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Comment by ndiddy | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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?

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.

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.

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