Lon Seidman gets YouTube takedown notice for public domain video from NASA
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It's costing them a lot of face, I know people who perform who've had YouTube videos disabled due to background music being licensed off by one of the big studios and now refuse to use. It just isn't working. There's no understanding of context, no ability to detect what the usage is or whether the rights holder is the rights holder aside from 'they uploaded it as well'.
I won't argue that the existing system isn't both impressive in terms of scale and complexity, just that it's not working as well as it should over something like blocking ma & pa's home video for the Britney Spears track you can hear in the background.
They haven't yet. And what rival content host has a better system?
I'd like to think people would demand better. But when it comes to free services, they generally don't.
Take a wild stab at where they've gone. And it doesn't have a better system in many regards, but they already put all their other digital ephemera on it.
These damned "strikes"... provisions are exactly what the "big media" providers have been asking for. Well, make them live by it, for a change.
Spend some hours and money sending that message.
Just an idea, from yet another pissed off Google customer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H product point.
The problem is that such a strategy won't hold up in court. If I'm a content producer, and I file a thousand invalid DMCA takedown requests, YouTube still has to treat request #1001 as a valid request. If they don't, they're liable for contributory infringement, and on a site of the scale of YouTube, that can be a billion dollar liability.
Or at least then make them go through formal channels consuming the maximum amount of time before response and doing the most to coerce them to prove the validity of the request.
A DMCA takedown request is the formal channel. The only more formal channel than that is a lawsuit.
If someone had to fill in a DMCA takedown notice, print it out, stuff an envelope, put a stamp on it and then drop it in the mail I imagine there would be a few less "Oops, we didn't own the copyright on that." incidents versus clicking a button, ignoring the entire "penalty of perjury" agreement and just hitting "agree" and having their video taken offline.
You're still following the law, you're just not providing tools to make it easier for scumbags and idiots to wreak havoc.
Make smart things easier, make stupid things harder.
According to the stats on Youtube ContentID is processing over 100 years of video every day.
I'd hold off on calling the system a disaster just yet.
Essentially, once something was published, it was pretty near free game. 103(4) grants:
> The permission to use scientific, artistic, literary, or oral works (speeches) in film, radio, and on television, provided the original work existed already in a form amenable to such use.
Bingo. If you ever wondered "What are these people trying to achieve?" this is it. By abusing the YouTube infrastructure and content systems they can get Google to collect money from other peoples content and give it to them. Unless Google can get out ahead of this problem they may find themselves fighting yet another class action Youtube lawsuit. I am sure they would rather spend that money on improving the YouTube experience than on lining lawyers pockets.
So I disagree with your assessment that 'they' (various news agencies) are 'allowed' to demand advertising revenue from another user's YouTube video when that video contains no video to which they have any claim. But I may be mis-construing your comment.
This is the way. Just let the system run amok and get everyone talking about how they just ban everything at the drop of a hat. No one can argue that they're "not doing enough" when the idea is always percolating in the public conscious that videos get banned all the time, even when they shouldn't be.
(1) And there really should be a small one, paid by the "owner" of the material. You should have to think carefully about how much it might cost you to turn on content protection for your material.
You are correct though, this is not the first time this has happened. This is fairly common (or at least I hear about it often enough), and I assume that anyone who uploads a fair number of videos will eventually be hit with some Content ID complaint regardless of whether they infringed.
I think Google should explain itself, and introduce some measure of protection and repercussions against over-zealous media providers that provide Content ID with samples of media that they do not own. After all, if Google can be asked to moderate it's own site, I think it's fair that a media company can accurately mark the content that it does own.
If this were a DMCA order, why would Google ever be willing to take that risk?
Google doesn't seem to be using it. If this keeps up, we'll all gravitate away from Youtube and over to Vimeo and other competitors.
But this isn't an official DMCA notice, apparently.
Wow now I'm really getting angry over this Content ID disaster from +YouTube regarding the Mars landing. On Sunday night I hosted a live broadcast with contributors from CTTechJunkie.com and NASASpaceflight.com to watch the landing live. We brought in footage provided by NASA, including their live feed of the landing. NASA footage is released into the public domain and can be freely used by anyone.
I just came home to my inbox filled with dispute claims from no less than FIVE news organizations claiming this footage as their own. BS. It's mine. And now Youtube says it might start running ads against content I created and handing that money over to these crooks who are essentially bigger players with the ability to claim rights to content they do not own.
The worst part is that Google clearly is not requiring these "rightsholders" prove they actually own the content. But it's somehow incumbent upon me to prove my innocence. This is outright theft of my content - plain and simple.
If anyone from YouTube is listening, this needs to stop. It's completely unfair that me as a small content producer gets screwed out of revenue like this.
You can watch the broadcast here: CTTechJunkie Mars Coverage - Live!
You do NOT have to login into Google+ to read the post.
To circumvent, you can put your browser into Private or Incognito browsing, and you can then read the post w/o logging in. (Which also logs you out of HN, so you can't comment or vote.)
So, for any of the HN audience with G+ accounts but who don't surf "logged in", a login is required unless the user takes extra steps (EDIT: such as incognito or child comment's noscript approach).
I did try the link, it did demand that I login. I did not login, and it did not show me the content.
I resent such accusations, and suggest you make sure you are in full possession of facts before you do so.
Then again, I only access my gmail from it's own dedicated VM and noscript prevents GoogleApis and Analytics by default.
Do you think it possible that Google is requiring you to log in because it can identify you via typical tracking mechanisms?
I have better things to do than play "hunt the foible" on Google.
If Google knows you have an account because of tracking devices, they require you to log in because you are more salable.
If you're anonymous, you're more salable if they just show you the content.
In so far as I recall, originally G+ wouldn't show content without javascript turned on - i.e. the price of content was to allow Google to track you more closely.
Here is what happened to me to prove my point. On the http://www.taodyne.com web site, there's a small video. If you switch the sound on, you'll hear a music I quickly put together in a few minutes using GarageBand. Despite this being my own (not very good) creation, the YouTube system kicked in and told me I was infringing on some other guy's rights. Why? Because that other guy happens to have used the same loops I used for his own commercial music.
So there's no evil intent here, but a nasty side effects of YouTube's automated content detection system. In my opinion, it is nobody's fault but Google's: the corporations don't really have lawyers bent on claiming your stuff, they just happen to take advantage of Google's offer to monetize on what they do, and then they happen to have entered something in YouTube that YouTube identified as similar to yours.
It's important to point out that there's no evil intent on Google's part either. What they did is a great way to grant us the ability to use musics in videos we post, compensating the artists with ad revenues. But given the volume of data that enters YouTube every day, it has to be automated. And right now, the automat is good at picking similarities, bad at analyzing whether it's infringing or not.
Excuses like "oops sorry that takedown notice was a mistake" just won't cut it. Every mistake should cost them dearly. That's the only way they'd ever try to fix their system.
If you can show potential losses of over $5000 in a year, then you might even be able to leverage the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act
... Knowingly causing the transmission of a program, information, code, or command that causes damage or intentionally accessing a computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage that results in:
Loss to one or more persons during any one-year period aggregating at least $5,000 in value. ...
Otherwise, it is still an attempt to misappropriate money by deception, and is plainly both unlawful and illegal.