The word "copyright" is slowly transforming into a more generic meaning where a big company silences a little company/individual that it doesn't like. This case doesn't seem to have anything to do with actual copyright. Did the company specify exactly what content they believed was copied?
If you have a kid under 20, ask them what "copyright" means. They'll probably describe it to you in terms of corporate bullying rather than anything that has to do with intellectual property or copying.
> When you look at how “IP” is used by firms, a very precise – albeit colloquial – meaning emerges:
> “IP is any law that I can invoke that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics, and customers.”
> That is, in a world of uncertainty, where other people’s unpredictability can erode your profits, mire you in scandal, or even tank your business, “IP” is a means of forcing other people to arrange their affairs to suit your needs, even if that undermines their own needs.
Adam Smith is said to have written division of labor taken to extremes will turn humans dumber than the lowest animal
Hard to see how he was wrong. Low skilled individuals exist in a state of helplessness. Like turtles in their back. Can’t solve a problem; need a committee to form a problem solving committee.
This is more of a YouTube thing. They are very trigger-happy on copyright and implement a "strike" system that will quickly get you demonetized. It's fairly easy to file a strike against anyone and the target has little recourse other than taking down the video even if it has nothing to do with copyright.
It's not DMCA so you don't even have the right to counter-file. And of course since it's Google there's no one you can call or email to get real help unless you're a super popular channel with an assigned rep.
> Youtube needs a better mechanism for punishing false claims.
[rant]
Youtube *can't* have a better system, because it's based on (A) how DMCA takedowns work, (B) how Safe Harbor platforms are supposed to work, and (C) how Viacom vs Youtube made YT extremely reliant on Safe Harbor to prevent another stupid lawsuit from big corps.
To have a better system in the first place, *at the very least*:
- Safe Harbor protections must be boosted so that ALL copyright problems must be passed over to users, and thus shield the platform from being in *any way* liable for those violations. Lawsuits that target platforms should be automatically dismissed if they're about copyright complaints, unless it's about enforcement of the above procedure.
- DMCA takedowns must require the claimant to submit public evidence of both (a) the offending snippet & (b) the contrasting source.
- DMCA takedowns cannot be made for any content slice shorter than 20 seconds.
- (Most importantly) Copyright claims must be "innocent until proven guilty", i.e. the claimant must be the one to prove fault, and not requiring the defendant to prove innocence.
> Youtube can have a better system by having it be straight DMCA, such that claimants have to actually submit DMCA claims that can be counterclaimed.
[rant]
NO, IT CAN'T.
The next Viacom would then claim that YT was violating / not fulfilling their Safe Harbor duties, resulting in ANOTHER stupid lawsuit.
A failure to make Safe Harbor bulletproof WILL continue to allow these cancerous lawsuits to exist. The Funko DMCA dumpster fire that resulted in itch.io's website being taken down is the most recent example of this, as they went after the domain registrars for ALLEGEDLY not fulfilling their Safe Harbor duties.
Neither your hypothetical Youtube lawsuit nor the itch.io takedown have any lawful basis. Thus your argument is that if Youtube doesn't bow to the bullies then the bullies might be mean. That is quite different from Youtube not being able to stand up to those bullies.
> Neither your hypothetical Youtube lawsuit nor the itch.io takedown have any lawful basis.
[max_anger]
THE YT LAWSUIT ALREADY HAPPENED: VIACOM VS YOUTUBE.
THE REVERSAL AT THE CIRCUIT COURT IN *VIACOM'S FAVOR* IS WHAT'S LED TO ALL OF THIS NONSENSE RIGHT NOW.
AND IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN IF YOUTUBE *EVER* BECOMES LAX WITH COPYRIGHT ENFORCEMENT.
[/max_anger]
The current expectation is that platforms *do* have to preemptively take down the offending content, or risk losing their Safe Harbor status. This defaults ANY platform's stance to be overly cautious about what is submitted, when they shouldn't even be doing the prosecution's job AT ALL.
> Thus your argument is that if Youtube doesn't bow to the bullies then the bullies might be mean.
The bullies ARE mean, and their current weapons of use are the holes in the Safe Harbor clause to take down platforms.
> That is quite different from Youtube not being able to stand up to those bullies.
YouTube CAN'T stand up to them, because ANY laxer enforcement risks losing their Safe Harbor protections.
To reiterate my point: Safe Harbor needs to be made BULLETPROOF for YouTube to begin to relax their current stance.
Maybe calming down will allow you to think more rationally.
> The current expectation is...
You expectation perhaps. Not the expectation of the law. The DMCA is clear on what service providers have to do and Youtube regularly does much more than they need.
> The bullies ARE mean, and their current weapons of use are the holes in the Safe Harbor clause to take down platforms.
So you want to preemptively surrender moderation to them? Might as well let them try taking it down.
> YouTube CAN'T stand up to them, because ANY laxer enforcement risks losing their Safe Harbor protections.
And living risks death. No company is without risks. Standing up to obviously frivolous takedown requests is a very small risk.
Maybe calming down won’t help rationality, as evidenced by your reply.
> Not the expectation of the law. The DMCA is clear on what service providers have to do
Their entire point is that Youtube already tried this, and that was found insufficient in court. So I’m sorry but your personally preferred reading of the DMCA means zilch.
> Their entire point is that Youtube already tried this, and that was found insufficient in court. So I’m sorry but your personally preferred reading of the DMCA means zilch.
YES. THANK YOU.
People should get it through their thick skulls that the *successful* appeal by Viacom is what caused this nightmare DMCA enforcement to be shoved down onto regular people. If the appeal had failed, YouTube wouldn't need to be this strict in their enforcement.
Viacom would've continued to appeal to the Supreme Court, but a straight line of failed appeals would have given YouTube much more leeway in how they handle DMCA Takedown requests. HOWEVER, *because* of the *successful* appeal, they HAD to be stricter to keep the law on their side.
All the idealism in the world is USELESS when it comes time to be in the courtroom. YouTube would've been SHUT DOWN if they had continued to be lax in their enforcement, and we would've NEVER had the video creator boom that we did have because YT continued to survive.
Missing the forest for the trees, GP (account42) did.
This sort of system would be get support from a sizable majority of people across political lines. The fact we don't see it implemented shows just how little public opinion can matter when it comes to the laws we have to live by.
Because it is considered one of the biggest problems on the platform.
Creators are frustrated that unless they are big enough to get YouTube to notice them they at minimum have to dox themselves to remove a bad DMCA claim.
Honestly in a world with Content ID they don't necessarily need the current system to remain as is to make the big publishers happy, who already get preemptive blocking of content without lifting a finger.
> Creators are frustrated that unless they are big enough to get YouTube to notice them they at minimum have to dox themselves to remove a bad DMCA claim.
Unfortunately, creators have very little leverage over YouTube, nor any realistic ability to move to a different platform. The can be frustrated all they want, but until YouTube has a reason to fear creators leaving the platform en masse, there's little pressure on them to change.
One might argue that having tons of popular entertainers who are frustrated with the platform, and there being no exclusivity agreements with those entertainers (AFAIK, and contrary to the way Twitch treats its top streamers) would create an opportunity for competitors to pop up.
That said, I don't think there is realistically anything YouTube can do do materially improve things under current laws. They can provide a real person to talk to about why the bogus claim is being taken seriously, but they still have to take it seriously.
If we want Google to fix this for us, they will have to do so via lobbying to change the laws, or at least some kind of creative but successful lawsuit that dramatically changes how they are interpreted. The product people are not capable of fixing this, it's in the lawyers' and courtiers' court (so to speak).
For instance the three strike system that results in your entire channel being demonetized is not required by law.
Additionally they could work with creators to get them in touch with people who can help rather than relying on social media to forward them the worst instances.
> One might argue that having tons of popular entertainers who are frustrated with the platform, and there being no exclusivity agreements with those entertainers (AFAIK, and contrary to the way Twitch treats its top streamers) would create an opportunity for competitors to pop up.
I wish, but it's not that easy. A potential competitor needs to not only start off with the ability to handle all the video uploading and delivery, but it has to also provide the audience and monetization. If YouTube was strictly a content hosting service there wouldn't be much of an obstacle in this regard, but it's also the discovery platform that audience members go to in search of content. The network effect is too strong because hosting and discovery are bundled into one.
Sure, I understand that its unlikely, but is Google willing to bet its multibillion dollar business on that? They would have to be pretty damn sure. $low_probability * $enormous_potential_losses = $still_pretty_big_expected_losses
I’m sure that creators would like to have a person to talk to, but it doesn’t seem that alphabet needs to provide one. Will they make more money if they did?
> They'll probably describe it to you in terms of corporate bullying rather than anything that has to do with intellectual property or copying.
Unless they dream of becoming a content creator or a vlogger, in which case they'll describe it as a Law of God, protecting the tiny Content Creators from the evil sinners who Steal and Plagiarize, and that occasionally gets abused by the corporate lords we all sharecrop for.
“This doing of something about disputes, this doing of it reasonably, is the business of the law. And the people who have the doing of it in charge, whether they be judges or sheriffs or clerks or jailers or lawyers, are officials of the law. What these officials do about disputes is, to my mind, the law itself.”
> The word "copyright" is slowly transforming into a more generic meaning where a big company silences a little company/individual that it doesn't like.
This has basically always been the case and is what copyright is, by design, for.
While that is true of some YouTube take downs I believe this article is referring to a DMCA takedown request which while using a YouTube specific form is based off Copyright law.
> If you have a kid under 20, ask them what "copyright" means. They'll probably describe it to you in terms of corporate bullying rather than anything that has to do with intellectual property or copying.
Instead of the original intention which was to grant the right to copy.
Copyright should be energising capitalism, not killing it. But yet here are!
Not granting the right to copy, controlling it was the entire point. The ability to produce copies of existing works never needed protection because it's a natural right that follows from the human ability to create. And that ability never needed limiting because creating a copy involved a large part of the same painstaking work that the original required.
Copyright was only introduced after the invention of the printing press. The whole point of copyright was to limit the persons/entities allowed to produce copies of a work, because suddenly the ability to copy became a lot cheaper than the ability to create.
I disagree with you argument — _we_ don’t know what the copyrighted portion was, but that doesn’t mean no such portion exists. Likewise, asking-kids-under-20 is not a method I’d generally endorse for legal issues.
Per the article, it is unclear what was copyrighted. It’s possible that YouTube knows but is not making it public, or maybe even YouTube doesn’t know. I definitely feel that YouTube’s handling of copyright issues is annoying, I feel like the creator should be told what YouTube knows. But that’s not an issue with copyright itself.
Youtube doesn’t know, because the DMCA doesn’t require the complainant to be very specific. The right course of action is to deny the complaint and make a counter complaint to youtube. This forces Youtube to reinstate the video, and forces the original complainant to take their complaint to an actual court. A copyright bully will simply never do that. They’re relying on people to give up at the first step, without making a counter complaint.
Pretty sure when you submit a DMCA you submit to US jurisdiction, and since YouTube's copyright strike are their version of "DMCA", and they are a US company, I'd venture to say it's probably still US law they are under for this as they even site fair use[0]
If you have a kid under 20, ask them what "copyright" means. They'll probably describe it to you in terms of corporate bullying rather than anything that has to do with intellectual property or copying.