources to do so

> I got annoyed and disputed them all and as of yesterday the claims have all been released. What a pain.

And from what I've seen, YouTube allows Content ID to automatically claim any and all "infringing" content, but the people who post the claimed videos must dispute each one individually.

Obviously, the primary goal is to make big copyright owners happy.

Sure, but I don't think it's about companies like Google doing their buddies a favor. It's more about not wanting to fight complex and uncertain legal battles with companies that have large and well-funded legal departments. Very few of us would be above that.

Hey, thanks for doing this. I absolutely love these old government produced science videos, and I've enjoyed some from your channel. It's nice to be able to directly thank someone who's making this content available online.

Well you're welcome! I figure it's a relatively tiny effort to digitize these compared to the work that went into producing them in the first place. It's really satisfying.

Would you mind sharing your YouTube channel? Thank you!

Sure! https://www.youtube.com/@whatisnuclear/videos

Wow, cool project!

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