How YouTube lets content companies "claim" NASA Mars videos
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Google just doesn't care at this point, because trying to fix the remaining 10% apparently costs more than the resulting good user experience / satisfaction would generate. This is also very visible in AdSense and Gmail. I think Google just doesn't like edge-cases.
Highly relevant Dilbert comic: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-02-25/
Actually humans can't process all the video uploaded to Youtube, and never did. Viacom sued them for $1,000,000,000 (billion) and more rights-holders were lining up behind them to do the same. Not just for money - a lot of very powerful companies wanted Youtube shut down for good, and were willing to throw real resources at making that happen. Google put ContentID in place to placate the rights-holders in order to save Youtube's existence. It would literally be sued into oblivion and no longer exist if it weren't for ContentID. So there are issues, but don't think Google just did this on a whim.
YouTube the site is clearly and plainly within DMCA safe harbor and has absolutely no need for ContentID to continue operating. It is the other things Google wanted to do with big Content that required this asinine system.
With videos of Curiosity being taken down for copyright infringement? With "the little guy" having to wait up to a month for anyone to prove wrongdoing, and in the meantime their video goes offline? I'd say that's pretty bad, yeah.
So in an ideal world, every piece of content from a Partner would be unique and original, and Content ID would work as intended.
The key is - 100% unique and original - it's not original if it's 2 anchors introducing a clip of the Mars landing.
The problem here isn't just YouTube - it's partners that are uploading content that they did not entirely create.
The system only works if people cooperate; if news orgs contribute original content and claim it (and other uploads) everything is ok - the problem is that news orgs are just dumping content on to YouTube without thinking about that.
We accidentally published a movie review to YouTube and CID claimed it, and for the next 3 months I was constantly releasing claims, until I finally unclaimed our own movie review completely to stop the matching.
TL;DR - publishers are very much at fault, as much or more as YouTube is.
I don't see how. From the publisher's point of view, it's completely legit: A video that mixes public domain imagery with original additions. Any news org that covered the landing without including some of NASA's public domain images or video would have everyone (rightly!) saying "Their Mars coverage sucks!"
Even if they don't have original additions, it's in the public domain; publishers can do what they want with it, including merely slapping their watermark in the corner and uploading as-is.
I'd say that nobody's really "at fault;" rather, the widespread availability of technology to easily and cheaply download, remix, upload, and stream video is presenting new use cases which our existing notions of content ownership simply haven't had to deal with before.
The solution will be through some mix of better technology (i.e. smarter scanning algorithms), better modeling of the problem domain (maybe the next version of YouTube's Content ID program will address the issue of situations like this), and changing social and legal norms.
In the long term, I believe that one day, people, businesses, laws, and private agreements like ToS will work out an equilibrium where expectations of ownership and use are clear to everyone, penalties are considered reasonable and proportionate to offenses, are enforced consistently with few false positives or negatives, and people mostly manage to get along -- in contrast to the current free-for-all environment where none of these things are true.
Unfortunately, "the long term" may be very long -- I'd say 30-60 years. Also, while my assessment may sound positive on first reading, the previous paragraph actually leaves substantial space for very distopian scenarios -- where (for example) permanent ownership is considered reasonable, fair use no longer exists, the expectation is that copyright violators will be jailed, financially ruined, and/or permabanned from the Internet, those penalties are swiftly and surely enforced by extremely invasive monitoring of all computer activity, and anyone who tries to make waves about the situation is dismissed by the media establishment as a fringe lunatic, and can't effectively organize due to the intense restrictions on the Internet.
Why does the stuff they upload to YouTube's content violation detector include public domain content? It doesn't have to be, and shouldn't be, exactly the same as what they broadcast.
I mean, fines like $5,000 per false claim.
That will stop abuse of it, real fast.
The ideal case would be someone reposting a trailer or a music video to Youtube. The content is identified as being owned by a partner. Now the partner gets the money and the poster still gets views.
Cases like the OP thus cause a problem: the majority of the content is 3rd party and free.
Note: I'm not defending CID or saying its a good thing. I just think your proposed solution won't fix the issue at hand.
At the moment it's a terribly one-sided process that allows big media companies to profit for absolutely no reason. Fining companies for approving disputed claims in error seems like a pretty good solution.
I just don't think any sort of band-aid (like a fine for example) is the real solution. I think the solution is to redo the law.
The article says that if a TV network's real, legitimately copyrighted feed, that they are correct in telling Youtube is copyrighted uses public domain video in some parts (which doesn't mean their particular feed based on it isn't still copyrighted), then other videos that use the same public domain video (from the original source, not off of the copyrighted feed) are identified as being the copyrighted source.
Apparently, "full partners" can actually get real customer service and avoid these problems, but you need to get on the order of 1000 views/day before they offer you that, which most people never achieve.
I will absolutely never do business with that company.
This change would surely weed out a big chunk of these false claims, and would put a lot of the effort for doing so squarely on the shoulders of the claimants.
What has happened is alot have loaded up alot of common things and sounds and as such any autobot will match them up with pretty much anything you do in some situations.
Can bet if you upload a video of your first born that it will match up with something somewere else. It's like patent trolls, only automated, utter nightmare.
This is also one of those moments were I liek the UK libel laws as deformation of character under the guise of falsly breaking copyright of somebody else's contents is one of those area's were you would have fun in court and fiscaly rewarding.