[HN Gopher] YouTube: filmmakers presumed guilty until maybe prov...
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YouTube: filmmakers presumed guilty until maybe proven innocent
Author : relwin
Score : 287 points
Date : 2021-10-18 17:21 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (larryjordan.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (larryjordan.com)
| thriftwy wrote:
| Life is long, even when these fraudulent copyright owners are 90
| years old, their grandchildren will still be footing these
| extremelly large, non-bancruptable fradulent copyright claim
| fines.
| thriftwy wrote:
| In fact, Twitch have very sensible approach here: it will mute
| any infringing material in replay.
|
| By taking this hard stance not providing the copyright owners
| with any way to monetize the material, Twitch discourages trolls
| from participating. Only a real content holder who is genuinely
| afraid of losses due to piracy, and is ready to spend resources
| on it despite no returns, will.
| ttctciyf wrote:
| In this version of the tragedy of the commons, the youtubers
| themselves are the resource headed for exhaustion.
|
| > the revised video had 5 new copyright claims even before upload
| processing was complete!
|
| Maybe there's an opportunity for an integrated offering of
| licensed music and lawyers to defend the licensee against bogus
| takedowns?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Those aren't claims, it's automatic Content ID. In this case
| YouTube has every right to prevent music from being uploaded
| and can prevent you from removing the Content ID claim, even
| when you have a license/it's in the public domain, because YT
| isn't abiding by or invoking the DMCA at all. It's like saying
| "guitar tryouts just don't play stairway to heaven" - you can
| forbid it even in the absence of AT&T sending a legal cease &
| desist your way.
| golemotron wrote:
| The fate of youtube has always been to become television.
|
| Countering the Tragedy of the Commons eventually raises the
| cost of creating and engaging with user-generated content
| relative to commercial content.
| rexreed wrote:
| The smartest technologists and developers of our generation go to
| work for companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and
| others, and what we see are these results. Why can't we do better
| for everyone?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Because the corporate interests of Google, Facebook and the
| reat dont align with the interests of small indepedent people
| but large companies like themselves.
| jorams wrote:
| Unfortunately this isn't really a technical problem. Content ID
| exists to appease large organizations that sued YouTube into
| the ground for not doing enough to counter copyright
| infringement.
|
| This claim process takes place before the _legal_ copyright
| claim process. The legal process would require YouTube to take
| the video down immediately, and it would be required to stay
| down for at least two weeks _even if the claim is bogus._ (Or
| YouTube could decide not to follow the process and be held
| liable in case of actual infringement.)
|
| There is no presumed innocence. The DMCA is constantly being
| abused, and the only possible punishment for malicious claims
| is an expensive lawsuit. It wouldn't surprise me at all if half
| of all DMCA takedown requests would be considered fair use in
| court, but the vast majority never get there.
| toolz wrote:
| I feel like this comment was intended to spell out how poorly
| the world is doing, but those companies have moved technology
| forward leaps and bounds. I won't pretend to know enough to
| suggest they're net good for the world or to know everything
| they've done, but I'm also very aware of the progress we've
| seen because of those companies.
|
| Just think about how much money people have saved from DIY
| projects on YouTube, for example or how skills have been
| learned.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| There is no financial incentive to.
| PeterCorless wrote:
| There are HUGE financial incentives to ensuring that creators
| get paid for their work, and that consumers/users get the
| content they pay for, and that a channel can help negotiate
| content rights as intermediaries between creators and
| consumers. The problem is that we have taken stabs at this in
| the past, and they were too narrow-minded or draconian to
| take on. And some of the execs at these huge companies don't
| see the upside of facilitating this new marketplace of
| creation. It is literally a trillion dollar industry. But we
| are throwing really primitive "solutions" at the problem. See
| my post elsewhere in the thread as to what we need in 2021
| and going forward.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I don't disagree there are technically huge incentives to
| ensure everyone is paid what they're rightfully owed.
|
| But currently the problem is that in aggregate, it brings
| more money to rely on an overreaching algorithm (which is
| already built and paid-for) that favours big established
| labels as opposed to small-scale creators; the money they
| would spend on ensuring everyone gets paid fairly by
| building a better system wouldn't be recouped by the
| (relatively small) revenue they'd get from small-scale
| creators being able to participate.
|
| When I mentioned financial incentives, I didn't really mean
| incentives in terms of making _more_ money - as per the
| above I don 't think there is enough money to justify
| improving the current system. What I meant is that there
| should be more enforcement; what the current system does is
| actually committing copyright infringement by
| misattributing the revenue to the wrong creators, and if
| this was punished appropriately it would provide a
| financial incentive to resolve this problem.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| YouTube seems to have three main priorities with their copyright
| system:
|
| 1) Eliminate legal liability and risk of lawsuits. _Technically_
| all they need to do is comply with DMCA requests, but YouTube
| would rather not be sued by a major record company or film
| studio, even if they could win the case.
|
| 2) Become friendly with major content creators (record and film
| labels, television studios). YouTube wants a good working
| relationship with these companies, to ensure that these companies
| post their content on YouTube. YouTube really wants the views
| they get by hosting SNL clips and Beyonce music videos.
|
| 3) Actually help the independent content creators deal with
| copyright claims. This is a very, very distant third.
|
| Because of these priorities, YouTube has decided their best
| course of action is to offload all of the work on copyright
| claims onto the independent content creators, in order to keep
| the big media giants happy. After all, NBC doesn't need YouTube,
| but a solo channel with 50k subscribers absolutely does.
| hogFeast wrote:
| I think point 2 is actually quite important. YouTube used to be
| a source of genuinely innovative content. It is now far more
| corporate and anodyne, and the most popular videos are largely
| big production companies, and part of that is copy-striking.
|
| Ofc, the intention of copy-striking was not to decrease
| competition. But that ended up happening because of the way
| that the system is implemented (it isn't just copy-striking, I
| think reporting violations/automated violation systems have the
| same consequence).
| IshKebab wrote:
| Nonsense. Most of the videos on YouTube are still made by
| individual people. Just because there is now _also_ corporate
| stuff on there doesn 't mean you have to watch it. What do
| you want to do? Ban corporations from using YouTube?
|
| I don't think I'm subscribed to a single corporate channel
| out of about 100 subscriptions.
|
| * 3b1b * Matthias Wandel * Applied Science * Colin Furze *
| Scott Manley * Practical Engineering * Tom Scott * Tantacrul
| * CGP Grey * Forgotten Weapons * StuffMadeHere * John Heisz *
| Clickspring * Internet Historian ...
|
| YouTube is bursting at the seams with quality content made by
| individuals or tiny teams.
| tombert wrote:
| I hate being "that guy", but isn't nearly every private
| corporation's policy "guilty until maybe proven innocent"? If
| Chuck E Cheese's get a report that I an punching children to
| death, they might preemptively disallow me in even if there's no
| evidence supporting that claim. If one of Best Buy's employees
| accused me of stealing Blu-Rays, they might not allow me into the
| store, even without any evidence. If I were a director and there
| was a rumor that my goal was to get Universal sued, they might
| not bring me on as a director.
|
| I'm not saying that this is _should_ be how it is, and you could
| make a strong argument that it shouldn 't be this way, but I
| think it predates YouTube.
| n8ta wrote:
| Chuck E. is not the dominant platform for sharing video online.
| As the internet has replaced the town square people have come
| to expect a higher duty from the dominant internet companies
| than profit motive. The law hasn't kept pace with our
| expectations of these new quasi-public spaces.
| tombert wrote:
| But how exactly do we draw the line of what's acceptable with
| YouTube? Should YouTube be forced to host hardcore porn [1]?
| If not, why not? You could say "well anything that the FCC
| allows", but then that means we'd have to disallow most
| videos that have curse words in them (not to mention it would
| greatly reduce the appeal of YouTube for me, since part of
| why I like it is because it allows stuff that wouldn't be
| allowed on TV), but if you're saying that YouTube should be a
| free-speech zone, then how exactly is porn not protected
| speech?
|
| I'm not claiming I have the answer, but I feel that the vague
| "omg youtube is a platform so it should allow all my
| videos!!!!" argument is extremely reductive, and tends to
| imply that it should just be this total anarchy of a
| platform. If YouTube doesn't regulate their content, it's
| going to be hard to find advertisers, and if they can't find
| advertisers it will be hard to monetize the platform.
|
| [1] Obviously legal stuff, porn that's outright illegal
| should of course not be allowed.
| theevilsharpie wrote:
| An actual town square is a scarce resource (due to being a
| physical piece of real estate) that's usually managed by a
| municipality in a way that ensures fair access.
|
| Online video sites are in no way, shape, or form, a town
| square. They are privately-managed, there is no practical
| scarcity on how many video sites can exist, and if you don't
| like YouTube's policies, you and your viewers can easily go
| elsewhere. Indeed, platforms like BitChute exist in large
| part to host channels that YouTube has banned.
|
| By moving away from YouTube, you'd obviously lose YouTube's
| viewers and advertisers, and that may make your video channel
| infeasible if you're running it for-profit. But them's the
| breaks -- you're not entitled to another company's audience.
| squarefoot wrote:
| What would be the safest place to publish own music, or videos
| with own music, licensed as CC, that is, where copying is allowed
| from start, so that those trolls cannot claim any copyright
| violations? I may be interested in making some tech videos in the
| future, and I'd use exclusively my music, but have no intention
| of seeing it taken down or claimed as someone else's work. No
| problems if using a non mainstream platform would mean 100
| viewers instead of 100.000; I don't plan to make a living with
| that and don't want to feed the Google trolls and their lawyers.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The problem here is copyright duration being insanely long. Works
| from 1926 should not still be under copyright but they are.
| YouTube is just doing the best they can do within the confines of
| our ridiculous system.
|
| If copyright were only 20 years with an application to extend in
| special circumstances (equivalent to patent law), we wouldn't
| waste so much of our economic power devising and enforcing
| systems to uphold our archaic copyright laws.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| "Guilty until proven innocent" is exactly how "DMCA safe harbor"
| is designed.
|
| Basically, YouTube as a content host, would actively, promptly
| and sometimes aggressively, respond to the "potential" copyright
| owner's requests, in exchange of keeping themselves away from
| lawsuit.
|
| This way, they don't need to pre-screen the content upon the
| uploading, because it's up to the copyright owner to find the
| illegal content and report (YouTube still do that in some degree
| with content-ID, though).
|
| There will be false-positives, there will be false claims, but
| they choose to play it safe.
|
| Just to make it clear: this whole system is fucked up, and how
| "aggressive" the host needs to be is a nuance that all parties
| involved will have dramatically different views. I just feel like
| lots of people don't understand the principle of DMCA safe harbor
| concept. It is the consequence of current copyright law; without
| it, user-generated content hosts can't survive the legal trouble
| (or they can, but would need significant more legal resources).
| munk-a wrote:
| That might be how the system worked if YouTube actually
| followed the law to the letter - instead YouTube actually
| preempts most of the DMCA claims by aggressively using Content
| ID to pre-flag content as soon as you attempt to upload it to
| their system. This approach _might_ be better for users as a
| lot of content owners just assume that Content ID will catch
| everything they care about and thus file less post-release
| claims letting content creators mostly pre-vet whether a video
| will cause a flag on their channel buuut - it doesn 't actually
| stop anyone from filing DMCA claims anyways.
|
| I think it's important to distinguish what the law says and
| what is actually going on in the world though - since the
| actual DMCA system is only very occasionally relevant to
| creators (and usually tied to soft claims - like reading out
| copyrighted material or static content - like images).
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| "The law to the letter" is a legal fiction. There's your
| interpretation of what the law is, the content creators'
| interpretation of what the law is, and you can spend millions
| of dollars in legal fees and risk billions in damages to find
| out what the law _actually_ says for your particular case.
| munk-a wrote:
| That is - essentially - what I said right above. What the
| law actually states does still apply in the extreme case -
| and it applies more truly on a lot of other platforms...
| but YouTube has essentially preempted most DMCA claims by
| offering a service that proactively checks for violations -
| a service in no way required by the DMCA.
| slownews45 wrote:
| If you have the resources and the DMCA claim was false there
| are further opportunities to pursue a resolution.
|
| https://www.dmlp.org/threats/crook-v-10-zen-monkeys
|
| for an example
| wmf wrote:
| DMCA lets you file a counter-notification if you're sure that
| you're right (I don't know why nobody ever does this) but
| YouTube Content ID is much worse.
| SpelingBeeChamp wrote:
| Sorry, but it's not as if a Content ID claim is the end of
| the road.
|
| You can appeal a Content ID claim. If your appeal is
| rejected, you can even appeal that -- which forces the
| claimant to either issue a DMCA takedown or concede. During
| the pendency of the dispute process all ad revenue is held in
| escrow for whomever 'wins' in the end.
|
| It's a great system, and I say that a full-time producer of
| content for YouTube.
| Spivak wrote:
| ContentID does the same thing and then falls back to the DMCA
| process if you and the copyright owner can't agree. It's more
| steps I guess but not all that different.
| ognarb wrote:
| Also with a DMCA you can only take a video down, not take the
| ads-money instead. Content-ID creates very bad incentives.
| retrocat wrote:
| Because filing that counter-notice requires you to provide
| personal information, in case the person who filed the
| original DMCA wants to serve you with a legal notice.
|
| From https://www.copyright.gov/512/:
|
| > [...] To be effective, a counter-notice must contain
| substantially the following information:
|
| > (iv) the user's name, address, and telephone number, and a
| statement that the subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of
| Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the
| address is located, or if the subscriber's address is outside
| of the United States, for any judicial district in which the
| service provider may be found, and that the subscriber will
| accept service of process from the person who provided
| notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such
| person.
| mindslight wrote:
| It'd be interesting if someone set up a series LLC that
| would stand in for the original user by assignment, fund
| legal defense as much as the original user is willing to,
| and would just declare insolvency in the event of a bad
| judgement.
| gruez wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil
| mindslight wrote:
| Sure, but the LLC wouldn't need to know the meatspace
| identity of the user. And for the LLC management it would
| be a bona fide arms length business. So the troll would
| be stuck doing discovery on the online account, which if
| things were setup correctly (likely for the situations
| where having to dox yourself is problematic), it wouldn't
| lead back to the user either.
| gruez wrote:
| There's two possible cases:
|
| 1. multiple creators assign their works to one LLC. This
| would probably avoid the piercing the corporate veil
| problem, but it would be a pretty juicy target for
| litigators. If they successfully win the lawsuit, they
| can potentially seize all works that were assigned to it,
| and take them down or resell them. If this happens to a
| video you spent weeks working on, I think I'll be pretty
| pissed.
|
| 2. each video/creator assign their works to one LLC. This
| would avoid the "juicy target" issue described above, but
| you'll have to be super careful to avoid piercing the
| corporate veil .
| mindslight wrote:
| I'm arguing that (2) should be fine. Piercing the veil is
| only a concern if the managers/owners of the overarching
| LLC could be found liable. But this would be a bona fide
| business for them, so why should they? Piercing the veil
| of an individual series to go after the original uploader
| would be the path, but the whole point of this setup is
| for the original uploader to not have have to dox
| themselves to file a counterclaim.
|
| Pooling like (1) might be an interesting approach to
| strengthen things further. You don't need to own a
| copyright to defend against a copyright claim, so the
| work merely needs to be licensed to the LLC series. A
| nontransferrable license to upload a work to a web host
| has little commercial value. In the worst case, a
| successful claimant would get the ability to contact
| webhosts to seize control of other accounts it then owns,
| and the ability to disrupt defense of other claims by
| seizing incoming funding. But given how useless such
| results would be, would it even be worth it for a troll
| to press that far?
|
| You could add additional interested parties into the mix
| by playing the public good angle. Donate to this
| foundation to protect user generated content against
| SLAPPs, etc.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > (I don't know why nobody ever does this)
|
| Even if your use is obviously and unambiguously fair use, the
| legal fees to defend yourself will range at least in the
| $10,000-100,000 range. (And many fair use cases aren't
| actually all that obvious, sadly).
|
| We need something like anti-SLAPP for fair use, where someone
| with an obvious fair use defense gets to have the malicious
| accuser pay their legal fees for them.
| wmf wrote:
| Realistically most of these trolls will not sue you. And in
| the rare case that they do sue you, they'll drop the
| lawsuit if they see you have a real lawyer. It's all scare
| tactics.
| kfprt wrote:
| Sounds like a great business model if you could pay a
| lawyer to keep the trolls at bay.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Exactly. This goes also for legitimate copyright owners
| if there's a good case for fair-use. Content-ID claims
| (or DMCA notices) are free, so they just send them out
| with little review. But they are sure to take a second
| look before committing to a $10k-100k court battle. They
| have much more resources than you, but their resources
| are still limited and better spent on cases that are
| clear cut, or on sending more DMCA notices.
| 101008 wrote:
| Based on recent experience, Amazon KDP is similar. However, you
| can talk to somebody on Amazon KDP. It may take a while but
| after a few bussiness day someone will reply your emails.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| >"Guilty until proven innocent" is exactly how "DMCA safe
| harbor" is designed.
|
| Google doesn't do DMCA: Under DMCA the alleged copyright owner
| whose alleged rights were allegedly violated has to file a
| notice and then the alleged infringer gets to file a counter
| notice. Then the alleged owner can either sue the alleged
| infringer or fuck off. The hoster - google here - would avoid
| liability from either direction as long as they followed the
| procedure, and processed valid notices _and_ counter-notices in
| a timely fashion.
|
| DMCA notices and the takedown process are NOT "guilty until
| proven innocent", they are "guilty until the claim of
| innocence", which is a big distinction.
|
| Google is actually in violation of the DMCA when they let
| alleged copyright owners decide on appeals and issue "copyright
| strikes" as the DMCA mandates they have to stay neutral and
| follow the notice/counter-notice procedure. What they do here
| is editorial oversight on behalf of the alleged copyright owner
| and against the alleged infringer, which goes against the DMCA
| and probably Section 230.
|
| Google doesn't care that they are in violation, because they
| are TooBigToGetSued by the content creators they host (well,
| most of them), but they are in danger of getting sued by the
| RIAA/MPAA and big media, and know chances are good big media
| would find a jury that makes the wrong decision in a lawsuit.
|
| They also want big media to put their stuff (from music videos
| to movie trailers) on their platform, so they play extra nice
| with them, even gave them their quasi-universal internet-age
| DRM (widevine) they craved so much, along with ContentId.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _" Guilty until proven innocent" is exactly how "DMCA safe
| harbor" is designed._
|
| No, it's not. Google has gone so far above and beyond the
| DMCA's requirements here that it's hard to even see the DMCA at
| play at all.
|
| If they were only following the DMCA rules, the video uploader
| would have the opportunity to send a counter-claim to Google,
| saying that they don't believe the content is infringing.
| Google then would put the video back up, without taking on any
| liability. If the original DMCA claimant still believes there's
| infringement going on, then their only recourse is to file a
| lawsuit against the uploader (not against Google, as Google has
| done their duty under the safe harbor provisions).
|
| But instead, Google has decided to bend over backwards and
| create this Draconian mess that prioritizes the will of the big
| copyright holding cartels.
| jasode wrote:
| _> , then their only recourse is to file a lawsuit against
| the uploader (not against Google, as Google has done their
| duty under the safe harbor provisions)._
|
| Your assessment is incorrect for the legal options a DMCA
| claimant will use and doesn't match how previous legal
| proceedings actually played out.
|
| E.g. Viacom still filed a lawsuit against Google because they
| _disputed that 'safe harbor'_ applied Youtube.[1]
|
| Google did settle with Viacom (helped by offering ContentID
| as a tool) but they didn't win any definitive court ruling on
| "safe harbor" that makes Google lawsuit-proof in the future.
|
| [1] Example articles from 1st page of results: https://www.go
| ogle.com/search?q=viacom+lawsuit+google+%22saf...
|
| https://www.finnegan.com/en/insights/blogs/incontestable/goo.
| ...
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/03/viacom-and-
| googl...
| echelon wrote:
| Google decided to cozy up to the music and film industries to
| support Google Play Services. They are forced to bend to
| their will for their contract.
|
| If YouTube was divorced from Google, YouTube would be
| friendlier to creators.
|
| Counter argument: some of the top performing content on
| YouTube is made by the establishment. But then again, Google
| created this status quo by using their algorithm to promote
| content that satisfies their partners.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > Counter argument: some of the top performing content on
| YouTube is made by the establishment. But then again,
| Google created this status quo by using their algorithm to
| promote content that satisfies their partners.
|
| Counter-anecdote: None of my recommended content on YouTube
| is from established media companies. YouTube's profiling of
| my account definitely puts me squarely in the "Tom Scott
| and Technology Connections" demographic - but even so on
| the times when I've let YouTube's auto-play do its thing
| I've never been steered towards mainstream media from
| Viacom and the like (unless you count the occasional clip
| from a decades-old Discovery Channel docu or unauthorized
| BBC Top Gear upload)
|
| -----------
|
| What weirds me out about "normal-persons' YouTube" that I
| see when borrowing non-tech-sector friends' devices is
| there's a lot of top 40 that's right there - I wonder if
| that's what you're seeing?
| vkou wrote:
| You are forgetting that YouTube was nearly got sued out of
| existence, until it bent over backwards to please the
| publishers.
|
| Your theory that it went beyond the requirements of the
| settlement with Viacom is interesting, but unless you have
| insider information as to the terms of it, it is at best,
| speculative.
|
| Would you stake billions of dollars on the legal theory
| that if YouTube followed the DMCA to the letter of the law,
| publishers would not be able to successfully sue them?
| paxys wrote:
| > If YouTube was divorced from Google, YouTube would be
| friendlier to creators.
|
| If YouTube was divorced from Google it would have ceased
| existing a decade ago.
| autoexec wrote:
| > No, it's not. Google has gone so far above and beyond the
| DMCA's requirements here
|
| Media companies insist that Google do more and more and they
| are willing to drag google into court and will lobby congress
| to force google and (everyone else) bow to their whims.
|
| Extorting 14 year old kids and broke college students for
| settlement money is nice and everything, but Google has very
| deep pockets and the the media cartels would love to get
| their hands on Google's money just like they want to take
| billions from ISPs
|
| I do blame google for going along with it when they have the
| clout and resources to fight them, but the real issue is our
| horribly broken copyright system
| phoneperson wrote:
| The US took down kickasstorrents and arrested its founder in
| Poland despite them following the DMCA. You have to suck up
| the media companies to be allowed to host a service these
| days.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| The DMCA is complicated, but you may not qualify as a safe
| harbor if you have actual knowledge of infringing content
| or if you're aware of facts or circumstances from which
| infringing activity is apparent. Running a website called
| "Kickasstorrents" may not qualify.
|
| But in the realpolitik sense, I agree. Foreign company,
| angry US business interests, etc. I doubt this was argued
| out reasonably in a court beforehand.
| xmprt wrote:
| Torrents aren't necessarily illegal so I'm not sure why
| running a website called "kickasstorrents" is relevant.
|
| I've seen a lot of software legally distributed using
| torrents where even the software creators link to
| torrents that you can use.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Torrents aren 't necessarily illegal so I'm not sure
| why running a website called "kickasstorrents" is
| relevant._
|
| Because we all know that website and what torrents it
| had. That "torrents aren't necessarily illegal" are
| neither here, nor there. Their torrents were illegal.
|
| (Not that I'm against it, but well, it's not like they're
| fooling anyone with the "torrents aren't necessarily
| illegal" defense for their particular case. That wasn't
| some FOSS/PD software torrent site, and that wasn't why
| people visited it, or why it was run...).
| markdown wrote:
| > Their torrents were illegal.
|
| Illegal in the US.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _Their torrents were illegal._
|
| Was that true in the countries where they had a local
| presence?
| phoneperson wrote:
| I did download an Ubuntu ISO from there more than a
| decade ago, and some films that I presume were in the
| public domain due to their age.
| monocasa wrote:
| Interestingly, copyright for video is very complicated,
| and the remastering process necessary to convert from
| film stock to digital generally has enough creative input
| legally to be considered valid for copyright protection.
| I don't think it's currently possible for a digital film
| to be aged out of copyright.
| judge2020 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y.
| ... (from
| https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/technology/24google.html):
|
| > Viacom said it was not seeking damages for any actions
| since Google put in its filtering system, known as content
| ID, in early 2008.
|
| Obviously other media giants weren't going to let Viacom be
| the only one with access to this profit machine, so now
| pretty much all global media giants have access to Content
| ID.
| didibus wrote:
| This seems very relevant, Googled settled, and probably
| that involved the preemptive use of content ID.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jrockway wrote:
| I am guessing that YouTube isn't the real problem here. If
| everyone self-hosted their videos, the first thing a media
| company would do is hire a bunch of programmers to crawl the
| internet, download the videos (probably in a buggy way costing
| you megabucks in transfer fees), scan the audio against my music
| library, and auto-send DMCA takedowns to the ISP that owns the IP
| address. If it was successful, I'd probably spin it off into its
| own company, and charge others to use it. Congratulations, you
| have Content ID! And Google already did this.
|
| I think that moving off YouTube would be the same story as other
| filesharing systems. Napster worked for a few years until the
| lawyers found out about it. Then (and my memory is foggy here)
| Limewire/Kazaa/etc. worked for a few years until the lawyers
| found out about it. Then public Bittorrent trackers worked for a
| few years until the lawyers found out about it. Then private
| Bittorrent trackers worked for a few years until someone
| accidentally invited the lawyers. That's exactly what would
| happen if everyone started hosting video files on their personal
| domains. It would work for a few years until the lawyers found
| out about it. (Meanwhile... the lawyers still haven't found out
| about Usenet, which indeed still exists and is a veritable haven
| of piracy.)
|
| Anyway, the problem is copyright law. Society would probably not
| implode if you said "movies and music are no longer
| copyrightable", and these probably would all go away overnight.
| What you'd see instead would be really competitive streaming
| services, and probably a lot of product placement in music and
| movies. (Except, you already see these things. This comment was
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| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Meanwhile... the lawyers still haven't found out about
| Usenet, which indeed still exists and is a veritable haven of
| piracy.
|
| They have it on their radar, but compared to torrents Usenet is
| so cumbersome to use it's definitely not a large enough market
| to waste resources on.
| jrockway wrote:
| Very good. I'm looking forward to having to switch back to
| Gopher at some point to evade the lawyers for another couple
| years.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| ISPs are only required to forward the DMCA notice to you
| (unless they suck and just want to drop you). The only reason
| the DMCA notices took down Napster et al. is because the
| requests are valid.
|
| You could build Content ID for the real internet but it would
| only as much as you can intimidate each individual creator/site
| operator. They are free to at least decide to defend themselves
| if they wanted to. Under the Youtube ContentID that really
| isn't an option. Plus non-US creators could care a lot less
| since enforcing DMCA/copyright internationally is going to be
| even more costly.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Absent a VPN, ISPs have teamed up (as in, are often ran by
| the same media giants sending the request) to give customers
| a 3/6-strike policy for DMCA takedowns. So people self-
| hosting could eventually mean no internet for them (at least,
| for as long as the internet isn't considered a utility).
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130227/14231422143/comca.
| ..
| jrockway wrote:
| It depends on what the ISP wants to do, right? They could
| forward the request along, or they could say "whoaaaa we
| don't want this customer" and turn you off with no appeal
| process. They have an obligation to forward the notice to the
| end user, but the end user doesn't have the right to have
| Internet access while the dispute process proceeds. That is a
| legal program, and it is certainly worth considering whether
| or not business Internet should be a "right" or not.
|
| (And I guess that as the Internet market heats up and
| competitors become available, a ToS like "we won't turn you
| off just because you get a DMCA notice" could be quite
| appealing.)
| bmitc wrote:
| It's really scary what we've built on the Internet, and it's even
| scarier that these corporations are able to go unchecked. Parts
| of life are already becoming miserable (e.g., automated "customer
| support"), and it's just going to keep getting worse, all at the
| alter of growth and capitalism.
|
| I absolutely hate the argument used that scale prevents them to
| do anything about it, as if crimes en masse are suddenly okay.
| It's _their_ problem, not ours, that they've built systems that
| are, for all intents and purposes, uncontrollable. These
| corporations act like they are the victim in these cases of abuse
| of their platform.
| president wrote:
| I said this a many years ago and was downvoted heavily for it.
| If you think about what the Internet is - it's a technology
| that enables things to be done at hyper-scale. And this applies
| to all the good things in the world but also the bad including
| crime, terrorism, money laundering, propaganda, corporate
| abuse, etc.
| rexreed wrote:
| I would venture that what we call capitalism these days isn't
| truly the capitalism of old. Rather, we're in some dystopian
| Corporatism future (corporatism vs capitalism) that aims to
| reduce choice, lock users in, and then treat those users as
| captive customers. It's no longer about providing a better or
| competitive product / service, but rather finding more ways to
| lock in users and eliminate choice. An acquisition by a FAANG
| is often a means to reduce choice instead of increase quality
| of a product or service.
| tehjoker wrote:
| For over a hundred years people have described the tendency
| of a capitalist enterprise to concentrate wealth and power.
| There is no fine distinction between small diverse
| competitive capitalism and oligopoly, they are different
| stages of the life cycle.
|
| This is because small diverse enterprises proliferate at
| first in the growth stage and then winners start to emerge.
| When a crisis hits, the larger players snap up the bankrupt
| smaller players at bargain prices and get their best
| employees too. Over a series of crises, the market
| consolidates into oligopoly. Once the national market is
| nearly consumed, the remaining players look abroad to expand
| markets. There is nothing controversial about this, it is
| taught in business school.
|
| https://hbr.org/2002/12/the-consolidation-curve
|
| This of course assumes a life cycle that starts domestically.
| Many ventures instead start abroad witnessing an opportunity
| to exploit cheap labor, lax regulations, or a unique natural
| resource. The western governments then assist the western
| companies in securing the opportunity, usually through
| gangster tactics. The resources are then extracted from the
| country, processed by the company into higher value goods,
| and resold to the originating country.
| stormbrew wrote:
| To add to this, the accumulation of wealth and power is
| literally written into the very concept of capitalism.
| That's the capital the name refers to. Even Adam Smith
| wrote about ways to mitigate it, so it's always been there.
| bmitc wrote:
| I agree about today's corporatism environment, with the
| elaboration of the idea that we've basically gotten into a
| privatized or corporate based socialist/communist regime vs a
| government controlled one. The U.S. has questionably railed
| against socialism and communism for over a century and still
| does, and yet, it's allowed it to take over from the
| corporation and private sector, which is arguably much, much
| worse. Governments, for the most part, at least have some
| incentives to keep people's interests in mind.
|
| However, I think this sort of corporatism is a natural
| evolution of capitalism, because capitalism has no other
| incentives outside of profit and growth.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _The U.S. has questionably railed against socialism and
| communism for over a century and still does, and yet, it 's
| allowed it to take over from the corporation and private
| sector_
|
| Absolutely zero corporations have done anything like
| letting their workers own the means of production or
| implementing workplace democracy.
| rexreed wrote:
| Interesting. Can you detail more about what you mean by
| privatized / corporate socialism?
| paulpauper wrote:
| bring back pre-2014/2013 YouTube, back when people could unload
| content without as much fear of arbitrary take-downs or content
| violations warnings.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| The automated beast that is Google strikes again.
|
| Why do business at all with robots? If you can't get someone on
| the phone, don't do business with that company.
| einrealist wrote:
| There should be a certificate system for copyrighted stuff.
| Buying rights to music? You'll get a certificate along with the
| piece from the licensor. Upload the license(s) along with the
| video and the Content ID system could automatically do the check.
| jeffybefffy519 wrote:
| This is a brilliant idea
| javajosh wrote:
| The solution is simple: YouTube will become a media licensing
| marketplace! That way it knows for certain if you've broken the
| rules.
|
| Plus, it's a nice little side biz, to have _de facto_ monopoly
| marketplace, enforced by the fear of BS infringement claims like
| these. It 's a monopoly that's very hard to attack in court,
| because hey you're free to license content anyway you like!
| Litigation will take decades, and the customers can't afford
| litigation anyway, so let's do it!
| n8ta wrote:
| I had this exact thought. It's obviously impossible for youtube
| to verify music was licensed since that licensing happens off
| platform. Clearly the next step is for them to vertically
| integrate and handle the licensing themselves.
| fencepost wrote:
| I do wonder if there's room for going after the people submitting
| false claims based on their libelous written claim to
| Google/YouTube that you're using unlicensed music. There's
| clearly a money trail to follow for identification.
| winternett wrote:
| A lot of the time musicians sign themselves up to licensing
| services that create sub-agreements and some that don't even
| let the creators know that they have been licensed out to
| others. Then these artists stumble across their work in a
| project they didn't know about and report it out of confusion.
|
| There are also some gutless people out there who file the
| copyright claims for other negative purposes.
|
| Copyright has always been a huge mess though, and YouTube's
| method of making everyone compete for visibility certainly
| doesn't help it all.
|
| I only sign licensing agreements directly with the film makers
| I work with, and refuse to use 3rd party sites to handle my
| licensing in order to properly protect my work use rights
| though. The Internet can be a scary place to share personal
| work at times.
| anilakar wrote:
| > The music was originally purchased under the title of Irish
| Reel from SmartSound. The identical track for which copyright is
| being claimed has been re-named Kilfenora Reels.
|
| Another huge issue that plagues ContentID is sample-based music.
| There is a huge number of pseudo-artists who license widely used
| sample packs, mash together songs with practically zero creative
| effort and then submit those songs to companies that register
| their clients' music to ContentID databases. When someone else
| uploads a song with the same (legally licensed!) samples in their
| composition to Youtube, it gets monetized with royalties going to
| the wrong person.
| noasaservice wrote:
| Or what Google could do is auto-identify music in videos (they do
| this), and then set up automated monthly payments to the
| appropriate ASCAP or similar licensing body for statutory
| payments.
|
| We already have statutory public performance prices. And we
| started to adhere to them, the creators could get their money,
| and the creators could further create content. (You know, like a
| content Ponzi scheme.)
| hateful wrote:
| Right? You upload and it says "this will cost $n per month to
| host it and you'll be charged starting next month via one of a
| few licensees you can select OR you can put in an existing
| license claim." Maybe each license can come with a UniqueId
| that you can fill in and it checks with an authority
| automatically.
| noasaservice wrote:
| Having done ASCAP fee schedules, the fees would be based on
| the amount of plays you've done. And you can pay per month,
| quarter, or estimated listeners in your area (for things like
| radio and broadcast).
|
| This is *simple*, and stays completely above ground with
| respect to copyright and mechanical reproductions. And it
| also allows the creators remixing content to ALSO make money.
|
| The hardest part is the ContentID that google already has. So
| it'd be keeping track of copyright owners, and paying.
|
| Sure, non-monetized videos would have to pay to keep them up.
| That could be a bummer... But it could be a definite choice
| to do. Monetized videos could just be paid directly out of
| the monetization bucket.
| withinboredom wrote:
| And get this, you can host our ads in your product and select
| where they'll be played. Any revenue generated from our ads
| will be passed on to you, less our commission!
| inetsee wrote:
| Or Google could go to some effort to identify the individuals
| who are making a large number of false takedown claims, and
| block them from making claims?
| teddyh wrote:
| Jim Sterling has an... interesting... solution to this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYinPJTxBNU#t=24s
| [deleted]
| onemoresoop wrote:
| They should charge litigators a fee that is non refundable for
| cases without merit. Problem solved.
| jasode wrote:
| _> From now on I will stay 100% with Vimeo but, as we know, they
| have a fraction of the viewership of You Tube - primarily because
| so few people know they even exist._
|
| Websurfer awareness is not the primary reason Vimeo has less
| viewership.
|
| The cause & effect _before_ the buildup of awareness is the
| _incentives that prevent_ content creators to upload videos to
| Vimeo in the first place:
|
| - platform membership fees: Youtube is $0 to upload and host,
| Vimeo used to be $240 and now has some new pricing plans[1] with
| a low-use free tier (too limited for high-res 4k uploads)
|
| - no advertising partners : Youtube enables monetization without
| content creators asking audiences to pay for subscriptions. This
| financial model covers a wide variety of videos _especially for
| unknown creators_.
|
| The financial model of Vimeo is fine but its inherent costs will
| keep it smaller than Youtube because both the uploaders and the
| viewers don't want to pay.
|
| [1] https://vimeo.com/upgrade
| snek_case wrote:
| Is there any competing service that has a model similar to
| YouTube? I know there's Facebook video, but AFAIK you need a
| Facebook account to view the videos, which stops a lot of
| traffic and makes the platform not searchable from Google.
| munk-a wrote:
| Facebook also publishes famously misleading engagement
| metrics to producers. It's lead to a lot of business issues
| where content creators have gone too heavy into the platform
| and ended up running out of revenue.
| Ir0nMan wrote:
| >Is there any competing service that has a model similar to
| YouTube?
|
| No.
| smaryjerry wrote:
| Rumble is making some big waves right now, actually paying
| uploaders for ads run on their videos and such. It's still a
| small fraction of YouTube in terms of viewership though.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I don't know if they still do, but Vimeo actively rejected lots
| of content that they felt didn't fit the goal of their
| platform. IMO If it wasn't basically art, they didn't want it.
| Most of the stuff I watch on Youtube wouldn't be allowed there.
|
| Under that direction, of course they'd have fewer content
| creators and viewers, and they obviously wanted it that way.
| thrashh wrote:
| It's not only that. Vimeo explicitly markets itself for a more
| niche market and has since the early days of video streaming.
|
| I don't think they ever wanted to be YouTube. Sometimes carving
| out a niche IS the business goal.
| Andrex wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| If you're an actual filmmaker making films (and not just a
| content creator) you're more likely to favor Vimeo over
| YouTube, but you probably care more about iTunes/Google
| Play/Amazon/Netflix/etc.
| tombert wrote:
| Doesn't Vimeo also license their platform out for other
| private streaming services? I thought I read that the
| Criterion Channel, for example, was hosted on Vimeo. I
| don't really think that YouTube is designed for that.
| stefan_ wrote:
| The biggest of all being that _Vimeo has essentially no
| discovery system_?
|
| To a viewer, Vimeo is just a crude way to host a video.
| amelius wrote:
| As a viewer I want my discovery algorithm decoupled from who
| hosts my videos.
| dleslie wrote:
| None of that pricing would seem all that unreasonable of
| Youtube weren't operated as a loss leader.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Any source to back that up? A quick Google only got me their
| revenue, which is a cool 20 billion. Though their costs are
| undoubtedly high, I'd guess they're making a nice profit.
| PeterCorless wrote:
| The problem with all of this is that there is no standard method
| to describe, assert, and validate digital rights as a technical
| grammar that is 1) computer parsable and 2) human interpretable.
|
| A long while ago, while back at Cisco, I suggested just such a
| grammar, called the Digital Rights Framework. It would be an
| inventory list embedded as data within a file, or an associated
| metadata file, that would clearly say "This is a unique name for
| a digital property with associated rights. This is my
| relationship towards the creator. These are the rights the
| creator gave me, or where I got a right from some authorized
| reseller of this digital property."
|
| Basically, we needed an industry standard for this kind of thing
| in the 1990s. Sadly, me and 10,000 of my closest friends got laid
| off back then. So all the work we were doing was scrapped (aside
| from getting a few patents around it). But the need for this sort
| of rights management and negotiation system has never lessened.
|
| Plus, it can't just be something that is done for one tech giant,
| and each tech giant does it differently. This needs to be a
| grammar as open as IETF standards, or W3C standards. Something
| that is extensible and customizable.
|
| Because then you'd be able to shove a list of your digital rights
| statements right in the face of someone who said you were
| violating copyright and tell them to shove it.
|
| Now, how you store and forward these rights is also up for
| debate. Do these need to be portable? Is this stored in a
| "wallet?" Or do these need to be accessible, and thus stored in a
| highly available or strongly consistent database?
|
| This is basically the nightmare I and others saw back in the
| 1990s that we simply never, as a collective tech industry, ever
| really addressed.
|
| It is literally a billion-dollar business for a trillion dollars
| of annual revenue if someone can figure out how to standardize
| this and make it simple and readily implementable.
| imaginationra wrote:
| As an indie film/animation/game/music studio the only reason we
| see for still using youtube is for their free 4k video
| hosting/streaming. If you look around at the alternatives(Vimeo
| etc) it gets really expensive to host 4k video given the massive
| bandwidth.
|
| Youtube's overzealous content ID system should push studios etc
| to create their own original music. We have several original
| feature films on youtube with all original soundtracks and have
| no issues with flagging etc as none of our music has been sold to
| music licensors etc.
|
| Youtube's content ID system even goes after sound effect
| libraries- we had an issue in 2012 where our original animated
| feature film was flagged because of a wind sound effect that was
| 5 seconds long. It was an original sound that somehow matched a
| licensed wind sound. We disputed the wind ^_^ and the
| flagging/flogging was dropped.
|
| It might a drag to hear for studios not wanting to do the extra
| work but I think creating/hiring people to create all original
| material is the way to avoid such things on youtube. We think its
| better for culture as well.
| lifeplusplus wrote:
| upload to cdn?
| imaginationra wrote:
| Which one would you recommend to host 2 hour long 4k videos?
| The videos themselves average around 40gb. I guess the Vimeo
| plan we would need is not so expensive $50/month. Do you know
| of a site that compares cdn hosting fees per gb etc?
| winternett wrote:
| As a music producer myself who makes music for film, I haven't
| had too many problems with use of my music in the work I do
| despite being distributed on all the usual major platforms. This
| is usually because content ID on YouTube gives credits and
| royalties to the original music creators, and most of my
| (remixed) uploads are not monetized once I publish them on YT. My
| distributer handles royalties for my all original music and pays
| me based on streams. I also make more money off spotify than
| YouTube even though I've been on YouTube for a lot longer than on
| Spotify... Overall though, the best comes from licensing my music
| in films outside of Internet platforms.
|
| I gave up caring long ago about gaining money from views, my most
| profitable upload was in 2015 when I filmed my parrot falling off
| my kitchen counter... That video likely succeeded because it
| wasn't something that would provide me residual success that
| overshadowed YouTube's normal (controlled) revenue pipelines.
|
| I do however mysteriously get my own music blocked frequently on
| uploads to TikTok, and there is only complete and demoralizing
| frustration in trying to report the issue, because they don't
| care about small creators like me because we don't make them
| enough money probably.... TikTok and many social platforms keep
| support only as an afterthought, and finding the right place to
| get problems solved on most platforms is damn near impossible.
|
| The social media creator economy is dismal and highly competitive
| for musicians and film makers right now. One of the biggest
| copyright issues is people who completely hijack and fake
| "original content" as their own in order to get views in order to
| profit or sell popular accounts to influencers later.
|
| I'd recommend primarily pursuing contracts with Amazon Prime or
| Netflix for independent films, rather than trying to battle
| YouTube because there is simply too much content ID activity on
| YouTube that is out of control, whereas on the alternate
| streaming services, they're geared more towards movies than to
| managing creator communities.
|
| If you are a film maker who needs music for a film project,
| contact music makers directly (producers that don't use samples
| in the work you need) in order to generate new, original, and
| exclusive music that they won't license or release anywhere else
| perhaps, make them sign a contract too... That might help in the
| future...?
| mysterydip wrote:
| Not to take away from a very insightful comment, but can you
| share a link to the parrot video?
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| The internet in one comment, ladies and gentlemen.
| winternett wrote:
| I don't want to turn this into a self-promo fest, but if you
| look up "parrot falls off counter", that may, or perhaps may
| not be the video I cited at the top. lol.
| jasode wrote:
| _> I'd recommend primarily pursuing contracts with Amazon Prime
| or Netflix for independent films, rather than trying to battle
| YouTube _
|
| I understand you're trying to give advice but for this
| particular thread's article, his videos are not the type of
| content for Amazon Prime nor Netflix.
|
| See: https://www.youtube.com/user/FlemingYachts/videos
| winternett wrote:
| That content is very well done, visually stimulating, and
| possibly could be edited into a documentary-style full-length
| video, or the content could be leveraged into something
| entirely different...
|
| Wow, really great shots in there and on the web site. I
| recommend updating the youtube channel description with more
| info about the company.
|
| Possibilities are limitless with OC these days, the main
| question is whether or not how it's leveraged will be
| interesting enough to others and/or successful within each
| possible format.
|
| Think about how Anthony Bourdain turned the normally "boring"
| world of being a chef into a captivating documentary series
| that created "foodie" culture and ultimately CNN picked up...
| for starters... ;)
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Can I ask how you got into being paid for producing music? I
| produce music, and what I have released is on Spotify, but it
| makes me a tiny fraction of what I spend in time and actual
| money to produce it. I don't think it's a problem of the music
| being good, at least I have plenty of people tell me they like
| it (even before knowing it's a song I wrote), and I do think
| some of the music would be appropriate for films or games, but
| I don't even know where to start if I wanted to make more than
| a pittance.
| winternett wrote:
| I started editing and producing video content of my own
| first... It's very cool being able to make a tune from
| scratch and then put visuals I made/picked on top of them.
|
| I regularly share my edit work on film communities and on
| social media sites like Stage32 and among my network of
| industry friends in the film industry. When they come across
| things that strike a pulse in their current projects they
| usually get in touch and ask me to send them a free copy...
|
| If they ask for custom/specialized music for their projects
| then that usually cost a little bit. Most of my work is
| towards building a future of work in the industry, and
| towards building a diverse catalogue of music, while still
| staying true to what I like most. :)
|
| I recommend avoiding the online licensing sites, they really
| don't do anything but de-value the potential for proper
| payment on your work, and most of the time they file you in a
| back room.
|
| Ultimately directors and producers pick music they like, and
| whatever fits the mood in their opinion, releasing music
| effectively and properly and building a following outside of
| looking for work helps to increase new licensing potential in
| film work.
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