Youtube has it's own system outside of the DMCA to handle copyright claims in which the claimant has all the power. If the poster of a video wants to appeal a copyright claim, they appeal directly to the claimant who gets to decide. You can then appeal to YT directly (good luck with that) but in the meantime the claimant can issue a "strike" on your account. 3 strikes and you are out. So instead of fighting claims, posters are encouraged to just roll with the punches and be glad they get any money. Youtubers at this point will openly say "I'd show a clip but then I won't make money on this video" even when that clip would 100% be fair-use.
Youtube designed this system after pressure from the major Movie / Music publishers to either give them stronger tools than the DMCA provides or face a blackout from these major publishers. They wanted final control over their IP on Youtube and they got it, damn the law. If they had to file real DMCA claims, these claims on obviously fair-use materials would disappear.
Not just a blackout---they were threatening to put legal pressure both on YouTube directly (to show it was violating the safe-harbor provisions of DMCA) and the tech sector in general (to modify safe harbor to give copyright owners more control via legal remedy).
YouTube capitulated to a technological solution in part to avoid a legal solution being forced upon them.
I expect you're getting downvoted for your attitude more than your content. Leading with a blanket "You're wrong" doesn't encourage a productive dialogue. Neither do "learn to read" and "I'll spoonfood you".
I wouldn't say "You're wrong" is necessarily offensive per se, but I do think it tends to shut down discussion rather than encouraging it. I wouldn't have down-voted if not for the more egregious follow-up though.
No, there's no mysterious search for offense. If you don't get that opening with "you're wrong" is not very diplomatic, this might be something limiting your career
I wonder if this will be the undoing of YT. If large content creators start inserting segments saying, "I can't show the clip here, but if you go to my vimeo channel <link at top>, you can see the full review." That will offer people a segue off of YT.
That doesn't surprise me at all. I was shocked when they allowed YouTube channels to promote their Twitch streams a few years back; that must have been to gauge interest in the YouTube streaming product they hadn't made yet.
But what I do know is that about half of the YouTube channels I follow have already started putting videos up on other services -- they're eager to get out of the YouTube ecosystem. And I'm eager to follow them.
Some of the video essay YTers have done this already with Nebula[1], some of the gaming YTers have done this with DLive[2]... So I think it's pretty fair to say people are on the same wavelength as you, whether or not it's economically viable for them to jump ship is still to be determined.
Just because they take a long time to fall down doesn't mean they won't, though. That and they aren't really offering anything that no one else can (besides unlimited capacity, maybe?)
If DuckDuckGo's any indication then I'm holding out hope for new challengers.
Youtube has had loads of issues these past few years. I've seen countless youtubers say this is the final straw, they're ready to leave, Youtube's days are numbered, etc.
They always come back within a few days.
So long as 99% of users stay there, creators will stay there. If creators leave, that leaves a gap that'll quickly be filled by another creator. Youtube needs to do something that makes the viewers absolutely give up, and that's when migration will happen. I can't really imagine anything that'd do that except requiring paid accounts to view any content.
Alternatively, if some competitor comes along, has all the same content Youtube has, and offers better payments for creators without caving in to every single copyright claim, that'd draw people in like nothing else. But that's seemingly impossible now that the web isn't a wild west anymore.
In general, this possibility has been back-stopped by lack of alternatives. The companies in question have enough money to throw around to buy up alternatives that threaten to become as big as YT without the technical clout to implement the same kind of fingerprinting YT did. Blip (my personal favorite that seemed to be attracting reviewers when ContentID went live) met this fate.
YT is about the only player in the market that the MPAA can't scrounge enough pocket change to meet the price of, but they don't have to because it plays ball with their demands.
I thought Vimeo was aimed more at artistic videos, not stuff like reviews/blogs, most of the stuff that gets dumped on YT wouldn't be allowed on Vimeo. I see more creators making free videos then asking for Patreon donations rather than fighting the awful YTDMCA
I really don't think Google even wants YouTube. I think they'd be more than happy to buy the personal data of customers from a competitor. I think their problem is that no one wants to compete because
it costs unreal amounts of money to store the amount of data that YouTube does, let alone the legal fees they must swallow each year. At this point, I imagine that they simply take the anti-consumer choice whenever a dilemma comes up in the hopes that it might finally be the bullet to put them out of their money-losing misery.
1. It's the second largest search engine in the world, and likely the GO TO search engine for any DIY / Howto type topic. Keeping control of this keeps them in control of search field.
2. It's a massive platform for adsense. Having a single stop for advertisers on both the web and on youtube helps keep google ahead of it's competitors in advertising
3. The unspoken advantage it gives google in the world of machine language and AI. Endless natural language data in every language you can imagine, facial recognition, etc etc.
Oh they do. What you're sensing is Google's lack of any kind of respect or care for their content creators or customers. You'll see this across every product they offer. Google develops systems that suits themselves, puts pressure on the rest of the internet so that nobody can compete, then they stagnate and sometimes fail leaving no real alternative.
Does Google care when their products fail? No, they just move on to the next data vacuum one of their developers designed or that they acquired.
Some claimants are so hilariously (or nefariously?) wrong too. My partner uploaded a video of her playing Greensleeves on violin. Though it only has about 10 views, it received a claim from some random company in the states.
Greensleeves was written sometime in the 16th century. That a company set themselves up an automated tool to search for people playing this song tells me that they are either idiots, or greedily trying to steal revenue from YouTubers.
> they are either idiots, or greedily trying to steal revenue from YouTubers.
Third option: some record label set up an automated system and indiscriminately fed it all the music they've produced. They didn't consider the edge case of "recordings we own of public domain songs."
In some cases the company making the claim doesn't even own the IP. I remember a case where the youtuber NerdCubed had his Portal videos copyright claimed, even though Valve themselves explicitly states that making videos of their games (and cutscenes) is perfectly okay.
When he contacted Valve they responded - "We didn't make the youtube claim". So SOMEBODY did, but not the actual owners.
Sounds like a new business model. Make claims against semi-popular youtubers and get them to agree to share revenue.
The best part is you don't need to own the ip you make a claim against. If they challenge take maximum amount of time and withdraw challenge. Keep repeating for new videos until the channel agrees.
In creating an automated indiscriminate system that has no mind for false positives or public domain songs, they've established themselves as idiots at best.
I used a track from the Open Goldberg Variations (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Goldberg_Variations) recorded by pianist Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka. Some company sent me a copyright claim presumably for a different recording... Perhaps the automated technology can't easily distinguish different performances...
This is not entirely correct: you can also appeal the strike by affirming your claim (the strike will then be removed) and it will be up to the claimant to then sue you (you have to provide contact details in your appeal).
Unless you run up against some studio that has a private deal with YT in which case they'll just take down your video - no appeals.
There's (at least) two different systems for video takedowns on Youtube.
DMCA takedowns have the option you specified.
Content ID is a seperate system, where it's entirely controlled by the claimant. They can choose to claim your video or not, and you have no option (other than to sue them - i.e the reverse of the DMCA system) if you want your video to go back up.
e: And to be clear, this was a Content ID claim. It's in the first screenshot on twitter where it says "Blocked - No one can view this video to one or more of the Content ID claims below"
e2: Also, Content ID does have an appeal system, but if the claimant rejects the appeal your only recourse is to initial legal action.
No, I was specifically talking about Content ID, as that is the one I used in the past (challenging on fair-use grounds). You can appeal a claim, which is usually rejected by the claimant. You can appeal that which, when rejected, will add a copyright strike to your account and then you can appeal that which removes the strike but requires you to provide contact details in case the claimant wants to sue you.
>You can then appeal to YT directly (good luck with that) but in the meantime the claimant can issue a "strike" on your account.
Sure ... These "strikes" are DMCA claims.
"If they had to file real DMCA claims, these claims on obviously fair-use materials would disappear."
So your position is that YouTubers aren't disputing claims because they're scared of strikes, but also that if the only option was strikes then they would vanish? How do you figure?
You can get a strike from a DMCA notice or YouTube's internal system.
The difference between the two systems is that the DMCA has language about fraudulent claims, whereas wading through the ToS and contracts you have with YouTube will be nigh impossible. A lawyer might take your DMCA case where youtube wouldn't really be directly involved, but nobody is up for a fight with YouTube directly. It's never worth the money to these YouTubers at their current scale.
Either YouTubers need a union as powerful as the major media cabal to bargain with YouTube on their behalf or some particular publisher needs to be making movie studio money before this system is fixed.
A copyright claim not made through the DMCA does not lead to a strike, full stop. See https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7002106?hl=en, which differentiates between takedowns through a formal notice (i.e. DMCA), and content ID takedowns.
And if you dispute a content ID claim, the claimant must either retract it or convert it into a DMCA notice. So they have no additional legal protections if they want to keep it down permanently.
I really don't see how this system is broken and needs to be fixed. Money is kept in escrow while claims are disputed, and ultimately the rights owner must allow the content to be reinstated or file a lawsuit.
> I really don't see how this system is broken and needs to be fixed.
As I understand it, for YouTubers who rely on monetization of their videos, the system is completely broken. A ContentID strike takes down or demonetizes the video immediately. The YouTuber disputes the strike. Once processed, that video goes back up -- but it's too late, the monetary damage has already been done, as most of the money a video will make is made in the first few days. Having the video taken down and reinstated does not reinstate the lost revenue.
That said, I think that anyone who has a business that relies so heavily on income from from YouTube has a very precarious business to begin with. I'd advise them to get the majority of their nickels in some other way.
That's a valid point. I looked into that and it appears the policy says they'll put the video back up during the dispute but won't monetize it:
"If the policy is set to block (don't allow users to view the video on YouTube) or track (allow users to view the video without advertisements), this policy may be temporarily lifted until your dispute is resolved. Learn more about policy and claim basics. During this time, your video cannot be monetized."
Strikes are not perfectly 1:1 with DMCA requests. I don't know how to prove that, but I don't trust some reductive Google support pages to have the whole picture either.
I'm fairly confident in what I've said (there's content ID claims, both manual and automatic, and then there's DMCA claims). The EFF does not mention any third option. They mention ToS issues, which are strikes but which aren't because of copyright. And there's a brief mention of contractual obligations, which I mention in my post as well. Those aren't a separate way to take down content, but rather an agreement not to consider disputes from certain rights owners (as far as I know, the only one that's been identified is UMG). This is rare and I have not heard of widespread abuse of this.
It's somewhat confusing because Youtube doesn't always use the term DMCA in their documentation. But it's fairly clear when they say "formal notice", mention that it's a legal requirement, and link to the counternotice page.
You are probably right about all takedowns being done through DMCA. I wish Google was more clear about it.
Your Reddit guide was very good but I would still not call a strike the same thing as a DMCA notice. YouTube doesn't have to have a strike system, they do that to placate the major rights holders who don't want to deal with serial offenders so that there's not a big court battle about whether YouTube knows they are uploading copyrighted content. ContentID serves the same purpose, to shield YouTube from liability. But YouTube lets copyright holders abuse these tools and so far has gotten away from trouble for doing so.
> If they had to file real DMCA claims, these claims on obviously fair-use materials would disappear.
If you're a big media company, you don't want to file a DMCA notice every time someone uploads a pirated video on Youtube. Even if you use the most sophicated bots to file real DMCA takedowns, you're bound to have at least a 1% error rate and get sued a bunch of times.
Has a company ever successfully been penalized for false DMCA claims? I was under the impression that those penalties have rarely if ever been put into practice.
If it really is that simple then that's scary. What's to stop someone from writing some basic scraper code in python that would claim peoples videos and hold them hostage for a fee less they get a strike on their account?
They intentionally created the system that allows this sort of abuse to happen? If you don't hold Google responsible for giving a few megacorps carte blanche to remove any content on YouTube that they don't like, who would you hold responsible?
The legislature? Corporations obviously pursue profits within the legal framework, and this is the most profitable path within the legal framework. Lawmakers can challenge or reduce this sort of abusive pressure by content publishers in a number of ways but they don't. The current legal framework seems to tacitly allow publishers to effectively move as a bloc in punishing any platform, whether it's by Google or someone else, that refuses to accept their anti-consumer practices.
But of course you can keep blaming one corporation. Bad Google, why don't you just voluntarily do what I want, profits be damned?! See if that changes anything.
No, there was no such requirement in the DMCA. Remember, we're talking about legislation that was written in the late '90s — the idea of Content ID would have been completely alien to them. YouTube has actually implemented a completely parallel system to the DMCA's takedown process.
Content ID was not at all alien to the 90s Congress; the DMCA explicitly calls for the industry to develop such systems, though it stops short of requiring YouTube to do all the technical heavy lifting:
(1) Accommodation of technology.—The limitations on liability established by this section shall apply to a service provider only if the service provider—
(A) has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network of, a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network who are repeat infringers; and
(B) accommodates and does not interfere with standard technical measures.
(2) Definition.—As used in this subsection, the term “standard technical measures” means technical measures that are used by copyright owners to identify or protect copyrighted works and—
(A) have been developed pursuant to a broad consensus of copyright owners and service providers in an open, fair, voluntary, multi-industry standards process;
(B) are available to any person on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms; and
(C) do not impose substantial costs on service providers or substantial burdens on their systems or networks.
The passage you quoted doesn't call for anything closely resembling YouTube's current system. All it says is that YouTube (where YouTube is standing in for any provider) has to be open to banning repeat infringers, and can't claim DMCA protections if it tries to stop content holders from identifying their copyrighted works through software that is the product of "an open, fair, voluntary, multi-industry standards process."
In the context where the DMCA was written, it seems most likely that they were thinking of, say, Napster banning known copyright enforcement agencies in order to prevent them from scanning its network.
Content ID is above and beyond the DMCA. Media companies asserted that, due to the size of YouTube, utilizing the DMCA reactively was insufficient. To avoid the media companies taking legal action (and possibly setting bad legal precedent), Google voluntarily created Content ID to proactively identify copyright misuse.
It worked - the media companies backed off. It's also a massive failure, in that it's been abused to the detriment of the content creators since it came into being.
Sort of. They built a video platform that they couldn't effectively moderate, so they built Content ID because they don't have the manpower to manually review everything. Content ID is just a side effect of Google relying on algorithms to do everything.
It’s possible that a human review system would be even worse. Have you seen the studies that show how insurance adjusters, working from the same inputs, with clear evaluation rules, have spreads of > 40% for the same case?
I find it highly unlikely that more than 1/8th of Alphabet's profits are coming from YT, so that'd make it a cost center... and I'm willing to bet it'd be deep deep in the red.
Parody in particular has lots of precedence backing it up as Fair Use.
Fair Use is not a law, it's a legal defense that you may use during copyright litigation. It does not prevent the litigation from going forward.
And it's generally considered very, very hard to prove Fair Use if the defendant is making money directly off of whatever was made with the borrowed material. So, whereas a teacher who makes copies whole-clothe of newspaper articles doesn't make money directly off of sharing articles with students, a YouTuber putting up videos for ad revenue is.
Commentary also has a long tradition of being fair use. People sold newspapers with reviews in them and they were absolutely able to quote from the sources they were reviewing. Quoting 30 seconds of a half-hour show as part of a review seems to fit comfortably in the tradition of fair use, whether it's a commercial use or not.
I am seriously surprised how long it is taking for YouTubers to realize the YouTube platform is failing them and in some cases it is pitted against them. When you get down to brass tacks they only care about their advertisers. CBS is a big advertiser and partner for YouTube so they and those like them will always win. Social and legal norms be damned
I do get encouraged when I see some creators going their own way like: floatplane.com and watchnebula.com
Support creators you care about or they may not be around much longer.
It feels like most YouTubers know and have vocalized their issues with YouTube, but lack any viable alternatives. The benefits they get with YouTube with the large audience already using the platform and potential help the 'Suggestions' system on YouTube gives them outweigh the freedom they'd get from switching platforms.
I agree, there is about to be a large market gap for streaming content creators. If someone had the team, the skill, and the funding they could effectively roll out a viable competitor to YouTube.
I'm not sure how it would go exactly, but their advertising could very easily be centered around dodging the wrongs of YouTube.
There's also the high barrier to entry due to bandwidth and storage: you're not going to be able to compete with YouTube if you don't offer at least 1080p streaming which means you have to have a pretty hefty infrastructure in place before you can launch.
And then the legal issues: as a scrappy new website, you're unlikely to be able to protect your users from large copyright holders, which in practice means new YouTube competitors will be even more quick to take down fair use videos than YouTube to prevent being sued out of existence.
I've been thinking about building something like that for a long time, but I just don't see how it would be feasible in the current copyright system.
The only solution I see would be sites like Dropout or Nebula(? not too familiar with it), where the platform is effectively the same as the content creator. This of course is inaccessible to the vast majority of smaller creators.
People have been talking a lot about how Twitch streaming is eating YouTube. Content creators are finding it more lucrative to stream on Twitch than create monetized content on YouTube. With VODs and such in Twitch they're really eating up that segment of YouTube.
I'm not sure how much YouTube notices though, they still have all the rest of their HUGE pie.
Well the creators absolutely know that... but they also know that those exact advertisers are the ones that are paying them as well. Who else is giving them money?
There's a few creators who managed to get Patreon as a second source of funding, but there's just no getting away from the fact that Google signed up advertisers who actually pay for a lot of YouTubes hosting, infrastructure and payout costs.
If creators move away from the platform they'll need to handle those deals by themselves from a weaker negotiating position. It's significantly easier to get money from all three: Patreon donations, their own in-video advertisements AND youtube advertiser payouts.
YouTubers absolutely realize, but YouTube is the biggest game in town by a huge margin. If you're making non-porn videos on the internet, it's very very hard to be successful outside of youtube.
It's interesting that Angry Joe got taken down; AFAIK, RedLetterMedia's review didn't get taken down, and it featured decent chunks of non-trailer footage (not sure if any of them were 10+ seconds consecutively) [0]. And, like AJ's, it was a very negative review. I don't doubt AJ was the victim of manual review, I'm just surprised RLM wouldn't be on CBS's shit list as well.
(and tangentially: both are right; the "Picard" show is depressingly bad and derivative. I've only watched the first ep, but it had more gratuitous (and cheap looking) martial arts action than several seasons of TNG.)
With so many shows to watch and so little time to watch them, most people pass judgement on series without watching any episodes. Can you earnestly say you watch two episodes of every series before deciding whether to watch more? I doubt there is any way you could find time for that; rather you judge most shows to be unworthy of your time after glancing at the promotional material at most. Everybody does.
So yes, watching one episode is enough to dismiss a show.
It’s also been discussed that the streaming services are also tending to not give shows as much of a chance to find an audience and a voice as was often the case previously.
To the general point there’s so much content out there and I watch relatively little. I have to find a show that at least looks interesting. And then I’ll almost certainly drop it after an episode or two if it doesn’t grab me.
It's also supposed to be derivative at first, I think. The poker game between Data and Picard is nearly exclusively derivative. But it's setting up a platform to jump from. I mean, I hope other elements aren't too derivative, but it seems unfair to criticize the first episode for it. The second one seems to depart quite a bit more (at least enough for my tastes).
sadly RLM was right, it is an atrocious show because certain people in Hollywood and political friends of their are more than willing to trash the legacy of respected shows and movies to score political points and show how "woke" they are.
Gone is the attempt to tell good stories and now we are stuck with political preaching which always requires all the canon of the show or movie being used to be trampled if not insulted.
RLM pointed out the defining difference between Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek and all the tripe we have today. When he wanted to deal with race he had the characters blow it off, it was such a non issue then they could not take offense because it did not occur to them. (episode with Abraham Lincoln)
Instead we are served the tripe and hatred that the woke political movement uses to silence those it does not agree with or those who dare call them out.
You might want to (re)watch Star Trek TOS. Glaring in my mind is The Omega Glory where Kirk reads off... well, spoilers: it's absolutely a political episode (as is most of Star Trek) and it rather killed the episode in my opinion.
Imho that's what makes it all the more grating: Star Trek was always on the rather "woke" end of the spectrum, and it usually managed to be there without pandering or being too condescending about it.
But this new generation of Trek seems to have completely lost that ability, while at the same time retconning large parts of the universe, and its inhabitants, to serve it's now much more simplistic moral dilemmas.
Which becomes particularly apparent when contrasted with something like The Orville. Sure, MacFarlane's humor can be an acquired taste, but I found that comedy take to be much more relatable, and truer to the "Trek spirit" than recent Trek offerings.
Maybe that has to do with the fact that The Orville also depicts a way more optimistic picture of future humanity, akin to the old Trek, while new Trek seems to be too busy to make Trek as gritty, edgy and actiony as most other media nowadays.
The original Star Trek had a good (though contested) claim to be the first (Black and White) interracial kiss on US public television[1]; Compare that with the Pew study "Intermarriage in the US 50 years since Loving v Virginia", showing that in 1990, about 63% of non-Blacks would be very or somewhat opposed to a close relative marrying a Black person[2] Pew. Imagine what that figure looked like in 1968.
If we don't see the original Star Trek as staking as many firm moral positions on issues where popular opinions are mixed, it says more about who we have become today, and how popular morality has adjusted, than about what was or wasn't radical or confronting at the time.
There doesn't seem to me to be any plausible claim that earlier Trek was previously less "confrontational" or deliberate in promoting its chosen morality.
its funny how some execs can slap the name on something and anyone expects it to be anything like what was the labor of roddenberry's life. can a bunch of people get together in a room and release a new "elvis" album cuz the name is owned by some studio?
DS9 was created without Roddenberry's involvement. And to your point, it severely clashed with his original vision, particularly the inherent non-exploration built into the setting and the dark interpersonal conflicts. But it's arguably still very good – even if you dismiss the later seasons as being too serial and warfare-oriented.
"Picard" imho is an across-the-board downgrade, carried only by the sentiments the fanbase has for Capt. Picard.
DS9 still had a lot of respect for the 'source material' so to speak. New Trek just wants to keep the iconography and tell whatever kind of story they feel like.
Yes. DS9 dealt with the realities of Roddenberry's vision when dealing with alien races that do not buy into it _and_ share your backyard, and an existential threat that was unable to be neutralized by technobabble after a single episode.
This is why, for instance, In the Pale Moonlight was so good. Sisko's actions went against the entire concept he had of himself as the goodguy Starfleet officer (a paragon of virtue!), and it _tore him up inside_. In any other show (and Star Treks since Enterprise), it would have been yet another "dark moment", probably followed by a torture scene.
DS9 never abandoned the Roddenberry ideal in favor of "dark edgy and xplosions", as RLM kind of alludes to in their video. Instead they showed it as an ideal worth striving for, but complicated in the absolute and in extreme circumstances. Previous Star Trek's did this on occasion too, but never admitted it to themselves, which is something much easier to do when everything is reset after the end of each episode (looking at you Voyager).
Picard -in the first episode- has given us a Starfleet that has failed to live up to its own principles. Do readers here honestly think that this idea is somehow an abdication of Star Trek's central conceit? - a project where morality tales about possible (fairly socialist, post scarcity) futures can and do help us think about moral issues and respond in more moral ways in our own lives.
Cold war Star Trek intentionally included a Russian crewmember, Civil-Rights-era Trek had a Black crew member as well as an alien race -Klingons- coded with racial tropes pointed at Black people and found ways for the viewer to gradually identify with the alien race. TNG had a Klingon crew member and gave us Ferangi (coded with some Jewish stereotypes), followed by the Borg (the 'looming threat' of Collectivism') and subsequent series are projects that bring sympathetic characters of each of these backgrounds (Quark, Seven of Nine).
Picard's anger at Starfleet in the new series stems from their moral abdication in the face of the largest refugee crisis Starfleet has ever seen. Today, we are in the second largest refugee crisis our planet has ever seen, and Western nations have responded less with sympathy than with rising anti-immigrant sentiment. I don't see how this is in any way "keeping the iconography to tell whatever kind of story they like"
Iconography in the sense of 'things we know' and brand recognition. USS Enterprise, Warp, Starfleet, the Borg, Vulcans, etc. In other words, things in popular culture that the average Joe/Jane would recognize as "Star Trek".
I was mostly talking about continuity and making storylines fit within the established universe. I wasn't talking so much about themes as I was talking about internal consistency. That being said, I fully acknowledge star trek cannon is a big mess.
I'd argue that CBS can't, but they didn't really use the Star Trek formula for Picard. The Orville has definitely shown us it's the ideas which are cherished, not the IP.
I also think the structure: self contained episodes, is why it works. Old star trek episodes were like bite sized scifi movies with usually at least one interesting idea within them. This long form spy thriller serial format is a drag if the overarching plot isn't really compelling.
The Orville is incredible. Anyone who saw the commercials and thought it was Family Guy in space needs to give it a chance. Seth MacFarlane has proven he can make a great Star Trek story without compromising his own brand of humor or interpersonal relationships. I can't wait until it comes back.
Generally this should be done under advice of an attorney, because these counter notices set a ticking clock of ten business days during which the copyright holder must either sue the Youtuber for copyright infringement or the complaint will be cancelled. Not all Youtube claims related to copyright are counter claimable. There is a tendency among people to misjudge their actual risk and whether or not they infringed, so it is unwise to file these counter claims without advice from an attorney.
You can also file in your local jurisdiction for declaratory judgment if you receive a formal cease and desist notice, and if that C&D contains false claims then the plaintiff may be in trouble. A truly false and malicious DMCA claim can be countered with a defamation lawsuit as well.
You can also sue someone for any reason ("It's Tuesday! I hate you! I'm suing you!") at any time, but that doesn't mean that you will win.
Using short clips of the trailer for review purposes is clearly fair use. Often times, however, Youtubers think fair use protects them more than it actually does and do go overboard such as taking entire TV episodes and commenting over them. However different judges have seen the issue differently in different situations. So, if you really did infringe, but think you didn't, and file the counter claim, you are doomed, and copyright law is very generous to victorious plaintiffs.
> because these counter notices set a ticking clock of ten business days during which the copyright holder must either sue the Youtuber for copyright infringement or the complaint will be cancelled.
What about damages to the target of the claim? It doesn't seem like there's a penalty for bad-faith claims that wouldn't ever lead to a suit.
Wonder if your claim fell under fair use and it harmed your channel if you could sue for tortious interference? There's some theme park in New Hampshire threatening to go after drone operators even though they don't own the private airspace, however, if it's a business day and full of crowds that a general no no anyways to fly over people.
Be funny if that guy sued CBS in some small town court, I doubt they'd even show up though or argue they don't have jurisdiction over them if no offices there, and I doubt an affiliate would count but maybe. Oh looks like Joe is from Austin, Texas so a pretty big city then, so not sure if CBS has anything other than an affiliate owned by third party company, but I know states in the past said having affiliates create Nexus for sales tax purposes. I was part of a fitness related affiliate program but never made any money with it years ago, and my state created one of those click-through nexuses so the company decided just to kick me out of the program based on the state in my profile.
Then if your tortious interference claim could be valid, and since YouTube has some processes (including automated ones) that side steps and goes well beyond what the DMCA requires, I wonder if YouTube along with CBS also would be opening themself up to additional legal liabilities then.
Be nice if people would stand up to legal bullies more, but sadly the justice and the legal system are not blind as they say and costs to access so it seems like unbalanced powers that favor both the government and corporations over individual citizens.
Youtube in general is not liable for copyright infringement on content posted by users.
People love to talk about standing up to legal bullies, but lawyers are expensive. Copyright law is extremely friendly to plaintiffs and generous in terms of damages: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html
CBS would totally show up in a small town if they knew that they had a good chance of winning. Their lawyers are already on salary. It doesn't cost them anything and they will get a lot of money. They may also just try to get the venue changed. In fact, it is their duty to enforce their copyright claims, or they risk their ability to protect their IP in the future. So, it's unwise to do the equivalent of coating yourself in butter and serving yourself up to be devoured by Viacom IP attorneys.
In the 2019 case of Epic Games, Inc. v. Lucas in which a 14 year old boy counter-claimed a copyright claim filed by Epic over the defendant's posting of Youtube footage involving cheats in Fortnite. While the case did not go all the way, Epic did successfully extract a punitive settlement from the defendant. If he had not counter claimed, the lawsuit might have never happened, or they could have settled it before it was filed.
Unlike trademark, you do not lose your copyright registration for failure to enforce it. However, it makes it a lot easier for prospective defendants if you have a track record of ignoring infringements. Your registration is not in danger, but your ability to win as much as possible might be. Even works with no identifiable copyright owner are not necessarily considered 'abandoned,' which creates a lot of interesting issues, such as in the case of Google Books: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...
The main thing with copyright is not like the risk of trademark dilution: it's just that not enforcing it makes it easier for defendants to bargain and argue for lighter penalties.
Sounds like that lawsuit with Epic Games was more about him selling the cheats instead of the videos. Plus I heard people spend real money in Fortnite and can even win real money with the Esports. Don't really follow that game much though.
Perjury, defamation, maybe tortuous interference, depends on the nature of the situation.
Not sure what you mean exactly in your last sentence because of the double negative. They would sue the target of the claim for copyright infringement if they believe that they will win.
A quick note - the 10 day period is for a manual claim, if you get a Content ID claim, it can be up to 30 days for the appeal to move to the DMCA process.
Content ID is essentially just Youtube moderation, whereas the other process is governed by the DMCA. Is that fair or proper...? IMO no but I don't think I know enough about it to say definitively.
Ultimately I think the YT process leaves the door open for legal action by the creator against the claimant.
Presumably most don't bother, because these are big big companies. They can feel secure in their bad faith claims, auto-rejection of appeals, and general abuse of the system to garnish monetization proceeds.
from TFA this was a manual takedown, meaning CBS had someone in meatspace take this down. If i had to guess why this happened its two reasons:
- Joe had a negative review of the show, and made several valid points about its lackluster writing and dialogue.
- CBS' streaming service, "All Access" is getting hammered by critics on reddit and blogs. Even after gobbling up Nickelodeon kids programming its still underperforming. A week after Picard aired, CBS released the first episode on Youtube free of charge in order to drum up business.
Most content creators have little incentive to go there because there's no money to be made, youtube is monetized by google. Maybe that's for the better and content creators who don't care for the money (or don't need it or can afford to share videos for the sake of sharing with the world) will share their videos outside youtube, and maybe maybe that'll naturally separate the wheat from the chaff..
People are broadcasting to multiple platforms at the same time. People broadcast to facebook/periscope/youtube at the same time via 3rd party apps.
There needs to be a way for these new content startups to allow broadcasting on multiple platforms. If a creator has to "upload" to each site, that going to turn them away from many alternatives.
I toyed with the idea of a portal for crowdfunding clone, with a threaded feed, and other technologies that already exist. Then there are dozen(s) of funding ideas for the Creators and the site.
The technology is there, the knowledge is there. But little interest from investors.
All Reddit would need to do is create creators subs with crowdfunding and paywalled content, subscriptions, etc, and they could easily own the market.
Linus is doing floatplane, so creators do see this big giant hole that is just waiting for someone to drive a truck and smash youtube.
I just can't understand why the biggest problem and the simplest solutions, and nobody has done it yet. Its like fedex\amazon, after its launches, people go, duh, that was a good idea.
The main assholes are Youtube, not CBS. CBS can request shit like this and they are expected to in today's copyright climate. Youtube clearly does not believe in fair use. That's what it boils down to. It doesn't matter that fair use is protected by law or anything because Youtube can do what it wants with its platform. So fair use is essentially up to the platform. In other words, it really doesn't exist anymore for people who are not willing to host their own content.
Google does not have the power to determine if something is fair use or not, that is up to the courts. You might think something is fair use, and I might disagree. We are supposed to go to court and have a trial to determine which one of us is right. Google is not judge and jury, they can't make that determination.
Isn't the issue that they're depriving the user of income based solely on a non-legal (not not-legal) complaint? If YouTube really justed wanted to have people Duke it out in court, they wouldn't have their own system that is massively tilted towards the studios. They're effectively allowing one side to be judge and jury.
There are two different processes here: the DMCA and ContentID.
If YouTube receives a DMCA request it will take the video down immediately (in accordance to the law). However, you can counter the DMCA claim at which point the other party has to either drop it or sue you.
ContentID is the non-legal system which essentially blocks or transfers monetization (copyright holder's choice) for any detected copyrighted work in YouTube's database. YouTube developed it to avoid fighting studios.
Since there are no objective standards to determine if something is fair use or not, instead it's a bunch of factors that are all supposed to be weighted against each other by a judge, there is no way for YouTube to determine if something is legal infringement of copyright (Fair Use) or illegal infringement of copyright. The solution here for YouTube is to be conservative and not allow any infringement against the rights holder's wishes.
It's not a great system, but I understand why it is the way it is, and I'm not sure how or even if it could be changed.
apologies in antecessum for this post not exploring specifics or explicating a rigorous knock-down philosophical argument for its conclusion, but f cbs and f youtube.
I've heard that one popular channel accidentally sent a take down for their own content once, then some companies just scan for keywords. I forget where but remember reading that some blog was a take down because some studio ran a bot looking for keywords and assuming anything that mentions their movie titles is a download even though that site didn't host an actual downloads of the movie. So say for example you had a movies review blog, just mentioning the movie can cause some studios to flag it in bulk without reviewing your website or considering any fair use.
Then even if you license royalty free music, there's bot's that flag it so you can to dispute even if you paid since they don't know you got a license, they just auto assume that you didn't. Then also sound loops so, like Garageband Loops [0] you are allowed to use them in a larger project, but not the loops standalone... but some songs use these loops and samples, so say some artist used a Apple Loop in their song and got popular to be part of ContentID, then that artist starts flagging content from Apple they never created in the first place. Sounds like YouTube requires your music doesn't contain third party licensed royal free stuff within them but sounds like they still get submitted to YouTube anyways. And this isn't just a Apple Garage Band problem, happens with other music programs too like FL Studio and a bunch of others. Wouldn't surprise me if two digital drums (I guess music programs call them "virtual instruments" sounded too much alike if it would be flagged either, since remember hearing nothing but white noise got flagged once...
I really dislike DMCA takedowns, but am I the only one who thinks 26 seconds is actually quite a long time--especially for a product of this caliber? That represents basically a full teaser trailer.
> That represents basically a full teaser trailer.
The footage he took was literally taken from the publicly available trailer. Reactions to trailers are quite common on youtube and generally don't appear to be taken down.
I question what the value of this for CBS is anyway because I doubt the few hundred bucks they theoretically lose from the youtube ad-revenue for the trailer aren't more than compensated by the attention that Angry Joe draws to the show. Not to mention that anyone who watches 40 minutes of star trek analysis has likely clicked on the trailer a while ago.
To use copyright material as fair-use you [edit: usually] need to transform the work or add value in some way. A reaction video where you show the full trailer and just say "wow" would not be protected. 40 minutes of discussion is almost certainly enough. There's a balance though, and the more "valuable" or "hot" the IP is the higher the bar is probably going to be set.
You also have to use as little of the underlying work as possible. If this was a 30s trailer and he used 26s of it, that's a lot, but again 40m of discussion on top of that probably warrants it.
> To use copyright material as fair-use you need to transform the work or add value in some way.
This is not true. Transformative use is just one of four factors a court would look at to determine whether a use is fair or not (see https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/). A use doesn't have to have all four factors apply to it in order to be fair. Transformative uses are more likely to be judged as fair than non-transformative ones, but there can be cases where non-transformative uses are fair.
(And even putting that aside, using a portion of a copyrighted work in order to create a new, unique work commenting on it could be considered transformative of the original.)
I have heard of takedowns / copyright claims on videos because of some song playing in the background while they film in a public space (think the radio playing in a store while someone films themselves shopping), so that might be one case you could argue fair-use without transformation of the underlying work. I wouldn't ever want to be in that position though.
There's a guy with a YouTube channel called "YouTuber Law" [0] but he quit uploading about 7 months ago. Some guy from Miami, he seemed pretty cool for a lawyer too since I figured most wouldn't even want to touch YouTube or show their face on YouTube so seemed like a very likable relatable guy, and seemed to be using tech for advantaged to build up his brand. Looks like he's still updating his playlists though even though inactive, was a bit worried something might have had happened to him.
I forget the specific video, but I know one of them he mentioned something about incidental use. So a short amount of music picked up in the background could be ok, but you on propose playing music yourself or adding it in via editing could be looked at different... So a TV in the background at a noisy bar would be viewed differently than a TV on in your own living room that you can contorl while you ramble on about a topic. I guess that's mostly though for people who do vlogging about their life though. But it's a balancing and judgement call, probably depends on how loud the music is too... Think say vloggers who cover theme parks for example, probably music and a lot of other ambient noises but the music isn't the main focus. So maybe you want to say something to your vlog but maybe it's better to wait to your at another spot if possible.
I understand it's a review of the 45 minute episode, not the 30 second trailer. Having seen the episode, the "heart" of the episode is certainly not in any of the trailers.
I haven't seen this review, but 1% of the total runlength for a review seems quite reasonable.
Apparently it's quite common on youtube for people to take entire pieces of someone elses work (like 30 seconds of a 30 second piece), say "hmm, that was interesting", and post it online. MxR Plays v. Jukin [1] was a recent case, where they refused to pay the really reasonable license fee for the video, posted the video in full, said "no, not funny" or something, and then sold it for profit. The original video is something like 10% of the entire piece rather than 99%.
The couple of question then posted videos admitting they were breaking the law. My knowledge of this case mainly comes from LegalEagle reviewing it [2]. To me they haven't got a case (unlike this angry joe guy), but apparently they might have.
> There's a balance though, and the more "valuable" or "hot" the IP is the higher the bar is probably going to be set.
Why? Isn't that like saying that law enforcement should prioritize the return of stolen diamond to a wealth person over the return of a a stolen car to a middle class person?
I read this as larger entities have quicker response times for DMCAing their own IP. Not that larger entities have more rights, although I would expect in practice they do as they have more money for lawyers to get the law interpreted in their favor.
26 seconds of a 50 minute show? 0.87% of the show is too much for fair use? I suspect you will in fact be one of the very few who thinks that is too much.
So it's footage spread out across the entire season then? More like 0.07% of the show? If that can't qualify for fair use then it seems the entire concept of fair use is moot.
Even if it had been the whole trailer looped 100 times it is utter stupid to take it down. The purpose of a trailer is advertising plain and simple: the more it is seen around the more audience it attracts to the real show. CBS shot their own foot on this one.
If it's a review, and you'd rather people see different reviews of your show, and you can get youtube to remove it based on using a few seconds of your footage, though...
It should be noted, this was two 13 second clips of the publicly available trailer. So the content isn’t even paywalled normally. What is the point of copyright if it’s being used to prevent discussion of a freely available work?
edit obviously I didn't catch a detail in my comment. Please stop downvoting this.
Automation fails to discern fair use. The YouTuber should file a DMCA counterclaim, but many youtubers are unsophisticated enough in copyright law to do so.
The way YouTube does copyright claims is actually an extra-legal process that's strictly harsher than the DMCA - so usually there is no DMCA claim to counterclaim on.
Additionally, strikes on accounts appear to be immutable and can seriously threaten a creator's revenue source so, while it sounds nice to encourage people to stand up for their rights, it's almost never in their interests to oppose the claim. Yes this absolutely is an issue where copyright owners can file baseless claims and assume they'll be obeyed anyways but trying to resist it as an individual is futile... honestly YouTubers need to unionize at some point and let their collective power force better enforcement rules for copyright violations.
YouTube does not make the DMCA counterclaim process available. Youtube give the copyright holder (or claimed copyright holder) who filed the original takedown the ultimate authority to process appeals themselves. (Which is horribly broken.)
Youtube designed this system after pressure from the major Movie / Music publishers to either give them stronger tools than the DMCA provides or face a blackout from these major publishers. They wanted final control over their IP on Youtube and they got it, damn the law. If they had to file real DMCA claims, these claims on obviously fair-use materials would disappear.