YouTube demonetizes public domain 'Steamboat Willie' video after copyright claim

https://mashable.com/article/youtube-demontizes-public-domain-steamboat-willie-disney-copyright-claim

by dragonbonheur • 3 years ago

342 211 3 years ago

mashable.com

adaml_623• 3 years ago

A positive take on this is that this is a clear pass/fail unit test on YouTube's copyright system.

that_guy_iain5• 3 years ago

This isn't really an issue with YouTube's copyright system but in copyright laws.

orra2• 3 years ago

No, there's a problem with both. This was a Content ID complaint, not a DMCA takedown.

chrismorgan4• 3 years ago

It’s only a valid positive take if it were in any way novel. But there are already loads of such cases. The Content ID system is just broken by design, and they’ve clearly demonstrated no interest in fixing it. The system is designed for abuse.

Most notably here, even a successful dispute on the grounds of the work being in the public domain doesn’t stop the claimer from claiming new videos that match, which it very obviously should.

My experience on public domain English hymns: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27004892.

wolframhempel2• 3 years ago

I wouldn't say it's broken by design - it's just a matter of incentives that heavily favor taking content down over allowing it to stay.

- If Youtube issues a copyright strike that wasn't warranted, a single creator will be pissed of. And apart from Mr. Beast and a handful of others, youtube's relies on large numbers of small creators, so is quite resilient on that front. Apart from that - where are these creators going to go instead? There is no video platform, long form or otherwise, that even remotely offers the level of revenue sharing that Youtube offers.

- If Youtube, on the other hand, allows copy right infringing content to stay up , they risk multi million lawsuits by companies that make a living of selling and defending their rights, such as major labels or publishers.

So, it's sort of a no-brainer for Youtube. If there's any non-zero chance of copyright infringement - take it down.

nubinetwork• 3 years ago

It got caught right after they uploaded it. Basically content ID hasn't been updated yet. I would contest it.

kzrdude• 3 years ago

I assume content id database entries have expiry dates

londons_explore2• 3 years ago

you assume wrong.

terramex2• 3 years ago

In most countries works go into public domain XX years after death of author. Predicting date of death is non-trivial problem.

ClassyJacket• 3 years ago

Who is the author of a collaborative work like a film?

luismedel• 3 years ago

Third hard problem in computing after the infamous "naming things", "cache invalidation" and "off by 1 errors".

hyperpape• 3 years ago

If you have XX years, you can update the expiration date when the author dies. If the author is still alive, expiration is safely decades in the future.

Of course, the real problem is that the system is not seriously designed with the idea that false positives are a problem.

littlecranky67• 3 years ago

Maybe because in some countries (like Germany) it is not yet in public domain.

ruune• 3 years ago

YouTube forces everyone, independent of local laws, to work under the US's fair use laws, they could at least be consistent and not care if some country has other laws on copyright.

Which is what they do mostly. If Germany was the problem, they'd make the upload inaccessible in Germany and leave it untouched for everyone else. Content-ID marking it globally is clearly an issue on YouTube's end

Mindwipe3• 3 years ago

YouTube forces everyone, independent of local laws, to work under the US's fair use laws

No they don't. You must work under the fair use laws of every territory the content is available in.

The US has a significantly wider fair use law than almost any other country on Earth.

If Germany was the problem, they'd make the upload inaccessible in Germany and leave it untouched for everyone else.

They do - it is extremely common for items to be blocked to Japan especially, as Japan has very tight fair use provisions in particular.

weinzierl2• 3 years ago

In Germany there is no public domain, so it never will be.

It will be "gemeinfrei", which is a different thing, somewhen after 2036. Probably even only after 2058, because one of the composers of the music lived till 1988.

EDIT: German Wikipedia says 2042.

CogitoCogito• 3 years ago

What are the practical differences between US public domain and German gemeinfrei?

d--b• 3 years ago

A one-off mistake or a sign of copyright battles to come over Mickey Mouse?

Or a stunt by a clever youtuber to make himself some free attention?

globular-toast• 3 years ago

YouTube could choose to continue to honour Disney's copyright forever. Yet another reason to get away from centralised platforms.

YouTube could have been good. It could have spurred a copyright revolution. But instead it just bowed down to the copyright industry so that a few execs could be in the top 1% of humanity during their short existence.

chii• 3 years ago

But instead it just bowed down to the copyright industry

you mean youtube tried to obey the law?

You cannot just unilaterally decide not to obey copyright laws.

It could have spurred a copyright revolution.

I am not in favour of vigilantism - the right way to change the law is to participate in the public civil procedures. For example, if enough people joined the Pirate Party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pirate_Party), such laws could be changed.

It's just that most people dont give a shit about copyright, and this is the democratic outcome.

arghwhat3• 3 years ago

you mean youtube tried to obey the law?

To be clear, YouTube's goal is not to obey the law, but to minimize their loss. This is why they entirely disregard key aspects and intents of the law, leaving fair use and fair process as a joke.

Their implementation harms creators and redirects their earnings to companies that were never legally, contractually or morally entitled to it.

the right way to change the law is to participate in the public civil procedures.

Unless there is going to be fines for not allowing copyright unencumbered content to be displayed and monetized, no change of law is going to help here. Copyright law is twisted because of companies like Disney, but the underlying problem is that YouTube will only ever care about avoiding expensive litigation.

JoshTriplett3• 3 years ago

YouTube goes beyond what the law requires. If YouTube followed the law, they'd accept a DMCA notice from a purported copyright holder and take a video down, then accept a counter-notice from the video poster and put the video back up, without question, and then the recourse the purported copyright holder has at that point if they still think the video is infringing is to sue the video poster and not YouTube. And if they don't sue, the video stays up.

What YouTube does instead, which is absolutely unacceptable and far beyond what the law requires, is put the purported copyright holder in charge of judging the video poster's appeal, and naturally they tend to say "no". No counter-notice mechanism, video doesn't go back up.

bni• 3 years ago

If someone scans a recent DVD release of SW, is it still public domain?

Or must you have access to an original film reel from the early 1900 and scan that? Do anyone have besides in some Disney archive?

Has issues like that ever been clarified?

stuartjohnson12• 3 years ago

In the UK, it was recently ruled that copyright could only apply to things not designed solely to replicate the original artefact. The context was museums licensing photographs of artefacts while keeping the originals locked away.

From what I understand it's not been tested significantly in the US yet, though I could be wrong.

ghaff• 3 years ago

Although it’s somewhat different IANAL but Feist probably at least peripherally applies in that “sweat of the brow” doesn’t give you copyright. So with respect to the photographs, just because you spent days setting everything up to get the perfect reproduction, you probably still can’t get copyright on it.

vasco• 3 years ago

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reuse_of_PD-Art...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Cor....

yetanotherloser• 3 years ago

There's a similar case in the US - Bridgeman vs Corel - that influenced the UK one. I don't think it forms a universal rule in the US, unlike the more recent UK ruling, but it is influential.

LegitShady• 3 years ago

It's like trying to copyright pictures of artwork from a museum - I don't think changing the media matters - taking a picture isn't significant authorship of a painting. Similarly whether on DVD or film reel, there isn't a significant authorship change in posting the same clip from a DVD.

michaelt3• 3 years ago

If you consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality the answer seems to be "it depends"

For example, in the US there have been cases where high quality reproductions of old public domain paintings did not meet the threshold of originality to qualify for copyright. Remastered audio recordings with adjustments such as equalisation and sound editing were ruled to be eligible for copyright in 2016, then the ruling was overturned in 2018.

On the other hand, under German law digitised versions of public domain paintings are entitled to new 'Leistungsschutzrecht' copyrights, reflecting the effort and expertise necessary to create the reproductions.

didntcheck• 3 years ago

There was actually a dispute between Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons and the British National Gallery over this - the UK working similar to Germany

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_...

tsimionescu3• 3 years ago

Actually, according to Wikipedia, starting in 2021, even Germany requires human creativity for a work to be protected by copyright. They explicitly say in the law that simple reproduction of public domain works is not protected.

helsinkiandrew• 3 years ago

I'm guessing that Brock Baker didn't digitise a 1928 reel of film himself.

If the digitisation was done recently and a lot of work went into cleaning up the images (restoring old movies is time consuming and costly - including artists touching up/recreating/fixing frames) couldn't Disney (or who ever has done it) claim that the new restored digitised version is now copyright?

tsimionescu3• 3 years ago

It seems to depend on the exact jurisdiction, but in the US and UK, it seems that this type of work is not protected, as it doesn't constitute human expression, it is only a matter of skill and technique.

Now of course anyone can claim anything in court, and you have to decide whether you think you can beat Disney's lawyers if you decide to do so...

insickness• 3 years ago

Recent Hacker News discussion on this:

Court of Appeal ruling will prevent UK museums from charging reproduction fees

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38817128

moomin• 3 years ago

In hbomberguy’s recent video about plagiarism, he points out that one of the dumb side effects of YouTube’s content ID policy is that claiming is so common and usually bad that people assume actual serious infringements are benign.

safety1st3• 3 years ago

"Oops, just a bug" only goes so far. What's interesting about content ID is that only a select group of large copyright holders have access to protecting their works through it, and we have a growing number of cases where it makes "decisions" that are not in line with copyright law.

So is it a copyright enforcement system or is it really some kind of cartel mechanism which is replacing copyright law?

Inquiring minds in the federal government might want to know.

rezonant2• 3 years ago

So is it a copyright enforcement system or is it really some kind of cartel mechanism which is replacing copyright law?

Yes. In this case this is certainly because this footage is in Disney's YouTube CMS and set to be auto-claimed. The fact that we are at the whim of an admin doing the right thing and removing that content from their CMS or at the very least changing the policy attached to it is problematic at best.

jasode• 3 years ago

So is it a copyright enforcement system or is it really some kind of cartel mechanism which is replacing copyright law?

It's neither of those. Content ID is an automated detection system that Google/Youtube voluntarily put in place to help make peace with big copyright holders like Viacom to stop the lawsuits: https://archive.is/Awz5k

Basically Youtube created a win-win deal: when our content scanner finds a pirated upload matching with your content, you can choose to share in the monetization revenue we get from ads or you can remove it.

In contrast, the DMCA copyright strike takedown mechanism is the more heavy-handed attempt at "copyright enforcement".

EDIT add to reply: >So to be more direct: Google is exhibiting non-transparent, cartel-like behavior

I can't speak to any invisible back room behavior but as one datapoint... you can be a small independent musician on a small distributor like CDBaby or DistroKid and partipate in Content ID. Example: https://support.distrokid.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013534874...

The initial motivation for Content ID fingerprinting was placating the big players like Viacom but it has since been opened up to others.

ben_w3• 3 years ago

So is it a copyright enforcement system or is it really some kind of cartel mechanism which is replacing copyright law?

Kinda both, IMO.

So, talking to defence lawyers about copyright cases, even if you settle before going to court, is extremely expensive, and even if you're a well-earning software developer you really don't want to pay even the counterparty legal costs that would precede a court case (and those can count as "actual damages" from an act of copyright infringement). The copyright holder may only get part of even just those legal costs back, so they don't really want to do that either.

For both rights holders and infringers, a thing like ContentID is actually pretty good. Likewise even mere suspected (but actually innocent) infringers, as things can be taken down without having to face a huge legal bill even if you're innocent.

But the downside is the cost savings is in the form of automation, and as there is no algorithm for the truth (and only just starting to be one for "common sense") this automation can be systematically abused by people who are not rights holders. (This isn't the cartel-like behaviour, this is just straight up old fashioned fraud).

Cartels are associations of suppliers who conspire to restrict competition and inflate prices. I think copyright does this all by itself[0], but the extra part of what you wrote was "replacing" copyright law, and… kinda? To the extent that ToS are contracts, and contracts bind parties to do more than the law alone, but can't do illegal things?

But the usual implication is that a cartel is doing forbidden things, even though that's not strictly true and they can sometimes be legally required[1], and that would be something I couldn't prove — but I don't see any particular reason why the big players in video IP would even be interested in doing that given they've already got copyright law. The closest I know of is things where a studio is inspired by a YouTuber, makes a big thing, and then someone sends a take-down request to the original[2], which seems familiar from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide[3]

[0] compulsory cartels include those forced by law[1], and there are copyright holders who lobby for the laws, in some places I'm told it's not possible to voluntarily renounce copyright (though that may have been a game of telephone involving a misunderstanding of a court ruling), and that this was behind the discussion of why there are equivalent licenses that aren't strictly "public domain": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-domain-equivalent_licen...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_cartel

[2] Pixels movie and it's antecedent, and I vaguely remember Tom Scott saying something similar as an example of the one time he used a small claims court?

[3] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9789445-the-simplistic-styl...

eurekin• 3 years ago

Accurate, but not precise.

I'd imagine they were focused on catching as many violations as possible, at the cost of catching false positives into net.

fermigier• 3 years ago

"Here's my favorite example, here: 1928, my hero, Walt Disney, created this extraordinary work, the birth of Mickey Mouse in the form of Steamboat Willie. But what you probably don't recognize about Steamboat Willie and his emergence into Mickey Mouse is that in 1928, Walt Disney, to use the language of the Disney Corporation today, "stole" Willie from Buster Keaton's "Steamboat Bill."

It was a parody, a take-off; it was built upon Steamboat Bill. Steamboat Bill was produced in 1928, no [waiting] 14 years--just take it, rip, mix, and burn, as he did [laughter] to produce the Disney empire. This was his character. Walt always parroted feature-length mainstream films to produce the Disney empire, and we see the product of this. This is the Disney Corporation: taking works in the public domain, and not even in the public domain, and turning them into vastly greater, new creativity. They took the works of this guy, these guys, the Brothers Grimm, who you think are probably great authors on their own. They produce these horrible stories, these fairy tales, which anybody should keep their children far from because they're utterly bloody and moralistic stories, and are not the sort of thing that children should see, but they were retold for us by the Disney Corporation. Now the Disney Corporation could do this because that culture lived in a commons, an intellectual commons, a cultural commons, where people could freely take and build. It was a lawyer-free zone."

-- Lawrence Lessig, "Free Culture", OSCON 2002 (https://youtu.be/uH4RskpUFiA?si=IHVC72F4oXpLHJVV&t=253)

skummetmaelk• 3 years ago

Take what you can, give nothing back. Apparently.

troupo• 3 years ago

That has been Disney's motto since forever. The "golden age if Disney" is all public domain works and fairy tales.

Log_out_2• 3 years ago

Very piracy, but okay for the big guy.

nmz2• 3 years ago

Everybody should keep their children far from morals? What?

zanellato193• 3 years ago

Moralistic has a completely different connotation, as I'm sure you are aware.

well_actulily• 3 years ago

Lessig isn't saying we should keep children away from morals. He's criticizing how Disney adapted the Brothers Grimm's stories, which often preached heavy-handed and regressive moral lessons in a moralizing manner.

sbergot• 3 years ago

In the original stories the bad guys are punished in a cruel and horrible way. Like forced to dance with red-hot iron shoes.

t-3• 3 years ago

Moralizing can have the meaning of "inculcating morality", but it's more commonly used nowadays as "relating to a narrow-minded concern [for] the morals of others".

CalRobert2• 3 years ago

"once upon a time a beautiful but poor girl married a rich dude and everything was great"

jdietrich• 3 years ago

Walt Disney was repeatedly accused of racism during his lifetime, mostly because he kept putting dreadful racist stereotypes in his films. The defence given by his supporters is that he was essentially naive and conformist, that he just reflected the values of his time, that he viewed his work as harmless fun, that he wasn't really thinking about the message he sent when he made a film like Song of the South.

That defence is quite reasonable as a defence of the man, but it's also an indictment of his work. Do you really want your kids taking heavy-handed morality lessons from someone who didn't actually have a clear sense of morality?

rsynnott• 3 years ago

The moral of the story for quite a lot of these stories is... a bit effed up. Like, try getting a coherent one out of The Little Mermaid.

doublerabbit• 3 years ago

No one seems to mention that Walt didn't really animate, nor create Mickey Mouse.

Walts friend of the time: Ub Iwerk did. Credit for Disney early successes should really go to him.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ub_Iwerks

greggsy• 3 years ago

It’s right there in the first sentence of the Wikipedia article. Credits did go to him. The film was produced by Walt Disney Studios.

merelysounds• 3 years ago

Both the Steamboat Bill[1] and the Steamboat Willie[2] wikipedia pages state that this was about parodying the title. Note that there was also a 1910 song "Steamboat Bill"[3].

The film inspired the title of Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie (1928), which was released six months later and is considered the debut of Mickey Mouse.
The title of the film may be a parody of the Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), itself a reference to the song by Collins.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_Bill,_Jr.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_Willie

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_Bill

furyofantares2• 3 years ago

This looks false, the Buster Keaton film was released the same year, not 14 years earlier, according to wikipedia. And both were inspired by an 18 year old song, Steamboat Bill, which Mickey whistles at the start.

danaris• 3 years ago

You have misread the post: it explicitly says that Steamboat Bill was released the same year, "no waiting 14 years"—as in, they didn't wait for the copyright to expire.

kitsune_• 3 years ago

From a moral philosophy perspective, corporations like Google display a concerning ethical imbalance when they fail to proactively uphold the common good in scenarios where there's no direct financial benefit. A question to HN, since there are a ton of Googlers on here, what are the justifications of those who work within such organizations, particularly when there are other companies that seem to manage a better balance between profit and public responsibility? Is it really just about money, status and working on "cool tech"? I see a lot of submissions about FAANG companies "doing wrong" on here but I rarely see a discussion about us software developers being active participants in this sort of behavior.

thelastparadise• 3 years ago

It's about the money.

kriops2• 3 years ago

Your supposition that they fail to uphold the common good is unsubstantiated (and arguably must be, because it is arguably wrong.).

And arguably a corporation can neither be moral nor immoral, as only its individual stakeholders are moral actors.

zanellato193• 3 years ago

A corporation is a collection of people. If these people are doing immoral actions, so is the corporation. Everything that happens by human action is moral or immoral.

anon84873628• 3 years ago

Are other companies really any better? Where can you work that is definitively "morally pure" and have such reliable income and comfortable lifestyle? (Or even in the same ballpark?)

It's pretty much the same question as asking why everyone doesn't go work for non profits or NGOs. Or move away from the US and stop supporting bad US government behavior with our taxes...

taway789aaa6• 3 years ago

Or move away from the US and stop supporting bad US government behavior with our taxes...

Why would you need to move away? There's a grand tradition in some communities (Quakers, for example) of paying taxes _except_ for the portion (based on national budget) that would be going to support the military. Sure there may be "consequences", but would they not be worth it?

DaiPlusPlus• 3 years ago

I'll give Microsoft props for open-sourcing a lot of their proprietary products (e.g. DOS, major components of Windows 3.11, etc) - though it's a shame that a lot of their stuff can't be re-released because it includes source licensed from other companies (e.g. Internet Explorer)..

Don't forget id Software too (granted, they open-source their game engines, while their game content remains paywalled - but it's the spirit that counts)

KMag• 3 years ago

Or move away from the US and stop supporting bad US government behavior with our taxes...

As long as you're a US citizen or green card holder, moving away from the US won't stop the US from taxing all of the money you make anywhere in the world. Giving up citizenship for tax reasons is also illegal and can get you a lifetime ban on re-entering the US.

Edit: with the very important caveat of Puerto Rico. I'm not a lawyer or accountant, but my understanding is that residents of Puerto Rico don't have to pay federal income tax.

kele• 3 years ago

It's a mix of what you just said, and many more.

But besides that, I work there because I actually believe that the company still does a lot of good. And from what I can tell, most people around me do too.

gempir• 3 years ago

Any for profit company does not act with 100% pure morale moves. Some do less some do more good, where do you draw the line? Google does a lot of good too, educating, bringing Internet to people who never had it before, being a diverse employer etc.

So because they have some morally questionable choices every developer should quit? There is no black and white.

lifthrasiir• 3 years ago

I see a lot of submissions about FAANG companies "doing wrong" on here but I rarely see a discussion about us software developers being active participants in this sort of behavior.

That's because i) there are better venues for that sort of discussions than the HN, ii) there is no reason that everyone (or even a fraction of them) should talk actively about their employer, and iii) that line of thought can be recursively applied to any other group, giving rise to common behaviors described in i) and ii).

fridek• 3 years ago

For me, it boils down to the question of participation in a flawed but powerful system in a hope of leading to better outcomes, or its avoidance in the hope of its downfall. This is the same line of reasoning you can apply to political elections in almost any country.

I have no illusion of being irreplacable, or of the FAANG companies going down. Even if my departure would create a ripple, hiring is not, and will not ever be a problem. There is an endless supply of purely financially motivated and reasonably talented people. To leave would be to let a worse person fill my seat. Conversly, I get to work with a lot of honest people towards better things, in the scope we have control over. You can't fix everything, but often you can really make a difference on what's right in front of you.

boppo1• 3 years ago

there are other companies that seem to manage a better balance between profit and public responsibility

How's the comp and WLB? Can you list these companies?

Schiendelman• 3 years ago

Indeed has been very good on all counts.

kevin_thibedeau• 3 years ago

There is a direct financial benefit. Their pseudo-DMCA automated takedown process, biased toward big media interests, has protected them from massive lawsuits.

deelowe3• 3 years ago

Google has two options here:

1) Accept all take down notices at face value and let the courts handle disputes

2) Become a mediator and open themselves up for liability

It's no surprise Google chooses option 1 given the scale they must operate at. It's a consequence of the legal system which makes Google liable for not taking action immediately on valid claims, but also making it such validity not determined until after claims have been reviewed by the courts.

jamwil• 3 years ago

And a consequence of their choice to operate at a certain scale.

sneak• 3 years ago

This is a false dichotomy that lets Google off the hook for irresponsibility and amorality.

If Google’s management is not responsible for Google’s pathological behavior, then nobody is.

ThrowawayR2• 3 years ago

Bluntly, no one gives a flying fig about moral philosophy or upholding what internet denizens think is "proactively upholding the common good" for much, much less money than what Google pays, even when said denizens happen to be right. Almost no one walks away from Omelas.

Once you reach FAANG levels of compensation, lulling oneself into complacency by internalizing marketing like "don't be evil" or "our products are loved by billions of customers" becomes even easier.

masto• 3 years ago

I have a pet peeve when people use the phrase "begging the question" when they really mean "raising the question". Begging the question is kind of technical and it's sometimes hard to think of examples. You have provided one here.

publiccopy• 3 years ago

it became public domain in the US. Disney still holds copyright elsewhere and Youtube must adhere to all national copyright laws in countries which have access to youtube

JKCalhoun• 3 years ago

Pretty sure YouTube/Google have a notion of region and can selectively enforce copyright if they choose to.

saaaaaam2• 3 years ago

Yup, correct. And interestingly the article says it was in fact blocked from view in some territories.

Which makes me think that the copyright claim is not actually about the video content but likely audio.

So perhaps they have blocked in territories where the video is not yet public domain and there’s a copyright claim in the territory (USA) where some other copyright controlled element is causing an issue.

saaaaaam2• 3 years ago

Not only this, but the musical works contained within the video may not be public domain. I can’t tell whether he has replaced all of the audio or dubbed his version on top of existing music.

Joel_Mckay2• 3 years ago

"Play stupid games... win stupid prizes."

Isn't a remastered version a separate work under the copyright semblance rules?

i.e. each digitally remastered re-release essentially extends that versions protection another 85 years. =)

trogdor10• 3 years ago

Isn't a remastered version a separate work under the copyright semblance rules?

No.

A 2018 9th Circuit decision held that remasters are not eligible for copyright protection because they lack originality. The case was ABS Entertainment Inc. v. CBS Corporation.

Joel_Mckay2• 3 years ago

"Burninating the countryside, Burninating the peasants, Burninating all the peoples" (Trogdor)

From one monster to another, cheers =)

jokoon• 3 years ago

I don't understand what youtube is gaining from this, there are so many stories like that.

Is that because they partner with big movie/music industries?

Also I don't understand why competitors are not really picking up.

daveoc642• 3 years ago

I don't understand what youtube is gaining from this, there are so many stories like that.

As others have noted, the Content ID system is in place to show that YouTube is proactively trying to do something about piracy - this makes the movie studios and record labels less likely to sue Google.

Also I don't understand why competitors are not really picking up.

Video hosting and streaming on the scale of YouTube is expensive and probably can't be profitable.

YouTube allows anyone to upload an unlimited amount of 4K video, make it available to everyone in the world - all free of charge. Advertising revenue won't cover everything, and of course, quite a few people are blocking ads.

Services like Vimeo compete to some extent, but they acknowledge the expenses involved, so only cater for niche market segments. Things like PeerTube offer an alternative model, using peer to peer bandwidth to keep the costs down - but the federated nature of it makes it less likely to catch on in the mainstream like YouTube has.

PurpleRamen• 3 years ago

Their main reason is to not get sued to hell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y....

Also I don't understand why competitors are not really picking up.

Video is expensive. But competitors do pick up, just in different ways. TikTok and Twitch are strong competition, but they have a focus on different style of experience.

stg22• 3 years ago

Social media sites have so many users/viewings that fixed costs for serving all their content don't really matter to them, but since ads don't pay much per viewing, they have to cut the marginal costs of hosting and serving content to the bone to stay profitable.

For every million pieces of user-generated content hosted, they get a certain number of copyright complaints, so handling those complaints is a marginal cost. Since the kind of uploaded content YouTube target is particularly prone to being a significant violation of copyright (e.g. entire films), handling the complaints cheaply is a particularly big concern for them. Handling them effectively and with common sense would require human processing of each complaint, but the effect of that on marginal costs wouldn't fit with the business model, so they go with a low-marginal cost, error-prone system instead.

Since the consequences for the business of wrongly failing to take down copyrighted content can be very bad, but the consequences for the business of wrongly taking down uncopyrighted content are negligible, if the system must be error prone, they want their users to be on the wrong side of any errors, not the complainants.

Any American rival to YouTube would have the same problem and would resolve it a similar way.

ikekkdcjkfke• 3 years ago

Wire fraud?

KHRZ2• 3 years ago

Disney also claimed copyright to my upload of Steamboat Willie to Facebook on January 1st. They have 1 week to review my dispute.

trogdor10• 3 years ago

This article is misleading, since it omits very important information. See the screenshot provided by the YouTuber regarding the Content ID claim? Look at the far right of the screenshot. There’s a “Select Action” link.

I make my living from YouTube, and I am going to explain what’s behind that link.

When a creator receives a Content ID claim, that’s the beginning of a process, not the end. Content ID claims can be disputed, and during the dispute, all revenue from the video is held in escrow, eventually going to whomever prevails in the dispute.

The first level of the dispute process is essentially the uploader asking the claimant to reconsider, with the option to provide a brief explanation of why the uploader believes the claim is invalid. There’s even a radio button to select if you believe the material is in the public domain.

If the initial dispute is rejected, that’s not the end of the story. The uploader can press the dispute further. Doing so forces the claimant to either abandon their claim, or ‘upgrade’ it to a formal DMCA takedown.

If a takedown is issued and the uploader believes their work is not infringing, they can respond with a counter-notification, which forces the claimant to either (a) sue the uploader within ten days, or (b) lose the dispute. In the latter case, the video goes back up and any escrow revenue - along with all future revenue - goes to the uploader instead of the copyright claimant.

Behind the “Select Action” link is the option to initiate the dispute process I just described. Which the uploader almost-certainly already did.

Also behind that link, IIRC, is the option to contact the claimant via email. That can be an equally-effective path toward resolution, as it provides the opportunity for a more casual, professional dialog, outside of YouTube’s formal process. In fact, on one occasion I developed a positive and ongoing business relationship with another media outlet after being contacted by them regarding a claim that I had made in error.

When Content ID first rolled out in 2007, it could be easily abused. And it was. But that was almost 17 years ago, and the way it works today is - dare I say - pretty good. Like any enormous system it has its problems, but on the whole it’s pretty fair.

Edit:

There is one other option behind the “Select Action” link. It’s irrelevant in this case, but I might as well include it here for completeness.

If the claim involves only a portion of the video, or the audio in the video, the uploader is given options to (1) excise the claimed section of their video, (2) silence the audio in the claimed section, or (3) replace the claimed audio with music from YouTube’s (huge) library of free music.

If the uploader chooses any one of those options, it immediately resolves the claim in their favor, since the claimed material is no longer present in their upload.

londons_explore2• 3 years ago

The key bit being that youtube and it's employees never make copyright decisions. They provide the tools, but all actual disputes must be settled between the parties or in court.

Angostura• 3 years ago

Thanks for this. Informative

jadbox• 3 years ago

I've worked in digital rights management for YouTube media, and (dare I say) it is far from being pretty good. Claimers can basically deny revenue to uploaded videos for months at a time while the dispute process is occuring. This period is a killzone as many content creators often rely on both the timing and month-to-month revenue to pay bills (content creation doesn't pay well to begin with).

The end effect is that claimers bully the industry far beyond what the legal rights that they hold.

xrd3• 3 years ago

This is a powerful indictment and should not be missed.

I recently read an article about how video games shops don't need to worry about any kind of copying. The reason is that most video games make the lion share of their money in the first few months, and then it tapers off significantly. So, you can copy ideas, styles, and whatever, but it won't dampen opportunities for the original work to make money, so don't worry about it. This is good for the industry and for the creative world and for commons.

If a claimer can halt revenue for the first few months on any creative work, they can kill any opportunities to be made off public domain works. This a second order effect of the public domain laws.

There should be an amendment where a claimer should have to pay damages to the creators if they abuse this. I would love for Disney to pay when they file a claim in bad faith.

trogdor10• 3 years ago

Your observation that the process can be excessively drawn-out is accurate. I think should be changed.

I disagree, however, with your conclusion that the drawn-out process is a financial “killzone” for creators. I talk regularly with other successful YouTubers, and I don’t know anyone for whom the majority of their revenue comes from sporadically-released new content. Yes, it sucks if revenue from a new release is held up in Content ID escrow, but for me and for the other YouTubers I know well, that wouldn’t wreck our overall earnings during the escrow period.

If someone is reliant on month-to-month revenue from single-release videos to pay their bills, that sounds more like a personal financial planning issue than a problem caused by Content ID.

Would you talk a bit more about “claimers bully the industry far beyond the scope of legally binding terms”? I don’t know what you are referring to, and I’d like to hear more.

AkBKukU2• 3 years ago

I also make my living from Youtube and I would strongly disagree that it is fair.

On the absolute most simple basis, false claims can be damaging to the creator but the same false claims are completely risk free to the issuers.

The problem shown in the OP is an additional layer of complexity where another company is contacting the creator on behalf of Disney which muddies the waters on who exactly is filing the claim and whether they have the right to.

The only thing in the Content ID system that is built in favor of the creator is if the claim issuer doesn't progress the counter claim and it is automatically dismissed.

This doesn't even get into the likely diminished recommendations the video will get after being flagged, the time wasted by the creator to manual fight things that can be spammed with the API (0), and the unfair revenue splits that can result if the creator did make an honest mistake.

(0) https://developers.google.com/youtube/partner/identify_conte...

trogdor10• 3 years ago

I also make my living from Youtube and I would strongly disagree that it is fair
The only thing in the Content ID system that is built in favor of the creator is if the claim issuer doesn't progress the counter claim and it is automatically dismissed.

Fairness doesn’t mean that the system should be stacked in favor of anyone who uploads a video. I get that copyright is a controversial subject, but both Content ID and the DMCA have mechanisms that are intended to balance the rights of copyright holders against the rights of people who create content using others’ works.

This doesn't even get into the likely diminished recommendations the video will get after being flagged

My personal experience is that Content ID claims have no impact on video performance. Do you have any evidence that a claim negatively impacts search and discovery?

the unfair revenue splits that can result if the creator did make an honest mistake

If the result of unintentional copyright infringement is a revenue split, that sounds to me like a very pro-creator outcome. They could take the video down. Or even sue you.

bertil• 3 years ago

Nothing says that YouTube (Google or Alphabet) cares a little too much about automated processes and not enough about making sense of what’s happening than they not have pro-actively removed that IP from their content recognition system—having implemented a way to do that systematically, even.

This is the canonical piece of culture whose entry into the public domain was expected and celebrated. It’s the touchstone of copyright extension.

If you work at YouTube, please get a couple of intelligent people to parse WikiData to flag those, ask rights-holders if they still want to extend strikes, and avoid getting egg on your face in straightforward cases.

zzzeek• 3 years ago

the article didn't seem to have it (?) so here's the video in question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMYJxCj6pmI

merdaverse• 3 years ago

Everyone and their grandmother knows that the video is public domain now. How is it possible that Disney and Youtube don't? How are people so incompetent calling the shots?

YouTube demonetizes public domain 'Steamboat Willie' video after copyright claim

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