Video About Fair Use, Remix and Culture Taken Down Over Copyright Claim | Hacker News Reader

Video About Fair Use, Remix and Culture Taken Down Over Copyright Claim

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58 pointsmtgx19 comments

I don't understand how there can be no appeal process.

My understanding (see http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi for instance) of the DMCA is pretty straightforward. If you wish to have safe harbor, you must respond to notices and counter-notices. So if you send a counter-notice and are not sued in 2 weeks, the material has to be put back up. If Youtube fails to do so, they lose their safe harbor and have an insane amount of potential liability.

What am I missing?

I think the reason is that their system is not DMCA. They respect the DMCA but also provide a stronger (for the rightsholders) service that was triggered here. ContentID makes them judge, jury and executioner.

That would be a good reason.

If so then I am sure that they thought through the liability issues (if any). I'm curious if there are any interesting ones.

The only thing that comes to mind would be a case where the ownership of a piece of IP is disputed. ContentID lead to Youtube recognizing that it was copyrighted, and paying money to the person that they thought was the copyright holder. The copyright holder now sues Youtube for infringing on copyright, and Youtube has deep pockets and no safe harbor.

I am not sure how realistic this case would be.

This happens all the time. They go through the proper DMCA process (which google obeys) and then correctly register with ContentID (theory).

In reality, the big publishers stomp all over little guys and they have no standing to do anything.

Shouldn't such an extralegal system make them into a publisher exercising editorial control over the content?

Wouldn't this then disqualify them for safe harbor?

I think the usual analogy is one of a private space. Youtube is Google's private pool that is nominally open to the public. If you break their rules, you get thrown out.

DMCA Safe Harbor protections apply to copyrighted material stored "at the direction of a user".

YouTube is not making judgements about the content - if they did, it would no longer be "at the direction of a user." Instead they've set up a system that lets other users (copyright holders) control content on the site. YouTube does not try to figure out whether those users' actions are valid - if they did, /then/ they could lose safe harbor.

DMCA does not explicitly require ContentID type systems, but it's becoming recognized as best practice as it makes it easier to show a court "hey, we're trying to be good corporate citizens here." It also pacifies the content companies which helps prevent lawsuits in the first place.

Source: currently doing research on the topic for our own service.

The video is not blocked anymore.

See: http://youtu.be/4BZ06Kwbi5s

I wonder why do people making these kinds of videos keep uploading them to Youtube. Are they trying to get blocked to make a point? Because otherwise, it seems just stupid.

EDIT: 001sky is right, I didn't realize this was an old video.

> I wonder why do people making these kinds of videos keep uploading them to Youtube. Are they trying to get blocked to make a point? Because otherwise, it seems just stupid.

Wow, you have been on HN for over 500 days and have over 6k karma and can make a comment like that. Since they don't usually hand out karma in lucky packets I can only assume you are having a bad day.

Karma is currency to those wanting to write a controversial comment.

Controversial statement usually get voted up if they're good reasoning.

This commenter appears not to have read the article, which is about an old video, up for a while and the taken down only recently, by a presumably automated action.

What's a "lucky packet"? I've never heard that term before.

It has several names, including hong bao or red envelope. More often associated with Chinese/Lunar New Year celebrations.

https://www.google.com/search?q=hong+bao&hl=en&tbo=u...

Let's not turn this into reddit, please.

Mashup videos (and especially videos documenting them) are a form of art and commentary that is worthy of protection.

I agree completely, and I completely disagree with Youtube's policy, but that's just one more reason not to promote the site by uploading videos to it. Boycott them!

(Of course, as I wrote later, I hadn't realized the video was old, which makes my comment rather idiotic)

Ah, I see. I got the impression from your comment and edit that you were taking a hard-line copyright maximalism stance.

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