YouTube Promises Changes To Copyright Claim Policy (thestack.com) 95
An anonymous reader writes: YouTube has set up a new team dedicated to weeding out false copyright claims and subsequent erroneous takedowns, responding to community criticism. Complaints have accused the video streaming site of a lazy approach to monitoring content, and using an unreliable automated system, Content ID, to enforce copyright policy. In response to these allegations, YouTube has announced that it will be introducing a workforce focused entirely on minimizing mistakes that delete legitimate videos. The tech giant has also promised to improve transparency into the status of monetization claims, and help strengthen communications between video creators and its support teams.
"Minimizing mistakes" (Score:2, Funny)
They won't do jack shit because any movement in the other direction has the MPAA/RIAA sneaking on to Google's campus in the middle of night, writing LIABILITY on the lawn with gasoline, and setting it on fire.
promises, promises (Score:1)
Re: Any bets that... (Score:1)
I think that is part of their business model to increase the fake number of video uploads. I've uploaded several of my videos more than half a dozen times.
Re: (Score:2)
Well being that YouTube is the big powerhouse. I don't see them as the dying brand any time soon. But what they are doing is tilted a bit too much towards the side of the accuser. The real question is where is the balance. If they can move it even just a little towards the side of people who are using it for fair use. It may mean that it would be too expensive for the copyright holders to continue on a mass takedown thread.
If YouTube went all out and just made a huge shift. Then they will probably get
Re: (Score:2)
How would being more resistant to bogus copyright infringment claims drive away legit users? The legitimate copyright holder is unlikely to send a takedown notice about themselves, and infringers are unlikely to care if there's legitimate content available (well, okay, that's not true - if legitimate copies of the content are available it's probably not worth the infringers time to post an infringing duplicate.) It's not like having a video posted on youtube makes it easier to copy than any other public r
The first false claim (Score:5, Insightful)
need new law. Comcast tried after 10,000 false (Score:5, Insightful)
After receiving thousands of false, incomplete, and otherwise invalid claims from one company, Comcast starting ignoring them. The court ruled Comcast was therefore liable for the claims they ignored. Under current law, the ruling against Comcast was more or less correct (it was borderline, arguable, under current law).
So while "three strikes and you're out " may be a sensible policy, YouTube can't really do that under current law. The DMCA REALLY needs an amendment that strongly discourages improper notices. Something along the lines of "three strikes and you're out" would greatly reduce the number of wrongful claims, which is actually the one big problem with the DMCA. Congress has to do that, though, not Youtube.
If that were fixed, and people were educated about counter-claims under DMCA, it would actually be a pretty good law. The DMCA system works pretty well in cases where the complainant isn't being reckless about filing improper claims.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: need new law. Comcast tried after 10,000 false (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't simply stop replying to copyright notices. That was comcast's mistake.
You could, however, route all 10,000 claims to a single queue, where the intern while initiate a thorough investigation to determine the validity of each claim. Individually. Your claims aren't being ignored. They're simple being handled in the order in which they were received.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Meanwhile, said intern, being a priot future alphabet employee prospect, will develop a method of analyzing music to compare against a database to help automate the boring task of analyzing thousands of take down requests by hand.
Re: (Score:2)
The DMCA says that you must move quickly to remove infringing material, so deliberately rate limiting them won't stand up in court.
The best option would be for YouTube and every other company that gets spammed with DMCA notices to leave US jurisdiction. I get DMCA notices now and then and I can just delete them, because US law does not apply here. I used to email back at first, pointing out how stupid the author was for not bothering to figure out what legal jurisdiction applied, but most of the notices are
Re: (Score:2)
Or better yet they could just reject the claims without checking. Then we would have the first all out autonomous bot war from major players; one sending in claims, the other
Rejecting isn't an option under DMCA, if URL provi (Score:2)
"Rejecting" a notice isn't an option under DMCA. The company hosting the content doesn't isn't the judge, and exercises no discretion. If they get a notice for a particular URL, and don't receive a counter-notice from the other side, they must take it down in a timely fashion.
They can only "reject" it if it's notice a DMCA notice, because it doesn't contain the information required by DMCA, such as the URL and the statement of agency.
horrible typing. "if it's not a DMCA notice" (Score:2)
That should read:
They can only "reject" it if it is not an actual DMCA notice, because it doesn't contain the information required by DMCA.
Re: (Score:2)
What do you mean valid? If properly formatted, req (Score:2)
> I'm 99% sure that a notice generated by a bot is not a valid DMCA notice.
What do you mean by "valid"? Do you mean 1) "correctly identifies an actual infringement which is not fair use or any other defense", or do you mean 2) "is a notice, as defined by DMCA"? Or do you mean 3) "I think that somewhere in the DMCA it says that you're not allowed to use any computer programs to assist in generating notices"?
As to 3), here's the text of the law.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us... [cornell.edu]
You'l notice it does not ban
Re: (Score:2)
However,
>(v) A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
Should open the door to perjury charges, since there's no way "good faith" is satisfied by a video being flagged by a system known to have an atrocious false-positive rate. Hence any claim based entirely on such a system is inherently fraudulent, regardless of whether or not any infringement is actually occurring.
Civil negligence. That's why the "note in (vi)" (Score:2)
It may well be negligence, which opens the door to a civil suit.
> Should open the door to perjury charges
That's a common misconception, and the reason I specifically ended the post by highlighting which clause that applies to:
> > Note that in (vi), the "under penalty of perjury" comes AFTER the word "and", not before. it applies only to the statement of agency.
The clause is:
âoeunder penalty of perjury, that the complaining party
PS here's why not perjury on infringement (Score:2)
PS, here's why the perjury clause is limited only to agency. Suppose I say that I'm a lawyer representing LucasFilm. That's either true or false. If I say I am, but my claim is false, that can be perjury.
On the other hand, suppose I publish a song that sounds a lot like "Stairway to Heaven". Is that infringement? It depends. It depends on how close my song is to Stairway, it depends on how much of my song sounds like Stairway, it depends on if my song is a parody of Stairway. Ultimately, it's a matter o
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm, maybe nort quite as simple.
As far as good faith is concerned though, I should think that continuing an action *after* you have been informed of ongoing harm it is doing would constitute bad faith.
Re: (Score:2)
I see your point. However, it would seem to me that making a habit of claiming infringement on things that are clearly noninfringing (say, the only similarities are that it includes "Heaven" and "Stairway" in the title) would open you to charges of something akin to vexatious litigation.
Content ID is just DMCA using YouTube's CPU (Score:4, Interesting)
Prior to Content Id, representatives of rightsholders would run automated software to scan new videos on YouTube, identify likely infringement, and automatically send a notice. Whoever uploaded the video could then file a counter-notice. This is the DMCA process.
With Content Id, automated software to scan new videos on YouTube, identify likely infringement, and automatically send a notice. Whoever uploaded the video can file a counter-notice. It's exactly the same as the DMCA process (as actually implemented*) , except that all of the notices are in the exact same format since YouTube generates them, and Youtube can ensure that the software which does the matching does a reasonably good job of matching videos to copyright protected samples. It's the same process, just implemented in such a way that it's more efficient for YouTube.
If DMCA were amended to penalize improper notices, Content Id could (and almost certainly would) be updated to match.
* When DMCA was being debated and public comment was being accepted, approximately nobody predicted that a huge mass of claims would be filed by automated software, so that's not what DMCA was intended to be. That is in fact what happened under DMCA though, and Content Id simply standardised the matching algorithm and the formatting of complaints to be used for content on YouTube.
** I know some of the first people who were involved with trying to create and use software to handle the thousands of infringements of their unique content. They did so with the best of intentions, and it made sense at the time. Then it got out of hand when large media companies send hundreds of thousands of notices without making sure that their systems for doing so worked extremely well first. Not all programmers are great, and some not-great programmers authored some not-great DMCA systems, for customers who found out that there's no real penalty for sending a bad DMCA notice.
DMCA requires email and postal mail acceptance (Score:2)
The DMCA requires that the site list the contact information for the designated agent as follows:
(A) the name, address, phone number, and electronic mail address of the agent.
That's in  512. So requiring a web form of any kind, with or without a captcha, would require a change of law.
Re: (Score:2)
Should lead to automatic denial of the next 2 claims from the same claimant.
I would suggest a 3-strikes policy; a strike should occur upon any claim against a video that turns out to be false or turns out to be fair use. One strike should remove all access to "advanced" tools for a 3-month probation and require a specific form be used for further claims that will require answering CAPTCHAs to prevent automated use.
After 2-strikes, 6 month probation.
After 3 strikes, banned from Youtube; taked
Re: (Score:2)
It really makes much more sense to treat the with total seriousness and legallity. So after having collected a bunch of false takedowns, say 100 Google turns around with those falsely accussed to sue those making the false claims with a class action suit to recover all losses, Googles cost, Googles lost marketing revenue on that content and the content creators and uploaded losses and well as defamation claims. So planning ahead to insure legal defences taken will pay for themselves and repeating the exerc
Or within the current law... (Score:2)
Sadly as others have pointed out such strategies would backfire badly under the current law.
On the other hand there *is* theoretically liability imposed for fraudulent takedown notices within the DMCA text, it's just that Joe Shmoe doesn't have the resources to sue Sony, Disney, etc. over false claims. So, what Google *could* do, is take their giant list of false claims received, and help organize class-action lawsuits against the offenders. It shouldn't be that hard for a good lawyer to argue that the st
Instead of complaining about youtube (Score:1)
Can't we just promote the alternatives?
Re: (Score:2)
Vimeo has plenty I want to watch. Usually more original than the shit you find on YouTube, too.
Re: (Score:3)
Vimeo's play stutters like a bastard on most hardware. Youtube is far less embarrassing to put your content on.
Any Youtube competitors that know how to do buffering competently?
Re: (Score:2)
Upgrade your ancient Netburst P4 and maybe Vimeo will play better. I've never had any issues with it.
Re: (Score:2)
"Vimeo's play stutters like a bastard on most hardware."
Funny, it runs just fine on a 3.2GHz Hyper-threaded P4.
I think you need to retire that Tualatin.
Re: (Score:1)
Oh, I thought this about uploading videos.
Re: (Score:2)
Streaming sites are a dime a dozen.
maybe so but almost all (and yes this includes Vimeo which I have never been able to get any of those to play) don't work most of the time. Or if they do work, there's so many flashing ads on the side or popup crap. Youtube is popular because those videos can be played with many different browsers. OK some of them have an annoying 30 sec ad you have to watch. Yes, there are alternates but it seems to me you have to set up a platform to do various scripting/interchange/whatever and have lots of programming/n
Re: Instead of complaining about youtube (Score:2)
We need the content creators to switch. And for that, we need an alternate site to provide a comparable wage to those who have made a career out of creating content.
As strange as it may seem to some people, there are rank amateurs who make a good living spouting their opinions into a microphone (and no, I'm not just talking about Rush Limbaugh.)
If a true competitor to youtube were to emerge, with the ad revenue and sponsorship deals, we might get somewhere. But for now, cheap dime-a-dozen video hosting sit
Re: (Score:2)
YouTube red just took the creators hostage. I don't know how exclusive the agreement is, but if anyone depended on yt as a medium they got raped. And lots of great people are on YouTube.
You need the kind of generational change that killed MySpace and geocities and dialup. Real big shit, not just a capable adversary.
Re: (Score:2)
Law at fault, not website (Score:2)
Can't we just promote the alternatives?
How will that solve anything though? Once an alternative gets popular enough the same people will come after them with the same frivolous claims. The problem is the US law which lets them do this with impunity, not the particular website which gets targeted by these idiots.
Re: (Score:1)
The problem is the US law which lets them do this with impunity...
Well, that's not going to change in the foreseeable future until the incumbent parties are voted out, so the next best thing is to hop around, do what we can
It really is a pain in the neck (Score:4, Interesting)
We purchased the rights to use a particular piece of music for the intro sequence we use on many of our department videos. Every time we post a new video, an automated "third party content" claim is immediately placed against it. I contest it and, after a while, the claim is removed... only to repeat the next time with a new claim based on the same piece of music we've already demonstrated many dozens of times we have the rights to use.
So I'll believe it when I see it.
Punish false claims. (Score:5, Insightful)
Until false claims carry some penalty, false claims will continue.
The penalty doesn't need to be particularly harsh. I'd say 3-strikes and you can no longer submit automated take down. After you've falsely accused 3 videos, all further accusations will go into a queue for human review
It would allow a company to police its trademark and take down any flagrant violators, but dissuade automated scripts that flags dozens of videos on flimsy grounds.
That's just my suggestion, there are certainly more options to punish false accusers. Until some punishment is in place though, youtube's words are hollow.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Many of the notices come from YouTube itself. They developed a content detection system that tries to spot when copyrighted music is used in videos. Companies can upload copies of their music to the analysis engine. Unfortunately it doesn't work very well, flagging up things like bird song and clear examples of fair use like a radio playing the background incidentally.
Re: Punish false claims. (Score:2)
I wasn't aware of that. If youtube is flagging and removing videos of their own volition, that needs to stop immediately, if not sooner.
Really, takedown requests should only be accepted if they come from a verified source, or at least a verified domain (e.g. legal@sony.com). Otherwise, what's to stop you or I from filing takedown requests against the entire Nickleback catalog, on the grounds that it violates a patent and-"/or trademark that I hold on sewage delivery systems?
Really, Youtube should require
YTSpencer didn't make any actual commitments! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not news. Nothing has changed. There was some murmuring and hand-wringing from YouTube and the status quo resumed its march.
Re: (Score:2)
I understand that the DMCA makes no provision for penalties for a bogus claim. But couldn't these bogus claims be considered to be Tortious interference [wikipedia.org]?
These claims cause all the revenue to be sent to the entity filing the bogus claim instead of the video author. Thus they prevent the author from receiving revenue as per his contract with YouTube (the contract here being whatever determines what money he will receive). That's interference. Now it may also be necessary to prove that the interference was in
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
a bunch of nothing (Score:4, Informative)
Change the law (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd rather see the law changed so companies (and people) that file bogus takedown notices are fined (or better, face criminal charges, or both)
If fair damages for each infringing song range from $750 to $80,000 per song, then the record industry can afford to hire lawyers to thoroughly vet each takedown notice. Even if it takes 15 minutes to review the video and ensure it's a valid copyright claim, that lawyer will be saving the industry $3000 - $320,000 per hour. They'll all be rich!
Re: (Score:2)
Can't the victims sue? Some of the affected channels are fairly large, estimated to bring in millions a year from YouTube alone.
#MakeYoutubeGreatAgain (Score:2, Informative)
you guys forgot to mention that all this is because of a youtuber called GradeAUnderA who started this whole #MakeYoutubeGreatAgain in one of his videos, urging people to tweet it to the CEO of youtube. She then responded to the tweets and someone at google even got hold of GradeAUnderA to talk to him. Gotta give credit where its due guys.
Re: (Score:1)
This team might be responsible for my good fortune (Score:2)
Until this weekend my main Youtube channel was inaccessible for over a year, as it didn't have an email address associated to it. I was so happy to see it back.
This one I used all the time but could only view. Granted it was of no outside value as it's just a lot clips of my game play, and unless you play games you could care less that I found the first glitch in Call of duty's BO https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
FWIW the youtube channel I have able to access has two videos, one has seen over 400000 views
Slashdot in a nutshell... (Score:1)
Big corporation does something bad: How dare they?! When are they going to do the right thing?
Big corporation does something good (or at least tries to): Whatever! It won't work! Big stupid corporations don't care about us and big stupid government is in the pocket of the big stupid corporations!
There is no such thing as good news on here, apparently. Unless it involves Raspberry PI or 3D printing. (But not 3D printing guns.)
Repeat offenders (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to see a "repeat offenders" classification for copyright claimants like the copyright holders want for alleged infringers. If more than a certain percentage of your copyright infringement claims turn out to be bogus, your claims get diverted for review and won't be acted on until someone's checked the content and checked with the uploader. Same standard for any automated system, if it can't maintain at least the same level of accuracy expected of claimants then it's results can't be used until after human review.
Second verse, same as the first.... (Score:1)
Easy fix (Score:2)
Want to stop "erroneous" take-downs of non-infringing content? Amend the law so that if 0.1% of your take-down claims is improper the content in question is transferred to the public domain. Companies would tread really carefully if they risked losing ownership of the content in question. If content holders expect such severe penalties for infringers its only fair that there be severe penalties for claiming infringement where none exists.
About Timr (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I bet you're quite the hit with ladies at parties.
You know what was meant. Everyone knows what was meant. It's perfectly cromulent to assign actions to abstract concepts in everyday English.
My recent experience (Score:2)
I recently had two of my videos blocked worldwide thanks to BBC Worldwide. Previously they had had copyright matches against them for use of music, but no blocks - I assume the BBC (the proper UK BBC) was getting any ad money, which was fine by me.
Anyway, I disputed both with a long rant about how it was a heavily edited montage with a specific new, uh, y'know, thing behind it and they were restored immediately. So far nothing else has happened, so I assume BBC Worldwide aren't bothered enough to employ a h
Just happened to me... (Score:2)
Youtube removed my animated film (Score:2)
I have an animated film I made in college in 1986 (pre internet) -- which I uploaded to youtube well before they had things like channels or monitization or anything. Videos at the time were limited to 10 minutes. I uploaded the film to youtube so long agao, I can't even tell you what name and password were used to upload it.
Recently (about 5 months ago); I was treated to a takedown notice cliaming my video violates someone's copyright, but that was all they could tell me. To dispute the claim, as well as s
Re: (Score:2)
How did you receive the takedown notice? If by email, wouldn't that be the account used to upload the video, and wouldn't you then be able to reset the password? (I don't have a Youtube account, so if things don't work that way, sorry)
It's about time... (Score:1)