YouTube’s “three strikes” policy is their implementation of the DMCA’s “repeat infringers” requirement:
> has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network of, a policy that provides for the *termination* in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network who are *repeat infringers*
You’re conflating the two systems. YouTube does have the Content ID system, which does automatic detection and is mostly used to monetize (not take down) copyrighted content. But this case is a copyright strike, which means there was a DMCA takedown filed.
That is my understanding too. We do not have a disagreement on that.
> he got a copyright strike, which means a DMCA takedown
Here is where we disagree. A youtube copyright notice / copyright strike is not the same as a DMCA takedown.
The DMCA takedown process as described in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Title II. Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act provides more rights for the content owner whose work got maliciously or mistakenly taken down. They have access to a counter notification process and §512(f) makes those who knowingly materially misrepresent content as infringing liable for damages. You don't have the same rights and affordances with the youtube copyright notification system.
It is similar. If you squint it looks the same. But it is not the same.
> A youtube copyright notice / copyright strike is not the same as a DMCA takedown.
Yes it is. YouTube doesn’t magically get to ignore the DMCA, so their process is built around that (along with layering Content ID on top to allow for a middle ground where videos can stay up but redirect some or all monetization to the copyright holder).
If you click through the link I posted above, you’ll get to this page which shows the complete process, including the counter-notification step: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/13823830 Do you have reason to believe 3blue1brown can’t file a counter-notification in this case?
Does YouTube's system also make a malicious complainer liable for damages? The DMCA does. Here's the relevant section of the law mentioned by krisoft:
(f) Misrepresentations.—Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section—
(1) that material or activity is infringing, or
(2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or
misidentification,
shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by
the alleged infringer [...]
Caveat is if you file the counter within 5 days. From listening to a few creators describe the counter filing process, you need to gather a lot of evidence to prove that you are not infringing. It apparently takes a lot of time and what happens is that targeted harassment very easily turns into a DOS-like attack. So 5 days is an unreasonably short time window that puts an extreme burden on the content creator.
Edit to quote the full section because the cherry picked quote is misleading:
> If you dispute a claim within 5 days, any revenue from the video will be held, starting with the first day the claim was placed. If you dispute a Content ID claim after 5 days from the original claim date, we'll start holding revenue the date the dispute is made.
There's a guy on YouTube that does discussions about star wars, and has an into music that he got the rights to use from the author.
Someone who didn't have the rights resampled the original song and submitted it to a label (not sure that's the right term), and the label proceeded to DMCA every single video the guy had posted.
Over a thousand videos, having to gather all that info for all of them, go through the appeals process on all of them. For him it was a manual action one at a time. From the label they have an API to bulk initiate claims
There was also the example of family guy copy-pasting a 10 year old youtube video of an exploit of an old NES game into an episode, and that video which predates the episode by 10 years (or something) then got taken down because it infringed on the family guy episode that copied the video.
But YouTube does accept DMCA claims, of course, as it's required by law. Their Content ID system provides an automated way to detect potential infringement by large copyright holders and redirect ad revenue to them, but if uploaders dispute the claim and appeal decision to uphold the claim, then the copyright holder is required to send a full DMCA claim to take down the video, and the uploader can respond with a counter notice to put the video back up. Of course, the copyright holder can choose to jump ahead to filing a DMCA notice at any point, bypassing some or all of the Content ID process. I'm guessing that most wouldn't do that, though, because the DMCA process is not automated, has strict timelines built in, and only allows for takedown (whereas Content ID allows for videos to stay up but make ad revenue for them). Without Content ID system, I'm guessing we'd be back in the days where the big copyright holders would just spam DMCA notices and end up with a lot more videos taken down.
(Disclaimer: I used to work in the media business so I'm familiar with the process).
> if uploaders dispute the claim and appeal decision to uphold the claim, then the copyright holder is required to send a full DMCA
I have heard that the dispute process uses dark patterns to punish uploaders for actually using it -- e.g. you must select between reasons for your dispute, none of which is "the claimed material isn't actually present."
Looking at copyright claims I have on my channel (these are valid music claims, for what it's worth), I see a dispute option labeled "The video is my original content and I own all of the rights to it", which I think covers the case you're describing.
That's not quite the same thing. For example, a work may be public domain, in which case it is not your original content, but nobody else owns the rights to it either.
There's a different option for if the video is public domain or otherwise not copyrightable to handle this case. I assume that that "lawyerly language" is to dissuade users from abusing the process and choosing an option when it's not really true.
Nearly every video is going to be an amalgamation of original content, licensed work, and public domain work, yet the listed alternatives you've presented both clearly apply to entire videos, forcing the content creator to lie if they want to go forward with a dispute.
It seems quite bonkers that you disagree with the "disputes are discouraged by forced lying" narrative yet keep posting evidence to support it.
Ah well. It's not my fight. I should be grateful for that.
> YouTube does accept DMCA claims, of course, as it's required by law.
As far as I know, it's not required. Rather, if a provider doesn't do it, they can be found liable for contributory infringement when a user posts infringing content.
Twitch, unlike YouTube, has a ton of experience dealing with gamers. They have direct contact with their streamers, organize events (TwitchCon, esports events etc). The Amazon acquisition has been incredible to twitch so far, too. The Amazon Prime/Twitch Prime promotion has gotten streamers a ton of income and has been overwhelmingly welcomed by the twitch community.
YouTube, in the mean time, has a broken DMCA/content-id/copyright claim system - a constant source of complaints with no support channel to actually help.
I find it fascinating how, in YouTube competition, where Vimeo and DailyMotion are failing, Twitch is succeeding because they are simply focused on their strength and advantage, rather than try to just provide the same service with a nonexistant community. And now with Amazon behind them, they have the money to double down on it.
I'd be surprised if twitch didn't get strong armed into doing a similar DMCA content id copyright deal to stave off attacks from riaa and friends. The issue there is a legal one :/
There's a lot of misinformation going on in the Reddit thread. These "Heroes" get better tools for flagging videos faster (among other things), but it's still just flagging. Every flag still gets reviewed by a human at YouTube, according to their documentation:
> YouTube staff review flagged videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and videos that violate our Community Guidelines are removed from YouTube. Videos that may not be appropriate for all younger audiences are age-restricted.
> Flagged videos are not automatically taken down by the flagging system. If a video doesn't violate our guidelines, no amount of flagging will change that, and the video will stay on the site. [0]
And that documentation is still true for the Hero program:
> As always, the policy team at YouTube makes the final determination of whether content should be removed. [1]
> YouTube says that those who participate will be eligible to receive perks, including access to exclusive workshops and sneak preview product launches, for example.
Gamifying content flagging with mass-flagging tools combined with their stupidly vague content rules[1] is a gift to the people that abuse moderation tools for hateful or trolling purposes. Maliciously flagged videos are already a problem (regardless of any human review), and YT is now going to reward (some of) these assholes?
[1] Remember the recent mess regarding the de-monitisation of videos arbitrarily deemed "not advertiser friendly"? The problem isn't that some videos were de-monotized; the guidelines - as written - could apply to anything.
I agree that their monetization policy is pretty vague; I wish it was clearer but they probably have to cover their bases.
As for "people that abuse moderation tools for hateful or trolling purposes": these people won't be given access to the tools. According to the site [0], you only get points and level up for actually flagging things correctly, and you get kicked out if you're abusing it. And the improved flagging tools are only available once you reach a higher level. So it would be pretty hard to abuse (especially since even after all that, there's oversight).
> Every flag still gets reviewed by a human at YouTube
Blizzard claimed something similar recently. Long story short, they weren't actually reviewing every report, and there were a number of people who were wrongly penalized or banned.
If Blizzard, a company with a lot of consumer good will and a stellar customer service group, can't get flagging right, why do we think that Google will, with a user base exponentially larger than Blizzard's?
I found an option to turn off notifications for those messages. If you open the notification settings for a channel that you're subscribed to, you can uncheck "Include community post notifications" and then stay subscribed to just get the video notifications.
> Censorship and demonetisation on YouTube seems to be happening to people fairly regularly, and without appeal, via poorly calibrated algorithms
Demonetization happens when a video doesn't meet their "advertiser-friendly" policy, but there is an appeal process where you can have a human look at it to determine if the original assessment was wrong [0]. Do you have data to support your claim that their algorithms are "poorly calibrated"?
Can you provide some examples of "censorship"? They do have policies that things like graphic content or spam is not permitted and will be removed from the site, but I think that's reasonable.
> It seems even the stars of the platform who often share managers and production companies with other stars have difficulty getting in touch with YouTube to resolve issues.
YouTube provides email support with a 1-business day response time to all creators [1], and the bigger channels get their own Partner Managers [2].
When Pewdiepie (person on your [2] link on Silver & Up banner) complains [0] that YouTube isn't communicating enough, most people will agree that problem is at their side.
>Demonetization happens when a video doesn't meet their "advertiser-friendly" policy, but there is an appeal process where you can have a human look at it to determine if the original assessment was wrong [0]. Do you have data to support your claim that their algorithms are "poorly calibrated"?
It happens all the time when content creators are using content under fair use. Jim Sterling goes over demonetisation with ContentID [1] and latest changes [2] in his videos. I don't know if he have used that email support, but it would be fair to assume that he have tried and gave up.
> YouTube provides email support with a 1-business day response time to all creators [1], and the bigger channels get their own Partner Managers [2].
Multiple demonetized channels have stated that they have not received responses via the official support channels. It's all well and good stating a 1-business day response time, but if Youtube doesn't follow through that, where does that leave the content creators?
It's like businesses with support response SLAs that are cleared by the sending of a robo-email from their support system. No actual support has been rendered.
https://www.maxlaumeister.com/blog/google-is-deleting-your-f... has some, but anyone who's been following it knows it's happening beyond that. I am surprised that infinitesoup is apparently unaware of these issues given his account on HN is 591 days old and over it's history has posted about absolutely nothing but YouTube. Indeed an account on Reddit called infinitesoup, possibly unrelated I concede, has wall-to-wall comments on YouTube too. They all read like a superfan or possibly an employee of Google providing support. The usual etiquette on HN is to simply disclose an interest and then argue a point. While it's not against the rules I don't like having to do my own research and finding out the person posting links from Google support is likely a Google employee (the person connected with the Reddit account seems to be a Google employee, maybe this guy isn't).
Even if they are different accounts and this guy isn't a Google employee they haven't presented any other credible evidence for this wonderful support anyway. They have only presented a policy aspiration. Google is not Amazon; Google is notorious for bad customer support. Our prior belief for "will YouTube provide good support" shouldn't be very high given they are part of Google. Therefore it doesn't take many data points in the direction of poor support to confirm that.
There are clear and sometimes good reasons for what Google does, it's a great company with competent employees but let's not drink the Kool-Aid and pretend they have great customer support just because there is a policy document aspiring to have good response times.
Flagged videos aren't removed automatically; a human reviews them first. It would probably be better if it was more automated, because humans make mistakes and machines don't get tired after a long day of reviewing videos.
"YouTube staff review flagged videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and videos that violate our Community Guidelines are removed from YouTube.
...
Flagged videos are not automatically taken down by the flagging system. If a video doesn't violate our guidelines, no amount of flagging will change that, and the video will stay on the site."
> has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network of, a policy that provides for the *termination* in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider's system or network who are *repeat infringers*
https://www.aclu.org/documents/text-digital-millennium-copyr...