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YouTuber Says He Was Accused of Infringing His Own Song (cnet.com) 121

CNET reported this week that a musician, who plays guitar and has lots of viewers on YouTube, received an unusual email from the company alleging that he had copied a tune he wrote himself two years ago. From the report: But last month, Paul Davids says he got a rather unusual email from YouTube. The Content ID system had flagged a tune he wrote himself, two years ago, for infringing on someone's else's newer video. Someone who, it seems, stole his backing track to create a new track of his own. [...] "Someone took my track, made their own track, uploaded it to Spotify, YouTube, whatever, and I get a copyright infringement notice? Wait, what?" said Davids. The story has a happy ending -- Davids used YouTube's appeals system to quickly work things out, and let the other artist keep on using his tune. (Davids tracked him down on Facebook Messenger, and the guy apparently admitted he'd downloaded 'a couple of guitar licks' on YouTube.) But it's weird to think YouTube would flag an old video for infringing on a new one, no?
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YouTuber Says He Was Accused of Infringing His Own Song

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  • by humankind ( 704050 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @11:08AM (#56911594) Journal

    I'm sure the story going viral had nothing to do with a relatively speedy settlement of this issue for the guy.

    If only we all could get our grievances with YouTube to go viral, the other half a million people who have been shafted one way or another might get an appeal.

    • by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @11:16AM (#56911628) Homepage

      An "appeal"? Most of them didn't even get a trial.

      The way youtube works is that you get a notification telling you something is wrong and you have 48 hours to "correct" the video (except you can't replace a video, you can only take one down and put a new one up, losing all the likes, etc).

      After 48 hours your video is reviewed by humans and you're judged guilty or not.

      The problem? At no point are you allowed to send them a message, provide evidence, or do anything else in your own defense.

      • by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @12:26PM (#56911914)

        I've been subject to a youtube copyright detection myself, and that's my experience too. The entire appeals process consisted of a drop-down box of possible reasons, none of which applied in my case (The music was public domain, the copyright having long expired). At no point was there even an option to contact a real person. The process was entirely automated.

        • by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @12:54PM (#56912034) Homepage

          Yep. How hard would it be for them to let you type a message they can read during the review process?

          The truth is they simply don't care. They're not short of content. Your work might have taken months to create, it mean the world to you, but it's nothing to them.

          • by Anonymous Coward

            So stop using their site.

            It is their site you know. Not yours.

            All this righteous indignation over someone not letting you use their site the way you want.

            If you don't like the way they use your content, stop giving it to them.

            • by Anonymous Coward

              Whoever voted this troll doesn't understand what it's saying, which is perfectly valid. Youtube is not a public forum, it's a private company. Sure the line is blurred when there's overlap but at the end of the day it's a fact,
              FB, YT, TWT, etc, none of that shit is a public forum where anyone can say whatever they want nomatter what. (And in fact the 1st never guaranteed that anyway)

            • And languish in obscurity? Youtube is where the viewers are. That means anyone who wants their video to be seen needs to use youtube.

            • You know what, I'll go ahead and say it. I've become entirely against the idea that a private company acting as a public forum with a monopoly, near monopoly, or companies part of a small oligarchy over something can do whatever the fuck they please with no obligations on basic fairness. We need stronger consumer protection laws in these situations. They want the benefit of being a giant public platform with virtually no competitors? Then so sorry, there should be responsibility that comes along with that t
              • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                The fact that YouTube lets you make money from uploading videos, and themselves make money from those videos, should require them to act more fairly.

        • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08, 2018 @08:12PM (#56913768)

          Strange, I beat a dozen or so claims accusing me of using copyrighted material in my videos when the pieces were actually in the public domain. But I was careful to make sure that the specific performances I used were also in the public domain.

          Specifically, I used several pieces of classical music to accentuate some Let's Play game videos (William Tell Overture, Flight of the Bumble Bee, etc.), but I made sure to use performances by the US Marine Corps Band, the US Army Band, etc. When my videos got flagged by "AdShare MG for a Third Party" and "rumblefish", for example, I simply disputed their claim, selected "The content is in the public domain" from the list of options, and provided the following explanation:

          The William Tell Overture was composed by Gioachino Rossini and premiered in 1829. Rossini died November 13, 1868. Therefore, this work is in the public domain in the United States, and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or less. Additionally, this particular recording was performed by "The President's Own" United States Marine Band. According to 17 U.S.C. 105, copyright protection is not available for any work of the United States Government, which is defined in 17 U.S.C. 101 as "a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. government as part of that person's official duties." Therefore, this particular recording is also in the public domain. Therefore, rumblefish and AdShare MG for a Third Party have NO copyright claim to any music contained in this video.

          I never lost a claim.

        • by Trogre ( 513942 )

          YouTube doesn't recognize the Public Domain?

          Shut them down now.

        • Real people cost money. I've seen a shift, throughout my long career, from bug systems and reporting sytems that involve personnel taking the call to automated systems that solve the problem the company wishes you had and knows how to solve. Too often they do not solve the actual problem encountered, nor is there any option to get to a human. The knowledge of how to get to a human is valuable tribal knowledge, retained by your own support people who have mastered their craft, and there has been real "cost-s

      • by nitehawk214 ( 222219 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @12:48PM (#56912004)

        Also most of the views of a video happen in the first 48 hours, so it screws the person out of nearly all of the ad revenue they might make.

        The 48 hour review window is perfectly designed to screw content creators out of as much revenue as possible.

        • It's designed to screw copyright violators out of as much revenue as possible, to protect the copyrights of the people who pay YouTube's advertising bills. I think that you'll find that the abuse of legitimate creators or posters are a byproduct, not the intent, of the 48 hour review process. It's the abusive "let me put up the new Infinity Gauntlet movie the weekend it's published!" posters that they wish to block, before they get views.

      • by spoot ( 104183 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @03:59PM (#56912820) Homepage

        I had my account terminated a couple of weeks ago. I had the 48 hours to appeal, however I didn't have any idea what I was appealing. Because whatever I did (or did not do) was considered 'grievous' no warning, just termination. They don't have to tell you what terns of service violations you may or may not have committed. Just a link to a page with all of the possible things you may or may not have done wrong. My account was pretty small, some songs I've written over the years, some videos of 'how-to' for protools and a few vids that I did voiceovers for. I wrote an 'appeal' that was pretty generic, that basically said, "hey, could you tell me what I did wrong. I'll fix it and promise to not do it again." Their reply, 48 hours later, "your terminated." I didn't really care about the content, the worst part is that I no longer have a youtube account and lost my history and all the stuff I used to like to watch. Now if I go to youtube, it's all cat videos, makeup tips and the top viral crap I don't care about. Yea, youtube needs to get their act together on this stuff, at least tell you what you did so you can appeal it properly. sucks.

      • on twitter (because even google execs hate G+)
        hahaha

  • ...that Google has proven its AI/algorithms [slashdot.org] just don't work.
    • ...that Google has proven its AI/algorithms [slashdot.org] just don't work.

      There's an ancient BBS days 'tagline' joke about this:

      Politically Correct programming: "The AlGoreRhythm".

      --
      Humor is the essential ingredient of a democratic society.

    • No. This is the second time in a few days that we have one example out of millions of applications of the algorithms not working as expected.

      Anecdotes are not data.

      While I'm no fan of google, their algorithms seem to work 99.999% of the time. If there is criticism to be levied, it's that their error correction method is lacking.

    • Google has proven its AI/algorithms just don't work.

      Not really, they have just proven that like humans their AI systems have a range of intelligence from smart down to gibbering idiot. What's interesting though is that, like humans, nowadays the ones which are idiots seem to be ending up in charge of important things.

    • by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @03:03PM (#56912618)

      ...that Google has proven its AI/algorithms [slashdot.org] just don't work.

      Not really. It did it's job, it matched the song. The algo has no way to know, and it's not designed to know, which version came first (music, after all, does predate Youtube by a little bit so video A is older than Video B doesn't really work). You could say it's an overall problem with the whole system, but nothing is going to be perfect. How many correct actions are taken for every one of these incorrect ones? I'd bet it's a pretty large ratio.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08, 2018 @11:28AM (#56911660)

    Welcome to the new world where you are guilty until maybe, maybe, maybe proven innocent, and the judge is a secret algorithm.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Seems like this could be a GDPR violation. Under the GDPR you have a right to know how decisions about you were made, including ones made by algorithm.

      I guess YouTube would argue that the appeals process meets this requirement, but I'd like to see that tested.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 08, 2018 @11:28AM (#56911666)
    In a world where copyright "infringement"" is worse than murder, we need a system that turns copyright claims into toilet paper.
  • of a failed system caused by this rampant - is it a disease? - more is not enough trend/habit...
  • by nerdonamotorcycle ( 710980 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @12:12PM (#56911842)

    ex lead singer of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Was sued in the '80s by his own former record company for releasing a single, "The Old Man Down the Road", that allegedly sounded too much like "Run Through the Jungle", a CCR song to which CCR's record label held the rights. Ultimately the label's claim of infringement was rejected, but not without substantial sums spent on litigation. (The subsequent litigation over attorney's fees went all the way to SCOTUS.)

    So yeah, being accused of plagiarizing yourself is nothing new.

    • by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @12:31PM (#56911942)

      (The subsequent litigation over attorney's fees went all the way to SCOTUS.)

      Fogerty was able to show an artist has a certain technique that can sound the same to the average listener but that each composition was different, and thus won. The interesting thing is SCOTUS decided defendants were potentially entitled to recovering lawyer's fees in any case, not just those that were frivolous or made in bad faith. That is important, as the previous standard meant only deep pocket defendants could bring a case or defend themselves. The court, since copyright law is intended to encourage artist to develop creative works for the public good, there needs to be an economic incentive to bring and defend copyright cases, regardless of the wealth of either party.

    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Irrelevant as this is not a case of "plagiarizing yourself". Furthermore, "plagiarizing yourself" is certainly possible even if Fogerty eventually won in his case. Musicians fail to own the rights to works they author all the time.

  • Three strikes... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Archturiat Baumann ( 5458230 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @12:24PM (#56911900)
    If we're going to do this "three strikes" policy, it needs to go both ways. If you copyright strike someone three times, they are successfully appealed, then you need a court order before a takedown happens. Seems only fair.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Happened to a buddy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thundercattt ( 4205847 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @01:30PM (#56912176)
    This often happened to a buddy of mine. He'd write a song, play it on his guitar and post it. Then some random music company claimed it was theirs. It got to the point where he got tired of being flagged and stopped posting on YT for this reason.
    • by Notabadguy ( 961343 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @01:37PM (#56912214)

      This often happened to a buddy of mine. He'd write a song, play it on his guitar and post it. Then some random music company claimed it was theirs. It got to the point where he got tired of being flagged and stopped posting on YT for this reason.

      Same. I stopped posting on youtube because I got tired of my content being claimed by music companies and youtube endorsing that bad behavior.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Hello, thundercattt's musician friend :D

      • I have copied all my content to BitChute. The platform is home to some of the most popular political channels on YT, and there are now some great scientific channels as well.

        Sadly, BitChute has still some scalability issues, but I'll take that over YT's capricious copyright and political bias despoty.

  • This isn't rare (Score:4, Informative)

    by Notabadguy ( 961343 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @01:36PM (#56912208)

    This happens more frequently than you think.

    I write and make music with a modest following, and have had youtube take down several of my songs due to the auto-trawling bots that run around claiming everything is theirs and auto-issuing DMCA takedowns via youtube.

  • Everyday (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This problem happens to my band on the regular. While promoting our new record, we were hit with multiple copyright infringements across multiple platforms. Interestingly, the party claiming the infringement violations had no agreement with us and was merely associated with a physical record distributor that had no real claim to the copyright of the music. It has become a complete handicap for our promotion efforts and stymied metrics that are used promoters at music festivals who determine our potential dr

  • ... and the guy apparently admitted he'd downloaded 'a couple of guitar licks' on YouTube.

    I'm not sure a "couple of guitar licks" would qualify for copyright protection, but perhaps the law or online monitoring system(s) really are that anal.

  • by Sandman1971 ( 516283 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @02:15PM (#56912390) Homepage Journal

    I have a couple of videos that use classical music that falls under Creative Common licenses. Every week I get a warning from Youtube saying that some company is claiming that I infringe on their copyright. I contest and always win... Then repeat again the following week, sometime from the same 'company' for the same song! I've so far had about 40 different companies claim copyright on songs that are not theirs. It's beyond frustrating. Youtube's process is clearly broken.

  • by jeti ( 105266 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @03:01PM (#56912612)
    NASA's live stream of the landing of the Curiosity rover in 2012 was interrupted as well. A news station integrated parts of the stream into a report. Since the station was a media partner of YouTube, the service assumed that the news report was the original and automatically interrupted NASAs live stream during the landing.
  • Many google tech is designed to appease their corporate partners, so it's a feature, not a bug.
  • Fine if you want to write a new song based on someone else's previous work, but you should get approval / a license to do so.

  • by SJ ( 13711 ) on Sunday July 08, 2018 @08:27PM (#56913822)

    Apply punitive damages to both Google and the claimant for false notices.

    Make no mistake, all those little "oops, the algorithm got it wrong" add up to a considerable amount of money for the record companies.

    With Google trying to get premium content into YouTube, they are massively incentivised to game it exclusively towards the big premium content producers.

  • 0. Make music, art.
    1. Set up your own web site, email, brand online. Find a better external site for hosting the content and the needed streaming.
    3. Set up a support method not linked to any existing "social" media.
    4. Use existing social media to link to your content and build a brand.
    Upload a video talking about the new music, art, video and where the link is.
    Social media becomes nothing more than a real time message service to tell of new content, forum for that new content.
    Everything that crea
  • "But it's weird to think YouTube would flag an old video for infringing on a new one, no?"
    Is this high school?
  • by slashmydots ( 2189826 ) on Monday July 09, 2018 @02:51AM (#56914794)
    Kevin McLeod stated publicly on Twitter that Adsense pulled its ads from a section of his website (or perhaps all of it) because it contained "copyrighted content."
    He's the one who made around half of Youtube's initial audio library for use by Youtubers on Youtube's own website.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    There are numerous companies that go around claiming any video they can. The burden is then put on the content uploader to provide proof that it's theirs. If they don't bother doing so, the claiming company gains control (and monetization) of the content. I've had numerous companies claim my content in this way. While I successfully have shown the content is mine (in one case the claiming company wasn't even in existence when the content was uploaded), it's a huge inconvenience and many shady companies get

  • Youtube copyright claims lots of stuff. Hell facebook's algorithm took down posts that had sections of the declaration of independence due to hate speech because of the language of it. youtube is no different. just some codes thats says if a=b then take down b crap.
  • Recently YouTube claimed that a video I made that contained a small part of a Nissan commercial (withing fair use guidelines) was owned by the National Hockey League. How the algorithm made that connection I will never know. I appealed and the claim was dropped.
  • Ultimately this other guy admits to essentially stealing the first guy's backing track, without even asking, and even after all that grief he lets him continue to use the music? Didn't the 2nd guy have to file for the copyright infringement in the first place in order for YouTube to flag it? That would make him an IP troll, why give him permission?

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