
YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Videos, and More - gooseus
https://torrentfreak.com/youtubes-piracy-filter-blocks-mit-courses-blender-videos-and-more-180618/
======
haywirez
As you might know, this is related to the disastrous EU copyright reform
directive proposal that would mandate such filters put in place everywhere.
Please don't be complacent, it's very important to do something about this.

At risk of repeating my comment[0] from 3 days ago, I'd like to appeal to you
to contact the MEPs that will vote on Wednesday in the EU's JURI committee.
This was the first time I called politicians' offices to voice my opinion. The
assistants were shocked that a private person actually bothered to do so and
seemed quite humbled - I could hear the change in the tone of their voice when
they realised an ordinary citizen is calling. I think it's a lot more
effective than the 1000s of e-mails piling up in their spam folders.

Please help out to make sure this directive proposal is voted against on
Wednesday by the majority of the JURI committee. List of Twitter handles of
reportedly yet undecided MEPs:

@jbergeronmep @1PavelSvoboda @FrancisZD @KaufmannSylvia @mcboutonnetfn
@rohde_jens @marinhopintoeu @mady_delvaux @emil_radev

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320122](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320122)

~~~
pitaj
According to some, YouTube's copyright filters / markers aren't good enough to
satisfy the EU directive. It's insane. The DMCA is bad enough already.
Copyright should be loosened, not tightened. Then maybe we'd see some
competition in video hosting.

~~~
avs733
I've always felt like false assertion of copyright should cause the loss of
copyright. Seems like a fair balance for me.

And before someone gets on me...I realize that these are automated filters
that are rarely asserted by the actual copyright holder.

~~~
ben_w
I agree with the sentiment, but I think in practice that would lead to
something like patent trolls — organizations designed no face no threat from
the normal consequences.

Plain old money based fines should work. Even a tiny fixed fee of $50 per
error might be enough, given the scale of the internet.

~~~
adjkant
I really like the per error idea - allows for large cases to have no barrier
to contest but for the whole thing to not become like patent trolling. Maybe
also some sort of threshold for mass cases, like a progressive taxation:

If you're right 95% of the time, you get a discount. If you're wrong 50% of
the time, you pay the full fee.

Who would be in charge of setting these?

~~~
glenneroo
Or what about a system like they use in Finland to deal with speeding tickets
- the fine is based on your income. The local paper has a weekly list of top
offenders, which is amusing to say the least.

~~~
scroogly
Sorry to hijack the thread slightly, but is only to introduce some visibility
to the fact that this particular issue is nothing to do with the EU, or
content ID, or anything like that.

Google is blackmailing the Blender foundation to try and get them to enable
adverts.

[https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-
blende...](https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-
videos-worldwide/)

edit - and Blender have now got
[https://video.blender.org/](https://video.blender.org/) in testing already. I
didn't think they'd be the ideal people to issue ultimatums to on video
hosting, given their technical specialities.

A situation like this triggered the development of git, (after the licence to
use bitkeeper was withdrawn from the linux kernel team) so I will be watching
the fallout with interest.

~~~
hknd
Apparently Blender had more than 2 years to sign an updated contract - a
contract which every partner had to sign to comply with updated legal
regulations. Their existing contract would not work anymore (legal reasons?).

The Blender team never did that, and also never reacted to any youtube support
mails.

~~~
natch
That doesn't map onto the Blender account of what happened.

They said YouTube was requiring them to enable ads, but the ads checkbox was
grayed out. Among other issues. Not that they wanted to enable ads on a not
for profit site. But just taking this one issue, it's not clear how they could
have possibly complied with Google's requirement, when Google keeps the
checkbox UI element grayed out and unchangeable.

------
jedberg
I saw a great "joke" the other day. It said, "If Shazam or Siri can't identify
a song for you, make a quick video and upload it to YouTube. Within a few
seconds you'll get a copyright takedown telling you the name of the song".

~~~
reificator
I've seen nature videos where there's no sound but the birds chirping, and
YouTube is still able to hear someone playing All-Star on Mars and flag the
video. It's really incredible tech.

EDIT: The article actually mentions some similar examples:
[http://c4sif.org/2012/02/youtube-identifies-birdsong-as-
copy...](http://c4sif.org/2012/02/youtube-identifies-birdsong-as-copyrighted-
music/)

~~~
jedberg
I know the guy who created ContentID. He's a good guy and only had good
intentions, namely to keep YouTube in business by identifying legit copyright
issues. At the time, a human had to review all the claims.

This is a good example of how AI can go bad.

~~~
reificator
I'm not demonizing the people making it, or even necessarily the people
demanding it be made.

The DMCA was the beginning of the end of a free and open internet, and now
it's accelerating. I just hope the next generation understands what they're
missing under the spectre of copyright law.

~~~
simion314
Humans are to blame for using horrible AI/software. At least if you know your
AI is that broken then have some human supervision.

~~~
mygo
today in order to do a Google search I had to prove to Google that I wasn’t a
robot. And even though I did it right the second time, they still made me do
it a third time. I just remember sitting there going, Google, I actually _am_
a human and your AI sucks so if I have to tap on storefronts and cars one more
time to do a freaking Google search then I’m just using Bing.

~~~
jstanley
It's partly checking that you're a human.

It's partly using you for free labour to train their next generation of
SkyNet.

We've reached a point with CAPTCHAs (originally conceived as a way for humans
to exert their will over machines) where the machines are now setting tasks
for the humans, and the humans are carrying out the tasks without putting up
too much of a fight.

~~~
eftychis
That. CAPTCHAs are used as free labour. The only reason you don't see them
everywhere is because people would stop using Google.

~~~
reificator
We've done it. We've cracked the code.

This thread is complaining about the fully automated process used by Google to
check for copyright violations, and how infeasible it is to hire someone to
check each video.

You're talking about how CAPTCHAs are now being used to get free labour.

> _Prove you 're human: Does the following video contain Beat It by Michael
> Jackson_?

~~~
eftychis
I am pretty sure they have considered it. Probably there is a legal hiccup
laying here -- you either have reasonable suspicion that the material you show
is copyrighted, or you acknowledge your algorithms and AI suck and you require
crowd-sourcing. Kind of a lose-lose legally, and they would possibly introduce
liability.

Recall the goal of Google is to avoid liability via the statement "we are
pretty good and have really low false negatives", and have as few false
positives as not to make the platform unusable.

Google does not care about content creators or propagation of knowledge
(instructive videos) and ideas. Simple statement here. Google engineers might
(at least the friends I have), but not as a whole organization.

But yeah crowd-sourcing is a good way to do a second sifting through results.
I know it is being used, by Google and others, already to classify video
sources.

------
ravenstine
I know this is just filtering for now, but I've been backing up entire
channels for fear they'll one day disappear because global policy or legacy
media conglomerates won't allow for it. I imagine the "you" in YouTube will be
mostly gone in the next decade. The writing's on the wall.

~~~
michaelsjoeberg
i have been doing the same, in particular unofficial music remixes, which
likely will disappear at some point and not allowed on spotify etc.

~~~
ravenstine
There's a lot of fan made instrumentals out there(of astounding quality) that
I've been archiving for fear of losing forever.

I learned my lesson after Nintendo went berzerk and requested takedowns for
gameplay videos and walkthroughs; smashrockgroin's series for Goldeneye 64 was
both funny and informative when playing that game, but now those videos are
gone forever. I've vowed never to buy a Nintendo product again because of that
alone.

~~~
userbinator
_I learned my lesson after Nintendo went berzerk and requested takedowns for
gameplay videos and walkthroughs_

Going after pirates and such I can sort of understand, but people enjoying
your product (and obviously helping to promote it)? WTF.

It reminds me of the complete opposite of this old meme:
[http://lurkmore.so/images/9/94/360_Kid.jpg](http://lurkmore.so/images/9/94/360_Kid.jpg)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _but people enjoying your product (and obviously helping to promote it)?
> WTF._

The usual rationale is that walkthroughs / let's play videos show enough of
the game that people may opt to just watch the video, instead of playing the
game itself.

I can sort of understand this position when it comes to videos that e.g. show
the entire single-player campaign with zero commentary. But I'm not convinced
that people opting for such videos would have bought the game if the
walkthroughs were not available.

~~~
chii
> I'm not convinced that people opting for such videos would have bought the
> game if the walkthroughs were not available.

also, if the game has nothing else to offer when compared to a video
playthrough, may be it's the game that has the problem!

~~~
TeMPOraL
Not necessarily. Story-rich games are essentially one-time only experiences,
even if they are very fun to play through.

~~~
krageon
Just like a good book, a good story-rich game invites you to experience it
more than once. Even if it is just to notice nuances you missed the first
time.

------
obsurveyor
There's an update buried at the bottom of the article. Ton Roosendaal
tweeted[1] that they sent Blender a contract to enable monetization. I can see
why he doesn't want to do it based on the principles of the Blender
Foundation. Sounds to me like Youtube is holding these creator's content
hostage because they don't want to put up ads.

He put the contract up for review as well:
[http://download.blender.org/institute/Contract%20between%20G...](http://download.blender.org/institute/Contract%20between%20Google%20and%20Blender%20Foundation.pdf)

[1]
[https://twitter.com/tonroosendaal/status/1009010581549060097](https://twitter.com/tonroosendaal/status/1009010581549060097)

~~~
lainga
Ought to tell Torrentfreak and all involved. It's not a piracy filter gone
wrong, it's monetization humans at Youtube.

------
doh
Let me first say that this law is taking too far. There is a need for better
legislation around copyright, but this one is just moving the needle from
platforms abusing copyright to rights holders abusing the platforms.

However the situation around YouTube is not a direct consequence of poor
technology, but rather poor policies. YouTube built 2 separate products, a)
Content ID (CID), b) partnership program.

CID is the system that, based on fingerprinting algorithms, is able to
identify videos containing same segments (both audio and visual). Technically
it's actually pretty good. However through the partnership program, YouTube
allows rights holders to abuse the system by providing reference files that
they may not have direct rights for, or allow them to claim any content just
because they say so.

This however has nothing to do with the technology itself, but rather with
YouTube's decision to not to have to challenge right holders directly (they
can and will sue, while users uploading content will most probably not).

There are ways to deal with this kind of situation, but most of the platforms,
especially YouTube and Facebook are somehow not interested.

~~~
icebraining
They can, will, _and have_. ContentID came after the Viacom lawsuit.

------
vezycash
YouTube seems to be more of a monopoly than Google Search. If only Facebook
created a dedicated site for Facebook videos. Fbtube, fbv.com...

Microsoft has a YouTube like service but limits it to enterprise.

Since video hosting is such a resource intensive undertaking, I wonder why
many free porn sites don't have outages and have no limit on uploads for free
users - unlike YouTube competitors.

~~~
no_wizard
What about Vimeo? I know it’s target market has pivoted to More high end indie
creations however aren’t they somewhat positioned at least to exploit any
holes in YouTube’s strategy? This is one of those things where I feel like a
real competitor will only sort of be able to creep up not explode on the
scene. I always thought Vimeo had a decent chance here because it’s pretty
easy (imo) to use just like YouTube and they have free tiers (or st least when
I signed up they did)

~~~
shittyadmin
I think a big chunk of the problem now is that when people want to watch
regularly released video content from internet creators they reach to YouTube,
there's no integration of subscriptions across sites. You'd basically have to
scrape video feeds from youtube to compete in this way.

~~~
robotmlg
If only there were some way to Syndicate website updates to a centralized
reader in a Really Simple way...

~~~
gnulinux
I think RSS is a vastly underused technology/tool. I wonder at what point
people lost hope in it and abandoned. Not to say, it's completely abandoned,
but it's not used as much as it should be used.

~~~
no_wizard
I personally feel like and I remember very distinctly that RSS (and Atom Feeds
to boot) seemingly hit their peak with google reader and when google reader
was discontinued RSS seemed to wane quickly thereafter. I’d be very interested
in knowing if hard statistics back this up or not but my anecdotal experience
suggests that this is indeed the case

~~~
icebraining
I think Twitter's coming of age was the big blow. When Reader shut down it was
already waning.

------
keth
Terrific, I can't wait for what will happen with the forced content filter
that will be voted on in the european parliament on june 20th. what could go
wrong...

[https://act1.openmedia.org/savethelink](https://act1.openmedia.org/savethelink)

~~~
partiallypro
For as much grief as the US Congress gets for its lack of knowledge in tech, I
would take (current) US laws over EU and GB restrictions any day.

------
jwilk
Somewat related article from yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17333920](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17333920)

("Politicians, about to vote in favor of mandatory upload filtering in Europe,
get channel deleted by YouTube’s upload filtering")

------
killaken2000
Its also possible to upload content to the contentid system without having any
claim to the work. Often nefarious companies will upload swaths of royalty
free or otherwise content (large sound effects libraries) and claim all of the
videos ad revenue. They never contest the response and the flag dissappears.

------
_bxg1
I don't understand why no other video platform has broken into YouTube's
market share, after the last couple years' constant stream of PR disasters
which mostly have to do with the scale of the platform

~~~
rocqua
Beyond the issues of infrastructure cost and litigious publishers as mentioned
by others, there is also the user base.

If users are on YT, that is where the content creators will be. And if the
content creators are on YT, that is where the users are. Moreover, users have
curated lists of subscriptions and creators have large lists of material.
Finally, YT has access to a lot of data on viewing behavior, and likes. This
means YT should be a lot better at recommending videos to users.

Finally, the creators that most want to switch to an alternative are those who
are the most censored. These tend to be more controversial, which means these
alternative services gather controversial content. This tends to give these
places a bad reputation which pushes away the non-controversial content.

The best bet would probably to take a non-controversial niche, start there,
and try and integrate well with YT to keep down switching costs. Its still
hard to provide actual added value to such a niche. Alternatively one might
take a controversial niche with wide acceptance. For example, gun channels or
LGBTQ+ channels. Both are currently demonetized, but both are still widely
accepted in broad swathes of society.

~~~
chii
> YT should be a lot better at recommending videos to users.

this is hardly the case, as any avid youtube watcher can tell you. Recently,
the algorithmic suggestions are terrible, and either show repeated content, or
content that's not even close to what's being watched (but the SEO/words in
the description/title matches), or is a huge list of videos from the same
channel.

------
dqpb
So YouTube takes down educational content while at the same time recommending
knockoff cartoons featuring violence, sexualization, and gore aimed at
traumatizing and corrupting the minds of our children. Way to tip the scales
YouTube!

------
mmaanniisshh
YouTube has [addressed the issue]([https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/18/youtube-
is-working-to-res...](https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/18/youtube-is-working-
to-restore-accidentally-blocked-videos-from-mit-and-others/)). There is no
mention of copyright violation, it says it was updating user agreements.

~~~
gregallan
It seems YouTube's statement here is really disingenuous. When they say "We
are working with MITOpenCourseWare and Blender Foundation to get their videos
back online." they mean that they are holding these non-profit organizations'
video hosting rights hostage until they agree to enable ads!
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17347560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17347560)

------
JumpCrisscross
Does YouTube plan to deploy its "enhanced" upload filters globally, or just in
Europe?

------
lucio
Blender seems to be testing #peertube

but: "PeerTube uses the BitTorrent protocol to share bandwidth between users.
It implies that your public IP address is stored in the public BitTorrent
tracker of the video PeerTube instance as long as you're watching the video"

Does this have GDPR ramifications?

~~~
hjnilsson
Not really, since you opt-in to use the service and accept that your IP is
shared there is no issue.

------
dghughes
It seems Phase 1 of analog to digital media (music, TV shows and movies) was
late 90s to early 2000s. It was going to happen but the teething pains lasted
quite a while. CDs and DVDs were abandoned for USB then just a file.

Now it seems Phase 2 will be trying to control the massive amount of media
users share. It's a whack-a-mole game against things like Kodi and sharing
media.

For YoutTube it's trying to delete copyright violations and it gets rid of
hundreds of accounts which are just created again and the material uploaded
again. Even an "AI" can't cope.

At some point it would be nice to see all video, all music available to anyone
for a reasonable price. "You will!" as Tom Selleck said. Really it's going to
be that way eventually otherwise enormous amounts of money and effort will be
spent trying to chase down endless illegal copies.

~~~
emodendroket
CDs, DVDs, and Blurays are still very much around.

------
drderidder
It's becoming a common occurrence to fall victim to false positives from
algorithmic filters. False positives are just always going to be part of any
kind of machine-learning algo. In the end it's statistical probability, and
probability doesn't equal certainty. Sure there are techniques to reduce false
positives, but I sincerely think that any user-affecting policy based on ML /
algos should _always_ have a real-live human based support fallback to get
real resolution to the real issue of false positives.

------
dingo_bat
This is why true net neutrality covers services like Google Facebook reddit
and YouTube. But you won't see anybody mention this anywhere.

------
gm-conspiracy
I never suspected the balkanization of the internet would occur, particularly
with such a coordinated effort across nations.

------
avoutthere
Why is this content being blocked in the U.S.?

~~~
giomasce
For the moment all content is blocked at Google's entire discretion, because
no European law has been approved yet. So they are probably jut blocking
everywhere.

------
ledriveby
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Google gets roasted by the press no
matter what it does.

~~~
lovelearning
They are blocking original educational content from everybody, including
members of the organizations producing that content. Seems perfectly
reasonable to criticize such a mistake on its own merit, independent of
whatever other criticisms you are referring to.

~~~
hknd
They have to block them. Apparently these partners had >2 years time to sign
their new contracts to be policy compliant with latest legal regulations
around different countries.

Apparently they didn't do it, and they didn't respond to any outreaches. YT
legal team _had_ to react.

------
volaski
in the short term this is annoying, but in the long term I think this is
really great. it's almost as if the market is pushing people to adopt
decentralization technologies, which would have been difficult to get adoption
without this type of push.

------
ausjke
google is dominated in search and youtube, both especially the latter, need a
competitor, kind of burger-king to MacDonald

~~~
ucaetano
Any competitor that gets big enough to challenge YT will attract the same
scrutiny from content rights owners. and will face the same copyright issues
that YT does.

The problem isn't in the content hosting industry, it isn't even on the
content producing industry. It is on the policy & legal side.

~~~
tyfon
Case in point, twitch.tv added a contentid type system on their VODs (video on
demand) in 2014.

