[HN Gopher] Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its n...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and its not clear
       YouTube can stop it
        
       Author : tombot
       Score  : 225 points
       Date   : 2024-12-27 13:25 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
        
       | 101008 wrote:
       | The system is broken and I can't see a way to fix it. Maybe pay
       | to send a takedown notice?
        
         | pavel_lishin wrote:
         | I think a sufficiently large company would still pay - it'd
         | likely be a drop in the bucket compared to hiring a legal team.
         | (A troll like the one in the article? Still, depends on the
         | price.)
         | 
         | I think it should switch to the strike system that YouTube, at
         | least, favors: if you issue three fraudulent DMCA notices, you
         | lose the ability to do so again in the future.
        
           | rcarmo wrote:
           | ...until you spoof a new e-mail address. That won't scale
           | well.
        
             | okanat wrote:
             | The DMCA takedown form can also request identity
             | confirmation.
        
             | pavel_lishin wrote:
             | Require registered law firms to file these.
             | 
             | Yes, it'll cost money. But these fraudulent claims cost
             | money, too.
        
           | pablok2 wrote:
           | Look at Nintendo, they're creating opportunities even when
           | they try to stop anyone from using their things.
        
           | IgorPartola wrote:
           | Not a lawyer but isn't it your rights to protect your
           | copyright? As in, if you file fraudulent notices, YT removes
           | you ability to file more, then you have a legitimate notice
           | to file, now you presumably can sue YT for denying you the
           | right to defend your copyright.
        
             | WesolyKubeczek wrote:
             | Tough shit, you shouldn't have sent the three fraudulent
             | ones then. It's all in the terms of service you have agreed
             | to.
        
               | onionisafruit wrote:
               | Youtube would probably be violating dmca safe harbor if
               | they required claimants to agree to their terms of
               | service.
        
               | IgorPartola wrote:
               | I mean I don't disagree with you as a person. I am saying
               | that YT might be hesitant to take this stance because the
               | legal system might not share this sentiment. That's for
               | their lawyers to figure out.
        
             | pavel_lishin wrote:
             | > _isn't it your rights to protect your copyright?_
             | 
             | Sure. But you don't have the right to harass people who
             | _haven 't_ done so. I'm obviously not a lawyer, but I would
             | imagine that _at some point_ , vexatious litigation
             | protections ought to kick in.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | And who decides a claim was fraudulent? Historically, the
           | fraudulent claims have gotten away with it while the target
           | has at least had to remove the video or at worst had their
           | accounts banned. Yet, nothing happened to the fraudster.
        
         | gorby91 wrote:
         | For larger and more litigious companies like Nintendo one would
         | think YouTube wouldn't continue to accept takedown requests
         | from random unverified users
        
           | LegionMammal978 wrote:
           | The problem with that is, the law absolutely demands that the
           | platform comply with any valid takedown notice, so YouTube
           | isn't going to risk having any false negatives (due to
           | internal miscommunications on Nintendo's side, etc.). It's
           | made the responsibility of the uploader to challenge it with
           | a counter-notice, but YouTube makes the process for those far
           | more difficult than what the law says. (YouTube opens itself
           | up to liability if it doesn't put the video back up upon
           | receiving a counter-notice, but it's not like the uploader
           | would be able to sue YouTube for much of anything.)
        
             | FireBeyond wrote:
             | In this case, the notice wasn't even quoting the right
             | section of law! Is it still considered a valid takedown
             | notice, then?
        
         | ghaff wrote:
         | The problem with any loser-pays or adjacent system is that you
         | inherently favor anyone with deep pockets even more than the
         | system does today.
        
           | gruez wrote:
           | It's "fake" lawyers, so I doubt they have deep pockets.
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | In this particular case but you make it hard for the fake
             | "little people" to pursue claims and you make it hard for
             | the real "little people" to do so as well while not really
             | inconviencing large corporations at all.
        
         | lupusreal wrote:
         | 10 year prison sentence for anybody sending fraudulent
         | takedowns, including all lawyers involved.
        
           | undersuit wrote:
           | How do I prove it's fraudulent? Hire a lawyer?
        
             | lupusreal wrote:
             | Crimes are prosecuted by the government.
        
           | Workaccount2 wrote:
           | This is great until a small time artist gets put on trial
           | facing 10 years for art used by megacorp, that is originally
           | theirs but hard to prove it.
        
             | oneeyedpigeon wrote:
             | In this scenario, has megacorp proved the art is theirs?
             | Because, if so, how, and if not, then surely the original
             | claim isn't unambiguously fraudulent?
        
         | mirekrusin wrote:
         | This thing should be based on some cryptographic proof/claim,
         | it's really not that difficult to setup. More problematic part
         | is to agree that everybody should be using "this" method, not
         | "that" method.
        
         | BlackFly wrote:
         | FRAND registry of copyrighted works. The registry would be
         | provably connected to the creator, the royalty rate would be
         | published ahead of time based on use. Infringement could be
         | seen as accidental at first instance and royalty rates charged
         | after discovery. Copyrighted work not registered? Then you are
         | free to attempt your own single distributor network without
         | legal protection, you can always register it some time after
         | you fail. Charge the creator the royalty rate (or some
         | fraction) they define in taxes to the registry so they don't
         | set ridiculously high rates. Could also charge maintenance fees
         | to automatically lower the rates that are so high that nobody
         | wants to distribute at that price, heck the entire copyright
         | limit could just be replaced with some compounding increase in
         | maintenance fees over time. If the work is really successful
         | they may maintain it longer, but unsuccessful works might just
         | become moneypits very quickly.
         | 
         | In this case, the identity of the legal department would be
         | directly connected to the infringing content found in the video
         | which YouTube would have access to to verify. It also wouldn't
         | be a takedown but a royalty demand or they could have
         | registered "Let's play" as not requiring royalties. In
         | principle though, YouTube or even the creator could just do all
         | of this upfront.
         | 
         | That's my idea, in the vein of, "We have the technology to do
         | this better."
        
           | imglorp wrote:
           | DMCA is working exactly as intended: the asymmetry is the
           | house advantage, keeping IP holders in the green and
           | consumers in fear of their power. Any innocent casualties who
           | were benefiting culture and society are acceptable losses.
           | It's not going to change as long as they keep buying
           | politicians.
        
         | helpfulclippy wrote:
         | Fraudulent claims -- those in which the filer knew or should
         | have known that they did not hold any copyright being infringed
         | upon nor were they duly authorized to act on behalf of another
         | party whose copyright was being infringed upon -- should be
         | treated as such, with exposure to civil and criminal penalties
         | for the individuals involved as well as their employer.
         | 
         | Platforms should only accept takedown requests through channels
         | in which a person has credibly identified themselves so that
         | they can be held accountable in this way.
        
         | stackskipton wrote:
         | No, just enforce the DMCA. Youtube has setup this fake DMCA
         | system where they are acting like they enforcing DMCA but not
         | actually.
         | 
         | DMCA has protection for creators. You can say "Copyright holder
         | is wrong, put my content back up and I'll see them in court."
         | and "They did this maliciously, I'll see them in court."
         | 
         | However, YouTube fake DMCA system is using the provision of "We
         | don't have to host any content we don't want to." so creators
         | are stuck dealing with corporate bureaucracy. Personally, I
         | think YouTube should lose DMCA protection if they want to run
         | this side system.
        
           | mdasen wrote:
           | Is YouTube playing a bit loose with the DMCA's requirements
           | here?
           | 
           | * YouTube has no liability for incorrect take-downs (17 USC
           | SS 512 (g) (1))
           | 
           | * That limitation on liability only exists if they restore
           | access to the disabled material within 10-14 business days of
           | receipt of a counter-notice (17 USC SS 512 (g) (2) (C))
           | 
           | https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512
           | 
           | YouTube doesn't have to host any content they don't want to.
           | However, it seems likely that a court would say "that doesn't
           | absolve you of complying with the counter notice provisions
           | of the DMCA. You can't just say that you don't want to host
           | any content that goes through a counter notice." There are
           | always limitations on the whole "we don't have to host things
           | we don't want to." I doubt a court would let them use that as
           | an excuse to ignore an explicit mandate of the DMCA, but
           | IANAL.
           | 
           | I think the problem is more likely that creators don't want
           | to sue YouTube or have the resources to go up against Google.
        
             | cmeacham98 wrote:
             | > You can't just say that you don't want to host any
             | content that goes through a counter notice.
             | 
             | Why not? (at least legally speaking, it'd be a PR disaster
             | I'm sure)
             | 
             | YouTube is not obligated to host any videos on their
             | platform and US law allows for businesses to discriminate
             | for almost any reason (except specific protected classes
             | like race or sex).
        
             | stackskipton wrote:
             | They have to comply with DMCA. However, YouTube commonly
             | strikes stuff without DMCA claims or when they get DMCA
             | claim, they remove the video and will not give video owner
             | a chance to counter claim. They will just say "Yea, we got
             | DMCA but now we are exercising our provision to refuse to
             | host anything we don't want to so video is never going back
             | up."
        
         | JasserInicide wrote:
         | _The system is broken and I can 't see a way to fix it._
         | 
         | With blood.
         | 
         | No I'm not being edgy. That is the _only_ way anything is going
         | to change regarding the litany of fucked up corporate practices
         | in our country. Our governments are ineffective at best and are
         | active abettors at worst (read _The Chickenshit Club_ for why
         | they won 't ever seriously prosecute execs). Boeing (completely
         | different scenario from the OP but it's recent) has no qualms
         | with killing to maintain the status quo, why should people that
         | want actual change be any different?
        
       | ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
       | Impersonating with intent to damage is legal?
        
         | emilamlom wrote:
         | When the penalty for frivolous and fake dmca takedowns is
         | basically non-existent, it practically is.
        
           | vezycash wrote:
           | DMCA works on a "takedown first, ask questions later" basis.
           | Therefore, the solution is to flood YouTube and Google with
           | massive, frivolous DMCA requests targeting the creators of
           | DMCA like Microsoft, Apple, and Disney. They'll solve the
           | problem if it affects them, maybe.
        
             | emilamlom wrote:
             | DMCA is for user generated content on platforms, so
             | microsoft wouldn't have a lot of surface-area to target.
             | That said, youtube gives preferential treatment to the
             | largest creators and companies. Apple and Disney could
             | easily call up their manager Jerry at Youtube and deal with
             | frivolous takedowns. Small creators often have no direct
             | contact with a human at youtube and have X as their best
             | option for contact. Unless they know the process and have
             | enough money for a lawyer, they're shit out of luck.
        
               | galleywest200 wrote:
               | Large companies just sue people who make false DMCA
               | claims, but small creators cannot afford to do that when
               | large companies make false claims about them. It is a
               | biased system.
               | 
               | https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/29/bungie-youtuber-
               | settle-l...
        
           | empressplay wrote:
           | Seems to me like it's still fraud, by definition? If you
           | monetize your content you can prove loss, if a competitor is
           | engaging in the fraud even better!
           | 
           | Those people being targeted by this troll should band
           | together and sue.
        
             | fn-mote wrote:
             | > Those people being targeted by this troll should band
             | together and sue.
             | 
             | Sue the troll?? Good luck finding them. How would you even
             | begin? A ProtonMail email address? No way.
             | 
             | Sue YouTube?? Again, no way.
             | 
             | Until either YouTube or the US Congress thinks this is a
             | large enough problem to deal with, it's not going away.
        
               | catapart wrote:
               | Maybe I'm just a malcontent, but for me this begs the
               | question: couldn't this be used in reverse as activism?
               | 
               | Like, if enough people used enough fake accounts and
               | started relentlessly submitting takedown requests on the
               | biggest channels making the most revenue, not only would
               | YouTube start to see the revenue issue, but the big
               | channels would start making noise. Go after one troll
               | sending the requests, another one takes its place. Seems
               | like it would force YouTube to at least reconcile with
               | this particular flaw in the system.
        
           | sleepybrett wrote:
           | Bungie went after someone going after destiny (the game)
           | creators: https://www.polygon.com/23180433/bungie-youtube-
           | dmca-takedow...
        
       | skrebbel wrote:
       | When DMCA was proposed, the internet was up in arms predicting
       | exactly this sort of stuff. It was a ridiculous law then and it
       | is now.
        
         | grecy wrote:
         | Absolutely yes. Ridiculous for you and me, and absolutely
         | perfect for multi billion dollar corporations to "protect"
         | their profit streams.
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | It looks like a hater with a suck channel who has mental issues,
       | but also knows how to use LLMs to generate fake lawyer letters
        
       | ternnoburn wrote:
       | I worry about let's plays (especially let's plays without
       | commentary). They pretty clearly exist in a "yes, this is
       | copyright infringement but yes, they are generally considered
       | positive for a game" space.
       | 
       | The moment some game creator decides to test this will get very
       | interesting. Not good interesting.
        
         | ferbivore wrote:
         | Why do you think a video capture of a computer program would
         | infringe the copyrights of the program's creators?
        
           | yuliyp wrote:
           | A video game contains text, images, videos, and/or audio
           | which are copyrightable, even if the game mechanics nor the
           | player's decisions themselves are not copyrighted by the
           | creators of the game.
        
         | do_not_redeem wrote:
         | It's not immediately clear to me that this is true. Video games
         | are designed to be played interactively. Streaming a single
         | playthrough via a non-interactive medium strikes me as
         | transformative.
         | 
         | Would you say a screen capture of Microsoft Excel is also
         | copyright infringement? If not, what would you say is the legal
         | basis for treating that differently than a video game?
        
           | Uehreka wrote:
           | > Video games are designed to be played interactively.
           | Streaming a single playthrough via a non-interactive medium
           | strikes me as transformative.
           | 
           | This is one of those areas where principles like "fair use"
           | and "transformative use" don't really matter, since we're
           | talking about YouTube de facto policy, not the law. If
           | YouTube decides to honor the claims, then that's what
           | happens. And YouTube generally errs hard in the direction of
           | rightsholders just to be safe.
        
           | Jarwain wrote:
           | Some video games are a fairly linear progression where
           | observing a single playthrough can give up the bulk of the
           | story.
           | 
           | Reading a book is interactive; you imagine the
           | narrative/interpretive voice as you go through it. You might
           | read a phrase one way where someone else might read it
           | differently. Listening to someone read a book removes that
           | difference but still conveys most of the plot.
           | 
           | Aaand Idk if book reads are on YouTube but typically people
           | pay for audio books and some revenue goes to the author
        
           | onionisafruit wrote:
           | Years ago somebody at Kinko's refused to make copies of a
           | draft software manual because it had screenshots of our
           | software's Windows interface. She said it would violate
           | Microsoft's copyright. This led to a fun discussion of how
           | copyright on rectangles would even work. Obviously this
           | wasn't Kinko's official stance. Just one obstinate, over
           | zealous employee.
           | 
           | Ironically, it was a bible software manual and the
           | screenshots she looked at accidentally had text from a
           | copyrighted bible translation. So she was right that those
           | screenshots had copyright issues, but for the wrong reason.
        
             | webmaven wrote:
             | _> Obviously this wasn't Kinko's official stance. Just one
             | obstinate, over zealous employee._
             | 
             | You might think that's obvious, but you'd be wrong.
             | Software publishers were cracking down on duplicating
             | manuals as a means of trying to curb software piracy.
             | 
             | I can practically guarantee that the "obstinate employee"
             | was given clear direction by their manager on the subject.
             | 
             | Though you do have to keep in mind that depending on when
             | exactly this happened, Kinko's might still have been a
             | collection of hundreds of largely autonomous regional
             | partnerships, each of which could set their own policy.
        
           | mysteria wrote:
           | > Would you say a screen capture of Microsoft Excel is also
           | copyright infringement?
           | 
           | Yeah it is. However most uses of an Excel screenshot would
           | probably be considered fair use, and Microsoft probably
           | doesn't care for 99% of use cases.
           | 
           | If you look at Wikipedia's Excel article they have more
           | details on the legal rationale behind their use of a
           | screenshot [1]. It looks like Microsoft allows the use of
           | product screenshots in certain cases as well.
           | 
           | I also took a quick look at an Excel textbook I had on my
           | shelf and it specifically stated in the copyright notice that
           | they had permission from Microsoft to publish the screenshots
           | used within.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Microsoft_Excel.png
        
           | ThatPlayer wrote:
           | This isn't anything new and unique to video games. Generally
           | this is considered a performance. No different than copyright
           | protecting a performance of sheet music or a play. Even dance
           | choreography can be copyrighted.
        
         | Wohlf wrote:
         | Already happened a few times. Japanese streamers have to ask
         | for explicit permission to stream games so they play a lot of
         | western games that allow it, Nintendo didn't allow let's plays
         | for a while, and a game developer didn't like a popular
         | youtuber (pewdiepie I think) and did takedowns of said youtuber
         | playing their game.
        
         | namrog84 wrote:
         | My first very ever attempt at making a let plays video.
         | 
         | Immediately got taken down for copyright infringement.
         | Completely destroyed my desire to ever make a let's play video
         | again.
         | 
         | And it was for a 10+ year old game. It is unfortunate
        
           | jandrese wrote:
           | It was for the music wasn't it? The music industry is
           | extremely efficient at flagging videos to claim the revenue.
        
         | delroth wrote:
         | Most game studios these days - including Nintendo - explicitly
         | provide guidance and licensing terms for content creators. You
         | can for example check out
         | https://www.nintendo.co.jp/networkservice_guideline/en/index...
         | 
         | > As long as you follow some basic rules, we will not object to
         | your use of gameplay footage and/or screenshots captured from
         | games for which Nintendo owns the copyright ("Nintendo Game
         | Content") in the content you create for appropriate video and
         | image sharing sites. To help guide you, we prepared the
         | following guidelines: [...]
         | 
         | The legal gray area definitely still exists for many of the
         | smaller/indie game studios, but this kind of licensing is more
         | common than not today.
        
         | deletedie wrote:
         | Nintendo (and some others) used to do this in the early days of
         | Let's Play. People stopped doing Nintendo Let's Plays for a
         | while until Nintendo somewhat relented.
        
       | probably_wrong wrote:
       | It is perfectly clear that YouTube can stop it. As the article
       | points out, we know there are things YouTube can do because those
       | are the very same things The Verge asked about and YouTube
       | refused to answer. The DMCA is broken, yes, but YouTube has made
       | it worse with their kind-of-but-not-actually-DMCA counter-claim
       | process.
       | 
       | If they really wanted to solve it, here's an idea: if you get a
       | takedown notice you also get a button that says "I am sure my
       | content does not infringe copyright and I'm willing to go to
       | court for it". YouTube reinstates your content and, if the entity
       | with the claim disagrees, they can take you personally to court.
       | Is this good? No, but that's on the DMCA. Is it better than now,
       | when you have no recourse? I'd say yes.
        
         | ToucanLoucan wrote:
         | They wouldn't even need to go that far. The current way
         | YouTube's system works is so deck-stacked against the creator
         | to a ludicrous degree. Basically any "copyright holder" just
         | has to say "this belongs to me" and YouTube _immediately_
         | funnels all revenue for the video to that holder, with
         | basically no oversight whatsoever, and as anyone in the space
         | will tell you, a video makes 90% of it 's money in the first
         | few days which means these holders can grab the monetization
         | right out from under a creator and steal just, all their
         | fucking money. It's ridiculous.
         | 
         | Like all you would have to do to, perhaps not fix, but heavily
         | mitigate this, would be to have YouTube just... hold onto the
         | revenue until the dispute is resolved. It's barely even a
         | change. And most of the time, when creators do counter the
         | claims, they're eventually dropped but again because of how
         | that system works, YouTube has already funneled all their money
         | to the claimant, irrespective of the determined validity of the
         | claim. And it would discourage bullshit claims because even as
         | low-rent a scam as this is, it is some amount of work, and if
         | there's no payout, you necessarily reduce the number of
         | scammers who will attempt it.
         | 
         | I don't know if that's a DMCA thing, I admittedly haven't
         | researched it in a long time, but I don't see how that would
         | put YouTube at any kind of liability. Any reader, do feel free
         | to correct me.
        
           | xvector wrote:
           | Big tech has such a twisted incentive structure for devs that
           | I don't see this getting solved unless it impacts YouTube's
           | bottom line. Execs won't care, and ICs will be actively
           | penalized for fixing this vs working on "business
           | priorities."
        
             | ToucanLoucan wrote:
             | God I wish there was a decent competitor to YouTube. They
             | get away with so much horseshit because there's just nobody
             | else that can match their service scale and network
             | effects.
        
               | HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
               | Why is that? Video streaming isn't the behemoth it was
               | last decade.
        
               | scrose wrote:
               | Google owns the platform and the ad network /
               | marketplace. A lot of videos 'lose' money and just take
               | up space. Any viable competitor to YouTube would need a
               | solution that allows signups, watches and video uploads,
               | without requiring a fee. Which typically means displaying
               | ads. For Google the ad network is already there. For
               | anyone else, they need to either create their own
               | marketplace, or have Google (or some other network) take
               | a large cut of their ad revenue.
               | 
               | This is likely why the only other 'competitors' you see
               | are peering based or based on a subscription model.
               | Neither of which can really compete with YouTube which
               | really doesn't need to *directly* make any money
        
               | rad_gruchalski wrote:
               | And how long do you think it would take until the
               | competitor would end up in the same situation? How can
               | the god help with it? And which god?
        
               | AnthonyMouse wrote:
               | > And how long do you think it would take until the
               | competitor would end up in the same situation?
               | 
               | YouTube ended up in that situation for two reasons.
               | First, the original YouTube before Google bought it was
               | playing fast and loose with the law and was in the
               | process of getting sued over it after Google bought them.
               | Second, Google wants to license Hollywood content for
               | YouTube TV etc. So between wanting to settle the lawsuit
               | and wanting to sell their soul and become Comcast, Google
               | agreed to do a lot of this draconian BS that isn't
               | otherwise required by law.
               | 
               | A competing service that just wants to be YouTube without
               | being YouTube TV could plausibly follow the law without
               | steamrolling the little guy quite as much.
        
           | MichaelZuo wrote:
           | Why would they implement this instead of de-monetizing it
           | completely?
        
             | ToucanLoucan wrote:
             | I mean, then YouTube is substantially cutting into their
             | own revenue too, but even that would be better than just
             | handing over all the revenue to an unverified 3rd party
             | that clicked a button.
        
             | monocasa wrote:
             | They're an ad company at the end of the day; they still
             | want their cut of the monetization.
             | 
             | Additionally both sides of the dispute normally still want
             | the monetization, they just disagree about who gets the
             | proceeds. And because of the time value curve of YouTube
             | videos (most make something like 90% of their revenue in
             | the first few days), demonetizing has a good chance fo
             | essentially erasing the revenue of the video for the
             | creator.
        
           | infinitesoup wrote:
           | > hold onto the revenue until the dispute is resolved
           | 
           | They do that:
           | https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7000961?hl=en
        
             | hysan wrote:
             | 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.
        
               | malfist wrote:
               | 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
        
               | asddubs wrote:
               | 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.
        
               | jay_kyburz wrote:
               | Hold on, A video that infringes will almost most
               | certainly be a mix of their content and your own new
               | content.
               | 
               | You should have to negotiate a percentage fee, not assume
               | the claimant is entitled to 100%
        
         | ndiddy wrote:
         | Youtube already has that system. I had to go through the
         | process due to a similar situation with someone falsely content
         | ID'ing my video. In that case it was someone uploading music
         | they didn't own to some online music distribution service.
         | Basically the way it works is after you dispute the content ID
         | claim and whoever filed it still says the content is theirs,
         | you can escalate the dispute to an actual DMCA counternotice.
         | After this, your video gets restored and the copyright strike
         | gets taken off your channel.
         | 
         | I think the reason why the person in the article didn't do this
         | is that the DMCA counternotice process requires the person
         | filing the counternotice to provide their full name and address
         | so they can be served if the rightsholder decides to sue them.
         | With problems like swatting going around, I think many people
         | would be reluctant to provide that information to someone who
         | they already know is trying to mess with them.
        
           | wongarsu wrote:
           | Yet YouTube's system takes a lot of time from the time the
           | content is claimed to the time you can escalate to an actual
           | DMCA. In this time your video is down or has its revenue
           | redirected. And if your content gets too many frivolous
           | claims your account is taken down by YouTube's three strike
           | policy before you have finished the dispute process for the
           | first video.
           | 
           | A single button to immediately and without human review or
           | notice period restore the video and monetization, remove the
           | strike, and declare you are willing to solve it in court
           | would solve a lot of the issues with ContentID abuse on
           | YouTube.
           | 
           | Such a system would likely have to sit behind strict identity
           | verification to prevent abuse, and some people wouldn't like
           | that. But that's the price for sharing a platform with some
           | very blatant infringers
        
             | ndiddy wrote:
             | Your idea for a "single button to immediately restore the
             | video" system would violate the takedown process outlined
             | in the DMCA. The way it works is that after someone sends a
             | takedown request, the content can't be restored until 10
             | business days after the person who uploaded it sends a
             | counter-notice. This gives whoever sent the takedown
             | request enough time to decide whether they want to file a
             | lawsuit and keep the content down.
             | 
             | Agreed that Youtube's system has problems with how long it
             | gives claimants to respond to the initial content ID
             | dispute and with people spamming false claims. It's
             | definitely not a perfect system.
        
               | mindslight wrote:
               | The DMCA does not obligate Youtube to do any of the
               | claiming/strikes parts. They could straightforwardly
               | separate out the two processes - a voluntary expedient
               | web process with the contentid fingerprint arbitration,
               | one-click immediate counterclaim, no need to dox
               | yourself, etc. And then a heavyweight strict DMCA process
               | that fulfills DMCA obligations to the letter of the
               | [unjust] law, requiring the waiting period for
               | restoration after the counterclaimant doxes themselves,
               | but doesn't drag in all the extrajudicial "strikes" and
               | whatnot. The filing of a heavyweight DMCA would forgo the
               | option for the voluntary nimble process.
               | 
               | Of course there are plenty of corporate authoritarian
               | imperatives for why they don't. This comment is a thought
               | experiment to demonstrate their complicity in how their
               | system is routinely abused.
        
               | nadermx wrote:
               | It would not. As youtube's "dmca" isn't an actual one. If
               | they did actual dmca's it would in fact go against the
               | dmca. And on a side note, there does not have to be a 10
               | day window for the reciver of the DMCA to file suit. Once
               | someone files a DMCA against you you can file an instant
               | action as they made a legal claim against you.
        
               | lesuorac wrote:
               | > Your idea for a "single button to immediately restore
               | the video" system would violate the takedown process
               | outlined in the DMCA.
               | 
               | IIUC, YouTube's copyright system is not a digital
               | implementation of the DMCA. It's an additional system
               | that occurs before the DMCA notice/counter-notice process
               | so the laws about the DMCA are moot because it's not a
               | DMCA notice (yet).
        
               | ndiddy wrote:
               | You're right that it's an additional system prior to the
               | DMCA process. I was interpreting his/her "declare you are
               | willing to solve it in court" as applying to the DMCA
               | takedown process, as that's what filing a counter-notice
               | does.
        
               | AnthonyMouse wrote:
               | > The way it works is that after someone sends a takedown
               | request, the content can't be restored until 10 business
               | days after the person who uploaded it sends a counter-
               | notice.
               | 
               | I'd be curious to know if this has ever been challenged
               | in court as an unconstitutional prior restraint. Pretty
               | obvious problems if you get people e.g. issuing
               | fraudulent takedowns 10 days before an election.
        
           | yellowapple wrote:
           | I went through a situation similar to yours, and encountered
           | an additional discouraging factor: YouTube seemed to threaten
           | to take down my channel entirely if my appeal was to be
           | rejected. There was also no real option for "the person
           | making the Content ID claim obviously doesn't own the
           | copyright to the work in question" (in this case, the famous
           | "yeah! woo!" a.k.a. "think break" sample; the Content ID
           | match was from what seemed to be a remix of "It Takes Two"),
           | so I was at the mercy of whatever opaque process YouTube
           | deemed fit to review my case - and was a bit spooked when it
           | came to potentially losing my whole channel (and who knows
           | what impact that'd have on my broader Google account).
           | 
           | Thankfully, I was able to find the contact info for the
           | Content ID provider in question - and within a day of
           | emailing them they pulled the Content ID claim, noting that
           | the customer of theirs who uploaded that think-break-
           | containing song did so in violation of the company's ToS
           | (which specifically forbids uploading music containing common
           | samples like that for this exact reason). It ended up being a
           | happy ending, but it still left a sour taste in my mouth
           | w.r.t. YouTube's policies and practices when it comes to
           | Content ID and copyright claims in general.
        
           | cesarb wrote:
           | > the DMCA counternotice process requires the person filing
           | the counternotice to provide their full name and address so
           | they can be served if the rightsholder decides to sue them.
           | 
           | It's even worse than that: the DMCA counternotice also
           | requires the person filing the counternotice to agree to the
           | jurisdiction of the USA courts, even if they live somewhere
           | else. I think many people would be reluctant to take that
           | additional legal risk.
        
             | BlueTemplar wrote:
             | And for many other people isn't this actually less of a
             | legal risk than if their own courts were involved ?
        
         | Vampiero wrote:
         | Consider the following: I make a form of parody that is known
         | as a Youtube Poop. It was all the rage last decade, but now
         | it's a dying art.
         | 
         | In part because of these stupid DMCA rules preventing people
         | like me from expressing their creativity.
         | 
         | I can appeal the strikes, but every time I do so I risk losing
         | my channel forever. I don't monetize, and I only make parodies
         | of stuff that came out over 10 years ago. So I've already
         | accepted that the existence of my channel is ephemeral and that
         | one day it will probably disappear forever.
         | 
         | But I don't have any other platform to go to if I want to share
         | my 5-10 minutes long edits with more than 4 people.
         | 
         | Why am I not allowed to continue an art form that owes its name
         | to the platform that spawned it? Is protecting the copyright of
         | some random anime adaptation or cartoon (that no one gives a
         | shit about anymore) seriously more important than creating
         | novel art?
         | 
         | Copyright lasts WAY too much.
         | 
         | And no, I don't really want to go to court over this bullshit.
         | But I am firmly convinced that it's in my rights to produce it.
         | It's just that what counts as "my rights" depends entirely on
         | the jurisdiction, because the law is a joke meant to protect
         | people who can afford good lawyers -- it's not meant to
         | actually enforce justice. Or rather, the concept of justice is
         | so malleable that it basically means nothing in a globalized
         | world.
         | 
         | Also, I'm from Europe. Which court should I go to when I
         | infringe on an american dub copyright for a japanese cartoon,
         | exactly?
        
           | mulmen wrote:
           | Nobody has a right to an audience.
           | 
           | > Also, I'm from Europe. Which court should I go to when I
           | infringe on an american dub copyright for a japanese cartoon,
           | exactly?
           | 
           | Well the copyright and the site are American so probably
           | America.
        
             | Vampiero wrote:
             | > Nobody has a right to an audience.
             | 
             | That's literally what copyright is
        
               | FireBeyond wrote:
               | No, it's literally not. Copyright is that you have the
               | right to potentially benefit from your work.
               | 
               | You can broadcast it. You don't have any kind of right to
               | an audience to watch it. I don't even know what that
               | would look like.
        
               | AnthonyMouse wrote:
               | A plausible interpretation of "you don't have a right to
               | an audience" is that people don't have to watch your
               | dross if they don't want to, and this is the meaning
               | which is normally meant to be implied (the motte in the
               | motte and bailey).
               | 
               | Then people want to use it in the sense of, you don't
               | have a right against someone else interfering with your
               | interaction with your willing audience, i.e. you don't
               | have a right not to be censored by a government or
               | corporate oligopoly. But that is a far less defensible
               | proposition.
        
               | FireBeyond wrote:
               | Exactly. Or even "you don't have a right to a platform".
               | 
               | You can speak your mind. That doesn't mean YouTube is
               | obligated to broadcast it for you, nor does it mean your
               | speech is being suppressed if they choose not to.
        
               | strken wrote:
               | On a factual level, your speech is being suppressed every
               | time someone refuses to broadcast it for non-commercial
               | reasons.
               | 
               | YouTube isn't obligated to broadcast it, and in some
               | cases it's debatable whether they're the ones suppressing
               | it, but it is still being suppressed.
        
               | FireBeyond wrote:
               | That isn't accurate. Unless they are physically stopping
               | you from speaking, they are not suppressing it. They're
               | just not _amplifying_ it.
        
               | AnthonyMouse wrote:
               | The premise being that you have lots of other equally-
               | viable alternatives. Which was probably true on the old
               | internet -- just use a different host.
               | 
               | The modern one where the adversarial video host is owned
               | by the search engine with 90% market share that disfavors
               | competitors in the search results? That's a different
               | story.
               | 
               | Of course, the better solution there might be antitrust
               | rather than common carriage requirements, but something's
               | got to give.
        
             | marcosdumay wrote:
             | > Nobody has a right to an audience.
             | 
             | The GP isn't asking for an audience. (Except if you mean
             | "with the king", because that's exactly what the comment is
             | asking for.)
             | 
             | > Well the copyright and the site are American so probably
             | America
             | 
             | The GP didn't tell you who the copyright owner is. And
             | Google is present in more than one country.
             | 
             | That said, yes, your last paragraph is a good hint. The
             | world should just think very hard about blocking every
             | large US business.
        
             | bingaweek wrote:
             | Comments like yours are why ycombinator has a horrible
             | reputation. It's a worthless dismissive truism to shut down
             | a legitimate complaint from a creator who is being screwed
             | around by bad laws and bad applications of bad laws. Yes,
             | we know we don't have rights, that's why we're complaining.
        
           | BlueTemplar wrote:
           | But here it's not so much even about DMCA, as about YouTube's
           | own para-legal system and trolls abusing it.
           | 
           | At this point, if you are still using YouTube (or another
           | platform), you're part of the problem (we've already been
           | talking about this specific issue for 15 years already !!),
           | use something like PeerTube instead !
           | 
           | Even more so if you're in Europe, heck, we even have the
           | example of VLC basically violating DMCA and US patent laws
           | for decades and they are still online - notably because
           | they're not under US jurisdiction :
           | 
           | https://wiki.videolan.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions/#What_a.
           | ..
        
         | Aunche wrote:
         | > I am sure my content does not infringe copyright and I'm
         | willing to go to court for it
         | 
         | This is exactly what the YouTube copyright counter notification
         | is. The problem is that YouTubers aren't lawyers, so they don't
         | want to risk going to court.
         | 
         | https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2807684?hl=en
        
           | blueflow wrote:
           | Then hire a lawyer & sue, you have to enforce your rights.
        
             | Aunche wrote:
             | Right. Part of the reason why it's hard to start a business
             | is having to deal with unfair bullshit. Youtube streamlines
             | enough of the process to get people started relatively
             | easily, but they get a lot of shit from these same creators
             | for not doing everything for them.
        
               | sleepybrett wrote:
               | they get a lot of shit because most youtubers would be
               | forced to hand over their pii (name and address) to the
               | reporter. Some reporters are doing this solely to get
               | that information (stalkers, doxxers, etc).
               | 
               | It's unclear, to me, if youtubers could proxy this
               | through an attorney.
        
               | Aunche wrote:
               | > It's unclear, to me, if youtubers could proxy this
               | through an attorney.
               | 
               | Yes. An authorized representative is allowed to submit a
               | counter notification on your behalf, so they would put
               | their name and address instead.
        
               | JohnMakin wrote:
               | Because all creators have the means and resources to hire
               | a lawyer to fight forces much more powerful and wealthier
               | than they are. This is blaming the victim.
        
               | Aunche wrote:
               | Welcome to being a business owner. Nobody is going to
               | protect your business more than yourself. A tenant
               | refuses to pay rent and eviction takes a year? Too bad.
               | Next time, do a better job of screening for risky
               | tenants.
               | 
               | The problem with the victim first mentality is that it
               | causes you to underestimate how much agency people
               | actually have (e.g. being unaware of how excessive tenant
               | protections decrease the supply of housing available to
               | low-income earners).
        
               | JohnMakin wrote:
               | You know not all content creators are out for money,
               | right? If you want a trivial example, I am one of them.
               | It may even shock you to learn that in the before-times,
               | people even created content _purely for fun and the
               | entertainment of others._ Wow! Hardly believable now,
               | especially reading this post I am replying to.
               | 
               | That said, again, how is a small creator, which at least
               | several nines of all creators are, supposed to scratch up
               | the legal and financial resources to fight massive
               | corporate interests and industrial scale fraud? Why is
               | the onus on them, rather than the platforms that enable
               | this kind of behavior? Like, I'm not trying to be overly
               | sarcastic here, I'm genuinely curious how you make sense
               | of this in your head. Is it like "oh well, that's the way
               | of the world, fuck em?" kind of thing, or is it based on
               | some kind of sound principle? Because the way things are
               | do not really help anyone, except behemoth media
               | interests, and especially hurts the quality of content
               | online, which if I can make an assumption, you and I both
               | consume. Which also, ironically, hurts the very platforms
               | that (I suspect) you are trying to stan for here. Make it
               | make sense?
        
               | Aunche wrote:
               | > people even created content purely for fun and the
               | entertainment of others. Wow! Hardly believable now,
               | especially reading this post I am replying to.
               | 
               | Believe it or not, I shitpost on the internet for fun.
               | Sometimes, I get flagged for bullshit reasons (moreso
               | Reddit than hackernews), and there's nothing I can do
               | about it. Since it's for fun though, it doesn't really
               | cost me anything outside some minor frustration.
               | 
               | > That said, again, how is a small creator, which at
               | least several nines of all creators are, supposed to
               | scratch up the legal and financial resources to fight
               | massive corporate interests and industrial scale fraud?
               | 
               | This article is talking about a small-time copyright
               | troll who is obviously pretending to be Nintendo. There
               | is virtually no risk of calling their bluff because they
               | obviously aren't going to commit identity fraud in court.
               | Chances are, the troll has better things to do than to
               | leak your personal information, but if you're worried
               | about that, you can hire a lawyer to file the counter
               | notification for you for a couple hundred bucks. I'm sure
               | there are ways to do this yourself as well if you need to
               | fight a lot of claims. Just spitballing here, but if you
               | have a business owner friend, you can use their business
               | address and have them be your representative and file on
               | your behalf.
               | 
               | If we're talking about large corporations with armies of
               | lawyers like real Nintendo, then there's not much you can
               | do besides hiring a good lawyer and listening to their
               | advice. For very straightforward cases, you can probably
               | play lawyer yourself so long as if you do enough research
               | and preparation (again, just spitballing). Also, it's not
               | like Nintendo is unaffected by legal costs. In fact, any
               | legal action will probably be several times more
               | expensive for them than it would be for you. If they're
               | pursuing legal action, they likely genuinely believe
               | they're in the right.
        
               | BlueTemplar wrote:
               | Then there's even less reason to keep using a platform
               | for this, use something like PeerTube.
        
             | Vampiero wrote:
             | I make free videos why tf would I ever hire a lawyer to
             | protect my parodies. It's incredibly stupid considering
             | that I am not a billionaire and that the copyright holders
             | are. I would be throwing my money in the bin. And they know
             | this full-well, which is why the system works in the first
             | place.
        
             | nullc wrote:
             | Google shields the false-DMCA complainers and will
             | absolutely not reveal their identities.
        
               | onli wrote:
               | Google has to given a court order. Or is that
               | unachievable?
        
               | nullc wrote:
               | Perhaps if you're interested in bankrupting yourself
               | fighting against Google's legal budget.
        
           | JKCalhoun wrote:
           | Hilariously, now I ignore every single text/email requesting
           | that I pay something, do something, etc.
           | 
           | I owe money for a toll road? Hmmm, I must have accidentally
           | blocked that user, deleted the message thread and reported it
           | as spam. Sorry.
        
         | cactusplant7374 wrote:
         | Why shouldn't Nintendo have an official YouTube mandated
         | account for takedowns? Is there a legal requirement that they
         | don't validate the rights holder?
        
         | kmeisthax wrote:
         | That exists, it's called a DMCA 512 counternotice; if you're
         | particularly monied you can even sue under 512(f) for perjury.
         | The problem is that the videos are _actually infringing_ , but
         | the owner of the content does not want to sue.
         | 
         | Under very basic principles of law, only the owner or exclusive
         | licensee of a copyright has standing to sue for copyright
         | infringement. Furthermore, copyright law does not obligate
         | copyright owners sue or license like trademark does. Therefore,
         | for uses which are _inconvenient_ [0] to sell a license for,
         | but not damaging enough to go to court, copyright owners will
         | often tacitly permit the use by simply failing to enforce their
         | rights.
         | 
         | The problem is that courts have a very high bar to recognize
         | tacit permission as a license. It's not impossible; there are
         | some famous examples of 'implied license', but no competent
         | lawyer would actually recommend you go to court and claim such
         | a thing. One particular complication would be that if, say, you
         | sued Fake Nintendo, and claimed fair use as a rationale for
         | using Real Nintendo's content, Real Nintendo might want to
         | actually sue you just to kill the fair use claim[1].
         | 
         | Just as an example of how complicated tacit permission can get:
         | 
         | Bungie's Destiny 2 is a perpetually updated "live service" game
         | with an ongoing policy of removing content to keep download
         | sizes reasonable[2]. As a result, there is music in the game
         | that is no longer accessible. Bungie does _not_ want people
         | uploading the game soundtrack to YouTube, but they also don 't
         | want to turn that removed music into lost media, so they had a
         | policy of not taking down "music archivists" that only uploaded
         | the removed content.
         | 
         | One of the YouTubers that got taken down for reuploading live
         | Destiny 2 music got pissed about it and started filing
         | fraudulent DMCA takedowns in Bungie's name to music archivists.
         | Bungie tried to get in contact with YouTube to have the
         | fraudulent takedowns removed, but it took over a week of PR
         | damage to everyone involved (and, if I remember, actually suing
         | the idiot kid that did this) before YouTube would restore the
         | videos.
         | 
         | If there is one thing that is badly drafted (and not just
         | irritating) about the current DMCA 512 system, it's that there
         | is no procedure for third-party counter-claimants to challenge
         | fraudulent or mistaken claims. However, the current mechanisms
         | of copyright make that impossible to provide. There is no
         | database of who-owns-what and who-licensed-what; rights owners
         | _do not want_ such a database to exist; and it is entirely
         | possible for multiple parties to have standing to sue the same
         | person for the same act of infringement on the same work. Under
         | regular copyright law, if Nintendo wants to sue you for, say,
         | using the officially-licensed Mario DLC in your Minecraft
         | streams, Microsoft can 't intervene and stop them on the basis
         | that they own Minecraft. How, exactly, should YouTube proceed
         | if they have two parties swearing under oath conflicting
         | information, and not obeying the right one puts you on the hook
         | for billions of dollars in copyright liabilities? The current
         | system is designed to make it easy to cheaply operate social
         | media, not to actually be fair to its users or to stop online
         | censorship.
         | 
         | [0] Reasons for this inconvenience can include:
         | 
         | - The transaction cost of negotiating a watertight contract for
         | a very small deal. Generally speaking you don't want to make
         | deals with understandable / 'plain language' licensing terms
         | for the same reason why web browsers don't have an API to load
         | unsigned arbitrary kernel modules from third-party servers.
         | 
         | - The licensing in question being contrary to exclusive
         | licensing arrangements with other companies - though exclusive
         | licensing contracts can also mandate the licensor or licensee
         | enforce each other's rights to prevent this sort of thing
         | 
         | [1] In general, common law mechanisms like fair use create an
         | incentive to sue, which is a very bad thing for people who
         | don't like getting sued.
         | 
         | [2] This is a terrible policy, but the policies of console
         | manufacturers require you to ship games as packages, so you
         | couldn't just stream in assets as needed.
        
       | nfriedly wrote:
       | Nintendo's problem is that this was fairly believable because it
       | lines up pretty closely with their own past behavior. Nintendo
       | regularly drags some of their biggest fans through the dirt with
       | bogus copyright claims and other legal nonsense.
        
       | JohnMakin wrote:
       | The DMCA has absolutely ruined a decade+ long hobby of mine,
       | which was streaming/content creation. I used to have really fun
       | streams not that long ago that featured a variety of
       | relaxing/cool music set to the backdrop of me messing around on
       | the computer, or in some game. Everyone was fine with this
       | arrangement for a _long_ time. Then, things suddenly changed a
       | few years ago. First your VODs would get yanked and you 'd get a
       | warning if you played some extremely popular song, and it was
       | like ok, I understand that. But now it's even spread to _in game
       | audio of a game I literally have purchased._ That is _ridiculous_
       | to me. There are games I actually cannot publish playing with
       | full audio settings enabled. That is _ridiculous_ no matter your
       | views on the DMCA, and I 'd even go farther and say it's
       | completely ridiculous that I cannot use audio I have purchased or
       | somehow leased on my own content. Why does it have to be this
       | way? Someone can try to convince me this is somehow sane or
       | necessary, but I really doubt it.
        
         | protoster wrote:
         | My guess as to why it's necessary to nuke all potentially
         | copyright audio is that the platform is liable for
         | infringement, and as a result they have a policy to shoot first
         | and ask questions later. This is justified because in
         | overwhelming majority of cases the streamer does not have a
         | license for the audio.
         | 
         | In the case that the copyright audio is coming from a game,
         | there is no way currently for the platform to automatically
         | verify that you have a license or not, so once again they shoot
         | first, ask question later.
         | 
         | This is unfortunate, but as usual, bad actors ruin the commons
         | for everyone.
        
           | JohnMakin wrote:
           | > This is justified because in overwhelming majority of cases
           | the streamer does not have a license for the audio
           | 
           | I guess my point is that this arrangement was fine for a
           | very, very long time. Why is it suddenly not fine in the last
           | handful of years? Who is standing to gain here? In my view,
           | it hurts the very platforms and industries this is trying to
           | "protect." Twitch/YT/etc. are harmed because the content will
           | be inherently worse, and copyright audio IP is hurt because
           | it will spread to fewer listeners. Not only this, but if it
           | were available to me, I actually _would pay to license the
           | audio I use,_ but there is no mechanism to do that!
           | 
           | A similar dumb thing happened a few years ago with the PGA
           | tour - they decided that anyone re-posting PGA clips without
           | their permission, even if it was for commentary/parody/etc.,
           | was all of a sudden not permissible. So, all the golf content
           | on IG/TikTok/etc got catastrophically worse overnight, and
           | PGA (which struggles with viewership, especially young
           | viewers) gets less free exposure. There's absolutely no way
           | this was a positive outcome for anyone involved, so why?
        
             | zamadatix wrote:
             | As much as I don't like the current rules either "I never
             | got a notice until recently" is a very different thing than
             | "It was fine until recently".
        
               | JohnMakin wrote:
               | It _was_ fine until recently. Crossposting another reply:
               | 
               | > We've had the capability to detect audio for a long
               | time. What changed suddenly in the last few years to
               | deploy/enforce this at scale? Certainly not any
               | improvements to detection. I've made a whopping total of
               | $46 in something like 12 years on these platforms.
               | Something tells me this level of enforcement is
               | ridiculous and against the spirit of the law, and I'm
               | certainly not an expert on the DMCA or a lawyer, but I'd
               | be willing to wager a lot that this strict interpretation
               | is misinterpreted. No one is submitting any takedown
               | requests to this content, which to be clear, averages
               | like 1.3 viewers and has less than a few thousand
               | follwers. And when I describe in-game audio - I mean
               | literal 2-3 second song clips like "barbie girl" song
               | happening when you score a goal in rocket league will get
               | your VOD DMCA'd and you can't upload it to YT. That is a
               | newer thing. You really can't view the last 20 years of
               | DRM and the way it's played out, and say something like
               | "this is how it's always been, now automation." That
               | doesn't add up.
               | 
               | I'm not exactly a big fish here. I don't make money.
               | There is no takedown request, nor would there ever be,
               | because it's silly.
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | Again, the absence of a negative consequence at the time
               | cannot be used as evidence something was actually fine to
               | do, only that it was possible to get away with. That's
               | regardless of whether it was actually truly fine or not.
               | 
               | If a new automated speed camera catches you on a road
               | you've been speeding on for 7 years it doesn't mean
               | speeding used to be fine it means you'll now receive
               | consequences for doing things which were never fine to
               | do! It also doesn't mean the speed limit always used to
               | be the current value or anything like that. This is
               | because "when regular enforcement began" has no causal
               | relation one way or the other about what used to be fine
               | or whether that was different than what's fine now. It is
               | only an effect, one where "what was fine changed" is only
               | one possible cause.
        
               | JohnMakin wrote:
               | I don't think you understand how the DMCA works or what
               | it was intended to do - again, these are not takedown
               | requests, as is the normal mechanism here, which there
               | are guidelines for - this is platforms preemptively
               | deciding for _potential_ dmca takedown requests to
               | takedown /censor content. If your position is that every
               | single piece of content should never be hosted in fair
               | use online, that is not only not how copyright law works,
               | it's not how the DMCA works, and I'm not sure how to
               | progress this discussion further since we seem to have a
               | fundamentally different understanding of how the law
               | works, or what this thread is even about.
               | 
               | To trivially prove your point wrong - I actually do have
               | the right under fair use to make content of my own with
               | copyrighted material. This has literally _always_ been
               | ok. Platforms are taking these actions to protect
               | themselves from _potentially_ hosting copyrighted content
               | on their platform that would _not_ consistute fair uses,
               | and since I, a user of their platform, have to abide by
               | their policies, it 's their decision. Assuming we are now
               | on the same page here, continuing your speeding ticket
               | example - this is not so much like that, as getting
               | pulled over in a labeled 40 zone and the cop goes "well,
               | we didnt know if you'd be breaking the law later or
               | before this, so just to be safe, here you go" or,
               | "actually that's not really the speed limit." take your
               | choice here, they both apply.
               | 
               | So yea, it has always been ok.
        
               | prmoustache wrote:
               | nope it hasn't.
               | 
               | People have been used to infringe copyright on the
               | internet for decades but this has never been right.
               | 
               | If you want to be able to share stuff you don't own the
               | right for, change the laws.
        
         | shakna wrote:
         | As things stand, there's a difference between purchasing for
         | personal consumption, and for publishing. That's been standing,
         | for a very long time. It might be as old as copyright itself.
         | 
         | Just because you own the game, doesn't mean you have the rights
         | to use it in more than a personal setting. That's basically
         | always been the case. You bought a personal license, not a
         | broadcasting one.
         | 
         | The main reason for not attacking such things in the past was
         | that it was a wasted effort at control. Too small a target,
         | requiring too much effort. Automation, through things like
         | audio recognition, changes that.
        
           | JohnMakin wrote:
           | We've had the capability to detect audio for a long time.
           | What changed suddenly in the last few years to deploy/enforce
           | this at scale? Certainly not any improvements to detection.
           | I've made a whopping total of $46 in something like 12 years
           | on these platforms. Something tells me this level of
           | enforcement is ridiculous and against the spirit of the law,
           | and I'm certainly not an expert on the DMCA or a lawyer, but
           | I'd be willing to wager a lot that this strict interpretation
           | is misinterpreted. No one is submitting any takedown requests
           | to this content, which to be clear, averages like 1.3 viewers
           | and has less than a few thousand follwers. And when I
           | describe in-game audio - I mean literal 2-3 second song clips
           | like "barbie girl" song happening when you score a goal in
           | rocket league will get your VOD DMCA'd and you can't upload
           | it to YT. That is a newer thing. You really can't view the
           | last 20 years of DRM and the way it's played out, and say
           | something like "this is how it's always been, now
           | automation." That doesn't add up.
        
             | mystified5016 wrote:
             | Someone invented a system that makes it trivial for bottom
             | feeding lawyer types to send frivolous notices. They feel
             | like they've accomplished something.
             | 
             | That's the long and short of it. It suddenly became trivial
             | to do and the consequences won't be apparent for quite some
             | time, so there are _no_ consequences as far as the lawyers
             | and accountants are concerned.
        
         | hnuser123456 wrote:
         | Some games have a "don't play licensed music" setting for
         | streamers.
        
         | quakeguy wrote:
         | There are games which, via menu settings, allow you to disable
         | dmca'ed music for the purpose of streaming and uploading your
         | plays. Control is a game that has this iirc.
        
         | juped wrote:
         | That's not the DMCA (a 90s law), though.
        
         | dim13 wrote:
         | I once recorded an half-hour drive and uploaded it to YT as
         | _private_ video for my own convenience. Got immediately a
         | copyright claim about radio playing some music in the
         | background.
        
         | BlueTemplar wrote:
         | You can just ignore the DMCA claims, are you really afraid of
         | getting sued ?
         | 
         | Meanwhile if you're still using platforms to host these videos,
         | and not something like PeerTube, you're part of the problem.
        
       | redman25 wrote:
       | I had no idea spoofing email sender was so easy. Does anyone know
       | of a good way to defend against this? I've always taken it for
       | granted that if the sender was a domain that I trusted that I
       | could trust the email itself.
        
         | wongarsu wrote:
         | DKIM and SPF are supposed to prevent email sender spoofing, but
         | that requires the domain owner to set it up correctly age the
         | receiver to verify the records and actually distrust or discard
         | the email if they don't match.
         | 
         | Both steps aren't trivial, and configuration errors are more
         | common than actual spoofing. DMARC is supposed to fix
         | everything, but only if the domain owner cares enough to do
         | more than the bare minimum setup
        
         | DaSHacka wrote:
         | Isn't this the purpose of SPF/DKIM?
         | 
         | https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/email-security/dmarc-dki...
        
       | mg794613 wrote:
       | They can easily stop it.
       | 
       | Question is, will there be enough incentive for them to do so.
        
       | Guest9081239812 wrote:
       | I have a forum that receives a high number of DMCA claims. They
       | link to pages on my forum where they claim I'm violating their
       | copyright. However, when I review the pages, the content only
       | mentions the name of a product or service. Imagine I write
       | something here, like how I watched the movie "Inception" last
       | week. A third party then sends me a DMCA request on behalf of
       | Warner Bros, and Google removes this page from their search
       | results. That's what I get, but thousands of them.
       | 
       | It's fairly clear no human is reviewing the content any step of
       | the way, otherwise they would see the only content on the page is
       | a paragraph of plain text with the name of a movie. I feel like I
       | have no recourse though. I don't have the time to make thousands
       | of counter claims for some random forum pages that receive an
       | insignificant amount of search traffic a year.
       | 
       | It feels like a broken system. How can someone pull thousands of
       | my pages from Google, and I'm either forced to spend weeks of my
       | time trying to recover them, or I need to leave them removed?
       | Where is the penalty or punishment for the false claims? Who is
       | going to compensate me for my time?
        
       | pentagrama wrote:
       | A bit of topic, considering my English isn't good at all, the
       | article title isn't missing an "if" here? I had a hard time
       | reading that.
       | 
       | > A fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and it's not clear
       | [if] YouTube can stop him
        
         | dylanpyle wrote:
         | Interesting question. This "feels" valid (as a native speaker)
         | - the "that" or "if" is implicit - but not a rule I had ever
         | identified before.
         | 
         | Looks like this may be called an "empty complementizer"; some
         | more info here:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementizer#Empty_complemen...
        
         | jacobgkau wrote:
         | As the other reply mentioned, another valid inference would be
         | "it's not clear [that] YouTube can stop him." And as a general
         | rule of thumb, you almost never actually need a grammatical
         | "that"-- it's best to leave it out for brevity unless it's
         | useful to distinguish the meaning of the sentence (typically
         | when the parts before and after it are longer and the
         | demarcation point could be interpreted several ways without
         | it).
         | 
         | It's definitely valid as-is. It's debatable whether it's
         | unclear (what would the alternative meaning be if you think
         | it's unclear?)
        
         | speak_plainly wrote:
         | This is an example of ellipsis, a common feature in informal
         | English and news headlines.
         | 
         | It's also an example of pragmatics, specifically a
         | conversational implicature, where the omission is forcing the
         | reader to rely on the context of the sentence to fill in the
         | blank or derive the meaning.
         | 
         | So while you are correct about the grammar, language use is
         | often more complicated in practice.
        
       | jedberg wrote:
       | The DMCA is totally broken, and has been from the beginning.
       | There are no consequences for anyone making a fake claim. However
       | there are severe consequences for someone who receives one and
       | doesn't take action. There are counter-claims processes, but that
       | puts a heavy burden on both the creator and the platform.
       | 
       | I myself am guilty of abusing the DMCA. When I was fighting fraud
       | for eBay and PayPal, if we found someone hosting a phishing site,
       | we would use the DMCA to get them to take it down, claiming they
       | were violating the copyright of the logo. We would send DMCA
       | notices to any host in any country. Most would just oblige. A few
       | would reply and inform us they weren't in the USA.
       | 
       | But it worked because the platforms feared the consequences of
       | not following it, and there was no risk to us.
       | 
       | The DMCA needs fixing by adding severe consequences for incorrect
       | use.
        
         | prmoustache wrote:
         | Please define severe. At worst your account on a platform is
         | deleted. This is not severe.
        
       | omolobo wrote:
       | So the first email was from a Protonmail account, and the second
       | one was spoofed and obviously had incorrect headers. Are you
       | saying Youtube doesn't check for these when processing take-down
       | requests?
        
         | jandrese wrote:
         | What incentive does Youtube have to get this right? They have a
         | major disincentive to ever push back on the content cartels
         | because even one false negative could put them on the hook for
         | trillions of dollars worth of damages, even if it was due to
         | sloppy work on the cartel's part. It is no skin off of Google's
         | back if they take their cut of the revenue from the wrong
         | person, it's all the same to them.
         | 
         | The only way to get Google to care would be for content
         | creators to start abandoning the platform on mass, but they
         | don't really have anywhere to go (sorry Vimeo). Even then
         | Google views content creators as a dime a dozen, so to get the
         | numbers you need to make them notice would be exceptional.
        
       | jokethrowaway wrote:
       | What about verifying the entity sending the request is legit?
       | 
       | An email @nintendo.com is not that hard to get for the legal team
       | of nintendo
        
       | toasted-subs wrote:
       | Maybe don't bully anyone unrelated to your organization until
       | active shooters become a regular occurrence at their own office
       | building.
        
       | miki123211 wrote:
       | I'm surprised Russia / China / North Korea aren't using this
       | process against dissidents and activists. If you're not reachable
       | by American law enforcement, it seems like such a low-effort way
       | to remove any content off the internet that you don't like.
       | 
       | Getting access to the real names and addresses of these people is
       | a nice bonus too; I'm sure their intelligence services would have
       | plenty of uses for this information.
       | 
       | If there's one way of making the DMCA (and similar legislation
       | around the world) go away, spinning it as an anti-free-speech law
       | with national security concerns is probably it, especially
       | considering the upcoming US administration.
        
       | bedhead wrote:
       | YouTube can only stop if it the guy goes on Joe Rogan, then they
       | can screw around with it with impunity.
        
       | samuelg123 wrote:
       | Do YouTubers have any recourse against Google or the faker? Seems
       | like a false DMCA takedown would be a first amendment violation.
        
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