YouTube Defending Select Videos Against DMCA Abuse 56
Galaga88 writes: It's not a complete solution, but YouTube is going to begin stepping up to defend select videos in court on fair use terms, including covering court costs. Will this help stem the tide of bad DMCA takedown requests, or just help the select few YouTube doesn't want to lose? From the blog post linked: We are offering legal support to a handful of videos that we believe represent clear fair uses which have been subject to DMCA takedowns. With approval of the video creators, we’ll keep the videos live on YouTube in the U.S., feature them in the YouTube Copyright Center as strong examples of fair use, and cover the cost of any copyright lawsuits brought against them. ... In addition to protecting the individual creator, this program could, over time, create a “demo reel” that will help the YouTube community and copyright owners alike better understand what fair use looks like online and develop best practices as a community.
Defense will be based on advertising dollars (Score:5, Insightful)
Google and Youtube really does not care about fair use or the legal rights of their users. All they care about is advertising money. Now that there are some alternatives to Youtube, big channels are threatening to leave if the flood of false DCMA notifications does not stop.
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nitehawk214 does not care if you know if that is true, as he has no idea if it is or if it isn't, but he does hate Google, and will write whatever he can against them in hopes that he can sway your opinion of them.
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He doesn't have to sway people's opinions as it pretty much matches the situation. There are more and more alternatives to youtube popping up that don't let people rip off content creators by sending false DMCAs or false claims against videos to block advertising revenue the content creator should have received (Due to the whole fair use issue - so many instances of people getting claims on their videos because they even -mention- a game.)
If Google cared about fair use, they wouldn't have the system they h
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I wasn't really thinking this, but you do have a good point. I was more along the lines of abuse, things that either are fair use or are completely original content getting hit by the DCMA. Google/Youtube enables this, by allowing channels to be auto-banned with no human intervention. I have never heard of anyone getting punished for abusing this.
It isn't just corporations too. Some Youtube users will DCMA anyone that makes a reply video to them if they don't like it. (read: the reply makes a valid point an
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nitehawk214 does not care if you know if that is true, as he has no idea if it is or if it isn't, but he does hate Google, and will write whatever he can against them in hopes that he can sway your opinion of them.
strawman much?
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Nope, that's an ad hominem.
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Google and Youtube really does not care about fair use or the legal rights of their users. All they care about is advertising money. Now that there are some alternatives to Youtube, big channels are threatening to leave if the flood of false DCMA notifications does not stop.
Google and Youtube are doing the right thing. Does it matter if they are doing it for the right or wrong reason?
Re:Defense will be based on advertising dollars (Score:4, Insightful)
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In a capitalist world, is there anything wrong about protecting your own interest, especially if it is for the public's benefit too?
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My point is that they will only protect profitable channels, small fries will continue to get abused by the DCMA.
From a corporate profits perspective this is the prudent thing to do, can't waste dollars protecting things that will never make money. Is it the right thing to do? I don't know. Most youtube content is complete crap, why bother protecting it?
How do we decide what is worth protecting? This I really don't know.
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>> Google and Youtube really does not care about fair use or the legal rights of their users. All they care about is advertising money.
Why is this marked "troll"? Google is an advertisement company, and if DCMA complaints drive the top channels away, they will lose money. So they kick their legal team in gear to protect revenue, which is a smart move for your average corporation, but sounds even better because they can talk about "fair use" etc. and get some PR cred out of it too.
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"troll" mod is slashdotese for "i disagree"
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so?
Greed is inevitable, what's wrong with working with it instead of against it?
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So Google does something good for selfish reasons. Let's hope they also stand firm on solid, backdoor-free encryption, if only for similarly selfish reasons.
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rights should not depend on a Corporation charity (Score:5, Insightful)
While I understand their desire to do this, we need a legal system that does it automatically.
Most privacy violations are clear. No one puts someone else's songs up there 'accidentally'.
If all DMCA cases, we should have loser pays rule. Right now, the poster can be required to pay huge damages, so why shouldn't the claimant be required to pay double the court costs.
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While I understand their desire to do this, we need a legal system that does it automatically.
Until people can choose among competing legal systems, for the best value, the monopoly systems will be for sale to the highest bidder (cf. history). Don't waste your time trying to fix the current monopoly system.
The DMCA is the best copyright system Disney could buy (rest in pieces, Fritz Hollings). Maybe Google can buy a little bit back. And yes, this sucks.
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And starting places are starting places.
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Between a rock and a hard place... (Score:5, Interesting)
That is entirely of their own making.
They didn't need to create the ContentID system and allow it work the way it does. But they did.
By law they needed a way to respond to DMCA notices but they didn't need to automate it. And now those chickens have come home to roost.
All in all, Google stepping up to start sorting out this mess they made all by themselves is a good thing. I am hopeful they see it through by changing the way their system works and maybe taking out some of the automation that is one of the biggest problems with it. May they also push some sane legislation that will make it possible to do away with the worst abuses of the Notice system.
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They didn't need to create the ContentID system and allow it work the way it does. But they did.
By law they needed a way to respond to DMCA notices but they didn't need to automate it. And now those chickens have come home to roost.
I thought by law they had to have a way to respond within a certain timeframe, somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 hours? As such, doing so without automating would be so expensive that they would have need of charging every user for viewings or their ads would make the annoying click bait sites look good...
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This does not have anything to do with content ID.
There's a serious problem where scumbags will target small-medium youtubers, steal and repost their videos, then file claims against the original owners. And they do it all in a more or less automated fashion.
This is a tiny bit oversimplified but it's basically this, and a bunch of other related schemes. Point is it works because it's a pretty asymmetric attack. The scumbag has automation and volume and zero chance of being caught.
Worse, all they have to do
Re:Between a rock and a hard place... (Score:5, Insightful)
Google had no choice.
Originally, YouTube was fueled by piracy, but content owners didn't really care : low quality videos and YouTube didn't have enough money to make a lawsuit profitable.
It changed the instant Google bought it. The content owners, now realizing that behind YouTube was sitting billions in cash quickly turned to Google and basically asked for their share. Google had no choice if they wanted to keep the service and not run it at a loss.
Unfortunately... (Score:2)
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proving bad faith (i.e. malice) is difficult, when so much can be explained through stupidity.
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When there is a massive power imbalance, i.e. corporation vs. individual, the standard should really be recklessness or carelessness -- you have 14,000x as many resources as the person you're accusing, you can afford to take a few minutes to make sure the bug you're squashing is actually biting you. When a corporation shotguns takedowns and hits the short movie they licensed to make their big movie, it would be pretty easy to prove carelessness.
Scant chance of that making it into law, of course.
This won't help (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't going to affect anything. DMCA abusers still have financial incentives to continue abusing (by automatically diverting ad money to themselves on claimed videos) and have no financial disincentives to stop doing this. If it gets to the rare point where Google does step in, they can just release the video in question while simultaneously continue abusing a thousand other videos.
Re:Yeah, nice self publicity YouTube (Score:5, Funny)
Call me back when they've made it their policy to protect every video that has a strong fair use defense.
You forgot to list your phone number.
Never mind, we can probably get it from Google.
Dailymotion/Vimeo (Score:4, Interesting)
I've already seen people backing up and dual broadcasting due to DMCA takedowns on youtube. Most are podcasts or game reviewers that are getting DMCA take downs, and after 3 your account is removed. Scary. I have no loyalty to youtube or twitter, or any other service that decides to swing the ban hammer on content producers for political reasons hiding behind a DMCA takedown.
Re:Dailymotion/Vimeo (Score:5, Informative)
What are they suppose to do (Score:2)
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"For google to hang on to it's safe harbor protections they've pretty much got to drop the ban hammer."
Yes, they do. HOWEVER, if the original content creator puts forth a counter-claim to the DMCA takedown notice, then they are free (And are suppose to) put the video back up - because at that point it goes to the courts between the two parties. They don't lose their safe harbour protections in these cases, or aren't suppose to. They aren't suppose to be the judge ruling who's telling the truth.
If google is going to leave the automated take down in place, they need to make it easy for the uploader to say "no, it's my stuff". Take downs are basically anonymous, that needs to stop. If you issue one, you should be serious about it. Google could say "ok, let's get your name, address, room in the basement, and lawyer on file, then you can issue a take down." I'd be willing to bet there won't be any lawyer information available, and that most of these take downs originate out side of the US where th
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Defend this! (Score:2)
You know the rules and so do I
A full commitment's what I'm thinking of
You wouldn't get this from any other guy
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Fair use? Best practice? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the heck do you think we bought that law? That's about us being able to dictate what can and cannot be shown and at what terms, get lost with your "fair use" bull! The DMCA was helluva expensive, you can't take that away like that, who do you think you are?
LOL! The answer is "no" (Score:2)
"Will this help stem the tide of bad DMCA takedown requests"
No.
Uh oh (Score:1)