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Comment by ndiddy | Hacker News Reader

Youtube already has that system. I had to go through the process due to a similar situation with someone falsely content ID'ing my video. In that case it was someone uploading music they didn't own to some online music distribution service. Basically the way it works is after you dispute the content ID claim and whoever filed it still says the content is theirs, you can escalate the dispute to an actual DMCA counternotice. After this, your video gets restored and the copyright strike gets taken off your channel.

I think the reason why the person in the article didn't do this is that the DMCA counternotice process requires the person filing the counternotice to provide their full name and address so they can be served if the rightsholder decides to sue them. With problems like swatting going around, I think many people would be reluctant to provide that information to someone who they already know is trying to mess with them.

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Yet YouTube's system takes a lot of time from the time the content is claimed to the time you can escalate to an actual DMCA. In this time your video is down or has its revenue redirected. And if your content gets too many frivolous claims your account is taken down by YouTube's three strike policy before you have finished the dispute process for the first video.

A single button to immediately and without human review or notice period restore the video and monetization, remove the strike, and declare you are willing to solve it in court would solve a lot of the issues with ContentID abuse on YouTube.

Such a system would likely have to sit behind strict identity verification to prevent abuse, and some people wouldn't like that. But that's the price for sharing a platform with some very blatant infringers

Your idea for a "single button to immediately restore the video" system would violate the takedown process outlined in the DMCA. The way it works is that after someone sends a takedown request, the content can't be restored until 10 business days after the person who uploaded it sends a counter-notice. This gives whoever sent the takedown request enough time to decide whether they want to file a lawsuit and keep the content down.

Agreed that Youtube's system has problems with how long it gives claimants to respond to the initial content ID dispute and with people spamming false claims. It's definitely not a perfect system.

The DMCA does not obligate Youtube to do any of the claiming/strikes parts. They could straightforwardly separate out the two processes - a voluntary expedient web process with the contentid fingerprint arbitration, one-click immediate counterclaim, no need to dox yourself, etc. And then a heavyweight strict DMCA process that fulfills DMCA obligations to the letter of the [unjust] law, requiring the waiting period for restoration after the counterclaimant doxes themselves, but doesn't drag in all the extrajudicial "strikes" and whatnot. The filing of a heavyweight DMCA would forgo the option for the voluntary nimble process.

Of course there are plenty of corporate authoritarian imperatives for why they don't. This comment is a thought experiment to demonstrate their complicity in how their system is routinely abused.

It would not. As youtube's "dmca" isn't an actual one. If they did actual dmca's it would in fact go against the dmca. And on a side note, there does not have to be a 10 day window for the reciver of the DMCA to file suit. Once someone files a DMCA against you you can file an instant action as they made a legal claim against you.

> Your idea for a "single button to immediately restore the video" system would violate the takedown process outlined in the DMCA.

IIUC, YouTube's copyright system is not a digital implementation of the DMCA. It's an additional system that occurs before the DMCA notice/counter-notice process so the laws about the DMCA are moot because it's not a DMCA notice (yet).

You're right that it's an additional system prior to the DMCA process. I was interpreting his/her "declare you are willing to solve it in court" as applying to the DMCA takedown process, as that's what filing a counter-notice does.

> The way it works is that after someone sends a takedown request, the content can't be restored until 10 business days after the person who uploaded it sends a counter-notice.

I'd be curious to know if this has ever been challenged in court as an unconstitutional prior restraint. Pretty obvious problems if you get people e.g. issuing fraudulent takedowns 10 days before an election.

YouTube is a private entity; as long as they comply with the DMCA, they're under no obligation to take content down or even make content available (outside of contracts they enter into voluntarily). The DMCA doesn't provide strict timelines (just that the initial takedown requires the provider to "act expeditiously", and nothing for restoration).

The bigger issue is that Content ID has always been a way for YouTube to side-step the DMCA in a way that's beneficial to big copyright holders -- channel operators assume risk fighting a takedown in a way that was never a part of the DMCA.

> YouTube is a private entity; as long as they comply with the DMCA, they're under no obligation to take content down or even make content available (outside of contracts they enter into voluntarily).

"Comply with the DMCA" is the issue. If the law requires user-generated content hosts to take down content and leave it down for 10 days or they lose a legal protection that keeps them from being incinerated by lawyers, that's effectively a legal requirement that they take it down for 10 days, i.e. a prior restraint, which is typically not allowed.

> The DMCA doesn't provide strict timelines (just that the initial takedown requires the provider to "act expeditiously", and nothing for restoration).

What's this about the 10 days in 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(2) then?

I went through a situation similar to yours, and encountered an additional discouraging factor: YouTube seemed to threaten to take down my channel entirely if my appeal was to be rejected. There was also no real option for "the person making the Content ID claim obviously doesn't own the copyright to the work in question" (in this case, the famous "yeah! woo!" a.k.a. "think break" sample; the Content ID match was from what seemed to be a remix of "It Takes Two"), so I was at the mercy of whatever opaque process YouTube deemed fit to review my case - and was a bit spooked when it came to potentially losing my whole channel (and who knows what impact that'd have on my broader Google account).

Thankfully, I was able to find the contact info for the Content ID provider in question - and within a day of emailing them they pulled the Content ID claim, noting that the customer of theirs who uploaded that think-break-containing song did so in violation of the company's ToS (which specifically forbids uploading music containing common samples like that for this exact reason). It ended up being a happy ending, but it still left a sour taste in my mouth w.r.t. YouTube's policies and practices when it comes to Content ID and copyright claims in general.

I play classical piano and sometimes upload to YouTube. You're right that there's no easy way to say "the person making the Content ID claim obviously doesn't own the copyright to the work in question". This happens almost every time I put a recording of myself playing Chopin, Bach, Mozart, etc and I get a notice from BMI or DG, etc.

You'd think that YouTube could at least categorize those who perform and record unambigiously public domain works and advise people using automatic match software to be _very_ sure there's an infringement.

Someday if I have time and patience, I may try to see what legal options I have against one of these deep-pocket companies who are making false (and libelous) claims about the recordings I have made. They're accusing me of theft, and it's provably false.

What's annoying is sometimes I'm on the road and don't get to responding to the request for several weeks.

Well, keep in mind Content ID [1] is in response to Viacom v YouTube [2] despite Viacom not winning (largely on the grounds that Viacom itself didn't know which works were copyright infringement so how could YouTube).

So, the system exists to placate large rightsholders. It's not going to be modified to cause them problems.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_ID#History

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y...

> the DMCA counternotice process requires the person filing the counternotice to provide their full name and address so they can be served if the rightsholder decides to sue them.

It's even worse than that: the DMCA counternotice also requires the person filing the counternotice to agree to the jurisdiction of the USA courts, even if they live somewhere else. I think many people would be reluctant to take that additional legal risk.

And for many other people isn't this actually less of a legal risk than if their own courts were involved ?

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