Michael Tiemann

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YouTube's system of copyright claims needs a re-think.  I made a video and married it to a song I downloaded from ccMixter, the site inspired by Creative Commons for sharing music.  The song I selected (http://ccmixter.org/files/RobbH/37026) has a CC-BY-NC 3.0 Creative Commons license--just what I need for a non-monetized YouTube Video.  Or so I thought.

A YouTube user named routenote immediately claimed copyright ownership, which I immediately disputed.  To their credit, they released the claim fairly promptly.  Then I posted new versions of the video that were shorter, but using the name music, and lo, I received several more claims from routenote (and others!).  I disputed those, which routenote initially released.  But here's where things are broken: less than a day after they released the claim, they filed a new claim, against the same song, in the same video.

I don't understand how a user can keep their account in good standing when (1) they claim copyright on a work that is obviously not theirs to prosecute, (2) make the same wrong claim numerous times against numerous videos, and then (3) make the same wrong claim against a video they previously acknowledged was the wrong claim.

In the mean time, others have filed claims against that song, which I have disputed, and some of those others have released their claims.  They have subsequently filed claims against the new versions of the video that contain the same songs.  And another entity, AdRev, has rejected my dispute, despite me providing the URL to my source material.  So now I need to file an appeal, which puts my account at risk of a copyright strike.  How many others have abandoned the fight at this point?  How many Creative Commons artists are seeing their works abandoned because of this bad behavior on the YouTube frontier?

Banks got into a lot of trouble for robo-signing mortgages.  I think that all this robo-enforcement of copyright is going to end badly for everybody, too.
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25 comments
Jamie Bainbridge
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Mark Bussell from Classic Game Room is a history documentary producer who has had a video game TV show since 1999, which also became a popular YouTube channel. He was one of the very first YouTube Revenue Sharing partners and had one of the biggest subscriber bases on YouTube. All the videos he made were video game reviews which ran for ~6 minutes, easily Fair Use under the DMCA. However, Google's new content dispute system which you have described above made it unfeasible for him to continue on YouTube. He left at the start of the year and is now running his own community website and embedding video from Dailymotion. This, coupled with Google's recent killing of RSS feeds for YouTube channels, make the site completely useless for anything except cat videos.
Simo Sorce
 
I still use the rss feeds, why do you say they were killed?
Jamie Bainbridge
 
I swear I saw a headline about it on HN the other day, however now I can find nothing. Also, Mark made a liar out of me and returned to YouTube 10 days ago.

That's potentially even worse. He presumably returned because there is no revenue to be made elsewhere, which makes YouTube and its copyright system the only viable option for profiting from creating online video content.
Terry Hancock
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It's a bad situation! One of the songs in the +Lunatics! (Animated Series) pilot has a problem like this. Apparently, after releasing the music on Jamendo under the "Free Art License", they distributed it through a CD publisher -- who files copyright claims on YouTube if you use their music. At least, this is my assumption.

In this case, I actually have a message from the band specifically supporting our use, because we needed to change to the By-SA license (which is technically incompatible with FAL, though they're very similar).

It's a little more subtle, though, because they don't actually issue a takedown -- they just want to put up ads. Does the revenue go to the band, though? I really don't know.

But that still raises ethical issues, since all the other bands on that video are not getting revenue. If anything, I should be able to put up ads and share any revenue with all the contributors.

I challenged this once, but let it go when it happened again. And that also made me wonder -- am I giving up some kind of rights or implicitly agreeing to the claim if I let this go?

I want to stand on principle, but I'm tempted to edit the song out just because of the hassle. That's a "chilling effect".
Jeff Garzik
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Thanks for posting this. Publishing facts and data related to copyright victims is crucial. Facts pile up.
Tarus BALOG
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At OpenNMS we received a DMCA takedown notice for four of our wiki pages. Apparently, +F5 Networks had hired a cheap lawyer to do takedowns on sites posting certification exam questions. They submitted something like 2000 links that were obviously the result of an automated search, and our four links that were included had nothing to do with F5 or their exam, but I guess hit certain keywords.

However, Google honored it and took down links to our pages, and I had to waste quite a bit of time to get that action reversed. I wonder how much productivity is lost because the rule seems to be "assume guilt" and it is up to the innocent to defend themselves.
Joshua Jones
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This is the already-broken nature of the DMCA takedown. There needs to be a mechanism in place by which those submitting knowingly false or frequently false DMCA takedown notices are punished.
Will Hill
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Please stand on principle, +Terry Hancock.  If you give in, they will just waste your time with another take down.  There's no end to the thieving malice of big publishers like Sony,

http://www.blendernation.com/2014/04/05/sony-blocks-sintel-on-youtube/

Whatever you do, don't let them put advertisements on your videos.  That gives these parasites more money to hurt us all.

I hate to punish Google for the malice of big publishers, but YouTube is not working for us.  Please use MediaGoblin and other self hosting.  
Homer Slated
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"(c) Fraudulent Copyright Notice.— Any person who, with fraudulent intent, places on any article a notice of copyright or words of the same purport that such person knows to be false, or who, with fraudulent intent, publicly distributes or imports for public distribution any article bearing such notice or words that such person knows to be false, shall be fined not more than $2,500."

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/506
Homer Slated
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They should make it a few million, not a couple of thousand.
Terry Hancock
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Putting such a low cost on copyfraud and such high penalties on infringement is a recipe for rampant copyfraud.
Homer Slated
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"Edited", as in deleted.
Oh well, back to TorrentFreak.
Michael Tiemann
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The plot thickens.  AdRev very quickly acknowledged and released its erroneous claim against the video after I used their web-based contact form.  Thus, with exactly the same information, but submitted via a different interface, they made the opposite judgement about my dispute.

Moreover, their robots filed additional claims against the shorter versions of the video (which has the same music).  I again filed a dispute, and they again auto-rejected the dispute.

Notwithstanding the original issue, which is bogus claims regarding content copyright, I think that YouTube should care their clients of theirs are flouting the expectations of good faith within the copyright claiming system.  When I clicked on the link to appeal the dispute, I get a big heavy warning that says one of two things might happen as a result of the dispute: either a release of claim (and no penalty against the claimant) or a copyright strike against me.  As +Terry Hancock said so well, there should be some symmetry of penalties within this system.  I would be happy to risk a strike against my account in order to deliver a strike against such bad behavior.  Alas, the system seems to lack any such fairness.
Homer Slated
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Incidentally, the CEO of +AdRev, +Ryan Born is right here on G+. Maybe he'd care to explain why his company is fraudulently asserting copyright over somebody else's CC-licensed work.
Tarus BALOG
 
@Homer- don't expect that to happen. (grin)
Homer Slated
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+Edward Morbius : They're still rejecting it, according to his other comment. Also, a DMCA notice is a request to remove content on the basis of assertion of copyright ownership.

I just don't understand how these criminals can so brazenly violate the law with complete impunity.
Homer Slated
 
+Tarus BALOG : I've learned not to expect much of anything from a corpocratic regime like America, but I can at least be an embarrassing reminder of its corporations' malfeasance.
Michael Tiemann
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+Homer Slated Indeed +AdRev repeatedly rejects my good-faith disputes via YouTube, but has thus far accepted identical disputes via their website.  I think that kind of behavior should be prohibited by YouTube's terms of service.
Homer Slated
 
Yes, clearly they're just a bunch of opportunists and should be prosecuted.
Benjamin Shropshire
 
If a law were to be passed  creating a legal definition of "copyright troll" along with per-bad-claim penalties (at a bit above parity to the potential upside), that might put a damper on things.

A single precedent of "prove they did it once and you can subpoena every claim they made and turn it into a class action case" would make it an extremely risky practice.
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