YouTube Ends Lofi Girl's Two-Year-Long Music Stream Over Bogus DMCA Warning (techcrunch.com) 74
An anonymous reader writes: There are three constants in life: death, taxes and the "lofi hip hop radio -- beats to relax/study to" YouTube stream. That is, until YouTube falsely hit the Lofi Girl channel with a DMCA takedown, bringing the beloved streams offline for the first time in over 2 years. With over 668 million views, the stream was one of YouTube's most popular places for people to go when they wanted to listen to calming, yet engaging music while studying or working. Listeners sometimes used the stream's live chat like an anonymized, distant study group, reminding each other to take breaks and drink water. So when the stream suddenly stopped, fans were worried.
[...] Yesterday, Lofi Girl addressed the sudden takedown in a tweet, stating that "the lofi radios have been taken down because of false copyright strikes." In response, fans of Lofi Girl circulated the tag #BringBackLofiGirl to get YouTube's attention. Some even went as far as to spam and troll FMC Music, the Malaysian label that allegedly issued the false copyright complaint, while others created fan art. Lofi Girl told TechCrunch that all of the channel's music is released through its record label, Lofi Records, so they have the necessary rights to share it. Because Lofi Girl has the proper rights to the music, YouTube determined that the account is not in violation of copyright laws. The platform responded to Lofi Girl on Twitter Monday, saying that the missing livestream videos should be reinstated in 24 to 48 hours.
If past precedent holds true, Lofi Girl's next stream will have to start again from the beginning, rather than as a continuation of the existing 2-year-long stream. In 2020, the channel faced a similar problem when an accidental suspension ended its 13,000-hour stream. In that case, YouTube also owned up to its mistakes and reinstated the account, but the same issues have apparently returned. [...] Today, in YouTube's reply to Lofi Girl, the company said that the takedown requests were "abusive," meaning that they were leveraged as an attack against the channel, rather than out of actual concern for copyright violations. This behavior is incredibly common, but platforms have struggled to determine when these reports are legitimate and when they're unsubstantiated. "This event has shone a light on an underlying problem on the platform: It's 2022, and there are countless smaller creators out there, many of which engaged in this discussion, that continue to be hit daily by these false claims on both videos and livestreams," Lofi Girl wrote in a tweet.
"We're shocked and disappointed to see that there's still not any kind of protection or manual review of these false claims," Lofi Girl wrote on Twitter. "At the end of the day, it was entirely out of our control, and the sad part is that there was no way to appeal beforehand/prevent it from happening."
[...] Yesterday, Lofi Girl addressed the sudden takedown in a tweet, stating that "the lofi radios have been taken down because of false copyright strikes." In response, fans of Lofi Girl circulated the tag #BringBackLofiGirl to get YouTube's attention. Some even went as far as to spam and troll FMC Music, the Malaysian label that allegedly issued the false copyright complaint, while others created fan art. Lofi Girl told TechCrunch that all of the channel's music is released through its record label, Lofi Records, so they have the necessary rights to share it. Because Lofi Girl has the proper rights to the music, YouTube determined that the account is not in violation of copyright laws. The platform responded to Lofi Girl on Twitter Monday, saying that the missing livestream videos should be reinstated in 24 to 48 hours.
If past precedent holds true, Lofi Girl's next stream will have to start again from the beginning, rather than as a continuation of the existing 2-year-long stream. In 2020, the channel faced a similar problem when an accidental suspension ended its 13,000-hour stream. In that case, YouTube also owned up to its mistakes and reinstated the account, but the same issues have apparently returned. [...] Today, in YouTube's reply to Lofi Girl, the company said that the takedown requests were "abusive," meaning that they were leveraged as an attack against the channel, rather than out of actual concern for copyright violations. This behavior is incredibly common, but platforms have struggled to determine when these reports are legitimate and when they're unsubstantiated. "This event has shone a light on an underlying problem on the platform: It's 2022, and there are countless smaller creators out there, many of which engaged in this discussion, that continue to be hit daily by these false claims on both videos and livestreams," Lofi Girl wrote in a tweet.
"We're shocked and disappointed to see that there's still not any kind of protection or manual review of these false claims," Lofi Girl wrote on Twitter. "At the end of the day, it was entirely out of our control, and the sad part is that there was no way to appeal beforehand/prevent it from happening."
control (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to control your works put them on your own platform.
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sadly Youtube is now complete corrupt and controlled by an evil, irresponsible and explotive upper class
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Do you know what www stands for? How did you ever find slashdot?
How did I find slash dot? (Score:5, Funny)
My grandfather mentioned it...
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Same ...
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Because YouTube is a music publisher! And because putting your own content on YouTube is not self-publishing!
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Doesn't work because LoFi Records are their own publisher but it didn't save them.
At this point I really think that Youtube (well, Alphabet) need to update their DMCA policies to state that if they determine that a takedown request is abusive that the requestor will have any channels removed and takedown requests quarantined (dealt with via a much slower manual process that exists but could take arbitrary time). Of course this is difficult with the DMCA and they would probably end up in court about it.
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DMCA is a "law".
Policies can not contradict the law ... not even in a fucked up country.
Re: control (Score:2)
cant it needs scanned too according to recently proposed laws.
Go read some
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Its about *how* you respond not *if* you respond to a DMCA request. Lofi, on her own platform, could have decided that the takedown was bogus and left her material up, while YouTube did something brain dead instead.
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There is an entire internet that exists outside of a few big players. Apparently, the big players have warped your thinking. Seems we have an entire generation that thinks services should be free, all paid by someone else, but somehow you want to maintain full control and tell a free service what to do. Get a clue.
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This is such a stupid sentiment. But perhaps we more Paramounts, Disneys, HBOs, Apples ?
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WTF?
When you relay on others, especially at no cost to you, you implicitly give up control. If you do not want to risk being cut-off then you do not want YouTube.
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She did that.
Youtube is only the streaming platform she has chosen.
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She owns Youtube?
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Perhaps you have reading comprehension problems:
She did that.
Youtube is only the streaming platform she has chosen.
That is what I wrote.
Hint: she owns the rights to the music, can't be so hard to grasp.
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About that reading comprehension... I wrote:
> If you want to control your works put them on your own platform.
She owned the rights but not the platform she was distributing her music through, she used YouTube. Had she used a private platform instead of YouTube then she could have controlled the DMCA response where instead she was reliant on YouTube's DMCA response.
Its nice to think in 2022 that you can just be an artist, or just run a small business, without also knowing something about how people find
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She is using a private platform and ALSO youtube.
internet based businesses that want control of their own destiny need a platform that allows for that level of control.
And that is obviously close to impossible if you only stream bytes.
How the funk would she ever be able to make enough money to host their music on their own site? Aka: pay for the internet fees?
You realize the channel is already back up? (Score:2)
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> Talk about late to the discussion....this was literally yesterday's news.
Are there people who can't talk about something that happened yesterday? What if I told you discussion improves when we know more?
Re:You realize the channel is back down again? (Score:2)
Talk about late to the discussion....this was literally yesterday's news.
Except, I just checked and the stream is back offline. Being RESTORED was yesterday's news.
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Talk about late to the discussion....this was literally yesterday's news.
So it will reappear on /. tomorrow.
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Don't worry, it'll be back as a dupe in a week, which is the more typical /. response time to breaking news.
Real situation: (Score:2)
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According to the story it's Malaysian, not US.
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If it's headquartered in Malaysia, how is it US based?
question (Score:2)
Youtube and google has too much control. (Score:2)
As it is now, Youtube and google is such a massive platform that it is easy to lose all control over anything we do, and the reasons are diverse:
For example, it should be no surprise to anyone that there are heavy censorship on youtube, a serious amount of youtubers have their content stolen, taken over, copystriked, censored, ball-chained and battle with "fair use" that is not fair anymore because youtube is SO big that they take the safe route of the bigger parties rather than the smaller individuals.
It's
Re:Youtube and google has too much control. (Score:4, Insightful)
Claiming that it's "just business" doesn't mean it's not evil.
Re:Youtube and google has too much control. (Score:5, Informative)
The DMCA was written by the music labels and movie studios specifically as a cudgel for tech giants to wield on fans and users. The entire process is designed to unreasonably favor copyright holders, who abuse it at every level.
Just ask Rick Beato.
Re: Youtube and google has too much control. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny, I know that name. I discovered Rick's channel last year during a lockdown. And watched his recount of the time he spent before Congress. And was thrilled that someone had the balls to speak truth to power.
Too bad he didn't have the enormous bank balance to speak in the only language they understand.
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Yeah this is exactly it.
The only way to make the big guns change is to speak with money. If people did protest by changing their platform of preference massively - then it would hurt the bottom line and they'd be forced to do more about it, but people are lazy and love the convenience of an already well established platform, it gives them money right here and now and don't want to chance on something else. A little temporary safety and comfort in exchange for their freedom.
"difficult" (Score:5, Insightful)
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> Not if you have actual people reviewing claims. But they try to automate everything to minimize their overhead.
They struggle to make enough money to hire humans. Video is still expensive to store.
Re:"difficult" (Score:5, Interesting)
Not if you have actual people reviewing claims.
Are you sure about that? I bet I can make some real-looking documents that say I bought the license to a piece of music. On the other hand, I'd probably struggle to prove a piece I personally recorded is actually mine. It's not like I can just go find a notary to sit down and watch me play on an instrument for a few hours.
Registration required (Score:2)
Firstly, I think the DMCA process starts with an email to the user that they can respond to.
But the big issue is that there is no registration. So no real way to show who owns what.
I would have thought that the music industry would actually want registration. They do not actually want bogus take down notices.
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That's supposed to happen. There are multiple levels of copyright enforcement on YouTube. They respond to DMCA notices, they have an automated copyright detection system that just blocks monetization unless appealed, and they have a "premium" tier where "trusted" entities can issue copyright strikes directly for supposedly blatant infringement.
It's the last one that was at work here, and the company that abused it has had their account suspended. It's not clear how they got an account in the first place. Ap
How to fix the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
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> If labels had to pay damages for false DMCA take-downs, I bet it would happen a lot less often.
There you go, bringing incentives into it again.
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In this case it was a company in Malaysia, and they had their copyright strike issuing account suspended. Suing them is probably a waste of time and money. The fault here is entirely with YouTube for giving them an account with the power to issue copyright strikes in the first place.
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Not even that. Just 2 steps:
1. DMCA claim? Provide an injunction from a court of law in my jurisdiction.
2. You want to make a claim? That'll be $10,000 to investigate it.
Music copyright is fucking broken (Score:5, Interesting)
I watch Youtubers like VWestLife [youtube.com] or Techmoan [youtube.com], and they're always super-careful to use sample music that's copyleft, in the public domain, from musicians they have an agreement with (apparently), or when they do have to use copyright music, only a few seconds, distorted or talked over.
It's painful to watch how quickly they hit the pause button, or tell you they'll play this only 2 seconds otherwise the video will be taken down, or this-or-that should be okay to play for more than 5 seconds because it's 1970's Korean pop music or something... They behave exactly like abused puppies: they don't want to get beaten so they'll desperately avoid the situations in which they'll get the stick. Amazing how the Youtube algorithm managed to inculcate self-censorship in all those Youtubers whose channels is concerned with A/V equipment.
And yet, I have no problems watching countless hours of any kind of music, free movies and free documentaries on Youtube. So much so that I only use it to play music at work 8 hours a day, and I've cancelled my TV subscription years ago. What gives?
Rick Beato (Score:5, Interesting)
Rick Beato, a songwriter / musician / producer, was just ranting a few weeks ago about how insane YouTube's copyright system has gotten.
Now this is a guy who has mainstream music that he makes money off of, so he is a copyright holder who "benefits" from YouTube's copyright protection when it comes to his music. Yet it is so insane that even purely educational videos adhering to Fair Use get copyright strikes. He did a video of the top 20 songs with odd meters, where he goes into detail counting beats and explaining the structure of the music. He includes fair use clips of 10 - 20 seconds of 20 different songs. This automatically garnered 16 copyright strikes by YouTube. He goes into detail why he won't contest the demonetization of that video (basically because if one single copyright holder blocks fair use then they get 100% of the monetization, so he's happier having it split 16 ways instead of one holdout getting all the revenue).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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It's all so confusing. How is it that there are YT shows that listen to an entire song where they "react to"?
Rapper reacts to Tool. Vocalist reacts to Iron Maiden. I've recently watched a music theory/classical music guy "react to" various prog rock bands like ELP and early Genesis. Are they paying royalties? These don't seem like deep pockets folks especially compared to Beato.
I watched a bunch of Techmoan videos and always wondered how much better they could be if he could play familiar samples.
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React videos sometimes get a pass because there is an actual understanding among some copyright owners that these videos drive real revenues. It depends on who owns the copyright and how much they choose to police it.
If a track is deep in the back waters of old catalogs by classic bands, it's common for no action to be taken. Older music is outselling new music (by a lot, except for a few outliers), and part of it is the rediscovery of it by new generations, often through these types of exposure.
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There are two different things. One is a flat-out copyright violation (which can lead to the shutdown of the YouTube account after so many violations have occurred), the other is demonetization. In the case of a demonetization, the claimed copyright owner gets all the revenue from the video. So it is very unlikely the creators of the react-to videos are actually making money off of that video. More than likely they put those out there just to get subscribers as a loss-leader.
You'll see lots of music video
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The EU proposal to have uploaders declare "fair use" and then put the onus on copyright holders to challenge it seems like a good idea. At the moment it's the other way around, the uploader has to appeal to each copyright holder individually.
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What's insane is copyright law; YouTube is just responding to that.
platforms have struggled to determine (Score:2)
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Another stream (Score:1)
It's a broken system (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you blame the music trolls for this behaviour?
There is absolutely no repercussion to a false claim.
The most effective way theses trolls can profit is to file as many claims as possible.
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Do you blame the music trolls for this behaviour?
There is absolutely no repercussion to a false claim.
the provisions of the U.S. DMCA make it a Criminal offense to do
exactly that. i hadn't realised that until the youtube-dl fiasco.
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The claimant has to attest that they have a sincere belief that they own the work being claimed. It's only perjury if not only do they not own the work, but you also have to prove that they knew they didn't own it and lied about it anyway.
That is a high bar that is expensive and time consuming to litigate. And since it is a criminal not a civil offense, you have to convince a public prosecutor to spend that time and money. "I spent $50 million of your taxes to get a $5 million criminal fine against BMI o
spam and troll FMC Music... (Score:2)
One of those is very different from the other.
Start again from the beginning? (Score:2)
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It's in reference to holding the record for the longest youtube video, not the actual contents. In the earlier incident, they had a 13,000 hour long stream when the account was suspended, setting the previous record.
Cant host their own, laws say it needs scanning (Score:1)
Technically they can't host their own considering the laws proposed that require any online platform to implement the copyright scanning.
So with laws like this on the books as soon as they switch in house and their own, they would be required to implement content scanning which would immediately be used by the same company to attack them in the same way.
Due Process ? (Score:2)
What a weird concept...
no such problem o Spotify? (Score:2)
I see they stream on Spotify so I wonder if they have to fight bogus DMCA there? Also wonder if they pay or are payed by Spotify for the content? It seams that it would be in Google's (YouTube) best interest to not take down this kind of thing. I'm sure they make some kind of $$ from these kinds of streams.
Copyright is reaching the end of life. (Score:2)
Copyright itself is losing value.
It's a drastic cultural shift but the 'net has been there the whole time, eating away at it.
Once you broadcast, anyone can do whatever they want with it. It wasn't always that easy. There was time before, when people couldn't record it.
That time went away before I was born. VCRs became ubiquitous in my lifetime. But the editing tools weren't there yet, for the average joe.
That's all changed, drastically.
Just remember, boys and girls... (Score:2)
Large tech companies couldn't give a shit if their products rely upon unsustainable and unfair process automation. That's how you "scale" software.