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Comment by citricsquid | Hacker News Reader

    filed a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown of the video

An attempt to pre-empt some comments: this seems to be a misunderstanding. The DMCA is not involved at all with these private agreements between Youtube and record labels, Youtube is a private company and can remove any content they want for any reason. They have given these companies permission to remove content they believe breaches their copyright. Anyone can file a DMCA notice with Youtube, what Universal etc. do bypasses it entirely.

If Universal etc. were doing this using a DMCA notice they would be breaching the terms of the DMCA.

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Exactly. As annoying as it is, this isn't a breach of DMCA in any way, shape or form - it's YouTube saying "it's more important for us to make the record labels happier than it is you". And, for better or worse, that's their perfect right.

* cue someone arguing that YouTube can't do that, because it's a violation of the First Amendment

It's not. The First Amendment guarantees you a voice, but not an audience. Youtube has every right to tell you to sod off if they don't like your content for any reason.

Of course it isn't. YouTube isn't the government, so it doesn't even apply. My comment was poking fun at people who forget about that.

FWIW, I upvoted you back into the black, since I thought your intention was clear. Lots of people seem to make this mistake, that somehow the first amendment means that private companies aren't allowed to censor you.

Technically, they are not censoring you, they just aren't providing you a free podium.

Just because they can legally, doesn't mean their not douchebags for doing it.

If yours is the only press, it makes your level of shenanigans worse.

Because YouTube is the only video sharing site on the internet?

Because you are not permitted to run your own web site / server to share your videos?

Do YouTube have a legal, moral or ethical obligation to you to allow you access to their ecosystems for your benefit?

It would be disingenuous to suggest YouTube is not the de facto video sharing site. If they censor something, it's a big deal.

It's the same thing with Amazon, Google, Twitter, or iOS. There are ethical implications if you are one of the major conduits by which people communicate and disseminate information, regardless of your status as a private or public utility.

Legal? Who cares. Ethical? Maybe. A good idea? No.

You think Twitter doesn't feel responsibility if they close out an entire country from their service?

You are pretending there are lines dividing sides that are black and white.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white

"And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are [corporations]. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

Is that Thatcher?

No, it isn't. Thatcher spoke about individuals and families, not corporations. And the sentence is of course a hyperbole which should be seen in the context of a longer speech.

Yes, she was a divisive figure, but has nothing to do with this Youtube thing, really.

I knew it was out-of context hyperbole, and the word [corporations] was added to the quote. Anyway, thanks.

Unless the time that sentence is referring to happened prior to any agreements between YouTube and Universal (the article states 2011).

Your explanation is still valuable, however. Thanks.

So if it's the case that the user did not infringe on Universal's copyrights, merely the agreement Universal has with Youtube does that still count towards their two strikes?

Oh, many people don't understand DMCA at all. They think it's a shortcut to take down content they don't like. It's not only the big companies that are doing it.

The DMCA is way too easy to misuse

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