[HN Gopher] Piano teacher gets copyright claim for Beethoven's M...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Piano teacher gets copyright claim for Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
       [video]
        
       Author : bitcharmer
       Score  : 814 points
       Date   : 2021-05-01 08:55 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | verytrivial wrote:
       | I can't be certain, but I think this video might be the
       | "original" that the algorithm matched:
       | https://youtu.be/-ThyLB6bakk
       | 
       | What is to stop bad actors pumping out a stream of
       | interpretations of public domain _melodies_ to prime the matching
       | algorithm then using the robotic nature of the appeal process to
       | extort ad revenue? Nothing, apparently!
        
       | wazoox wrote:
       | This is the evil of monopoly. Monopolies destroy freedom and will
       | bring back feudalism. The GAFAM must be broken up.
       | 
       | Yannis Varoufakis discusses this in this (oh the irony) youtube
       | video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlkuA1mx0pc
        
       | cronix wrote:
       | Rick Beato explains a lot of this very well. He's even testified
       | in congress about this subject. Here's a good explanatory video
       | of his on this subject:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5lY_DbUsok
       | 
       | It's slightly different as the music he uses actually has
       | existing copyright, but along the same lines.
       | 
       | "You can't teach people music without giving examples. I can't do
       | something like, 'well you know, this is _like_ Led Zeppelin, or
       | _like_ Bach '...this is something I created and you're going to
       | learn from it... No, you have to learn from the actual sources."
        
       | bluesign wrote:
       | This is fraud. They claim they have right to something they
       | don't, when you dispute, YouTube just directing them the dispute
       | and they reject.
       | 
       | As you don't want to risk 3 strike, you agree to share revenue.
       | 
       | Basically Youtube doing nothing.
        
         | intricatedetail wrote:
         | Have you ever tried to report fraud to authorities? Even if you
         | show overwhelming evidence, details of perpetrator, chances are
         | LE will laugh you out and say it is a civil matter.
        
           | bitcharmer wrote:
           | With law enforcement at least you get to talk to people. With
           | YouTube/Google all your complaints go straight to /dev/null
        
             | globular-toast wrote:
             | Only if you're a big enough company and/or have to the
             | right contacts. Do you think regular people could get the
             | police to raid a data centre or something on grounds of
             | copyright infringement?
        
           | spacemanmatt wrote:
           | LE might also decide they look funny and launch a frivolous
           | prosecution against you.
        
         | matsemann wrote:
         | At least DMCA has a perjury clause. It seems like there is no
         | punishment for spamming frivolous takedown notices on YT.
        
         | cronix wrote:
         | > Basically Youtube doing nothing.
         | 
         | Actually, they're hurting an independent content creator over
         | something she has every right to do using works in the public
         | domain. Youtube is doing that, not the fraudster making the
         | false claim. They have no power other than what Youtube gives
         | them, and Youtube gives them 100% of the power.
        
       | tsp wrote:
       | This is really bad! YouTube should find ways to respond to
       | misclaimed tracks as a creator. Also companies / individuals that
       | claim public domain music should be banned from the platform.
        
         | paulmd wrote:
         | you're fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose of the
         | copyright claim system: it doesn't exist to determine the
         | legitimate owner of a work, it exists _to keep youtube from
         | being sued_. Since there is no legal penalty for a  "false
         | positive", even if the creator can prove that it's a false
         | positive, while there _is_ a penalty for a false negative, the
         | system will always lean to aggressive removal and
         | demonetization, because that 's where youtube's interests lie.
         | 
         | the legal answer here is that if you don't like youtube's
         | copyright system then distribute your content on another
         | platform. Otherwise, push for there to be a penalty for an
         | excessive removal of copyright, because that's the only thing
         | that's going to tilt youtube's scales back to the center.
        
           | bertil wrote:
           | > Since there is no legal penalty for a "false positive",
           | 
           | I'm really confused by that part: YouTube lawyers must know
           | that there's a significant risk they'll piss of a someone
           | like a law professor and that they'll use all their faculty
           | to go after what is essentially fraud: there are provisions
           | in the CDMA precisely for that, and the platform is liable
           | for indulging those in systematic cases. Even if it's not,
           | they are risking a change in law.
           | 
           | Compared that PR nightmare to having an engineer spend a few
           | days to hack a "public domain" user that automatically
           | accepts re-use, or re-train to distinguish interpretations
           | from copies... I feel like I'm missing something -- and I'm
           | not missing a cynical take on how Google is too big to care.
           | 
           | God knows that I've been arguing that some problems are
           | harder than one expects, but public domain sheet music isn't
           | a hard one for YouTube.
        
             | Sebb767 wrote:
             | > there are provisions in the CDMA precisely for that, and
             | the platform is liable for indulging those in systematic
             | cases.
             | 
             | (assuming you mean DMCA) Yes, that has provisions, but YT
             | copyright claims are explicitly not DMCA claims. This is
             | intentional to both protect the content creator (lawsuits
             | are expensive!) and YouTube.
             | 
             | > YouTube lawyers must know that there's a significant risk
             | they'll piss of a someone like a law professor and that
             | they'll use all their faculty to go after what is
             | essentially fraud:
             | 
             | YouTube can ban you from the platform at any time for any
             | reason. While it's not good publicity, you don't have a
             | legal right to be on YouTube or receive money from them.
             | 
             | > Even if it's not, they are risking a change in law.
             | 
             | I doubt Google is happy with the status quo, actually,
             | since it is not good for their creators. But with the
             | system being as it is, they're doing what's best for them.
             | 
             | > Compared that PR nightmare to having an engineer spend a
             | few days to hack a "public domain" user that automatically
             | accepts re-use, or re-train to distinguish interpretations
             | from copies... I feel like I'm missing something
             | 
             | For one, recognizing this music is not an easy problem.
             | You'll need to be accurate in a wide variety of cases,
             | lengths and qualities, which in itself is already very
             | hard. _But_ , just because it's that piece, it's not
             | necessarily free: Recordings of these songs _can_ be copy-
             | righted. For example, Beethoven 's music itself is free,
             | but the recording performed by the Sydney opera is not. So
             | you need to decide whether the uploader has rights to this
             | specific recording, which is nearly impossible.
             | 
             | And this is just the easy case. Fair use, for example, is a
             | very gray area and something which can take courts years to
             | decide. Same on whether a piece is derivative or different
             | enough to be its own work. There is no chance for Google to
             | automate away any of this.
        
               | eru wrote:
               | > There is no chance for Google to automate away any of
               | this.
               | 
               | I'm not quite so pessimistic. There is a chance, machine
               | learning is pretty good these days.
               | 
               | But: the chance is pretty low and I assume other
               | priorities are taking up most of their time, and this
               | would be a risky project from a legal point of view.
        
               | naniwaduni wrote:
               | There is no chance because copyright is not a data
               | problem. It is a provenance problem. Provenance is not a
               | function of data.
               | 
               | (Humans can't really solve this problem either.)
        
             | dkarras wrote:
             | The nuance with "public domain sheet music" is that while
             | the instructions of how to play that music is public
             | domain, the recorded performance of such music is not. So
             | when you play moonlight sonata, you have the copyright to
             | that particular performance (recording) and someone else
             | cannot use that without permission. It is somewhat harder
             | to distinguish between recordings of thousands of
             | performances of the same musical piece.
             | 
             | The thing though is that youtube decided not to care.
             | Actually, that is not about caring - the youtube we knew
             | when it first launched was killed because it was an
             | impossible business model if they themselves had the
             | liability for uploaded possibly copyrighted content. So now
             | they say "sort it out between yourselves, go to courts if
             | you want but I will take it down while you do that to not
             | be liable in the worst case".
        
               | withinboredom wrote:
               | This particular case is about a copyrighted "melody" and
               | not the performance. Sheet music would cover this.
        
               | dkarras wrote:
               | The same principle applies though: Youtube has no say in
               | deciding what is copyrighted or not. They don't want to
               | have a say in it themselves. Someone, somewhere, claims
               | that they own the copyright to x and y. Youtube can't and
               | won't decide if that is truthful or not. Almost a decade
               | ago, youtube gave the keys to claims to people to remove
               | themselves from the equation. "Someone says they own this
               | stuff so _they_ took it down. Sort it out between
               | yourselves. "
        
               | cycomanic wrote:
               | How much would you bet that the same wouldn't happen to
               | e.g. Warner Bros.. YT is quite definitely taking a
               | stance, the problem is they're not taking a stance on
               | truthfulness, but simply on how much money does it make
               | us.
        
               | dkarras wrote:
               | They are taking a stance on how much headache and money
               | it will cost them, which is really reasonable. The reason
               | old and unsustainable youtube died is _because_ of the
               | Warner Bros and alike - because their kind tend to hold
               | an enormous amount of copyrights. If they feel they
               | benefit from copyrights, then they will feel the most
               | attacked. They, with their influence, said youtube cannot
               | continue in this fashion back in the day, and it was
               | true. They could sue youtube to the ground and they 'd
               | have to close down (assuming manual moderation is
               | impossible). I am actually amazed that they allowed it to
               | continue with this solution, being, "youtube, you give us
               | the keys and we do the takedowns when we feel like our
               | copyrights are violated, then you may continue" and
               | youtube said "fine" and that is where we are. Now if you
               | feel like your content is taken down unjustly, you should
               | take it up with whoever is claiming ownership over _your_
               | content. Which is... impractical actually, but that is
               | how it is. This is one of the only ways within the
               | current legal framework where you can have a site where
               | people post content to freely without being liable for
               | aiding and abetting copyright infringement yourself. No
               | easy solution to this.
               | 
               | So yes, Warner Bros can be an enormous headache to
               | youtube. Legally and financially. "Piano teacher"
               | probably can't. Youtube acts accordingly which is pretty
               | rational. If you owned a youtube-like service, you'd have
               | to do the same.
        
             | BlueTemplar wrote:
             | Well they already managed to piss off the EU, but after
             | intense lobbying by Google, it looks like that the
             | resulting law hinders more YouTube's competitors?
        
           | robbrown451 wrote:
           | Sure, YouTube doesn't want to get sued, but they also don't
           | want to lose most of their content creators. Things are
           | rarely as simple as assuming a party has a singular
           | motivation.
        
         | tomcooks wrote:
         | Or creators should promote public domain platforms like
         | archive.org instead of complaining that a commercial platform
         | is run like that
        
           | qayxc wrote:
           | And what exactly would that solve? Now you've shifted the
           | problem to a different organisation without addressing the
           | actual issue: bad actors and copyright trolls being
           | asymmetrically favoured over content creators.
           | 
           | Being a non-profit organisation doesn't make you immune from
           | frivolous lawsuits...
        
             | gaius_baltar wrote:
             | > And what exactly would that solve?
             | 
             | Google won't get the ad money from these views. That's the
             | point.
        
       | disillusioned wrote:
       | I used the YouTube studio editor to add a piece from YouTube's
       | library of music in the public domain to a small video of no real
       | consequence, and then, ten years later, received a copyright
       | claim on that audio. The system is really truly fucked.
        
       | trinovantes wrote:
       | I don't understand why YouTube doesn't use their content id
       | system to detect these obvious public domain disputes.
        
         | Mordisquitos wrote:
         | Probably because it would cost them time and effort, but they
         | have no incentive to do so. Why would they? At most, when cases
         | such as this come to the public's attention, all that YouTube
         | suffers is inconsequential reputational damage. This is easily
         | and cheaply mitigated in PR terms if it gets bad enough by just
         | handling the incident with a quick _" Oops, sorry, our bad"_
         | and reinstating the removed material.
         | 
         | Meanwhile, the uncountable cases of illegitimate copyright
         | takedowns which never make the news don't matter. What are the
         | victims going to do about it? Sue? Use a YouTube competitor?
        
           | kzrdude wrote:
           | The only defender of the rights holders without money would
           | be the court system, so a court needs to suspend youtube's
           | copyright strike system.
        
           | durnygbur wrote:
           | > YouTube suffers is inconsequential reputational damage
           | 
           | No such thing exists. Using "reputation damage" in context of
           | YouTube, or any Google service really doesn't make any sense.
        
           | ziftface wrote:
           | Even the marketing you mentioned isn't really necessary.
           | That's what happened when you're a monopoly, bad reputation
           | doesn't really hurt the bottom line.
        
       | banbanbang wrote:
       | If you look at Google's (Alphabet's) margins you will know why.
       | We are allowing these monopoly tech companies to extract value
       | without bare min investments. Google is one of the biggest
       | violators. I think all SV companies are at fault to some degree.
       | Some still operate with "startup" budget for support. I know
       | Paypal does this for example. There's gotta be a wake up moment
       | where if you are going to be in the consumer facing business you
       | have to invest in minimal support infrastructure or face fines.
        
       | RyJones wrote:
       | I used to have a bunch of time lapses on YouTube- my office for a
       | few years was above the ferry docks in Seattle. I chose music
       | from the YouTube collection of free music for background music. I
       | have copyright claims on all of them now; I've taken almost all
       | of them down. https://youtu.be/TgzqOvTvWzw As an example
        
         | lovelyviking wrote:
         | btw I loved your video and I would prefer to see them even
         | without music. I can play guitar while watching or play some
         | other music in background.
        
           | RyJones wrote:
           | thanks - I appreciate that.
        
       | plmu wrote:
       | Google might be doing this to show the negative aspects of the
       | current copyright system. Maybe they want to annoy enough people
       | so that something might change.
        
       | egao1980 wrote:
       | My daughter plays guitar and violin and this is a very common
       | issue. Moreover Youtube automatically labels some original
       | performances as if they use third-party soundtrack. Both annoying
       | and flattering.
        
       | gekkonier wrote:
       | It's google. I can live without it. Do you?
        
         | lovelyviking wrote:
         | What about copyright it self? If they have manage to abuse it
         | even with google what are chances that they would not find a
         | way to abuse it on smaller platforms?
        
           | gekkonier wrote:
           | In this situation here google is not willing to check if an
           | automatism failed. I do not think that problem applies to
           | selfhostetd content. But who knows, its a world where
           | everything is possible....
        
           | BlueTemplar wrote:
           | They would. That's why you should avoid platforms, they go
           | against the principles of the decentralized World Wide Web.
        
       | Jyaif wrote:
       | I believe this is the video/music that claims the copyright of
       | Moonlight Sonata (notice the downvotes):
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ThyLB6bakk
        
         | h0l0cube wrote:
         | The 2015 album is on Spotify too:
         | 
         | https://open.spotify.com/album/1eMRlKHhUiVQRncGQRBBmH?si=K3e...
         | 
         | Just seems like the artist played a slowed down Moonlight
         | Sonata with some effects on top and the algorithm now thinks
         | it's theirs. Hard to know if they know that they are
         | blocking/leaching from other content creators.
        
         | shirleyquirk wrote:
         | it makes it worse that its a hamfisted, soulless rendition.
         | perhaps Mx Molland has other superior tracks but this one is
         | particularly egregious.
        
       | croes wrote:
       | This will get worse in the EU when the upload filters are in
       | place.
        
       | BooneJS wrote:
       | My daughter got her first content claim when she was a 7 year old
       | violinist. Proud father moment.
       | 
       | Dispute was allowed to lapse.
       | 
       | I'm on day 22 or so of another dispute from my son's violin
       | performance. I don't see this going anywhere either.
        
       | jeffwass wrote:
       | Summary for those that don't want to watch the video :
       | 
       | - Pianist creates YouTube video demonstrating how to play
       | Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
       | 
       | - part of this video includes her playing Moonlight Sonata (of
       | course)
       | 
       | - YouTube has a new 'feature' that scans submitted videos prior
       | to publication to identify potentially copyrighted material
       | 
       | - her video is found to include copyrighted material. She is
       | certain this is a mistake that will be rectified by disputing the
       | copyright claim
       | 
       | - she agrees the only person who's content she is reproducing is
       | Beethoven himself
       | 
       | - her copyright dispute is rejected. She is found to be violating
       | the copyright of a piece called "Wicca Moonlight"
       | 
       | - she can appeal the dispute but the appeal process is limited,
       | and she risks getting a feared "copyright strike" on her account,
       | wherein three such strikes would mean permanent closure of the
       | account
       | 
       | - she says nearly anyone can file copyright claims against
       | published YouTube videos, including bots, and is worried about
       | all the time she's putting in to create content being usurped by
       | a few bad actors
        
         | de6u99er wrote:
         | Strange, that nobody at Google seems to have heard of
         | Beethoven.
        
         | guggle wrote:
         | Upload videos to her own website. Problem solved.
        
           | Tepix wrote:
           | The reasons why ppl go to YT are monetization and visibility.
        
             | igarcia wrote:
             | She mentioned that she's not making much money from it.
             | People are migrating from this model into sponsorship such
             | as patreon, with followers chipping in for their favourite
             | creators.
        
               | BlueTemplar wrote:
               | Patreon is also problematic due to centralization.
        
               | gverrilla wrote:
               | soon there will be a killer app for that in blockchain
               | that will replace patreon
        
             | guggle wrote:
             | Yes, I get it and my comment was intended tongue-in-cheek.
             | But still... not everyone goes to YT for monetization in
             | which case I really think it's just better not to use it.
             | I'm probably too old but I remember a time when we had
             | plenty of visibility on the web without platforms dictating
             | the content.
        
               | qwertox wrote:
               | You mean your Geocities homepage which got a fabulous 121
               | hits in 1997? ;)
        
               | robobro wrote:
               | Why would you assume that videos have to be shared to
               | YouTube to get views? I really hope that the majority of
               | adults know how to click on or share a hyperlink. If not,
               | there is a big problem.
        
               | lacksconfidence wrote:
               | Because while i don't have numbers, i'd bet a weeks pay
               | that the vast majority of youtube views (especially after
               | exluding viral content) come through the youtube
               | recommendation system and not external hyperlinks.
        
           | eru wrote:
           | Then you get sued instead of youtube.
        
             | ratww wrote:
             | I don't think Beethoven is willing to sue her. His lawyers
             | will probably remind him that he's been dead for a while.
             | 
             | What happened here is a problem unique to Youtube. Nobody
             | will get sued for the _same_ reasons she 's getting taken
             | down. For _other_ reasons? Sure, but that 's also can
             | happen in Youtube.
        
               | dredmorbius wrote:
               | In this case, yes.
               | 
               | In the general case, someone (or some _thing_ ) can sue
               | for pretty much any reason whatsoever. One of the
               | unappreciated roles of publishers and distributors is
               | that they also serve as a legal defence organisation.
               | You'll often hear people talk of how the publisher of a
               | newspaper, magazine, or books also have lawyers to deal
               | with, say, libel or other claims. Copyright isn't the
               | only consideration here. For any community-based
               | activity, there are also the issues of inter- and intra-
               | community disputes.
               | 
               | Peer-based publishing tends to ignore this question.
        
           | qwertox wrote:
           | * _That_ problem solved.
           | 
           | And so many more created.
        
           | surfsvammel wrote:
           | How? I gave this a shot, but it was such a hassle to get it
           | working. Hosting, automatic resampliny of videos to different
           | quality, CDN stuff. Is there an easy way to host videos
           | yourself?
        
             | tomcooks wrote:
             | Peertube, self hosted or upload to a public istance
        
               | robobro wrote:
               | Federation is really the answer. I would much rather
               | upload content to peertube than bitchute or YouTube.
               | Although, invidious is a nice answer to YouTube problems,
               | in some aspects
        
             | leephillips wrote:
             | The hosting issue is orthogonal: register a domain
             | ($4-$15), rent a Linux VPS ($5/month), install Apache.
             | Then, learn how to use the video embed tag
             | (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
             | US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/vi...). Use ffmpeg to convert the
             | videos to the format and size you want them in, upload with
             | rsync. That's it.
        
               | leephillips wrote:
               | I forgot: go to https://letsencrypt.org/ to learn how to
               | get a (free) certificate so you can do https.
               | 
               | You might be thinking that you don't want to learn about
               | all of that just to host some videos, and that's
               | reasonable. But there is a tradeoff. Either let someone
               | else control your content and live under the threat of
               | arbitrary takedowns, or learn what you need to control
               | your own stuff.
               | 
               | If you get popular you will have to deal with bandwidth
               | issues, because video is huge. That's one reason even
               | people who are capable of hosting on their own turn to
               | platforms like YouTube.
               | 
               | You can look into Vimeo. For some reason it's not
               | mentioned often as an alternative to YouTube, but it
               | seems to be better in almost every way.
        
               | jasode wrote:
               | _> You can look into Vimeo. For some reason it's not
               | mentioned often as an alternative to YouTube, but it
               | seems to be better in almost every way._
               | 
               | The _" Vimeo better in almost every way"_ needs to be re-
               | calibrated based on the typical reasons that content
               | creators' such as this piano teacher use Youtube.
               | 
               | The many ways that Vimeo is _worse_ :
               | 
               | - platform membership fees: Youtube is $0 to upload and
               | host, Vimeo used to be $240 and now has some new pricing
               | plans[1] with a low-use free tier (too limited for high-
               | res 4k uploads)
               | 
               | - smaller audience : Youtube is ~2 billion users, Vimeo
               | ~200 million
               | 
               | - no advertising partners : Youtube enables monetization
               | 
               | - less recommendations leading to discovery of your
               | videos because less catalog of content _from others_ to
               | expose viewers to your video: Youtube has dozens of
               | Beethoven Moonlight Sonata piano tutorials, Vimeo has
               | none[2]
               | 
               | And btw, Vimeo also removes videos. Previous comment
               | about someone following advice of switching from Youtube
               | to Vimeo which didn't solve his problem:
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20347254
               | 
               | Vimeo is a good platform but it's not mentioned as often
               | as alternative to Youtube because it doesn't solve the
               | same problems for many Youtubers. Also, self-hosting with
               | Apache web server and HTML5 <video> tag also doesn't
               | solve the same problem. And Peertube+Patreon doesn't
               | solve the same problem.
               | 
               | [1] https://vimeo.com/upgrade
               | 
               | [2]
               | https://vimeo.com/search?q=moonlight%20sonata%20tutorial
        
               | falcolas wrote:
               | > install Apache
               | 
               | > video embed tags
               | 
               | > ffmpeg
               | 
               | > That's it
               | 
               | You're thinking like an engineer. To a non-technical
               | person, that's a lot. I'd even go so far as to say it's
               | prohibitively difficult for anyone outside of our
               | profession.
               | 
               | I'll even say that it's going to be difficult even for
               | folks within our profession. Finding someone who can
               | launch and configure Apache properly (i.e. in a way which
               | won't get it quickly reconfigured to serve porn or
               | illegal files), not to mention keeping everything up to
               | date, is getting more and more rare.
        
               | leephillips wrote:
               | I mentioned the tradeoff involved in a later comment.
               | 
               | The difference between a technical person and a non-
               | technical person is that the former has decided to learn
               | what is needed to do what he or she wants to do. It's not
               | a secret club. All the information is on the internet.
               | 
               | I never went to Apache engineering school, I have been
               | running my own sites and others for many years, and no
               | one has taken anything over for porn. There is a lot to
               | learn, but it's not like going to medical school. Anyone
               | can do it who is motivated.
        
               | falcolas wrote:
               | That knowledge is an entire career's worth of knowledge.
               | Sure, almost anyone could pick it up, but it's more cost
               | effective for them to rely on others to do it for them.
               | 
               | For a musician, the learning and upkeep is a lot of time
               | that would better be spent creating; making a living.
        
               | leephillips wrote:
               | I don't disagree. But that's the tradeoff I'm talking
               | about. Letting others do it for you means giving up
               | control; the limiting case is being abused by YouTube. If
               | you have money, you can hire people to do this for you.
               | But most people can't afford to hire their own
               | "engineers". These are the choices.
        
               | guggle wrote:
               | Indeed. Convienience vs. freedom. Ignorance vs.
               | knowledge.
               | 
               | Way to go...
        
           | grphtrdr wrote:
           | Must be a bot. No one with a brain would actually think to
           | post this.
        
             | yesenadam wrote:
             | That's apparently your first comment on HN. Please read the
             | guidelines-your comment breaks quite a few.
             | 
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html the "In
             | Comments" part.
        
             | eru wrote:
             | Disagreeing is more than fine, but accusing people of being
             | bots or lacking a brain doesn't add to the discussion.
             | 
             | (The parent comment wasn't the best comment, ever, I
             | agree.)
        
           | igarcia wrote:
           | Great idea. There's also Peertube (joinpeertube.org) which is
           | free and open source software. I've seen many content
           | creators migrating there and they're now free from this kind
           | of abuse. (Note: I have no relationship with them apart from
           | just admiring a beautiful work that the people at Framasoft
           | do.)
        
             | robobro wrote:
             | Activitypub ftw!
        
             | igarcia wrote:
             | odysee.com is also a good alternative.
        
         | GordonS wrote:
         | IMO the biggest issue with all this is the lack of a suitable
         | appeals process, handled by humans.
         | 
         | Would such a process be expensive? Yes, but you can't have it
         | both ways, enabling copyright holders to lodge spurious claims
         | at will, and not allow content creators - who the entire
         | platform is built on! - to disclaim them.
         | 
         | Would such a process be expensive? Yes, of course - but YouTube
         | can very well afford it.
        
           | zucker42 wrote:
           | I think the biggest issue is that the burden of proof and all
           | the risk is on the person who's video is being claimed. False
           | DMCA claims are free, practically riskless, and require no
           | evidence.
        
             | jedberg wrote:
             | > False DMCA claims are free, practically riskless, and
             | require no evidence.
             | 
             | This is the crux of the issue. The DMCA needs to be amended
             | so that filing an incorrect claim comes with some risk.
        
           | sixQuarks wrote:
           | Perhaps the copyright holder should have to pay for a human
           | review, where the content creator agrees to pay the cost if
           | it turns out to indeed be a true copyright infringement.
           | 
           | This would get rid of all bots and most false claims
        
             | amelius wrote:
             | That would be too much in favor of the little guy, I'm
             | afraid, and probably doesn't align well with preexisting
             | deals with the music industry.
        
               | blunte wrote:
               | If the little guy is indeed little and is earning little
               | or none from their content, then is the copyright holder
               | being harmed? Or is the copyrighted material being
               | promoted, thereby increasing the potential value of that
               | original material?
        
           | adrr wrote:
           | Copyright enforcement should be on the copyright holders.
           | YouTube shouldn't have to build AI to scan for copyrighted
           | material. Copyright holders need to a person verify all
           | copyright claims and be liable for the opposite exact same
           | amount of damages that would be rewarded for legitimate
           | copyright claim.
        
             | zentiggr wrote:
             | Talk to the RIAA etc.
             | 
             | They seem to believe that only their own sanctioned
             | releases should be allowed, and that they should all be
             | paywalled so that every view is paid for.
             | 
             | Or we could fight the whole damn robber baron system and
             | return to something resembling common sense.
        
               | EarlKing wrote:
               | Actually, I have a better solution...
               | 
               | Disallow the uploading of all content held by RIAA/MPAA-
               | affiliated companies from the likes of YouTube, even if
               | the owners thereof wish it to be there. Fuck them. Let
               | them go build their own platform if they think their work
               | is so god damn awesome. Save YouTube/et al. for works
               | created by, well... You.
        
           | gwd wrote:
           | I think what should happen is this:
           | 
           | Step 1: Someone files a copyright claim (or perhaps this is
           | done automatically). This is free.
           | 
           | Step 2: Someone disputes the claim. This is also free, and
           | automatically restores the video.
           | 
           | Step 3: The filer can re-submit the claim _but_ they have to
           | post a bond for the price of a professional manual review by
           | a trained copyright lawyer; maybe $1000.
           | 
           | Step 4: If the video owner can re-dispute the claim; to do so
           | they also have to post a bond for the price of a professional
           | manual review. The trained copyright lawyer comes to a
           | conclusion; whoever "wins" the ruling gets their money back,
           | and the other person pays for the whole thing.
           | 
           | If the video owner doesn't go on to step 4, obviously the
           | copyright claimant gets their money back.
        
             | robflynn wrote:
             | Would this not allow companies with deep pockets to
             | continue to abuse the smaller channels who might not have
             | $1000 lying around to put in escrow on the off chance of
             | losing the $1000 just because some lawyer somewhere made a
             | bad decision? Or they just get their video removed because
             | they dont have $1000 to begin with.
        
               | gwd wrote:
               | Let's not let the best be the enemy of the good. Right
               | now 1) companies with deep pockets can easily false
               | claims with very little consequences 2) small channels
               | basically have no recourse.
               | 
               | Obviously the whole system is predicated on the lawyers
               | being fair: but assuming the lawyers _usually_ DTRT, then
               | 1) there will be consequences for false claims, resulting
               | in far fewer of them and 2) small channels can get a real
               | human to look at their claims.
               | 
               | No situation is perfect, but I'm pretty sure it would be
               | better.
        
             | heavyset_go wrote:
             | I'm pretty sure the process can't have payment stipulations
             | like that.
        
             | anigbrowl wrote:
             | That's sort of OK for an operating business, but many
             | creators don't have $1000 sitting around for every video
             | they upload.
        
         | 0xTJ wrote:
         | A really great video (if you're willing to spend the better
         | part of an hour watching it) about this is YouTube's Copyright
         | System Isn't Broken. The World's Is.[1] by Tom Scott.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU
        
           | avereveard wrote:
           | DMCA is bad but the undisputable claim and three strike
           | systems is all of Google own doing
        
             | Sebb767 wrote:
             | The video covers this aspect. Yes, the current system is
             | bad, but it replaces a scary letter demanding cease and
             | desists plus high damage payments and a resolution between
             | extremely expensive lawyers. It surely is not optimal, but
             | I doubt your common YouTuber could afford to fight claims
             | in court.
        
               | avereveard wrote:
               | DMCA replaces the scary letters. YouTube only
               | responsibility is to collect claims and counterclaims.
               | Common YouTubers can just accept the claim and mute
               | content. Youtuber wanting a fight or that know the other
               | party would never risk their frivolous challenge to go to
               | court with the threat of perjury hanging on their head
               | have a right to counterclaim and put the ball in the
               | other party field.
               | 
               | YouTube instead decide to act as jury and will allow
               | claimant to counter the counterclaim, and here lies the
               | crux of the issue.
               | 
               | YouTube isn't protecting poor youtubers anymore than what
               | DMCA already allows; YouTube is instead actively removing
               | youtuber right to challenge the claim, putting all the
               | power in the claimant, far above what DMCA mandates or
               | requires.
               | 
               | And that decision to act as jury and judge and final
               | unappealable authority in the claim process lies squarely
               | on YouTube shoulders.
        
               | zaphar wrote:
               | I don't think the DMCA replaces the scary letters. The
               | scary letters existed because they were _more_ effective
               | than the DMCA. Threatening to sue someone is always and
               | always has been totally an option. The reason scary
               | letters don 't get sent right now is because it's easier
               | to just have Youtube remove the video.
               | 
               | If that went away the next easiest option (scary letters)
               | would happen again. DMCA or not.
        
               | BlueTemplar wrote:
               | That's a US-specific issue. Yet people all over the world
               | are affected by ContentID (though at least in the EU
               | AFAIK you can now get a third party to mediate this
               | dispute).
        
         | DaveExeter wrote:
         | >"copyright strike" on her account, wherein three such strikes
         | would mean permanent closure of the account
         | 
         | I think the three copyright strikes have to take place within
         | 90 days. Unless I am confusing community guidelines strikes
         | with copyright strikes.
        
         | tremon wrote:
         | _is worried about all the time she's putting in to create
         | content being usurped by a few bad actors_
         | 
         | Is this where we must point out that the entire ContentID
         | system was designed to protect bad actors, because it was
         | written by them?
        
           | toyg wrote:
           | One could argue that _the DMCA_ was largely written by bad
           | actors. Everything else flows downhill from there.
           | 
           | The "western" world lost a once-in-a-thousand-years chance to
           | change how copyright works at a fundamental level, when the
           | internet started getting traction. We're now forever beholden
           | to the whims of parasitical "industries".
        
         | ascotan wrote:
         | Wow. So if a public domain piece of music (which does not have
         | a copyright) is played by someone and recorded (which does have
         | a copyright) the Google AI has no way to know if you're
         | reproducing the the public domain music (which you are allowed
         | to do) or reproducing the reproduction of someone playing a
         | piece of public domain music (which you're not allowed to do).
        
         | bredren wrote:
         | Here are the "copyright owners" as displayed to the pianist in
         | YouTube's interface:
         | 
         | - APRA_CS
         | 
         | - ECAD_CS
         | 
         | - SOCAN
         | 
         | - VCPMC_CS
        
           | lightlyused wrote:
           | I went digging. APRA = Australasian Performing Right
           | Association Limited ECAD = Escritorio Central de Arrecadacao
           | e Distribuicao SOCAN = Society of Composers, Authors and
           | Music Publishers of Canada VCPMC = Vietnam Center for
           | Protection of Music Copyright
           | 
           | CS stands for collections society. In another age CS would
           | stand for the Mafia.
           | 
           | All but ECAD were found from here: https://www.cisac.org/
        
             | snickms wrote:
             | These collection societies are actually the opposite of the
             | mafia.
             | 
             | They collect royalties on behalf of the composers. If the
             | composer has a publisher, the royalties are forwarded there
             | instead (so the publisher can take their contractual cut).
             | 
             | They are the only way to protect your work if you are
             | unsigned (think struggling artists).
        
               | pbhjpbhj wrote:
               | AIUI there collection societies are collectives of
               | publishers and look out for the people who own the
               | publishing companies, they're not making sure the
               | publishing companies act fairly and justly, they're
               | making sure they sue people who are too small to defend
               | themselves in order to boost the collections in order to
               | support the publishing company owners.
               | 
               | Maybe I'm wrong ... counter evidence welcomed.
        
           | narcissismo wrote:
           | Something odd is happening here. Perhaps I can offer a piece
           | of insight.
           | 
           | APRA is the Australian music copyright organisation
           | (https://www.apraamcos.com.au/)
           | 
           | ECAD is the Brazillian version.
           | 
           | VCPMC is the Vietnamese equivalent.
           | 
           | Not sure about the others, but basically these are the people
           | with whom a composer registers their work. These
           | organisations work together by forwarding royalties collected
           | within each territory to their rightful owners.
           | 
           | I am a member of APRA and very much doubt that someone got
           | away with registering a Beethoven work as their own.
           | 
           | Very curious indeed. I have no explanation.
           | 
           | [Edit] You are only meant to register your work in one
           | territory, so it is odd that this 'work' would be registered
           | in four of them.
        
             | thebooktocome wrote:
             | > I am a member of APRA and very much doubt that someone
             | got away with registering a Beethoven work as their own.
             | 
             | I've yet to hear of one of these nationwide registries
             | vetting any of the work that gets submitted to them for
             | novelty or whatever. That would be too much like doing due
             | diligence.
        
           | yesenadam wrote:
           | APRA is Australia & NZ, ECAD is Brazil, SOCAN is Canada,
           | VCPMC is Vietnam.
           | 
           | APRA: Australasian Performing Right Association
           | 
           | ECAD: Escritorio Central de Arrecadacao e Distribuicao
           | 
           | SOCAN: Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of
           | Canada
           | 
           | VCPMC: Vietnam Center for Protection of Music Copyright
        
         | jMyles wrote:
         | It seems that this entire fiasco can be fixed by simply having
         | a media streaming platform which is hosted in a jurisdiction
         | which doesn't recognize 'intellectual' property.
         | 
         | Why has no such thing emerged?
        
           | bmn__ wrote:
           | Such a jurisdiction does not exist. See Berne Convention,
           | Rome Convention/PPPPBO, TRIPS, WCT, WPPT.
        
             | jMyles wrote:
             | Well, presumably one will emerge at some point.
             | 
             | I'm just trying to look at the root problem here and how to
             | overcome it.
        
         | Black101 wrote:
         | Even if that piece was copyright, is it a copyright violation
         | to play it yourself and publish it?
        
           | qayxc wrote:
           | Potentially, yes. There are different types of licences [0]
           | and depending on your use of copyrighted material, it may
           | require a license to publish it legally.
           | 
           | [0] https://www.bmi.com/licensing/entry/types_of_copyrights
        
           | SeanLuke wrote:
           | Yes. Because music is both composed and performed, it has
           | three primary copyright scenarios.
           | 
           | 1. Print rights protect sheet music etc. from being copied.
           | 
           | 2. Performance rights control whether your composed music can
           | be performed.
           | 
           | 3. Mechanical rights control whether your performance can be
           | copied (onto mp3 say). Also related to these are
           | "synchronization" issues and licenses.
        
         | jeffwass wrote:
         | I sympathise with her. I had a copyright claim on one of my
         | YouTube videos (I'm totally small potatoes, handful of vids
         | with dozens of views).
         | 
         | I made a video of myself playing my own unique interpretation
         | of The Safety Dance by Men Without Hats on piano.
         | https://youtu.be/ZNfMZ6g9YWo
         | 
         | I got a copyright violation notice shortly after posting it, by
         | some random Latin American music company. It wasn't clear if it
         | was legit or not, it could have been some holding company of
         | song rights or some failure of the AI.
         | 
         | I disputed the claim, saying I used no recorded material, it
         | was entirely my own styling on the song including ragtime and
         | stride piano influences.
         | 
         | Frankly I'm not even sure how copyright works on covers,
         | particularly if style is quite different.
         | 
         | The company never responded in the 30 day period so the
         | copyright claim was removed.
         | 
         | My channel is so small that I probably would have just removed
         | the video. I'm not even close to the levels that are required
         | for monetisation (1000 subscribers and 4000 cumulative view
         | hours).
         | 
         | But it was a bit surprising how quickly it was claimed that I
         | violated someone's copyright.
        
           | blondin wrote:
           | same here.
           | 
           | i am a big fan of film music. i made a small piano reduction
           | of a favorite piece and uploaded it to youtube. i wasn't even
           | mad when i saw the copyright claim within hours, since i run
           | no ads.
           | 
           | i was however baffled and somewhat proud that my efforts were
           | not in vain, and that the algorithm thought my poor
           | interpretation was close to the real thing.
           | 
           | i do not defend the algorithm though.
        
             | chrisseaton wrote:
             | I don't get why you're confused. You violated copyright and
             | got a legitimate claim against you.
        
             | RogerL wrote:
             | You are not allowed to create derivative works from another
             | person's creation, regardless of whether you are making
             | money from it. You can't go and make a Shrek III flick, for
             | example, or write a book set in the Harry Potter universe.
             | Likewise, you can't adapt music from a film (IANAL, there
             | are things like fair use, but in general this holds).
             | 
             | https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf
        
               | visarga wrote:
               | > You are not allowed to create (free) derivative works
               | 
               | I think putting such constraints on creative work is a
               | cultural disaster.
        
               | solipsism wrote:
               | Then your beef is with the United States, not with
               | Google.
        
               | EarlKing wrote:
               | I think misappropriating someone else's work to make a
               | buck is a cultural disaster, but then I work for a living
               | and expect to get paid, so what do I know? Fair Use does
               | exist to provide an avenue for the reuse of the work of
               | others for criticism, parody, and the like., but straight
               | up lifting someone else's work and using it to your own
               | ends, even if noncommercial, is wrong.
        
           | spuz wrote:
           | Covers of songs, even if the covers use completely new styles
           | are protected by copyright law and therefore can risk being
           | claimed by YouTube's system:
           | 
           | https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/posting-cover-songs-on-
           | yo...
        
             | eru wrote:
             | I guess you need to make it a parody to be in the clear?
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | I'm guessing the next Weird Al has already been
               | disillusioned with the copyright ban hammer.
        
               | JeremyNT wrote:
               | Weird Al himself was well aware of this issue, and
               | famously would only parody songs after receiving
               | permission from the authors.
        
               | stordoff wrote:
               | > Al does get permission from the original writers of the
               | songs that he parodies. While the law supports his
               | ability to parody without permission, he feels it's
               | important to maintain the relationships that he's built
               | with artists and writers over the years. Plus, Al wants
               | to make sure that he gets his songwriter credit (as
               | writer of new lyrics) as well as his rightful share of
               | the royalties.
               | 
               | https://www.weirdal.com/archives/faq/
        
               | grayclhn wrote:
               | Permission from the authors is unfortunately different
               | from permission by the copyright holders. IIRC Weird Al
               | did it more for goodwill than legality.
        
               | throwaway17_17 wrote:
               | Didn't even need the next Weird Al. Al's own YouTube
               | videos were copyright claimed by his own label for
               | violating copyright.
        
               | ksherlock wrote:
               | Not necessarily.... The Posterchild for parody is 2 Live
               | Crew Pretty Woman. Which includes samples of the original
               | Oh, Pretty Woman. Youtube videos get flagged for 10
               | seconds of a song snippet all the time.
               | 
               | After the Campbell v Acuff-Rose Supreme Court decision, 2
               | Live Crew licensed the song from Acuff-Rose music. (which
               | is what they tried to do in the first place).
        
               | SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
               | Parody is a fair use defense, so you have to go through a
               | lawsuit to be able to assert it.
        
           | yesenadam wrote:
           | Not an expert, but I've been learning a lil about this
           | lately. Royalties for performances of someone else's song are
           | paid to the writers of the words and the music. The melody
           | and words can be copyrighted, not the chords or style. So you
           | can use the chords of an existing song and give it new melody
           | and words, and it is your own song. Style has nothing to do
           | it.
           | 
           | I love this quote from the classic _The Manual: How To Have A
           | Number 1 The Easy Way_ by KLF:
           | 
           | ...the copyright laws that have grown over the past one
           | hundred years have all been developed by whites of European
           | descent and these laws state that fifty per cent of the
           | copyright of any song should be for the lyrics, the other
           | fifty per cent for the top line (sung) melody; groove doesn't
           | even get a look in. If the copyright laws had been in the
           | hands of blacks of African descent, at least eighty per cent
           | would have gone to the creators of the groove, the remainder
           | split between the lyrics and the melody. If perchance you are
           | reading this and you are both black and a lawyer, make a name
           | for yourself. Right the wrongs.
        
             | yesenadam wrote:
             | I'd love to know if (the downvoters think) that has factual
             | errors. I'm a jazz musician who will soon be releasing
             | music online--some my compositions, some not--and planning
             | to pay license fees etc. Thanks--I'm a totally at a loss
             | what could have made people downvote it!
        
               | DreamScatter wrote:
               | I think the problem with that post is that race (black
               | and white people) are unnecessarily brought into it. I'm
               | sure that musicians of all races would want this issue
               | addressed. Making it about race is extremely ridiculous.
        
             | DreamScatter wrote:
             | That doesn't have anything to do with black or white
             | people. We don't need black people to change this copyright
             | system, just people in general who want to make sure that
             | musicians get paid. Saying this is an issue between black
             | and white people is extremely ridiculous.
        
             | weswpg wrote:
             | Learning about the difference between a "groove", a
             | "melody" and a song has been a wonderful rabbit hole to go
             | down. Thanks!
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | phendrenad2 wrote:
         | This exact thing has happened to most YT creators at this
         | point. It's just part of doing business on YT. Some small
         | section (<10%?) get three "copyright" strikes (nothing to do
         | with actual copyright, of course, as Google isn't the judge of
         | that), and get taken down, and need to start a new channel from
         | scratch. It's what we all get for using a free video streaming
         | service to distribute our content.
        
           | opan wrote:
           | I think the centralization plus trusting a company is the
           | issue, not a lack of cost meaning we aren't deserving of a
           | good experience.
           | 
           | Look at Peertube or other free as in freedom options.
        
             | qayxc wrote:
             | > I think the centralization plus trusting a company is the
             | issue,
             | 
             | I think that's not the issue at all. The problem is simply
             | scale. Currently, about 5000 videos are uploaded to YT
             | every _minute_. If just 0.1% of them have any potential
             | copyright issues, that 's 5 potentially complex cases per
             | minute or 7200 per day.
             | 
             | No amount of human review will be able to decide this in a
             | timely manner. The piano teacher's case is just the
             | simplest of scenarios and you'd have to expect the vast
             | majority being "fair use" cases, which are incredibly hard
             | to decide.
             | 
             | Free an in freedom ultimately results in users being sued
             | directly (see torrent networks) and I'm not at all
             | convinced that that's any better.
        
               | adolph wrote:
               | > > I think the centralization plus trusting a company is
               | the issue,
               | 
               | > I think that's not the issue at all. The problem is
               | simply scale.
               | 
               | Do you think that the scale of YT is achieved without
               | centralization?
               | 
               | Given the reality that a lack of a centralizing force
               | like YT would just shift copyright adjudication to actual
               | courts and be more expensive and higher stakes for all
               | involved and probably have a similar error rate and bad
               | actors like Prenda, I'd agree that a relatively benignly
               | uncaring Corp without access to police and prisons is
               | better than the court route.
        
               | emidln wrote:
               | > 7200 per day
               | 
               | Let's say it takes 5 minutes to properly adjudicate a
               | dispute. 5 minutes allows 20 per person-hour. An 8 hour
               | shift could resolve 160 reviews. 7200 / 160 = 45 shifts
               | per day to review all of the hypothetical copyright
               | issues. I don't think that's required, and the number of
               | requested reviews is going to be some fraction of that.
               | Requiring google to spread out under 50 shifts over a 24
               | period in order to provide a fair review so that they may
               | bring in billions of dollars a year from youtube doesn't
               | seem like a large ask. This is call-center-esque work and
               | even done in the US or Western Europe would be very
               | cheap, particularly as it can avoid otherwise more
               | cumbersome regulatory hurdles.
        
               | qayxc wrote:
               | > Let's say it takes 5 minutes to properly adjudicate a
               | dispute.
               | 
               | That's highly unrealistic, but review alone would take at
               | least twice as long, since the average video length is
               | about 12 minutes.
               | 
               | How would you find out in just 5 minutes whether a
               | monetization claim is justified? Not every case is as
               | clear as the piano teacher's case. Keep in mind that this
               | isn't a DMCA takedown request either - it's about a party
               | that claims the content in order to redirect the revenue.
               | 
               | So you seriously claim that on average you can find out
               | in just 5 minutes whether one of the 6 license types [0]
               | applies and the claimant actually has a case? If it was
               | that easy, I doubt that court cases like [1] would take
               | years. And that's assuming all the information is already
               | at hand so no further communication with either party is
               | required...
               | 
               | [0]
               | https://www.bmi.com/licensing/entry/types_of_copyrights
               | 
               | [1] https://completemusicupdate.com/article/song-theft-
               | dispute-o...
        
               | trasz wrote:
               | You don't need to review the whole video, the accusing
               | side should provide the exact time at which the alleged
               | violation happens.
        
               | riskable wrote:
               | > "fair use" cases, which are incredibly hard to decide.
               | 
               | Only a judge acting in a court of law can decide if
               | something is fair use. All else is speculation.
        
               | xyzzyz wrote:
               | 7200 cases a day is most definitely not too much for a
               | human review.
        
               | tzs wrote:
               | If they followed the DMCA instead of their own system it
               | would scale just fine.
               | 
               | It would scale because under the DMCA system the _site_
               | is not responsible for finding violations. That is up to
               | the copyright owners.
               | 
               | All the site has to do is:
               | 
               | 1. Take down alleged infringing content when someone
               | claiming to be the copyright owner files a take-down
               | notice.
               | 
               | 2. Put the content back when whoever uploaded it files a
               | counter-notice.
               | 
               | 3. Tell the former that if they want the content taken
               | down again, sue the latter. The site is now in the DMCA
               | safe harbor.
               | 
               | All the site has to scale up to handle is dealing with
               | notices and counter-notices. For that, all they need to
               | do is check that all the required fields in the forms are
               | filled out. This does not require anyone with any legal
               | training--it is just checking things like they have
               | identified themselves, described what content they want
               | taken down/put back up, stated a reason for their belief
               | that this action should be taken, and similar things.
               | 
               | You could train in an afternoon anyone who can read at a
               | pre-high school level to handle this. 20 people in a
               | normal shift could handle those 7200 cases per day.
               | 
               | Heck, you could even speed that up if you wanted by doing
               | even less review on the notices. There aren't really any
               | legal consequences to the site if they accept a notice
               | that wasn't quite right. It is only the counter-notice
               | that needs a little scrutiny. You want to make sure
               | everything is correctly filled out in that, because it is
               | the counter-notice that gives you the safe harbor.
        
               | Aunche wrote:
               | I mean that's basically how it works right now:
               | 
               | https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2807684?hl=en&r
               | ef_...
        
               | BlueTemplar wrote:
               | It is because people are routinely violating copyright in
               | much larger amounts, yet nobody is bothering to go after
               | them. Compare with the way the laws about audio and video
               | cassettes ended up.
        
         | gbuk2013 wrote:
         | There is actually one more step available, even after the
         | copyright strike: you submit your contact details and YT clears
         | the strike and it's up to the claimant to then issue proceeding
         | against you outside of YT.
         | 
         | https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2807684
         | 
         | I have used it in the past and it works.
        
           | anadem wrote:
           | > and YT clears the strike
           | 
           | there's the rub .. in the OP's example, the strike wasn't
           | cleared
        
             | joshuaissac wrote:
             | As I understand it from her video, she did not get a
             | copyright strike yet, and she also did not complete the
             | appeals process because she did not want to submit her
             | contact details to strangers.
        
           | jeremyjh wrote:
           | If it is so simple why are there content creators losing
           | their channels over merit less claims?
        
             | gbuk2013 wrote:
             | I don't know - are they submitting counter-claims? All I
             | know is it worked for me and my channel although I was
             | never at the point of having more than one strike.
        
         | qwertox wrote:
         | 1) Feed a computer with MIDI files of public domain music and
         | render it as audio
         | 
         | 2) Upload to YouTube
         | 
         | 3) File copyright dispute to YouTube for any (future?) uploaded
         | video which contains the music which used to be in the public
         | domain
         | 
         | 4) Have Google reject the videos
         | 
         | 5) Create a site or an app which allows you to license that
         | public domain music for a fee.
         | 
         | 6) Notify YouTube who has licensed this public domain music.
         | 
         | Ok. that's the way Google thinks is the way it should work. Or
         | maybe they just recognize that their AI is causing more harm
         | than good.
         | 
         | --
         | 
         | Two days ago I uploaded a video which was a screen recording to
         | demonstrate a bug in the Android app "Komoot". It was unlisted,
         | the link was attached to the bug report I sent to the company.
         | It was just a short video showing how the caching (or something
         | in that direction) of uploaded images in the app seemed to be
         | broken. The content in the video was 100% adhering to all the
         | guidelines, specially to those of "for all ages". The content
         | was nothing else but scrolling photos of an MTB-trail with a
         | bit of UI. If your video is flagged or you mark it as "for
         | 18+", then it can only be viewed by logged in persons.
         | 
         | After uploading the video I got an email that it was not
         | complying with the "for all ages" requirements, which is kind
         | of bad, because now the support team must log-in with a Google
         | account to YouTube in order to see the harmless but useful
         | video.
         | 
         | But then again, videos related to Instagram celebrities or
         | Chinese ASMR-binge eating are totally ok for them.
        
           | havernator wrote:
           | http://spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html
           | 
           | TL;DR copyright becomes absurd surprisingly fast when you
           | have a large population, widely-available authoring/recording
           | tools, and a way to store/search all of them, indefinitely.
           | Like, _indefensible_ absurd.
        
             | Baeocystin wrote:
             | That was a good read. Thanks for sharing it.
        
           | slothtrop wrote:
           | Honestly, the only way things will change is through grass
           | roots abuse of the system like this. You have to force them
           | to change.
        
             | guerrilla wrote:
             | Sounds like good material for a Defcon talk: "How I Own A
             | Quarter of Content on YouTube"
        
           | Iv wrote:
           | > Ok. that's the way Google thinks is the way it should work.
           | Or maybe they just recognize that their AI is causing more
           | harm than good.
           | 
           | Let's be clear. It is not Google that wants it. Actually
           | Google is on the side of calling all of this retarded. It is
           | the state of copyright laws, of the DMCA, of the lobbying by
           | the RIAA. The day the whole copyright ecosystem is updated to
           | accept that computers exist and that people share files on
           | internet easily, Youtube will be VERY happy to unplug all
           | these terrible bots that are there to provide a bad solution
           | to a problem we should not have.
        
             | tehwebguy wrote:
             | Ehh, Google has gone to great lengths to ensure that the
             | largest holders of copyright have their content libraries
             | available to check against new uploads and apparently no
             | lengths to ensure that public domain content is available
             | for the same purpose.
        
               | techdragon wrote:
               | The public domain doesn't threaten to sue them.
        
               | Robotbeat wrote:
               | It ought to.
        
               | ddingus wrote:
               | Who has standing?
        
             | qwertox wrote:
             | > Actually Google is on the side of calling all of this
             | retarded.
             | 
             | Google has the means to make this stop.
        
               | Iv wrote:
               | How so?
        
               | rndgermandude wrote:
               | For starters, they should actually follow the DMCA. The
               | DMCA gives affected people a defined way to counter-
               | notice, and then the entity who filed the initial DMCA
               | notice can either sue within 14 days or the content gets
               | restored.
               | 
               | Instead Google chose to evaluate "disputes" themselves,
               | with algorithms and "AI", and reject disputes. Rejecting
               | counter-notices is absolutely NOT something the DMCA
               | mandates or even suggests. Moreover Youtube essentially
               | used to allow (probably still does) alleged rights owners
               | to reject disputes in essentially one click, while the
               | DMCA would require them to bring a law suit. Some
               | copyright owners therefore created bots doing the
               | clicking for them.
               | 
               | They could also be more lenient to "established" players
               | as a first step, especially when it comes to counter-
               | notices/disputes. Factor in previous history google has
               | with an alleged infringer (alleged by their own algorithm
               | by the way, not even by a third party) when considering a
               | dispute, like account age, channel age, number of
               | previous videos without problems, "we do know the
               | customer" e.g. to pay out ad money, etc. And then maybe
               | not outright reject it, but leave it to the alleged
               | copyright owner to file a law suit (as the DMCA states)
               | or at least refer it to actual human beings for further
               | evaluation.
               | 
               | Of course, Google could hire people to check up on their
               | own algorithms and decide on disputes instead of
               | machines. Youtube had $6 BILLION in ad revenue in the
               | last quarter (not year), so they could certainly afford
               | to hire some people. In the end it might even be a
               | profitable investment, as fewer good content is pruned
               | from Youtube for wrong copyright issues, leading to more
               | ad revenue.
               | 
               | Youtube right now seems pretty content with their quasi-
               | monopoly, to their own detriment in my opinion. As
               | unlikely as it may seem that people will create
               | competitors, it can happen, ask mighty MySpace about it.
        
               | Nextgrid wrote:
               | > Youtube had $6 BILLION in ad revenue in the last
               | quarter (not year), so they could certainly afford to
               | hire some people. In the end it might even be a
               | profitable investment, as fewer good content is pruned
               | from Youtube for wrong copyright issues, leading to more
               | ad revenue.
               | 
               | Who is paying said ad revenue though? Could a large chunk
               | of it come from the same companies/industries who
               | currently enjoy the broken state of YouTube's DMCA
               | process?
        
               | withinboredom wrote:
               | They just stop and wait for the DMCA take downs and
               | copyright owners have to make their own claims? I guess.
        
               | azornathogron wrote:
               | Add friction to the process of submitting copyright
               | claims. Reduce friction in the process of appealing
               | copyright claims. Relax draconian rules like the
               | copyright strike system leading to account closure.
               | Adjust the content ID system to reduce false positives
               | (assuming no magical improvement to the system this will
               | come at the cost of increased false negatives; that seems
               | like an entirely reasonable trade-off)
        
             | p49k wrote:
             | Parent comment was also referring to YouTube's AI marking a
             | benign video as 18+. Google is willing to wrongly punish
             | people via excessive/unfair false positives in the interest
             | of trying to be more advertiser friendly. It's just about
             | money.
        
               | eru wrote:
               | Well, false positives result in fewer scandals than false
               | negatives here.
               | 
               | So guilty until proven innocent seems like a perfectly
               | reasonable, if very annoying, stance.
        
               | DreamScatter wrote:
               | It's not reasonable to screw innocent people over.
        
               | Nextgrid wrote:
               | It's reasonable for a for-profit company that has a
               | monopoly.
        
             | mlang23 wrote:
             | I dont believe this in the slightest. Besides, the false-
             | positives which regularily pop up around YouTube claims are
             | not a result of any law, or lobbying. They are the result
             | of googles sloppy implementation of the cliam system.
        
             | LudwigNagasena wrote:
             | I don't think the laws are so harsh. It seems like YouTube
             | caved in to the music industry interests so that popular
             | artists continue to premiere their videos on YouTube.
        
               | sofixa wrote:
               | And otherwise they'd get sued for hosting copyrighted
               | content, which will result in hefty fines and jail(
               | didn't the US want to get Kim Dotcom from NZ precisely
               | for that?)
        
               | LudwigNagasena wrote:
               | They won't get sued if they follow the DMCA process which
               | is very different from what they are doing.
        
               | slavik81 wrote:
               | They were sued [1]. The lawsuit lasted 7 years and ended
               | in a settlement. The terms were not public, but I think
               | it's likely they promised to institute a process that
               | goes above and beyond what the DMCA requires. [1]: https:
               | //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y...
               | .
        
               | MereInterest wrote:
               | So long as they respond to actual DMCA reports, no.
               | ContentID goes far, far beyond what is required by the
               | DMCA to have safe harbor.
        
               | tzs wrote:
               | Dotcom got in trouble because he was intentionally
               | hosting infringing content, going so far as to try to
               | hide that material from the copyright owners by making it
               | look like he had taken it down when notified of its
               | presence when in fact he just made the URL that the
               | owners knew about stop working. Employees that went too
               | far and actually took down infringing material got
               | reprimanded.
               | 
               | Go dig up a copy of the indictment. It includes a bunch
               | of internal emails from Dotcom and other running his site
               | where they talk about all this stuff. It was basically a
               | site whose intent and business model was hosting pirated
               | movies. That you could also use it to host your own
               | photos or whatever was there to try to provide cover.
        
               | sofixa wrote:
               | Does the extent matter that much? Assuming YouTube did
               | nothing to take down copyrighted content, is that better
               | or worse compared to lying about taking down ?
        
           | treesprite82 wrote:
           | > which is kind of bad, because now the support team must
           | log-in with a Google account to YouTube in order to see the
           | harmless but useful video.
           | 
           | Not only this, but in the EU* it requires verifying your age
           | with a credit card or ID photo:
           | https://i.imgur.com/gP20dXi.png
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | BrandoElFollito wrote:
             | Since you van have a credit card when you are 13 yo, the
             | check is more or less useless.
        
               | envp wrote:
               | It's it effectively doxxing people under 13? That's a
               | concerning implication if I'm understanding this
               | correctly.
        
           | anticensor wrote:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eBB1ZzvFoI
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | moron4hire wrote:
           | You have YouTube's content rating system backwards.
           | 
           | It's not "racey content gets marked special" with "suitable
           | for children" being a catch-all category.
           | 
           | YouTube's "content developed for children", is the special
           | case. It's explicitly content meant for and marketed to
           | children, or content that children would be particularly
           | attracted to, like nature documentaries.
           | 
           | All other content _should_ be marked  "not intended for
           | children", even if it's not "adult"--aka restricted to
           | 18+--content.
           | 
           | This is stated pretty clearly in YouTube's documentation.
           | They have a link to it in a contextual pop-up right next to
           | the form field asking you to self-rate the video.
        
             | qwertox wrote:
             | This was the email I got:
             | 
             | > We wanted to let you know that our team has reviewed your
             | content and we don't think it's in line with our Community
             | Guidelines. As a result, we've age-restricted the following
             | content:
             | 
             | > Video: Komoot Bug
             | 
             | > We haven't applied a strike to your channel, and your
             | content is still live for some users on YouTube. Keep
             | reading for more details on what this means and steps you
             | can take if you'd like to appeal this decision.
             | 
             | > What "age-restricted" means
             | 
             | > We age-restrict content when we don't think it's suitable
             | for younger audiences. This means it will not be visible to
             | users who are logged out, are under 18 years of age, or
             | have Restricted Mode enabled. It also won't be eligible for
             | ads. Learn more about age restrictions.
             | 
             | When I click on appeal I get a popup titled "Submit an
             | appeal" with the body text of "Appealing this violation is
             | not available"
             | 
             | ----
             | 
             | EDIT: Ah. I see. I actually did set it to "Is made for
             | kids" thinking that this means that through this option I
             | express that it does have no content which would be against
             | the community guidelines.
             | 
             | I've now changed it to "Not made for kids" but also "Not
             | age restricted".
             | 
             | Thanks for pointing this out.
        
           | contravariant wrote:
           | Unless they've changed this you can get around this by
           | sending the 'embedded' link:
           | https://www.youtube.com/embed/<videoid> instead of
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<videoid>.
        
           | ozim wrote:
           | There are disputes over "white noise" videos so it is already
           | as bad as it gets.
        
             | banana_giraffe wrote:
             | I don't think it's hit YouTube, but there are people and/or
             | bots enforcing a copyright on silence:
             | 
             | https://www.youredm.com/2015/11/28/soundcloud-finally-
             | goes-t...
        
             | Someone wrote:
             | What would be worse: whoever holding the rights to John
             | Cage's "4'33" filing complaints against movies without
             | background music, claiming that they have copyrighted
             | background music.
        
             | teachingassist wrote:
             | Given that white noise is random, a recorded copy of white
             | noise is its own perfect watermark.
        
               | ozim wrote:
               | If you take 30 seconds of white noise and look for it in
               | 2h long generated output I expect that you can find
               | similar 30 seconds in whole 2h.
               | 
               | Copyright algos are not looking at the whole video, they
               | are searching for pieces of songs.
               | 
               | Because if you use 30sec of someones song you have to pay
               | up and youtube is enforcing that.
               | 
               | Now if you will take another 2h video cut it into pieces
               | and start searching for similar patterns in other 2h
               | video I expect you will find some matching ones.
        
               | dredmorbius wrote:
               | Depends on how lossy the compression is. Your watermark
               | becomes compression artefacts instead.
        
               | cma wrote:
               | Most audio codecs by now use perceptual noise
               | substitution, which potentially substitutes in identical
               | noise (I think it just EQs it?).
        
               | DreamScatter wrote:
               | no, the mp3 codec actually deletes humanly inaudible
               | portions of the frequency spectrum to reduce storage,
               | this data isn't recoverd or replaced or referred when
               | played back again, it's lost information. what is removed
               | is based on human perception limits for audio
        
               | IshKebab wrote:
               | He is referring to modern codecs, not MP3. MP3 isn't
               | widely used anymore.
               | 
               | Modern codecs don't encode noise - they remove it during
               | decoding and then add back artificial "comfort noise"
               | when decoding, e.g. for film grain or background noise in
               | voice calls.
        
               | DreamScatter wrote:
               | You haven't named any lossy stream codecs that do restore
               | white noise, so i will not consider you a reliable source
               | of info.
        
               | orestarod wrote:
               | Got a source for the current usage of MP3?
        
               | chrisseaton wrote:
               | What services do you know of that use MP3?
        
               | dredmorbius wrote:
               | Virtually every podcast ever.
               | 
               | YouTube itself seems to rely more on webm for audio. That
               | seems to be a container for Opus or Vorbis formats.
               | 
               | Vorbis and Opus themselves are lossy encoders (Ogg
               | Vorbis).
        
               | pierrec wrote:
               | If you're comparing sample-for-sample, maybe. But that's
               | not what is performed by music identification algorithms
               | - it would be both slow (to the point of being unusable)
               | and inaccurate (because of re-encoding, etc). Instead
               | they rely on different kinds of dimensionality reduction
               | that match the way we perceive music, so they only
               | compare smaller amounts of data to get more perceptually
               | relevant matches. The Shazam fingerprinting algorithm is
               | the best known but there are others.
               | 
               | So if you submit white noise to a copyright database, it
               | could match different white noise recordings.
        
               | Guest42 wrote:
               | Does it depend on seeding that would eventually have
               | tendencies for replication? Or could that be pushed out
               | until practically forever?
        
               | someguyorother wrote:
               | If the white noise is based on a random number generator,
               | the pattern would restart after a full cycle.
               | 
               | If the random number generator's period is 2^32 and you
               | use one integer per sample, then at 44 kHz, you would
               | have about a million seconds, or twelve days, before the
               | RNG has gone through a full period.
               | 
               | Most RNGs have periods much higher than this. xorshift128
               | has a period of 2^128-1 and the Mersenne Twister's period
               | is 2^19937-1.
               | 
               | So you could push it out until practically forever.
        
               | nitrogen wrote:
               | _So you could push it out until practically forever._
               | 
               | But, there will still be repeated sections.
        
               | aranchelk wrote:
               | Knowing nothing of the YouTube algorithm, I'd still wager
               | it'll take you longer than the lifetime of the copyright
               | to produce conflicting noise works.
        
               | ageitgey wrote:
               | Even if they were the case, this further shows how
               | limited and dumb (i.e. not 'smart') YouTube's copyright
               | voilation detection system is.
               | 
               | You (probably) can't copyright white noise because US
               | copyright requires authorship. So in the same way that
               | you can't copyright a phonebook's alphabetical list of
               | numbers, you can't copyright random numbers rendered as
               | sound, unless you did something else unique to it to
               | exert authorship. It's just not something protected by
               | copyright law. So even copying someone else's exact white
               | noise sample is probably just fine.
               | 
               | The problem is that YouTube's system can only apply
               | simple content matching rules and it counts any
               | sufficiently long content match as a violation with no
               | consideration of the work or context of use. Thats not
               | how copyright law works. Copyright is a complicated
               | system with all sorts of issues like fair use, derivative
               | works, public domain, and works that don't qualify for
               | protection. It's not a database query.
        
           | T-hawk wrote:
           | > Or maybe they just recognize that their AI is causing more
           | harm than good.
           | 
           | Google recognizes that these flaws in their AI aren't worth
           | caring about. Google doesn't have any mission or obligation
           | to help the world share videos. Google cares about Google's
           | profits. And they've found that the expedient way to do that
           | is just let the AI be overzealous with rejecting, because the
           | cost of a false positive is infinitesimally tiny and the cost
           | of a false negative (real copyright violation) is so much
           | higher.
           | 
           | How do we fix this? Competition. We need a Google/Youtube
           | competitor so that users will choose the platform that does
           | copyright recognition better.
        
       | imperistan wrote:
       | Could we fix this (partially) by writing software that generates
       | every possible piece of music and then upload it to YouTube? If
       | you never claim copyright on the pieces, No one else could claim
       | them in the future cause you uploaded it first. Now we only need
       | a way to filter out all existing copyrighted music I guess
        
       | Waterluvian wrote:
       | Is this all because of bad American law, or is youtube
       | proactively being bad in their moderation process?
        
         | qayxc wrote:
         | It's a problem of scale. It's perfectly possibile to manage a
         | few hundred disputes on a daily basis, but with >5000 uploads
         | per minute, it becomes impossible to do manually.
         | 
         | The worst part is the asymmetry between claimants and creators.
         | But that's the fucked up nature of civil law - the burden of
         | proof is reversed.
        
           | SeanLuke wrote:
           | > It's a problem of scale. It's perfectly possibile to manage
           | a few hundred disputes on a daily basis, but with >5000
           | uploads per minute, it becomes impossible to do manually.
           | 
           | Nonsense. Assuming the revenue to Google increases linearly
           | with uploads, so does their ability to hire content
           | moderators.
        
             | anonuser123456 wrote:
             | Revenue is a function of views, not uploads.
        
       | strange_things wrote:
       | https://youtu.be/-ThyLB6bakk
       | 
       | Here is the "wicka moonlight". Already 6.1K dislikes. I wonder
       | why...
        
       | seaman1921 wrote:
       | YouTube's Copyright System Isn't Broken. The World's Is.
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU
        
         | manquer wrote:
         | As much I love tom scott, he is ignoring the choices that
         | YouTube made along the way were that precisely that choices.
         | They didn't have to become this kind of platform.
         | 
         | Tom himself is owning/promoting nebula an alternative platform
         | with quality curated content.
         | 
         | Youtube either could have become a pure user generated platform
         | not engaging with big biz, and strictly following DMCA only :
         | counter notice is not for Google's to review merit , claims
         | like above are penalized, you have to take it court if there is
         | a counter notice, no three strikes nonsense, no flawed content
         | ID system - all of this is placate big biz.
         | 
         | Alternatively they could have become a curated content platform
         | (like nebula) them wanting to do everything is why we are here.
         | 
         | Every other user content platform in video or otherwise is
         | working perfectly fine with DMCA framework, they all have
         | considerably less resources than Google.
         | 
         | P.S. Google's inability to put people to support content
         | creators and this dispute process even for creators with 100'
         | of millions of views is simply about Google culture of not
         | believing in user/creater support (product) , big biz sure gets
         | human support.
        
       | jarek83 wrote:
       | Google - you are becoming the most dump entity in the internet.
       | Laughable level of work you are providing in recent years. Maybe
       | consider laundry business if you can't grasp technology for
       | people.
        
       | lsiebert wrote:
       | Well remember when they scanned a bunch of books? Like all the
       | books in a bunch of libraries?
       | 
       | That was physically turning pages, photographing them, doing OCR
       | and then correcting that. By comparison create a library of
       | public works in terms of audio to test copyright claims, and
       | reject or put greater requirements on ones for public domain
       | works would be relatively easy.
        
       | rchaud wrote:
       | If this is Google being proactive about avoiding lawsuits, how
       | come the same issue doesn't affect Patreon?
       | 
       | A number of 'reaction' channels have copyrighted content (full
       | music videos) that is clipped on Youtube to avoid strikes. The
       | full versions of these videos are on the uploader's Patreon.
        
       | anoncow wrote:
       | Being able to access real people for support should be a
       | mandatory requirement for big corporations offering services to
       | the public directly.
        
         | vidarh wrote:
         | In the UK you have a right to have automated decisions on e.g.
         | loan applications reviewed by a human. Broadening a right like
         | that would certainly be worth considering.
        
           | Symbiote wrote:
           | The GDPR has exactly this provision.
           | 
           | https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/
        
         | exporectomy wrote:
         | No. Mandating real people won't help. I've dealt with real
         | support people who are exactly as useless as the website's FAQ.
         | They're powerless to make any special exceptions to the
         | predefined process or even to escalate to someone who can.
         | 
         | As an example, I can't use my main email address for an Apple
         | ID account because apparently somebody else set it as their
         | backup email and I may have carelessly clicked the accept link
         | when I got the confirmation. I talked to a human Apple support
         | person and his higher level colleague and was told that's
         | probably what happened but they can't know for sure and even if
         | they did, they can't fix it. The end. Bye.
        
           | katbyte wrote:
           | at least you spoke to someone and now know why your screwed
           | vs an automated AI system that doesn't tell you anything /s
        
             | saalweachter wrote:
             | To be fair one of the major drivers of quack medicine is
             | that there are still a lot of problems where science based
             | medicine will eventually go "We don't know what's wrong
             | with you, but it's probably not something we can fix, so it
             | just sucks to be you right now."
             | 
             | It may be the best most honest answer, but a lot of people
             | would rather have a name for what's wrong with them, even
             | if there's no cure, and a treatment, even if it doesn't
             | work.
        
           | libertine wrote:
           | >Mandating real people won't help.
           | 
           | Mandating real people COULD help, bust sometimes it doesn't -
           | yet this is by design. For example, Amazon Seller Support
           | renders humans into bots because they can only reply with
           | templates (it's like they have humans teaching machines what
           | to reply from a fixed set of replies) - of course this is a
           | shitshow.
           | 
           | If you get a cryptic reply, you have to figure it out, just
           | to reply and get the same response, and then to finally get a
           | "case is closed".
        
           | plasma wrote:
           | You could try doing an account recovery (leverage that email)
           | and just change it to something else.
        
             | exporectomy wrote:
             | I think I lost the email which was many years prior, and
             | also I would need to know the actual email of the account
             | it's linked to, which I don't.
        
         | TheManInThePub wrote:
         | > Being able to access real people for support should be a
         | mandatory requirement.
         | 
         | Being able to appeal an automated decision to a real person is
         | a mandatory requirement under the GDPR.
         | 
         | https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...
        
           | CRConrad wrote:
           | Especially noteworthy here: > The data protection law
           | establishes that you have the _right not to be subject to a
           | decision based solely on automated means,_ if the decision
           | produces legal effects concerning you or significantly
           | affects you in a similar way.
           | 
           | That seems to me (IANAL etc) like it could be used to argue
           | that you need to be able to appeal to a real person _who
           | actually has the power to do something_ about the problem.
           | Because these examples like in the GP(?) where one gets hold
           | of a real person who claims they can 't do anything because
           | "that's just how the system works"... Well, then they're not
           | really "a person" in the sense that I'm fairly sure has to be
           | the one meant here; they're just another cog in the automated
           | means.
        
         | mxcrossb wrote:
         | Or in this case, maybe we should be relaxing the legal
         | requirements that lead to YouTube trying to enforce copyright.
        
           | 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
           | While that would be good, I don't think this would solve
           | anything on Youtube. In the end Youtube is heavily courting
           | the music companies with the way they do things, it's not
           | about the actual law.
           | 
           | See the whole world of educational music youtubers, they are
           | well within their rights to do quite a few things, but in
           | reality they can't even perform certain short guitar riffs
           | themselves without getting flagged.
        
       | swiley wrote:
       | What a horribly broken platform.
       | 
       | Thankfully Peertube appears to be gaining some traction due to
       | its compatibility with Mastodon.
        
         | stirlo wrote:
         | Yes, it expect it will have a near monopoly in the year desktop
         | Linux goes mainstream...
        
           | ziftface wrote:
           | Funny but I can actually see peertube appealing to big
           | YouTubers, especially if there's an ecosystem around it, like
           | apps and fully hosted servers.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | kossTKR wrote:
         | Really? Interesting as i am looking for a video hosting
         | platform.
         | 
         | Looking at their front page and it looks dead and weird to me.
         | A mix of my little pony videos, scantily clad women and 5
         | second long videos of grass, bugs etc. Absurd curation.
        
       | Symbiose wrote:
       | I made a Moonlight Sonata cover myself a few years ago
       | (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIbBcJ7EkxQ) and had countless
       | copyright claims since then.
       | 
       | I had to manually dispute every single claims over the years and
       | prove again and again that no copyright were infringed.
       | 
       | It can get tiring when you get a copyright claim finally lifted
       | after weeks of dispute, only to get a new claim the next month.
        
         | nobodyandproud wrote:
         | I wonder if small claims court could assist, for each
         | infraction and claim. Time lost, etc.
         | 
         | IANAL
        
       | mcv wrote:
       | This sort of thing happens way too often on Youtube, and it's far
       | worse than merely violating copyright; here artists get denied
       | ownership of their own expression of public domain music. Unlike
       | mere copyright violation, this is actual copyright theft that
       | Youtube is enabling here.
       | 
       | It should be punished harder than merely copying someone else's
       | work usually is, but instead this sort of direct theft seems to
       | be allowed by governments and copyright institutes.
        
         | 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
         | > here artists get denied ownership of their own expression of
         | public domain music
         | 
         | Hell why stop there, music artists get _their own original
         | music_ stolen by Youtube who then proceeds to hand it to
         | someone else, for anyone interested in a popular example:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4AeoAWGJBw
        
         | meepmorp wrote:
         | YouTube's automatic system exists to keep the company from
         | getting sued and it's going to work like anything else at
         | Google and be as automated as possible. The necessary result is
         | a black box ML system to score content, and biasing ambiguous
         | output in favor of the side more likely to have lawyers on
         | retainer.
        
       | gabrielblack wrote:
       | I can't understand why Youtube has no procedure to flag companies
       | as "Wicca Moonlight" like scammer / troll so, after a certain
       | number of infractions like that one ( pretending to be the
       | rightful owner of the rights on BEETHOVEN music !), they are
       | sanctioned in some way or banned. That to add some symmetry to
       | the procedure to fight trolls trying to steal other peoples hard
       | job.
        
         | mistercow wrote:
         | I think the problem is that the whole system they have is to
         | appease copyright holders so that they don't get sued for
         | individual videos. They've productized it and made it all look
         | very official, but the underlying fact that this is about
         | appeasement puts them on a bad footing for banning trolls. If
         | they ban someone, they're basically saying "sue us instead",
         | which is exactly what they don't want.
        
         | harshreality wrote:
         | How is it the fault of that youtube channel? They may genuinely
         | want to protect _their_ reverb 'd rendition of the Moonlight
         | Sonata, which is technically their right even if it's stupid.
         | 
         | Then it's purely google's fault that their AI contentid scanner
         | can't distinguish between Wicca Moonlight and some other
         | arbitrary performance of the sonata. It's google's fault that
         | their AI doesn't understand that the sonata itself is in the
         | public domain so they have to _only_ match against _exact_
         | reproductions rather than  "kinda sounds the same because same
         | notes and instruments" reproductions.
        
         | CydeWeys wrote:
         | Maybe "Wicca Moonlight" has previously been flagged as a
         | scammer/troll and are now on their tenth account they've been
         | doing this with? It could be whack-a-mole on all ends. It's not
         | particularly hard to spin up another LLC, register, and start
         | filing claims.
        
         | eru wrote:
         | They might have such a system, but the scale is so big, that we
         | are still seeing the false negatives?
        
         | bredren wrote:
         | Alphabet gets paid either way.
        
         | rainbowzootsuit wrote:
         | It seems like the claimers have little invested into the
         | persuit compared to the people making videos and could
         | relatively easily make a new scam account. It certainly
         | wouldn't hurt to add a little more friction to someone making
         | frivolous claims as it would likely kill off a number of them
         | that are low effort.
        
         | daedalus_f wrote:
         | "Wikka Moonlight" seems to be the name of the audio the
         | copyright claim is originating from rather than the
         | organisation claiming the copyright. [1] The audio contains a
         | recording of Moonlight Sonata with a load of added reverb. The
         | uploading channel is "Alice Violet Molland - Topic".
         | 
         | The "Topic" bit generally gets added to a channel name when a
         | music distributer (like DistroKid [2]) publishes music to
         | youtube on behalf of a musician (in this case Alive Violet
         | Molland), typically at the same time adding it to other
         | streaming services.
         | 
         | Distrokid will let you publish an unlimited number of albums in
         | this way for about $20 a year and then collects the revenue
         | from any streaming on your behalf. I'm guessing the distributer
         | may also register the audio with music rights organisations,
         | which are presumably the source of the copyright claims.
         | 
         | The Wicca Moonlight video now has 4.4k downvotes.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ThyLB6bakk [2]
         | https://distrokid.com/
        
           | crescentfresh wrote:
           | > The uploading channel is "Alice Violet Molland - Topic"
           | 
           | I went searching around using that info and came across a
           | (similarly outraged) thread on google's support forums about
           | this video, in which someone named longzijun seemed to make a
           | reasonably sound counter-argument:
           | 
           | https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/108213944/a-posted.
           | ..
           | 
           | > Then she files a counter-notification. The appeals process
           | has not been completed. She is only part-way through it.
           | 
           | > Once she files that and if she does it properly, the
           | claimant has 14 days to initiate a court action against her
           | or the claim is released, the strike removed and the video
           | goes back online.
           | 
           | > Obviously, the claimant will not pursue legal action in
           | this case.
           | 
           | > False claims can cause inconvenience for sure, but with the
           | counter-notification system, they don't do long-term damage.
           | 
           | > Both the takedown system and the counternotification system
           | are mandated by US law (specifically the DMCA).
           | 
           | > YouTube is not supposed to intervene in copyright cases. If
           | they do so, they will lose their safe harbor status (again
           | under the DMCA) that protects YouTube from being sued for
           | hosting copyright infringing content.
           | 
           | > To sum up
           | 
           | > 1) the dispute process has not been completed in this case
           | 
           | > 2) your beef should be with US legislators, not YouTube
        
             | datapolitical wrote:
             | Issuing the strike when the process is not complete is an
             | example of them getting involved.
             | 
             | Especially since there's no strike for copyright holders if
             | they issue a false claim.
        
             | CRConrad wrote:
             | That poster _may_ be right on this particular issue... But
             | it 's hard to take them seriously after umpteen posts where
             | they go on yammering about "If someone posts a recording of
             | someone's performance" after repeatedly being told that the
             | lady posted _her own_ performance, and repeatedly asking
             | someone else whether they are that poster, which AFAICS has
             | fuck-all to do with anything.
        
               | crescentfresh wrote:
               | So much agree. Their taking issue with that detail made
               | me trust their viewpoint less.
        
             | daedalus_f wrote:
             | Unless I've misunderstood something, no DMCA notice or
             | counter-notice has been sent.
             | 
             | Instead the copyright claim is purely via YouTube's content
             | ID system that detected the supposedly infringing audio
             | before the video was even published, as the YouTuber states
             | in the video linked. The company claiming the copyright
             | sought to monetise the "infringing" video for themselves
             | through this content ID mechanism.
             | 
             | I would argue that, while YouTube says it cannot arbitrate
             | copyright disputes, if it continues to allow supposed
             | copyright holders the exclusive right to decide whether
             | something is in fact their copyright, they are arbitrating
             | the disputes, just in a completely one sided manner, and
             | the creators beef should be with them. If they were
             | actually neutral, they would instead allow the DMCA system
             | to work as you said.
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | raarts wrote:
       | In ten, maybe twenty years I predict storage and cpu will be so
       | cheap that everyone can just host their own data in their own
       | router, and provide some universal API to it. Many problems
       | solved, including privacy.
        
         | tcgmu wrote:
         | We've already had the capability to do this for many years. See
         | Napster or BitTorrent.
         | 
         | The thorny issue is that legitimate copyright holders lose out
         | when anyone can freely host and share their work. That leads to
         | discussions about whether there should be copyright at all,
         | whether digital creators have a right to charge for their work,
         | etc. Those are the problems that need to be solved, not the
         | technical issues.
        
       | crazypython wrote:
       | Upload to a decentralized service like PeerTube or Odysee
       | instead.
        
       | tonystride wrote:
       | I've been working on a project converting my piano curriculum
       | into a 42 week YouTube series (currently on week 34, almost
       | there!) and one of the first challenges I ran into, other than
       | sucking a video production, was what to do about teaching
       | repertoire so as not to run into copyright claims.
       | 
       | I decided to compose my own material each week and it has turned
       | out to be the best thing about producing the series. At first the
       | idea of writing a new intermediate level piece each week seemed
       | daunting but it's actually been quite liberating. Also when I'm
       | finished with the series I'll be able to publish the collection
       | as my own book of repertoire.
       | 
       | If you've been teaching for a while (like 10 years) I would
       | highly recommend going beyond the safety net of pre published
       | teaching repertoire and try making some yourself. Find the deeper
       | connection to what you teach about music by encoding into, well,
       | music! New music, that reflects your unique relationship with the
       | craft.
        
       | durnygbur wrote:
       | How come this video is not interrupted by ads?! Something is
       | fishy here.
        
         | rchaud wrote:
         | I think uploaders can choose whether to include ads in their
         | videos.
        
       | redis_mlc wrote:
       | Before HNers waste a lot of time debating pointlessly, here's the
       | facts about how Youtube works:
       | 
       | Youtube has a 2-level copyright complaint scheme:
       | 
       | 1) Youtube Content ID system - almost all complaints are handled
       | by Youtube with their internal process. Essentially most musical
       | performances are demonetized unless you're the music publisher,
       | and occasionally for legit uploaders a copyright claim is made.
       | 
       | The Content ID system was very likely developed as part of the
       | settlement agreement with labels, where Google spent about $1
       | billion in legal fees.
       | 
       | If you don't follow YT's instructions and instead protest, then
       | you risk having your account locked. So most uploaders back off.
       | 
       | Fair use is not respected by YT normally, because they don't have
       | to under their internal system.
       | 
       | (What's interesting is that after a famous rock song by a
       | Youtube-famous cover artist was blocked, it was unblocked a few
       | months later with the original view count also restored. That one
       | was weird - very hmmm.)
       | 
       | 2) US federal copyright legal process - rarely used for Youtube
       | because #1.
       | 
       | Fair use is a defense if you file a lawsuit and win. (Using less
       | than 10 seconds approx. for educational purposes.)
       | 
       | Source: I advise a famous Youtube artist on US publishing issues.
        
       | markvdb wrote:
       | This kind of absurd copyright trouble is all over the place in
       | the world of music education. I advised my boss to choose a video
       | hosting platform between:
       | 
       | - a paid video upload account in a place where we're not the
       | product (vimeo)
       | 
       | - self hosting (PeerTube)
        
       | kroeckx wrote:
       | For music copyright is split in 2 types: composition and
       | recording. The copyright on the composition is probably expired,
       | but on a recording most likely isn't. The automated system most
       | likely claims it's a copy of a copyrighted recording. Since it's
       | a popular piece, it can be hard to tell recordings apart.
       | 
       | Note that the composition might also still have a copyright
       | because it's not the original composition but a derived work, but
       | that seems unlikely in this case.
        
       | shirleyquirk wrote:
       | https://youtu.be/-ThyLB6bakk is the referenced "Wicca moonlight"
       | performed by Alice violet molland
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | politician wrote:
       | Why don't people upload the video from one account, and then
       | claim copyright infringement from another account, and then
       | intentionally drag out the appeals process as a form of defense
       | against baseless claims?
        
       | ajuc wrote:
       | IP is such a scam.
        
       | Normille wrote:
       | I don't know what I find more annoying; the ridiculous US
       | copyright system that allows people to copyright almost
       | 'anything'... or the unfathomably stupid people employed by the
       | likes of Amazon, YouTube _et al_ whose policies seem to be _" Ban
       | first. Ask questions later... Bu let's not bother with the
       | questions"_
       | 
       | It doesn't surprise me that a 200 years dead composer's works are
       | considered subject to copyright when, apparently, even referring
       | to the name of a 1200 year old mediaeval manuscript violates
       | copyright:
       | 
       | https://stiobhart.net/2021-04-8-bubble-trouble/
        
         | Iv wrote:
         | The policies are directly caused by the laws. If google does
         | not react swiftly, it is considered guilty of copyright
         | infringement. Remove the laws, the policies are instantly
         | removes as well.
        
           | Normille wrote:
           | >If google does not react swiftly, it is considered guilty of
           | copyright infringement.
           | 
           | Only if a copyright infringement has actually taken place.
           | 
           | The problem is that none of these companies ever apply a
           | gramme of logic or examine the merits of the claim, when
           | someone cries 'copyright infringement'. They just
           | automatically remove the 'offending' article and refuse to
           | countenance any counter-arguments from the person accused.
           | 
           | It's this supine attitude which, I reckon, is fuelling all
           | these ridiculous claims. I just wish that the likes of
           | Amazon, Google, YouTube, RedBubble... etc. would call the
           | copyright trolls' bluff occasionally and not just instantly
           | cave. Every. Single. Time.
        
             | dragonwriter wrote:
             | > The problem is that none of these companies ever apply a
             | gramme of logic or examine the merits of the claim
             | 
             | True, but, TBF, evaluating merits doesn't scale, the
             | authors of the safe harbor provision knew this, and this is
             | exactly the outcome the law intended, though it does not
             | mandate it.
        
           | masklinn wrote:
           | Exactly. Benefiting from Safe Harbor provisions is usually
           | predicated on taking the claimant at their word and
           | implementing restrictions as fast as possible.
           | 
           | No such requirements exist on the release side.
           | 
           | Therefore it is no surprise that platform policies will
           | heavily favor claimants, that is very strong incentivised if
           | not an explicit requirement.
        
         | wheybags wrote:
         | I studied there. When I got to the start of the long winded
         | official name, I actually said "oh no" out loud to myself :(
        
       | NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
       | That is the reason these guys decided to Copyrighting all the
       | melodies to avoid accidental infringement
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJtm0MoOgiU TED talk
        
         | lovelyviking wrote:
         | did it help?
        
       | mlang23 wrote:
       | One of the first uploads I did to YouTube, a recording of me
       | playing BWV 1034-3 (Andante) got a copyright claim. This was the
       | day I realized youtube is in fact helping big corporations to
       | supress individuals. "We might delete your account if you raise
       | an objection against this claim and we find your objection is
       | invalid." That was pretty much around the time YT decided that it
       | can now be as evil as it wants.
        
       | mykowebhn wrote:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDcvPf78g1k&t=12s&ab_channel...
       | 
       | The irony and hypocrisy of this are incredible.
        
       | enriquto wrote:
       | Youtubers have it coming. They have accepted obviously
       | unacceptable terms of service. The problems of Youtube are very
       | old, and people have been consistently proposing alternatives
       | that solve these problems. Yet they willingly chose to fatten the
       | beast in the hopes that they will get spared of its cruelty. I
       | say good riddance!
        
       | squid32 wrote:
       | Copyright is broken, time to overhaul the whole system.
       | 
       | edit: Every. single. video I uploaded to youtube has been
       | copyright claimed.
       | 
       | If you know a reasonable alternative to youtube, please let me
       | know.
        
       | lovelyviking wrote:
       | Actually I doubt that you _can_ avoid abusing current copyright
       | laws.
       | 
       | Also because there is no such "right" in nature. If you wish
       | monopoly call it for what it _is_ and have laws in accordance.
       | Such  "right" shouldn't exist in the first place or at least in
       | the current form.
       | 
       | Copy process is the way people learn and progress. Copy process
       | is essential for spreading knowledge and development.
       | 
       | When you learn you copy. When you sing you copy. When you speak
       | you copy. When you teach you copy. When you think you copy.
       | People copy their parents. _You_ are the mixed copy of your
       | parents plus mixed copy of other things and factors.
       | 
       | When you show to others what you did you copy too.
       | 
       | I give you a concrete example. I was dancing Argentinian tango in
       | a charity event and wanted to show record of it to other people.
       | I've got copyright claim on YouTube.
       | 
       | I was not even demonstrating music - I was demonstrating Dancing!
       | The music played in the background was created somewhere in
       | 1930-1940. The music played at the event was not even original
       | composition. It was a cover done by local artist. And it was
       | played live during the event with improvisations. Unfortunately I
       | couldn't show this event to anyone else because I've got
       | copyright claim on YouTube channel. I couldn't even share the
       | record with my friends as private link. I couldn't even show the
       | video to my partner for goodness sake. If this is not idiocy
       | resulting from so called "copyright" then what is?
       | 
       | Unlimited copy process is _crucial_ to arts especially because
       | you should feel free to express yourself and only this way
       | something _new_ can appear.
       | 
       | Copy is a natural process and any attempt to _regulate_ it or
       | _regulate it too much_ can and will create more problems than it
       | solves!
       | 
       | Perhaps it's time to start listening RMS more carefully. This is
       | one about copyright: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eginMQBWII4
        
         | redwall_hp wrote:
         | Better terms for copyright include "imaginary property" and
         | "bourgeoise pseudocapital."
         | 
         | Not only does copyright hinder creativity and infringe upon
         | your natural right to copy, but it doesn't even benefit artists
         | so much as companies who pay them a pittance while wielding the
         | law as a cudgel to protect their imaginary fiefdom. The world
         | needs less ownership, not more.
        
           | cdot2 wrote:
           | People will complain about copyright precisely until they
           | have some creative work of theirs sold by someone else.
           | Professional authors cannot exist without copyright.
        
             | lovelyviking wrote:
             | I complain about copyright precisely because I cannot even
             | show my creative work. And if I'll try to upload it
             | anywhere where people are then I will be stripped off any
             | of my "rights" in that very moment. So how copyright helps
             | in that case?
        
         | TeeMassive wrote:
         | Copyright is a way to encourage the production of _new_
         | culture. Even if it is abused it doesn 't remove all of its
         | merits. Countries with weak copyright laws do produce or export
         | content and are barely heard of and the reason why is not hard
         | to deduce: all their top talents can't live out of what they
         | produce and therefore go elsewhere.
         | 
         | If you really want to go the deconstruction route, laws are
         | unnatural but murder and assault are found in nature everywhere
         | and therefore we're all doing it wrong. Now if you excuse me I
         | have to take care of my collection of scalps /s.
        
       | blacklight wrote:
       | I've already stated this many times, I'll state it again.
       | 
       | Get your shit out of YouTube and any other Google product.
       | 
       | Google is a dumb, faceless, fully automated company only
       | interested in extracting as much data as possible from its users,
       | force them to swallow as many ads as possible, all without caring
       | about listening to them (both consumers and creators), under the
       | faulty assumption that they're too big for users and consumers to
       | live without them. They simply don't deserve anybody using their
       | shitty products anymore.
       | 
       | The error in this case is quite obvious. YouTube's scanner
       | incorrectly identified the teacher's recording of Moonlight
       | Sonata as a copyrighted reinterpretation of the same piece of
       | music originally written by a guy who actually died 200 years
       | ago. And I can't completely put the blame on Google's AI: the
       | notes are technically the same, the beat might also be the same,
       | if you calculate an FFT of the audio you'll probably also come up
       | with similar spectral signatures. But a human listener will
       | IMMEDIATELY notice that was played by the teacher IS NOT the the
       | same as the copyrighted piece of music.
       | 
       | The problem is: who is accountable for these mistakes? Who shall
       | I reach out to if Google's foggy algorithms make a mistake? And,
       | in the case of educators and creators who actually do that for a
       | job, who will compensate them for the revenue they have lost
       | because of algorithmic errors?
       | 
       | Until Google can provide an answer to these questions, I repeat:
       | keep your ass away from anything that has their name on it. They
       | are not reliable, the risk of losing your data, your account or
       | your followers because of random automated decision is very high,
       | and the probability of getting a real human to assist you is very
       | low.
        
         | robbrown451 wrote:
         | And put your content where? What should this piano teacher do?
         | 
         | This is partially the fault of YouTube/Google, but also
         | copyright law in general. It's broken.
         | 
         | This community, right here, could collaborate and force changes
         | upon the powers that be. Boycotting Google and YouTube isn't
         | going to do it though.
        
           | ratww wrote:
           | Google's extension to copyright and lack of accountability is
           | the only thing broken here. That, and the fact that they have
           | multiple monopolies.
           | 
           | Boycotting Google is the only way to go. One can also
           | advocate for regulation in this are.
           | 
           | As for your question: They can put the video in Nebula or
           | Patreon, for instance. Maybe there can be more of those,
           | perhaps for music teachers. Maybe that's also an opportunity
           | for someone new to jump into the streaming game and provide
           | some competition.
        
           | josteink wrote:
           | > And put your content where?
           | 
           | Vimeo? Peertube? Facebook? Self hosted website? Anywhere?
        
             | livre wrote:
             | You can put your content anywhere you want but you can't
             | choose where the audience is. YouTube is in practice a big
             | monopoly because there's no audience in the "alternatives."
             | If you want to be seen you have no choice but YouTube, you
             | can prepare for the worst and upload simultaneously to
             | other platforms and include links in your video description
             | but you can't avoid YouTube.
        
             | jasode wrote:
             | _> Vimeo? Peertube? Facebook? Self hosted website?
             | Anywhere?_
             | 
             | Those proposed alternatives don't address why the content
             | creators like this piano teacher put their tutorials _on
             | Youtube_ :
             | 
             | ++ $0 in hosting and bandwidth costs: self-hosted costs
             | money that's often _unpredictable_ , and Vimeo has platform
             | membership fees
             | 
             | ++ ad revenue to help make the effort of producing a video
             | worthwhile : Peertube does not have relationship with ad
             | sponsors
             | 
             | ++ audience size & reach : Vimeo/Peertube/selfhosted/etc
             | don't have comparable viewers. For niche content such as
             | piano instruction, this makes building a financially
             | sustainable audience more difficult
             | 
             | ++ discovery recommendations from the platform:
             | Vimeo/Peertube/selfhosted don't have the network effect
             | ecosystem of _other videos on music_ that can lead viewers
             | to the piano teacher 's tutorial videos.
             | 
             | When frustrated Youtubers ask _" And put your content
             | where?"_, they're not looking for dumb hosting sites to
             | upload some mp4 files. Their question is really a short
             | version of: _" And put your content where that has the
             | audience reach and monetization to make the video
             | production worthwhile?"_
             | 
             | A content creator like this piano teacher wants to make
             | some extra money with Youtube videos. It's not the end of
             | the world if she can't do that but the extra income could
             | help offset the cancellation of in-person lessons because
             | of pandemic social distancing. I don't think lecturing
             | people repeatedly about Vimeo and Peertube is helpful.
             | 
             | EDIT reply to: _> But the other rely to this comment makes
             | a very good point - post in as many places as
             | possible/desired _in addition_ to YouTube, and point to all
             | the other places in that YouTube posting._
             | 
             | You're still losing sight of this thread's topic: the piano
             | teacher is _losing ad monetization money_ to a fraudulent
             | claim of copyright. If she hypothetically uploaded her
             | Moonlight Sonata tutorial to Peertube /Vimeo/selfhosting,
             | she still gets $0 in ad share revenue from those
             | alternative video hosters which makes the advice
             | irrelevant.
             | 
             | Your "syndication" advice to distribute the videos to
             | multiple sites _solves a different problem_ such as de-
             | platforming. E.g. Youtube deletes /censors her video or her
             | entire channel.
             | 
             | That's _not_ the problem she has. Her video is still there
             | and viewable. But she doesn 't want the ad monetization
             | money _stolen from her_ by a fraudulent claim.
        
               | zentiggr wrote:
               | But the other rely to this comment makes a very good
               | point - post in as many places as possible/desired _in
               | addition_ to YouTube, and point to all the other places
               | in that YouTube posting.
               | 
               | Also a good way to inform viewers about Google's shitty
               | policies and forewarn them that the much more reliable
               | sources are All The Others.
        
           | anigbrowl wrote:
           | I hate copyright law and agree it's broken, but it's not at
           | fault here. Compositions can be copyrighted, but obviously
           | Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata is in the public domain and has
           | been for a long time. Performances can be copyrighted, but
           | obviously a performance isn't the same thing as a
           | composition.
           | 
           | There's no _legal_ grey area here. This is _completely_ on
           | Google /Youtube. Why isn't there a way to assert the
           | copyright status when uploading, beyond saying you ownt he
           | copyright or not? The answer would seem to be that it would
           | take some work on the company's part, and they don't want to
           | put it in because it's unlikely to yield any additional
           | revenue and the occasional bit of bad publicity doesn't hurt
           | them enough.
        
             | robbrown451 wrote:
             | "This is completely on Google/Youtube. "
             | 
             | What about the copyright trolls that are filing claims for
             | content they don't own, forcing Google into an arms race
             | with them.
             | 
             | Even when the system is working "correctly" it is broken.
             | If I take a video of my kid dancing to a song, I often
             | can't share it with my family on YouTube. That's messed up.
        
         | mikenew wrote:
         | > under the faulty assumption that they're too big for users
         | and consumers to live without them
         | 
         | It is, unfortunately, not a faulty assumption. I'm a piano
         | teacher on YouTube, and I'm able to make money there. My entire
         | audience was developed through the platform. I put videos on
         | platforms like Vimeo or even Peertube, and I've had more views
         | in one day on YouTube than their entire lifetime on those other
         | platforms combined.
         | 
         | The network effect is a cruel mistress, but short of some kind
         | of global exodus _no one_ has the ability to change that. I
         | hate it as much as anyone.
        
           | fsflover wrote:
           | Any creator with established audience can bring those people
           | to alternative platform, e.g., Peertube. Start from posting
           | videos on both platforms and advertise the other one. Then
           | post videos on Peertube _earlier_.
        
             | anigbrowl wrote:
             | _Any creator with established audience_
             | 
             | Well yeah, once you're already successful you have more
             | options. That's absolutely no help to people who do not
             | have a paying audience.
        
             | SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
             | That will only work for a select group of viewers. Waiting
             | a day or even a week isn't a huge deal for me as a
             | consumer, and I'm familiar with it because Patreon people
             | often put their videos up in patreon earlier than their
             | YouTube ones.
        
               | fsflover wrote:
               | You are right. However, when Google blocks the creator,
               | most of their audience will know how to find them.
        
             | cortesoft wrote:
             | Yeah, but YouTube has ads that can pay the content creator.
             | PeerTube doesn't.
        
         | tom-_- wrote:
         | As a content creator, you want the platform to protect your
         | copyright and at YouTube's scale, copyright scanners are the
         | only way to implement this.
         | 
         | Will they produce false positives? Of course. Do the benefits
         | to content creators outweigh the costs of these false
         | positives? Yes if you believe creative content should be
         | protected.
         | 
         | The only other viable model for content creators are
         | subscription based services like Patreon and they have/will
         | also be pressured by the entertainment industry or even the
         | content creators themselves to flag copyright infringement once
         | the platform gets large enough.
        
           | nobodyandproud wrote:
           | > As a content creator, you want the platform to protect your
           | copyright and at YouTube's scale, copyright scanners are the
           | only way to implement this.
           | 
           | Is this really true, though?
           | 
           | Google certainly doesn't want to pay for people, but
           | automated systems can be used as a first-pass filter, before
           | human are brought-in to make a second-pass judgement.
           | 
           | So what is the rate of false-positives? And how many
           | automated flags are triggered per day?
        
           | anigbrowl wrote:
           | But the difference between composition and performance is
           | well delineated in copyright law. What _technical barrier_ is
           | preventing Google from setting up scanners to detect
           | similarity, get a hit, and then identify a video as a
           | performance of  'Moonlight Sonata', look _that_ up, and OK it
           | on the basis that everything written by Beethoven is long out
           | of copyright?
        
           | dominostars wrote:
           | As it stands, someone can make a remix of your song and make
           | claims against anyone using your original song. It all
           | happens through youtube's automated system, and you won't see
           | a penny for your work.
        
           | Swenrekcah wrote:
           | Like some have suggested, the automated system should only be
           | an input for a team of humans to then review and consider.
           | They should then contact the potentially breaching party and
           | get some feedback as well as doing some due diligence to
           | check if the complaint came from a proper right holder.
           | 
           | Yes this costs money but it is the only way to do the job
           | without being a scumbag and a general burden on the world.
           | 
           | Furthermore it should cost the person sending a complaint
           | somethings to file it, which then is refunded if the
           | complaint is found to have merit.
           | 
           | Lastly, some of these steps could and should be skipped if a
           | particular account or multiple accounts determined by some
           | other means to be the same person are repeatedly found to be
           | in violation.
           | 
           | Similarly if a person keeps making unfounded accusations the
           | refundable fee might increase in steps.
        
             | bskap wrote:
             | That's all great in theory, but current US copyright law
             | isn't really in favor of implementing any of that. If
             | Google tried to do it, they'd likely get flooded with
             | massive lawsuits from the media conglomerates because
             | they'd lose the DMCA safe harbor.
        
               | Swenrekcah wrote:
               | No doubt you're right. In that case the copyright laws
               | are wrong and should be fixed.
               | 
               | I apologise and transfer my scumbag stamp from google to
               | Congress then for this particular case :)
        
               | rfrey wrote:
               | Why would they lose the DMCA safe harbor? We're talking
               | about YouTube's own scanner here, not DMCA takedowns.
               | There's no requirement in the DMCA to implement an
               | internal scanner that has many false positives, and not
               | investigate the scanner's output.
        
         | galangalalgol wrote:
         | Sobhow was wicca moonlight even copyri if it was that close to
         | something that is out of copyright protection?
        
         | matchagaucho wrote:
         | _The error in this case is quite obvious..._
         | 
         | That was the symptom. The cause of the error was Google
         | allowing another Publisher to stake claims on public domain
         | music.
        
         | dominostars wrote:
         | People are using this system intentionally as a scam. Recently,
         | I tried uploading a video which had video game music in the
         | background, and youtube flagged a copyright claim on behalf of
         | someone who made a remix of the original song. I did not have a
         | license to use the song, so that's fair, but my choices were
         | either to drop my video or run ads that give money to someone
         | who wasn't even the owner of the song I was trying to use.
         | 
         | There was no avenue for recourse, or to report the person who
         | was fraudulently making claims.
        
           | erik wrote:
           | Can you reach out to the original composer of the game music?
           | They would likely care about the bogus claims. Particularly
           | if it is a smaller studio. It's not a great solution, but it
           | might work.
        
         | danbmil99 wrote:
         | Interestingly this intersects with
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26996972
         | 
         | Content cannot be safe if the tech necessary to deliver it is
         | out of reach for independent creators.
         | 
         | Note that in the Roku thread Google is (IMHO) the good guy, for
         | reasons unrelated to this thread's concern.
        
         | bcrescimanno wrote:
         | I agree with your assessment of Google; however, what is a
         | reasonable alternative for a content creator who wants to
         | publish their videos and be able to build an audience? You
         | kinda have to go where the audience will be if you don't
         | already have one and I'm not aware of any video discovery
         | platforms with anywhere near the reach of YouTube. I've managed
         | to get out of Google products almost entirely--YouTube remains
         | the exception.
         | 
         | Moreover, let's say a new site comes along and dethrones
         | YouTube. Remember that this whole mess started because of
         | lawsuits that were ultimately ruled (or settled) in favor of
         | copyright holders. Any player in this space will need a method
         | for handling vast quantities of copyrighted material scanning
         | and, like Google, will be heavily incentivized by legal
         | precedent to have that system "err on the side of caution."
         | 
         | I'm not a fan of Google; but, the villain of this story is the
         | horribly outdated and corporate-lobbied copyright system that
         | will push any player in the video space to this kind of
         | draconian approach.
        
           | ineptech wrote:
           | > what is a reasonable alternative for a content creator..?
           | 
           | Insurance? I'm only half kidding. No individual youtuber has
           | the deep pockets to stir the slumbering Googlebeast enough to
           | get it to notice and correct its mistake, but all youtubers
           | certainly do. Conversely, perhaps there's a market for a we-
           | only-get-paid-if-we-win lawyers to spring up here, as they
           | have with workplace injuries and such. Youtube's resolution
           | process may not be friendly to creators, but juries probably
           | will be, if the creator bypasses Google and sues the party
           | making the claim. "Sues for what?" I dunno - emotional
           | damages? Tortious claims? They'll figure something out, I
           | imagine.
           | 
           | Maybe those are silly ideas, but they're certainly less silly
           | than waiting for Google to fix things...
        
             | superkuh wrote:
             | Or join the youtube creators union https://fairtube.info/
        
           | fsflover wrote:
           | > however, what is a reasonable alternative for a content
           | creator who wants to publish their videos and be able to
           | build an audience?
           | 
           | Put your videos on Youtube _and_ PeerTube.
        
             | cortesoft wrote:
             | Does PeerTube have ads or monetization?
        
               | fsflover wrote:
               | No. But you can advertise something in your own videos as
               | people often do nowadays.
        
               | cortesoft wrote:
               | That is a lot harder to do, and only the most successful
               | content creators will be able to find sponsors on their
               | own. In addition, that is a lot of extra work for a small
               | content creator.
        
               | zentiggr wrote:
               | ... or the small content creator gets a random permanent
               | ban for "REASON WE CAN'T TELL YOU SO YOU CAN'T GAME US",
               | and the easy road turns out to be a dead end.
               | 
               | And you wind up doing the extra work anyway.
        
             | bcrescimanno wrote:
             | I'd honestly never heard of PeerTube so I searched it. Ah,
             | they have a "about peertube" video! Should be great! In the
             | first 30 seconds of the video, there were 1-3s long hiccups
             | 4 times. Not exactly a confidence-inspiring start. After
             | figuring out how to find more videos, I tried to play some
             | --but, experienced more hiccups or load times from 20s to a
             | full minute--and some just flat out didn't play at all.
             | 
             | I'm not saying PeerTube doesn't look like interesting tech;
             | but this is clearly aimed at a far more tech-savvy crowd
             | and to put it out there in response to asking for a,
             | "reasonable alternative for a content creator who wants to
             | publish their videos and be able to build an audience" is
             | just totally missing the mark of what makes YouTube
             | successful for creators and viewers alike.
        
               | fsflover wrote:
               | > 1-3s long hiccups 4 times
               | 
               | PeerTube is not one single website. It is a decentralized
               | platform, where everyone can set up their own server and
               | it will work as a part of the whole system (like emails
               | work). This is why it will never be owned by a single
               | entity like Google.
               | 
               | You probably chose a slow server. It does not mean that
               | the whole PeerTube is slow.
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube
        
               | bcrescimanno wrote:
               | As stated above, I watched the promotional video from
               | PeerTube themselves on the JoinPeertube.org website and
               | experienced multiple hiccups in under 30s. If their own
               | hosting isn't cutting it, what chance does anyone else
               | have?
               | 
               | > You probably chose a slow server.
               | 
               | I didn't choose a server. I chose a video. The moment the
               | service asks me to think about what server is hosting it
               | is the moment I don't care enough to jump through those
               | hoops. Never underestimate the value of a consistent
               | experience.
               | 
               | Once again, I don't want to be disparaging to PeerTube--
               | it's a cool concept and I understand the foundations
               | behind it. But, spending 10 minutes with it earlier today
               | made it obvious that it's not going to challenge YouTube
               | as a content discovery platform.
               | 
               | Edit: Corrected the URL from "PeerTube.com" to
               | "JoinPeertube.org" -- I typed "PeerTube.com" in haste and
               | just assuming the URL.
        
               | fsflover wrote:
               | > from PeerTube themselves on the PeerTube.com
               | 
               | PeerTube.com is not "PeerTube themselves". This is one of
               | the servers, not the best one. This is the official
               | PeerTube website: https://joinpeertube.org. It will show
               | search results on many servers.
               | 
               | > The moment the service asks me to think about what
               | server is hosting it is the moment I don't care enough to
               | jump through those hoops.
               | 
               | You only choose your server once, like you chose Youtube
               | once. You do not need to jump through hoops.
               | 
               | > If their own hosting isn't cutting it
               | 
               | PeerTube (actually FramaSoft) is a non-profit
               | organization. You shouldn't expect huge resources from
               | them. Also peertube.com is not their server AFAIK.
        
               | bcrescimanno wrote:
               | I corrected the URL in my post. I was on JoinPeertube.org
               | and watched the, "What is PeerTube?" video that is
               | embedded in that page. If I watched it again, it might
               | not buffer at all. Maybe it was a bad moment. But I
               | consume a lot of content on YouTube and I can't remember
               | the last time a video buffered a single time--let alone
               | several times in the first 30 seconds.
               | 
               | I'm honestly done with this ridiculous strawman about
               | whether the video works. PeerTube is not a viable
               | alternative to YouTube from a content creator's
               | perspective for may reasons which I've already stated;
               | but, I'll summarize:
               | 
               | 1. It lacks even a tiny fraction of the distribution and
               | discovery reach offered by YouTube.
               | 
               | 2. It lacks the monetization features that allows YouTube
               | to become part of a business.
               | 
               | 3. It requires me to provide my own hosting and technical
               | setup which is far more involved than dropping a video
               | into your browser like you get with YouTube.
               | 
               | 4. If I, as a consumer with no knowledge or interest in
               | how PeerTube works, "choose the wrong server," I get a
               | crappy experience with videos buffering for ages so I'm
               | disinclined to continue to use the platform leading to
               | reduced audiences on the platform and the feeling of,
               | "doing extra work for nothing."
               | 
               | You can defend it all you want; but, your responses so
               | far have been thinly veiled, "You're too stupid to get it
               | right." I guess maybe I am; but, I'll stand behind _that_
               | being the single biggest reason that PeerTube simply
               | cannot be a platform to rival YouTube.
        
               | fsflover wrote:
               | > 3. It requires me to provide my own hosting and
               | technical setup
               | 
               | This is wrong. You choose someone's server and use it
               | just like you use Youtube.
               | 
               | > "You're too stupid to get it right."
               | 
               | I never said or implied that. Yes, using PeerTube is
               | slightly harder, but the benefit you get is huge. If it
               | is not worth for you, you can give your live to Google...
        
           | StreamBright wrote:
           | There are ways to avoid these copyright guys going after you
           | with a truly decentralized system where node stores only a
           | fraction of the content and there is no central place to ban
           | content. Just like the concept of internet was DODs answer to
           | a threat nuking communication there must be an answer to the
           | threat of copyright trolling. I am very much waiting to a
           | decentralized content platform to show up that is immune to
           | content filtering abuse and much easier on the ISPs bandwidth
           | wise than the current YT or similar sites.
        
           | ajross wrote:
           | > however, what is a reasonable alternative for a content
           | creator who wants to publish their videos and be able to
           | build an audience?
           | 
           | I think it's more instructive to look at it from the other
           | side. What's the reasonable alternative for a _video hosting
           | service_ to doing this kind of policing? Remember it 's not
           | really an option to just throw video over the fence, DMCA
           | requirements mean you have to be responsive. And thus there's
           | a built-in incentive to cut a deal with the content owners to
           | preemptively prevent the DMCA claims (which are expensive!)
           | by doing this sort of automated policing.
           | 
           | It's true that not every host does this, but every host that
           | doesn't do this either does it in violation of the law or
           | eats significant overhead that needs to be recouped in some
           | other way (i.e. by paying their content creators less! Check
           | the author's channel, this is someone who's clearly on
           | youtube for revenue. Would even she jump ship given that it
           | would probably cost her money?)
           | 
           | Really, this isn't something Google can fix. It's a problem
           | with the legal regime that imagines that all infringement is
           | a bright line definition and that preemptive takedowns are
           | the best solution.
        
             | burkaman wrote:
             | The alternative is to responsibly scale your service. If
             | your platform is so big that it can only be moderated by
             | algorithms, and the algorithms don't work, then it's too
             | big. Scale down until, at the very least, you can hire
             | enough humans to review complaints when the algorithm does
             | something wrong. Even better would be to have a human
             | review every flagged violation to confirm it.
             | 
             | Obviously, hiring humans is expensive, and nobody is
             | forcing them to do it, but that doesn't make it an
             | unreasonable alternative. I consider it unreasonable to
             | design an unethical system with the sole excuse that it
             | makes more money that way.
        
               | ajross wrote:
               | So... which providers have responsibly scaled, in your
               | opinion? All we have are tiny hosts (mostly porn) running
               | by the seat of their pants and occasionally disappearing
               | in a conflagration of lawsuits, and big folks like TikTok
               | and Google and Facebook with draconian preemptive
               | enforcement of various forms.
               | 
               | I think that argues strongly that the service you want to
               | see is "unreasonable" given the regulation regime we
               | have. You can't put this on the hosts, you'll just be
               | disappointed. Call your representative.
        
               | nine_k wrote:
               | To leave a ton of money on the table, and let the
               | competition eat that space, because 0.1% of DMCA requests
               | would be served with an overreaction?
               | 
               | Sorry, this is not going to make business sense. If you
               | want a free video publishing platform that does user
               | outreach for you, you got to pay a price; the false
               | positives is a part of the price, alas.
        
               | gbear605 wrote:
               | That's why we need a regulation change to make it so that
               | you can't outcompete by being unethical.
        
             | bcrescimanno wrote:
             | Completely agreed. I'd love to see Google (and let's get
             | Twitch in there as well, while we're at it) working _with_
             | content creators to push for legal change. To me, that 's
             | what's most disappointing: Google will spend millions on
             | lobbying to legally collect more and more information about
             | me; but, they don't have the inclination to use their size
             | and scale to push a significant expansion of Fair Use
             | Doctrine (or, if they do, they certainly aren't vocal about
             | it).
        
               | creato wrote:
               | It was out of self interest of course, but, Google did
               | just finish a decade long, costing probably hundreds of
               | millions of dollars in legal fees, battle with Oracle to
               | fight for reasonable copyright interpretation for
               | software developers.
               | 
               | This current situation on YT is the result of _another_
               | multi-billion dollar legal fight with the music industry.
               | I don 't like how YT handles this either but I put most
               | of the blame on the music industry for it.
        
           | feudalism wrote:
           | > what is a reasonable alternative for a content creator who
           | wants to publish their videos and be able to build an
           | audience?
           | 
           | I've noticed several tech-related content producers copying
           | their videos over to LBRY/Odysee as a backup in case the YT
           | algorithm decides to cancel them.
        
             | bcrescimanno wrote:
             | These are great solutions to keep your content if Google
             | decides to lock you out or destroy your content; but, they
             | aren't platforms on which you can build a content creation
             | side of a business.
        
           | fossuser wrote:
           | Yeah - agreed.
           | 
           | If I was a creator I'd use YouTube, but also have backed up
           | local copies of videos. Preferably hosted elsewhere in case
           | the channel gets in trouble too.
           | 
           | You have to be where the users are and YouTube is by far the
           | best video streaming service (with the largest audience).
        
           | ergot_vacation wrote:
           | I'd disagree slightly with the parent post here: the
           | conclusion shouldn't be "get away from Google" so much as "If
           | you have to use Google, understand what you're getting into."
           | If you deal with unsavory people, things will go south
           | eventually. If you deal with Google, sooner or later things
           | like this will happen. Expect it, build it into your
           | strategy, but don't be surprised by it.
        
             | RogerL wrote:
             | How do you "build that into your strategy"? That is so easy
             | to type, but unactionable. A piano teacher can't build her
             | own streaming platform, and if she goes to a different
             | platform she'll die in obscurity.
             | 
             | Concretely, what should she have done differently?
        
               | piptastic wrote:
               | my thoughts would be:
               | 
               | - while building up your following on google, market your
               | brand to your own site(s) as much as possible
               | 
               | - build brand an alternate streaming site(s)
               | 
               | - have a way to reach your followers in the event you get
               | shut down - email list, etc. to inform your followers to
               | switch to the alternate site
        
               | matart wrote:
               | Do many people watch through embedded videos or do people
               | watch in the YouTube app? There's a convenience in having
               | all your videos in 1 place. I've had a couple podcasts
               | move to Spotify only and I stopped listening even though
               | I have a Spotify subscription.
        
               | zentiggr wrote:
               | It's that assumption of "dying in obscurity" that gives
               | Google their damnable network effect.
               | 
               | If there isn't enough marketing advice out there about
               | finding as many channels and methods as you can, I'll eat
               | this comment with barbecue sauce.
               | 
               | Read up, utilize all the advice on everything except
               | Google-owned properties, accept the lower visibility, and
               | help neuter the algorithm beast.
               | 
               | Or accept that you're riding the tiger and never complain
               | again.
        
             | ratsmack wrote:
             | >Expect it, build it into your strategy, but don't be
             | surprised by it.
             | 
             | This is kind of like saying... Expect failure, build
             | failure into you strategy, and move blindly forward
             | believing there is no other alternative.
        
               | zentiggr wrote:
               | I'd say it's more like:
               | 
               | Go ahead and build your initial business on quicksand.
               | 
               | Know that you'll get lots of traffic, but it might sink
               | into the ground at any time.
               | 
               | Use the profits to build up a solid future property that
               | isn't built on quicksand.
        
             | StreamBright wrote:
             | Explain this to my mom please. P50 users of the internet
             | could not give two shits about these entities.
        
         | simion314 wrote:
         | I just want to emphasize that Google are not the only ones,
         | 
         | I had my Sony Play Station account banned for 2 months with no
         | exact reason and no way to appeal, on short the Sony message
         | was like "you did something wrong, something about our policy
         | on sex and violence, our moderators are perfect so there is no
         | mistake and there is nothing you can do".
         | 
         | I think we need something that addresses all such issues and
         | not a Google only workaround, the solution is regulations.
        
         | ChuckMcM wrote:
         | When I was at Google they had a mission statement that went
         | something like "Organize the worlds data and make it
         | available." But the reality seems to be it was "Seize the
         | world's data and hold it for ransom." The latter of course
         | being the better business model.
        
         | kzrdude wrote:
         | Everyone uses youtube. Local businesses use youtube. I took
         | driving lessons and they use it. Small tech companies use it to
         | host their promo videos, and so on. So people use it without
         | even needing the "reach" that youtube can provide - it's just
         | being used for hosting.
        
           | zentiggr wrote:
           | Again and again the same basic "but it's free" refrain.
           | 
           | Sure, building on quicksand is free. No one wants to pay for
           | a service that is as undependable, and impossible to appeal
           | in case of fraudulent or just mistaken bans.
           | 
           | So go ahead and build on that quicksand... but do it knowing
           | so, and stop complaining when the quicksand swallows you.
           | 
           | There might not be much land around the edge of the quicksand
           | patch, but it's solid ground.
        
         | 6510 wrote:
         | All that is true of course but I think the bigger issue is that
         | the copyright system has to go or at least change dramatically.
         | People walk around with video cameras now 24/7, they want to
         | add music to their video. We should facilitate this.
        
         | Causality1 wrote:
         | The more stories like this crop up, the more I wonder what the
         | source is. Google's pervasively horrible treatment of both free
         | users and paying customers reflects its extraordinary fetish
         | for using computers to do a person's job. The worse it gets the
         | more I start to think this is coming from someone in
         | particular. How could they be so incapable of improvement
         | unless someone powerful is stomping on it? Who is it? Who in
         | the top twenty Alphabet/Google executives has this godawful
         | obsession?
        
         | heavyset_go wrote:
         | > _The problem is: who is accountable for these mistakes? Who
         | shall I reach out to if Google 's foggy algorithms make a
         | mistake? And, in the case of educators and creators who
         | actually do that for a job, who will compensate them for the
         | revenue they have lost because of algorithmic errors?_
         | 
         | Given that we've had to endure this nonsense for more years
         | than I can count now, and Google and other companies refuse to
         | budge, it sounds like a great opportunity for legislation to
         | enumerate users' rights in situations like this, and to
         | enumerate penalties should companies like Google violate them.
        
         | ergot_vacation wrote:
         | More and more, ordinary people are not citizens in a nation,
         | with a balance of rights and responsibilities afforded to them,
         | but simply cattle: a resource to be cultivated, controlled, and
         | harvested. This is true online, but also increasingly off.
         | People are still operating under the outdated notion that
         | corporations, banks and government institutions can be held to
         | account because they are in some way vulnerable to the
         | displeasure of ordinary people. They cannot, and are not.
         | 
         | Youtube does not care about your happiness. Their business
         | model is unrelated to it. Youtube, like Google, is in the
         | business of gathering up a bunch of delicious users and bolt-
         | gunning and butchering them so they can be served up to ad
         | partners for a tidy sum. In this arrangement, the happiness of
         | the livestock hardly matters.
        
         | cblconfederate wrote:
         | Without a viable and better alternative this wouldnt make
         | sense. But what would be a viable alternative? Well, it could
         | use only non-copyrighted material, which is feasible nowadays,
         | there is tons of CC0 music to dress any video
        
         | vkou wrote:
         | > Get your shit out of YouTube and any other Google product.
         | 
         | Any video hosting service that you will move to will behave in
         | a very similar ways, in order to avoid getting sued out of
         | existence by the media lobby.
         | 
         | If you want to solve this problem, the solution can only come
         | from dismantling the parasitic parts of the media industry.
         | That requires political action.
        
           | zentiggr wrote:
           | Sure, that's step 2.
           | 
           | Step 1 is walk away from the biggest, most obscure and
           | capricious banning system around, to pull the biggest teeth
           | of that copyright industry.
        
         | lovelyviking wrote:
         | >Get your shit out of YouTube and any other Google product.
         | 
         | My thoughts exactly 5 years ago. So I did exactly as you say
         | back then. So , did you notice? Did it help? I do not think so.
         | 
         | May be the problem is more complicated and leaving YouTube
         | would not help ?
        
           | fsflover wrote:
           | I guess it did help _you_ , since you are protected from
           | Google's unpredictable moves.
        
         | mustacheemperor wrote:
         | Genuine question, what should I replace Firebase with? I have a
         | responsibility to my customers there, not just myself. I want
         | to fulfill that responsibility by migrating off of Google while
         | continuing to provide the product performance they expect.
        
       | tomcooks wrote:
       | You publish on a proprietary, commercial,centralised platform and
       | are surprised that said platform behaves like that?
       | 
       | Use peertube or any other decent video platform.
       | 
       | AHH, but you want the sweet YT cash.
        
       | savrajsingh wrote:
       | In this case, a solution is to match against obviously known
       | public domain first, and failing that, check copyright claims.
       | I'd imagine google has or can quickly build the necessary db of
       | all public domain music, starting with music from 100+ years ago.
       | Also identify copyright claims that conflict with that db ahead
       | of time.
        
       | analog31 wrote:
       | The irony is that Beethoven probably stole it. Even to this day,
       | music composition has always involved "something old, something
       | new, something borrowed, something blue," to quote Duke
       | Ellington.
        
       | lurquer wrote:
       | YouTube is an advertising company. Period.
       | 
       | The problem won't be fixed as it's not a problem... who cares if
       | some piano teacher gets silenced? It matters not one iota to the
       | revenue.
       | 
       | You could ban 10% of 'content creators' and it wouldn't matter:
       | people watch YouTube like they used to watch TV: it doesn't
       | matter what's on or how crappy it is. You'll keep watching. Your
       | favorite show got cancelled? You'll grouse and watch something
       | else... your consumption of pharmaceutical and insurance ads will
       | not be affected at all.
       | 
       | There will be no competitor emerge in this medium... just as no
       | 'competitor' ever emerged in the established newspaper domain.
       | 
       | There may be a new medium that emerges that nukes YouTube. Can't
       | imagine what it would be.
        
       | rurban wrote:
       | Maybe the adequate counteraction is to file DMCA claims against
       | Google itself. Like the German newspapers did. Google News copies
       | their headlines and intro. And fotos.
       | 
       | Or Australian news. Google News copies everything.
       | 
       | Or Google Search. Googles copies everything. Text, fotos,
       | original work, derivative work. Nobody needs to go into museums
       | anymore. Google has it. Nobody needs go into cinemas anymore.
       | Google has it.
       | 
       | Youtube is full of copyright violations, and has no adequate
       | support mechanism to handle claims and violations, as we saw in
       | this example. They are policing themselves, the biggest thieve of
       | all.
        
       | WmyEE0UsWAwC2i wrote:
       | This should bear consequences for YouTube as they have enabled
       | such brutal treatment on this woman and many others.
        
       | bitcharmer wrote:
       | She actually decided to quit YouTube after this completely unfair
       | treatment.
       | 
       | I think it's high time these platforms saw some regulation. It's
       | ridiculous what they are allowed to get away with.
        
         | swiley wrote:
         | Good for her, it's the sustained highly creative output of
         | skilled people that makes Youtube interesting beyond music
         | piracy and memes. They have the power to collectively do the
         | same to any other platform and shouldn't tolerate abuse like
         | this.
        
         | xiphias2 wrote:
         | Quitting will just get people to use the next best teacher on
         | youtube that they can find. She can just get the music muted
         | and create a link to her patreon, and tell that Google muted
         | it. Google will lose out on revenue that way for now.
        
         | eru wrote:
         | You know that Google's behaviour here is a reaction to
         | regulation?
         | 
         | It's tempting to answer failures in regulation with cries for
         | more regulation..
        
           | CRConrad wrote:
           | This seems more a failure in Google's reaction than in the
           | legislation they're reacting to.
        
           | banbanbang wrote:
           | It's a good point but regulators (ie politicians) are nowhere
           | near up to the tasks. They often leave the legislative
           | details to industry "experts" often tied to big corporations.
           | I frankly think our government is broken and outdated to
           | accommodate the complexities and speed of modern society. It
           | also doesn't help that politicians refuse to retire and hold
           | onto their seats often until death.
        
           | manquer wrote:
           | Hardly, dmca is straight forward law, take down notice and
           | counter notice has no three strikes. There are penalties for
           | incorrect claims to deter such claims
           | 
           | This is Google's poorly implemented system to satisfy big
           | studio creators to publish on YouTube.
        
       | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
       | I feel like the fundamental issue here with these giant tech
       | companies is _their scale has outgrown the capabilities of their
       | AI_. They 've all basically bowed down to the mantra of "AI will
       | solve everything", and indeed they are so big that getting human
       | customer support at the scale they need would be a huge financial
       | hit, even for them.
       | 
       | But here is a situation where any rational human can say "this is
       | crazy, anyone with sense knows that Moonlight Sonata is in the
       | public domain", but Google has created a Kafkaesque nightmare
       | because (as has been lamented a million times on HN) it takes an
       | act of God (or Twitter outrage) to actually connect with a human
       | support person is you're not a paying customer.
        
         | noobermin wrote:
         | This entire episode is a great example of how the SV crowd
         | really is full of groupthink and ideology despite their veneer
         | of being rational. Everyone who isn't in the SV RDF can see the
         | limits of AI today for example youtube copyright strikes,
         | failures of AVs to take over the streets, and so on and so on.
         | AI is useful but it clearly has limitations but the industry
         | can't recognize it because they're high on their own supply.
        
         | modzu wrote:
         | the ai is built to deal with the peasant class. the ai
         | occassionaly abuses them, because the peasants have no power.
         | but nobody cares about the peasants except other peasants. the
         | peasants are fed enough (you tube mostly works for them) just
         | enough to keep them content and any sort of uprising is
         | quelled. content enough in their toil (creating content), the
         | ai grows stronger.
        
           | kecupochren wrote:
           | what a world to live in
        
       | fortran77 wrote:
       | This is widely known among the classical musician community.
       | Nearly every time I upload a YouTube video of me sitting at my
       | piano playing something written 150+ years ago, I'll get a
       | copyright strike.
       | 
       | In the past, I'd simply affirm it was mine and it would go away.
       | 
       | It looks like the new system isn't so forgiving.
       | 
       | This probably won't change until the right person gets a claim
       | and hires the right lawyer who thinks of a good argument to win a
       | massive judgement.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | chrismorgan wrote:
       | Along the same lines, I was publishing church services each
       | Sunday between May and December of last year, with three English
       | hymns in each, mostly old ones well-known across denominations.
       | In total, I got 23 Content ID claims (about 20% of the hymns),
       | claiming ownership of the melody. Every single one was for a work
       | in the public domain. I disputed each, providing the name and
       | date of death of the composer.
       | 
       | Two were released (one after three days, the other after 27), the
       | rest were allowed to lapse in my favour (which happens after 30
       | days).
       | 
       | A few of these claims were duplicates (same claimer, same hymn).
       | This showed that even though I had successfully disputed their
       | claim in the past in the grounds of the work being in the public
       | domain, _YouTube had not revoked their ability to claim the
       | melody in question_.
       | 
       | If any of the liars claiming they owned these works had rejected
       | my dispute, it could have become a strike, _& c._ and there would
       | of course be no recourse, because Google generally refuses to
       | arbitrate.
       | 
       | Also, an insidious aspect of the claims system was that YouTube
       | basically didn't tell you about the copyright claim at all when
       | publishing; you had to close the edit page for the video and
       | return to the list, and see if the Restrictions column for the
       | video said "Copyright claim". If you didn't do that, the video
       | would probably be being monetised by the claimer in at least some
       | of the world (and if you disputed it, I guess Google would
       | happily take the lot for the period while they had monetised it--
       | though now that they're putting ads on everything, this lot isn't
       | so different from the usual situation; depends on whether you
       | hate the balance of the ad money going to the copyright liars or
       | Google more).
       | 
       | (There was also one amusing case where some music being played at
       | a nearby temple was audible during a quiet time in the service,
       | and so I found out the name of the music being played. I claimed
       | fair use on that one, because I didn't even _want_ that music in
       | it, and it was quiet. That claim was released after ten days.)
        
         | maweki wrote:
         | > Every single one was for a work in the public domain.
         | 
         | While the sheet music is, the performance by other artists - as
         | your own performance - is not. That's the issue the algorithm
         | is having here (not defending).
         | 
         | The automated system would need to "understand" that this is
         | indeed a new performance of a public domain piece of sheet
         | music and not a reproduction of a copyrighted performance by
         | somebody else. Even if you were note for note playing exactly
         | the same (tempo and whatnot) with the same instrument tuned the
         | same way. I think this would be an argument against automated
         | systems. Whether a human could know that my bike-ride was
         | scored by myself and not somebody else is doubtful though.
         | 
         | On the other hand, I do understand that people do not want
         | their individual performances to be used without licence and
         | there may be many such performances.
        
           | chrismorgan wrote:
           | Every time that I'm speaking of it was the _melody_ that was
           | being claimed, not a specific recording.
        
             | maweki wrote:
             | I understand that that is what was claimed.
             | 
             | I said that two actual and copyrightable performances of
             | the same melody are arguably indistinguishable.
             | 
             | Edit: How would an automated system know, that you did not
             | just non-transformatively alter another person's
             | performance, instead of performing yourself?
        
               | ncallaway wrote:
               | > How would an automated system know, that you did not
               | just non-transformatively alter another person's
               | performance, instead of performing yourself?
               | 
               | Yes, exactly. You have really nailed the problem with the
               | current system.
               | 
               | Google _chose_ to build an automated system. That was a
               | choice, not an immutable fact. Google _chose_ not to have
               | a human arbitration process. Another choice. Google
               | _chooses_ not to punish the claimants that abuse the
               | system. Another choice, not an immutable fact.
               | 
               | People aren't saying there must be a perfect automated
               | system. People are saying Google has chosen to employ an
               | automated system that does not meet the actual needs.
               | 
               | The criticism is for Google choosing to exclusively use
               | an automated system, which can never successfully perform
               | this task.
        
               | rocqua wrote:
               | Ideally, the easy cases are automated, and more difficult
               | cases like these are not. Hence, the system would know
               | because of an actual DMCA request, rather than an
               | automated YouTube request.
        
               | chrismorgan wrote:
               | I have gained the impression that YouTube has two
               | distinct techniques within Content ID, one for claiming
               | melodies, and another for claiming specific recordings.
               | 
               | I'm absolutely confident that this is doing melody
               | matching: these recordings are trivially distinguishable
               | from any professional performance, with completely
               | different instruments and playing styles, and with much
               | lower quality singing.
               | 
               | For example, the most repeated claim was by "AdRev
               | Publishing", claiming "Crimond (The Lord's My Shepherd) -
               | FirstCom" three times. (That song was also claimed once
               | by "Capitol CMG Publishing and Adorando Brazil" as "The
               | Lord's My Shepherd I'll Not Want".) The first two times,
               | I was accompanying with a piano-sound keyboard in the
               | traditional four-part harmony--admittedly they sound
               | fairly similar to one another; but in the third, an
               | Indian was playing, using a piano-and-strings sound on a
               | different keyboard, using Indian harmonisation (which is
               | quite different).
               | 
               | I think we even had an unaccompanied song claimed once,
               | matching throwaway0b1's report.
               | 
               | These are _completely_ different performances from
               | whatever recordings the liars may have provided to the
               | Content ID system. The melody is the only thing they will
               | have in common.
        
               | teach wrote:
               | My experience aligns with yours. I had a video of a half-
               | hour coffee-shop-style gig blocked because at one point I
               | covered "Hotel California". This was just me -- one
               | voice, one acoustic guitar played poorly, and was down a
               | whole step from the original key.
        
               | rocqua wrote:
               | I believe that Hotel California is still under protection
               | as a melody, rather than a performance. Hence covers
               | require either a license or fair use according to law.
               | This differs a lot from the case of performing a 200 year
               | old song whose melody is in the public domain.
               | 
               | Not to say it was wrong what you did, or that Google was
               | in the right for flagging. But Google was legally
               | correct.
               | 
               | (Google suggests controversy around the question of
               | whether hotel California is public domain or not)
        
         | thraway123412 wrote:
         | I don't think I'm ever going to approve of any sort of
         | automated copyright claim system but if Google wanted to make
         | it one bit fair, they should use the same concept of three
         | strikes against the accounts that make false claims and ban
         | them.
        
         | throwaway0b1 wrote:
         | I've had the same experience (although I don't remember if it
         | was specifically the melody being claimed). I don't always
         | bother to dispute them (in my understanding, most of them just
         | claim ad revenue, and we don't run ads), but sometimes it
         | annoys me enough that I do. (The organist and people singing
         | are pretty clearly pictured, and I get especially annoyed when
         | it's a capella.)
        
           | chrismorgan wrote:
           | > _we don 't run ads_
           | 
           | Historically Google only put ads when requested by the
           | channel, which required a fairly significant threshold of
           | views and subscribers and supposedly manual review by Google.
           | Some time last year they started a switch towards serving ads
           | on all videos, regardless of the preferences of the channel
           | (whether you're big or small, whether you want ads or not),
           | which I hear has been progressing steadily further and
           | further. (I wouldn't know. The internet's too dangerous to
           | view without an ad blocker. I also just generally hate ads
           | and only see any at all when I leave my peaceful rural
           | environs and go to the big city.)
        
             | throwaway0b1 wrote:
             | True, this is also something I should look into further
             | (also, for example, to make sure that they don't force ads
             | when a copyright claim is put on).
             | 
             | Of course, that I don't ever look at it without an ad
             | blocker makes it somewhat more difficult.
        
               | chrismorgan wrote:
               | My reading of the situation at the time was that if there
               | was a copyright claim, the video _would_ be monetised in
               | certain regions (depending on the claimant). So once I
               | cottoned on to the situation, I always disputed the
               | claims before publishing, so that no one would be fed
               | ads. Now, who knows. Once I returned from India to
               | Australia I stopped uploading the videos personally, and
               | I don't intend to publish any of my _own_ stuff that I
               | might make to YouTube.
        
               | throwaway0b1 wrote:
               | Yeah, I should probably just dispute them all at some
               | point.
        
       | ThrustVectoring wrote:
       | YouTube's system has some _massive_ design flaws. One of which is
       | that the default way copyright holders get treated varies based
       | off whether you 're doing automated ContentID type claims vs
       | whether you merely own the copyright to your own work you
       | created.
       | 
       | As a result, you get better outcomes if you own a piece of
       | content-ID'd work that you include in your videos, which is
       | completely silly. Basically, if you copyright claim your own work
       | automatically, if someone else comes along and tries to do the
       | same, worst-case you _split_ the advertising revenue among all
       | the copyright claimants. If you just upload it normally, you get
       | _zero_ if someone claims it.
        
       | brailsafe wrote:
       | Susan Wojcicki on the case again. The freedom of expression
       | pillar would crumble without her support.
        
       | barkingcat wrote:
       | This has been happening for decades. Almost all musicians playing
       | classical music has had bans, 3 strikes, blocks, etc on social
       | media, youtube, live streaming sites.
       | 
       | Often times Hilary Hahn (one of the great violinists of our
       | times) gets copyright claims on her own practice streams because
       | they sound _literally_ like her concerts and solo albums.
       | 
       | Basically, the more refined and the better you are as a classical
       | musician, the more likely you'll get a ban for streaming live
       | music (that you play) because ... the composers are all long dead
       | and there's thousands, if not tens of thousands of previous
       | interpretations of the same music (literally note by note the
       | same) floating around in the algorithms of the RIAA ban bots.
        
       | mullikine wrote:
       | There should be some kind of law to forbid this type of
       | unilateral model training. What great lapse of judgement to not
       | also train the same model that is used to blacklist music to also
       | whitelist music that is in the public domain -- and to use AI in
       | this way, to suppress the creative freedoms of billions of human
       | beings as the robot revolution edges closer to automate us out of
       | existence. AI should not be used this way, but if you're going to
       | do it you may as well be honest about it. How this algorithm
       | could be deployed without first even acknowledging the existence
       | of music outside of what is proprietary is disturbing
        
       | aspectmin wrote:
       | Someone needs for form a defense association which indie artists
       | and content producers can join/pay into. Use this structure and
       | funds to defend artists against these claims.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | intricatedetail wrote:
       | The current copyright law is unsustainable. Pretty much every
       | melody you can think of is copyrighted and as an artist you can
       | be anxious that anything you make can be claimed by someone else.
       | Copyright laws need urgent change as they are not fit for
       | purpose...
        
         | tapland wrote:
         | In this case that's not the problem. Beethoven isn't
         | copyrighted, but public.
        
           | atoav wrote:
           | Yeah but certain Beethoven _recordings_ are copyrighted.
           | Legally you are totally allowed to play his works on an
           | instrument, while you could still break someones copyright by
           | e.g. using their 2019 recording of the work which they sell
           | on CD or whatnot.
           | 
           | How will sonic fingerprinting be able to decide whether it is
           | that copyrighted work, or whether it is somwonw playing it
           | live? It just won't
        
             | polytely wrote:
             | The problem is that Youtube is pretending that their shoddy
             | sonic fingerprinting system works and is fine with 3rd
             | parties using their dumb system to defraud their users
        
               | atoav wrote:
               | Yeah, I think they should mark recordings where the
               | melody is public domain and review these cases manually.
        
           | genezeta wrote:
           | It's still related to copyright law.
           | 
           | If the law promotes, say by making it a default, that one
           | side can easily benefit from a certain behaviour, then
           | people, companies will assume that as the behaviour to
           | favour. And then these are the consequences: that going
           | around claiming rights on whatever you feel like is not only
           | not punished by Youtube but carelessly accepted. Because it's
           | just _easier_ , less effort.
        
         | fourseventy wrote:
         | I agree. On top of that you have bands from 50 years ago suing
         | each other because two riffs sound vaguely alike, its
         | ridiculous.
        
         | matheusmoreira wrote:
         | Copyright cannot be fixed, it should be abolished. It made
         | sense in the era of physical books and huge printing presses.
         | That era is long gone, copying have made copying trivial.
        
           | hvdijk wrote:
           | That seems backwards: the concept of copyright was introduced
           | because the printing press made it so much easier to make a
           | large number of exact copies. If you agree with the
           | introduction of copyright in that era, as you say you do, how
           | does it then make sense to abolish it again when copying
           | becomes even easier?
        
             | matheusmoreira wrote:
             | Printing presses were not ubiquitous. There were relatively
             | few of them, not everyone had access, there were
             | limitations to the scale of copyright infringement due to
             | the physical nature of books. People had to be major
             | industry players in order to infringe copyright at scale
             | and it was necessary to do it for profit in order to cover
             | the significant costs involved.
             | 
             | Today virtually everyone has access to a computer that can
             | create and transmit unlimited copies of any data at massive
             | scales and at negligible costs and there's no way to stop
             | it from happening unless you destroy computing freedom by
             | making it so processors refuse to run software not signed
             | by the government.
             | 
             | Copyright needs to go away because the alternative is the
             | total destruction of free computing as we know it today. I
             | want a future where I'm in control of my devices and can
             | write my own software if I want without the need for some
             | government license. If the copyright industry must die in
             | order to protect that future, so be it.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-05-01 23:00 UTC)