Hacker News Reader

I wrote about a related issue a while ago: https://blog.dbmiller.org/2022-04-08-not-that-kind-of-pirate...

In effect, anyone on YouTube can upload material and claim that it is their own copyrighted material, even if it's not. And there's no way to dispute this.

If you write and say it's public domain, then the claimaint gets 30 days to dispute the claim. If they choose to dispute it, I believe they are required to DMCA you (which they rarely do, especially considering that they'd be totally in the wrong for a c1927 item).

Usually, they just let the claim lapse after 30 days. But if you upload the content again, then you will have to dispute it again, because there's no way to mark a claim as invalid in itself.

It is more or less this. But after two conventional disputes, the alleged copyright holder cannot just claim it again. They need to go into the DMCA legal process - as so far this was just YouTube backed policy. Once a DMCA takedown received a counter-notification (disputing it), the alleged copyright owner has to either file a lawsuit, or just back out. They won’t be able to either claim the content or take it down again (unless they use shady techniques, which could get them in trouble). In a vast majority of cases, they won’t file a lawsuit, even more in this specific case of a very short excerpt, which could fall into fair use anyway.

I had the tune Crimond claimed by the same party three times (on three different performances).

Worse: according to YouTube policies, you are not even allowed to even use public domain material that is not created by you or a nation-state government in the first place. For YouTube purposes, you have to assume as if copyright is a perpetual, irrevocable, fully transferrable right. Yes, you read it right: fair use is allowed in YouTube, reuse of public domain is material is not.

Could you elucidate and source this? (Because it makes no sense to me. Fair use is allowed by most jurisdictions’ legal systems, but in practice not allowed by YouTube because they grant way too much power to copyright holders. Meanwhile, I find no grounds on which YouTube could legally or practically prevent or even hinder reusing public domain resources. Again, they’ve granted way too much power to people that claim to hold copyright on things, but really that’s just “putting anything on YouTube is risky”.)

> I find no grounds on which YouTube could legally or practically prevent or even hinder reusing public domain resources.

They are totally allowed. YouTube is not a public utilty. ContentID, the software that enforces copyright and dissimilarity on YouTube, is coded based on the specific assumption that every piece of content has been uploaded to YouTube eventually originates from a uniquely determineable single origin. In fact, single-origin assumption is required for similarity checking software of this kind to work reliably (copyright&plagiarism enforcement).

"...reuse of public domain is material is not."

Uh? No doubt you're correct but from what I have experienced I'm still not clear about the details.

It's years since I've posted anything on YouTube but there was one instance where I received a copyright infringement notice from YouTube. The 'infringing' material involved was a 78 audio recording over 80 years old that was in the public domain which I'd downloaded from the Internet Archive then posted to YouTube. The only reason I did this was because there were many of the artist's recordings already on YouTube and I posted it to help complete the artist's collection.

Much later YouTube sent me a somewhat ambiguous note to the effect that there had been a copyright complaint but it was not taking any action however I could lodge an objection in case the matter escalated (it may not have used those exact words but that was my understanding of the matter). I chose to ignore it.

In my post I made it clear† where the recording had originated from and whilst YouTube would not allow me to post its download URL as plaintext I embedded it into the accompaning image where it was fully legible.

That was some years back and the recording is still there. Thus YouTube was well aware it was a public domain recording but did nothing about it. Those who posted the other recordings must have had a similar experience.

Also, there are hundreds of old documentaries, newsreel footage etc. on YouTube that are in the public domain that havn't been taken down. If this is a violation then why hasn't YouTube taken action to remove them?

† Edit: here's the link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yWoEanmuolQ

I know very little of your religion so I’m not familiar with many hymns at all but I thought this was interesting and so did a quick check.

It seems many popular hymns are still in copyright - not necessarily the melody, but often the lyrics, as often the popular English versions are translations, or new lyrics written to old songs.

For example one of the most popular English language hymns “How Great Thou Art” has various versions of the lyrics, and popular versions appear to have been written by lyricists who did not die until the 1980s meaning these works will not become public domain until 2050 or later - even if the melody is much older.

It may also be that the arrangement (which is a distinct copyright when it comes to music) is what is causing a copyright claim.

I understand that religious music publishers can be quite persistent in ensuring use of their works is adequately compensated.

This may be why you are unable to upload these. See also my comment below about differing lengths of copyright for works to enter the public domain.

Your suggested defence was already debunked in the linked thread. These were melody claims, all firmly in the public domain, most composers having died in the 1800s or earlier (e.g. Crimond, by J. S. Irvine who died in 1887).

Took a look, it’s a long thread! I don’t see a debunking as such apart from your own statement that they were flagged for melody. Apologies if I’ve missed something that is key to this. However I respectfully suggest that this is a misunderstanding of copyright and the content ID process. Content ID will flag the composition which includes melody and lyrics. This is because of the way music publishing has traditionally operated. So a flag for composition could be melody, lyrics, arrangement or any combination of those.

As someone else pointed out (though this won’t be why are getting a content ID flag) there is actually a separate copyright in a performance - so even if you record a musical performance you would (technically) need the agreement of all the performers involved. This is common in film and TV where “release forms” are signed, as well professional record label recordings.

I wonder if the solution to this problem is to go full-scale DDoS-style mass copyright striking all the big channels in the platform until they change things so the system is less abusable.