YouTube Flags Democrats’ Convention Video on Copyright Grounds | Hacker News Reader

YouTube Flags Democrats’ Convention Video on Copyright Grounds

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70 pointsmtgx32 comments

Google's automatic copyright recognition system is absolute crap. I've spent hours upon hours emailing them different documents showing them that we have the licenses (purchased from the exact company that is claiming infringement through the automatic system) and just get automated responses back. Eventually it gets cleared up, and then 3 months later, the same thing happens again.

Now I've started getting infringement claims against classical music that we are using (that we have also licensed) because a different company owns the license to a different performance of that piece. When I stated we had a license to this piece through another company, it was rejected and the video was removed from monetization. The only way to get out of that black hole was to contact the CEO of the company directly and appeal to him to read the license agreement we had.

I don't have the links handy, but when I started researching this problem (automatic copyright detection and fair use or works in the public domain), I found hundreds of people experiencing the same problem. Google is in a really tough place. Wedged between the typical youtube uploader and the recording and movie industries, this system makes sense. The problem is that all of the well intentioned people are getting swept up in the solution, and now high profile people are showing how broken it is. A system that makes your genuine users frustrated and exasperated does not have a bright future.

At the very least it seems like the system would benefit from a graduated-tier of trust. Once you've demonstrated to them that you're very likely to have the licenses for your content, it seems the burden of proof and benefit of the doubt ought to shift in your favor.

Something like that probably wouldn't last very long, since it could be easily gamed.

1. buy a cheap license to something that will get flagged by the auto-detecting algorithms

2. go through the red-tape of proving you have licensed the material, thereby flagging your account into a higher level of trust

3. post mad amounts of commercial content on your account and monetize the pants off of it, making insane amounts of cash before finally getting noticed and shut down

4. set up a new account, rinse and repeat (maybe even with the same licensed material you used the first time)

Currently there is no incentive for claimants not to spray out take-downs like a firehose. They need something to motivate them to take more care.

Google should implement a cost for incorrect claims as an incentive for claimants to get it right the first time. Somethink like, say, a $1000 for each claim that is obviously negligently submitted.

Thanks - this is very useful.

I'm going to be launching a (free) film I've spent years on in the next few months, and I've been debating which video sharing site to use. Obviously, having it go offline whilst popularity is at its peak would be a disaster - so your information here inclines me away from YouTube and toward a smaller provider or self-hosting.

If your video is totally free, you have a much easier time because you can use vimeo or another video hosting site. If your video is commercial, besides hosting it yourself, there aren't really any other monetization rental strategies beside Youtube.

Actually, Vimeo offers a Pro plan, and Wistia's pretty good too from what I hear (although pricier than Vimeo).

I actually know one training provider who hosts his videos with Vimeo. It seems to work pretty darn well.

However, the film I'm referring to is free. If it weren't for the threat of some bogus takedown, YouTube would be the perfect venue for it.

What has me confused is how these automated take downs, without automated appeals, don't constitute fraud. I can't go down to the local county courthouse, spamming it with grossly erroneous and frivolous claims documents, and expect to just walk away. There are laws against that sort of thing.

Why would we tolerate this of digital media?

It is not entirely clear whether this was some internal monitoring, or a DMCA takedown notice.

If it was a DMCA takedown notice, then section g.2.C of http://images.chillingeffects.org/512.html says exactly how Youtube has to act. In particular the 10 day delay before putting content back up is pretty horrible.

If internal monitoring, then the fact that Youtube is aware that the content is copyrighted means that Youtube no longer qualifies for the DMCA safe harbor. (That is my reading of section c.1.A.i of http://images.chillingeffects.org/512.html. I am not a lawyer, but read it for yourself.) This is inevitably going to lead to internal policies that err on the side of caution and not exposing yourself to copyright infringement liability.

Perhaps now that Barack Obama has been on the receiving end of copyright policies that his administration supports, he'll rethink his positions? Not likely. But one can hope.

The Democrats (together with the Republicans) are responsible for 90% of the copyright bullshit in the world, so they deserve to have it rebound on them.

This needs to be said more. As much as I like Obama, his administration's position on digital copyrights is truly shameful.

During the 2008 election, McCain had problems with incorrect DMCA takedown notices affecting his camapign. (McCain was one of the people resonsible for the DMCA). His response? Not "we goofed, let's make the law better", no it was that politicians should be exempt from the law.

That attitude disgusts me.

Remember when MPAA was telling us that SOPA and PIPA would never be used to censor political speech? Yeah, it seems even DMCA is enough for that, and it's already happening. SOPA would've made it just that much worse.

Of course, Google also takes a huge part of the blame here for their automatic takedown system, which shouldn't even exist in the first place. Maybe they should follow in Usteam's footsteps and permanently suspend their system as well.

Is there any evidence that this takedown was in any way incorrect? I'm sure NBC news has perfectly valid copyright on Brian Williams' banter during the DNC, and also so does MSNBC of Rachael Maddow.

Just because this is another claim (which possibly is a perfectly valid one) doesn't mean automatic (or not) copyright claims are destroying the free world. Youtube scans 100 years of video every day with ContentID. It works.

No, it doesn't work.

The problem is not the fact that they scan and (correctly) ignore a vast bulk of material. It's a question of what false positives it hits, and how important those false positives are.

So far we've had two high profile false positives one of which is directly relevant to American civic life.

At some point if your errors are high profile enough, or damaging enough, it's irrelevant how few errors you're making, damage is being done.

This is a problem, and it needs to be dealt with.

I'd love to know the percentage of false positives out of their overall scan dataset. I'm sure it is extremely small.

Note I haven't seen anywhere yet that the claim related to this story is actually incorrect? DNC cable coverage is perfectly copyrightable and you don't have an inherit right to watch NBC's coverage on YouTube of a political convention.

The flagged video is on the official barakobama.com account. It is only Michelle Obama's speech and includes no commentary by any network personalities. I would be utterly shocked if the campaign did not hold full and arbitrary rights to the video of the speech. There is no way the campaign and party would not make that part of the contracts with the networks.

They should tweak it so there are NO false positives. Maybe they miss a bunch of videos that have to be brought manually to their attention, but then at least the people playing by the rules are not punished.

The majority of copyright usage on Youtube is probably illegal or unsanctioned. Most of the time Youtube is doing the right thing and taking down bad videos.

But for the small number of people who are playing by the rules, and trying to do the thing they have asked us to do, you can't keep making them jump through hoops. They are punishing the good guys!

I'm sure that they would love to see that in action, but I'm pretty sure efficiently scanning the 100 years of video that is uploaded every single day isn't quite as easy as you think. Also if the group of engineers at YouTube are having a hard time getting it 100% correct you can believe it is a hard problem to solve.

I'm sure the large majority of people are playing by the rules, just these small exceptions always keep getting posted to HN like they are the end of the world, but in reality they are the extremely small exception.

I don't think it's an extremely small exception. If you have content that could be copyrightable (i.e. classical music, or anything that you've licensed yourself) it will definitely get caught by the automatic filters. Here's dozens of videos in response to a company using the filters fraudulantly http://goo.gl/eI8kj I've done the research and this affects a large percentage of legitimate users (yes, overall its a small percentage of the TOTAL users, but a large percentage of legitimate users who have copyrighted material in their videos).

Noticed that I didn't hear about this happening to the RNC. Funny thing is, they were using a live cover band featuring GE Smith for the event where the DNC seems to be using snippets of the actual songs.

So I wonder if that's what's getting them. With all the fun with SOPA/PIPA/ACTA and domain takedowns there's a smidge of poetic justice to it. Hopefully they get to enjoy the same response and support for resolving the problem as is offered to the average person.

The worst part of this and the Ustream debacle (http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4471213) is that many of the takedowns on major video-streaming services to date have been entirely voluntary. You can only imagine what would happen if the government gave the MPAA/RIAA a bigger stick (i.e. SOPA and/or PIPA) than the business deals that they're currently leveraging for this sort of thing.