
YouTube Identifies Birdsong As Copyrighted Music - frankydp
http://c4sif.org/2012/02/youtube-identifies-birdsong-as-copyrighted-music/
======
ryanjmo
This just happened to me with a parody video I created. I created all the
music from scratch and obviously rewrote all the lyrics. And UMG review my
video and said that it was indeed their property. So, I can not run ads
against the video, which at this point has probably cost me $500-$1,000. There
is nothing I can do right now but wait and hope YouTube changes its mind...

The video:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJQAnamKeLs>

Here is what I see:

These content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims to
some or all of its content: Entity: UMPG Publishing Content Type: Musical
Composition

These content owners have reviewed your video and agreed with your dispute:
Entity: Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society Content Type: Musical
Composition

Your dispute is still awaiting a response from these content owners: Entity:
Social Media Holdings Content Type: Musical Composition

What should I do?

No action is required on your part. Your video is still available worldwide.
In some cases ads may appear next to your video.

What can I do about my video's status? Please note that the video's status can
change, if the policies chosen by the content owners change. You may want to
check back periodically to see if you have new options available to you.

Please take a few minutes to visit our Help Center section on Policy and
Copyright Guidelines, where you can learn more about copyright law and our
Content Identification Service.

~~~
nivloc
It's different in that neither party has claimed ownership of your content. If
they delayed with intent to cause damage, sure, but otherwise a court would
probably defer to the extra-judicial process Google is using. It's not ideal,
and I'm not really sure if there are sites with similar revenue sharing deals
like YouTube you could post it on, but it's how the cookie crumbles,
unfortunately.

------
KristianRoebuck
I was so furious after reading this article, I wrote to Rumblefish demanding
an explanation.

Anyway, it's good news, I've just received this email.

Kristian,

Thank you for your note, just read your email and I share your concern. The
YouTube content ID system mis-ID'd birds singing as one of our artists songs.
We reviewed the video this evening and released the claim that YT assigned to
us. One of our content id representatives made a mistake in the identification
process and we've worked diligently to correct the error once we were made
aware of it earlier today.

Thank you for voicing your concern. Very much appreciated. We're doing our
best to improve the process as it's very challenging for our team to keep up
with the massive amount of claims coming through which grow every day.

All the best,

Paul Anthony | Founder and CEO | Rumblefish

~~~
NameNickHN
A ray of hope. Albeit a very small one in comparison to al. the other things
that are very wrong with the system.

~~~
KristianRoebuck
Absolutely, it's a shame that only cases with a little publicity get reviewed
and corrected. Still, least there's a small positive to take away from this.

------
dpearson
What is truly appalling here is the claim that the video had been reviewed by
humans, who had determined that birdsong was copyrighted music (although the
birds ought to be flattered by that), and, as such, Rumblefish is either lying
(about having looked at all), hoping to make a quick buck, or criminally
incompetent. I wouldn't be surprised if Rumblefish was trying to make a buck
or two off of ads here, but I'm guessing that that's their standard response,
and they hope whoever made the video will give up.

~~~
vibrunazo
Are there humans from Google involved in the review process somehow? Or do
they just automatically accept claims from the copyright owners?

~~~
kamjam
>Are there humans from Google

Yeah, good point, are there humans at Google? Or have their bots finally taken
over?

~~~
loup-vaillant
If they had, we'd already be doomed. <http://intelligenceexplosion.com/>

------
lukeschlather
During the SOPA mess, a lot of people on this site were saying that the DMCA
is fine, we don't need a new law.

However, it seems pretty clear that the DMCA is not fine. There need to be
better protections against this sort of thing - no hiding behind "it wasn't a
DMCA takedown notice" when your automated takedown bot fraudulently implicates
someone.

Also, and this almost goes without saying, we need to modify the anti-
circumvention provisions of the DMCA to at least legalize jailbreaking,
whether the device is an iPhone, a PS3, or whatever. Though ideally the anti-
circumvention provisions should be repealed wholesale, since they're
unreasonably broad and create huge damages for a wide class of perfectly valid
uses.

~~~
Silhouette
> There need to be better protections against this sort of thing

There is always a better protection against this sort of this: host your own
content.

It is regrettable that as the Internet has grown, and services that offer
hosting for free in exchange for attaching ads have grown, a lot of people
have forgotten that you're under no obligation to host a video file on one of
those services.

If your blog/pictures/videos/whatever are important to you, look for a self-
hosted solution. If enough people are interested in doing that, businesses
will appear to help the less technically literate do it as well, just as there
are numerous businesses today that will make you a web site, register you a
domain, and host everything on their servers but otherwise under your control.

Unless that starts happening, all the big video sites (not that there are many
of them in the grand scheme of things) can impose more or less any terms they
want, including claiming all kinds of rights to use any content you upload and
not giving any guarantee that they will continue to host it or that they will
not modify/corrupt/ad-splatter it.

------
fragsworth
I am pretty sure this amounts to fraud on the part of Rumblefish.

~~~
Alex3917
Why? Birdsongs are actually copywritable music, and since they all sound
fairly similar it's certainly possible that the software confused his
recording with something from the Cornell lab of ornithology, which licenses
their bird recordings to Hollywood, toy makers, musicians, etc.

~~~
sp332
_since they all sound fairly similar_

That's not how copyright works. If you make an original work, it can be
_identical_ to a copyrighted work and not be infringing. It's only a problem
if you make your work from the copyrighted one.

~~~
bigiain
I suspect Cornell do have mechanical copyright in some recordings of birdsongs
- which'd allow them to charge royalties on anybody using copies of the
recordings they made, but there'd be no composer or performer to own the
actual "song". (Sort of like how you can't claim copyright in every photo of a
sunrise just 'cause you took one, but you do have rights with regards to the
particular sunrise photograph you shot.)

~~~
stwe
In GB the copyright definition apparently includes the mere idea of a
photograph:
[http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/news/photographers_face...](http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/news/photographers_face_copyright_threat_after_shock_ruling__news_311191.html)

~~~
GFischer
In the U.S. as well.

"Infringement of Copyrighted Photographs Under U.S. Copyright law, you violate
the copyright owner's exclusive rights of copying and/or to create a
derivative work by creating a work that is a copy of or "substantially
similar" to another's. The courts determine whether the two works are
substantially similar by comparing them and evaluating whether copyrightable
elements have been used in the second work. A court is much more likely to
find an infringement if the subject of the photo has been "set up" by the
photographer and contains creative and original elements, compared to a
photograph of subjects that already exist, such as in nature or a structure
such as the Golden Gate Bridge."

[http://www.photoattorney.com/2008/11/does-derivative-work-
vi...](http://www.photoattorney.com/2008/11/does-derivative-work-violate-
your.html)

The case you quote is not so easy, though.

The tough decision is if New English Teas intended to violate copyright, and
if the Red Bus photos were original enough to claim copyright.

The judge decided that the Red Bus photos were original enough (creator
claimed 80 hours of work), and New English Teas had used the original photos
earlier on, and was made to remove them, so there was clearly intent to
violate copyright. However, I'm not so sure if the Red Bus photos were
original enough, or if there was intent to mislead buyers into thinking the
New English Teas were Red Bus licensed.

------
Tyrannosaurs
So there are two things here.

The first is Google's algorithm incorrectly identified something as another
work. This is bit is a bit "yeah, whatever". False positives will happen,
what's important is the processes that are put in place around the algorithm
to help resolve the errors.

And that's the second bit and the foobar bit, where a "human" check has
confirmed it. Now, I may be skeptical but it feels very much like no-one ever
looked at this, that Rumblefish basically automatically reply "yeah, that's
ours" to any request or question and then leave it up to the poor video owner
to show otherwise.

What I'd suggest needs to happen here is, at the very least, Google,
Rumblefish or whoever need to state the piece of work that's being infringed.
On Google's part this should be trivial - it's algorithm must have got a match
against something specific which is cataloged.

The "copyright owner" at that point has a far more straight forward check (if
they bother with it) and the video producer at least knows more about the
claim rather than ending up in a slightly Kafka-esque position.

------
extension
This is a massive problem on YouTube right now. Essentially, there are a few
large troll operations that abuse Google's "Content ID" system to steal ad
revenues from random accounts, while Google shows no interest in fixing the
system or shutting down the fraudulent accounts. The targetted videos often
contain original music or no music at all. It's so common that it seems to be
a fact of life for anyone as soon as they start monetizing their videos, and
it's enough to remove any desire I have to do business with Google.

------
bnr
Rumblefish CEO responded on Slashdot:
[http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2693545&cid=3916...](http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2693545&cid=39168105)

~~~
GFischer
And a Rumblefish employee (Lead Architect actually).

They at least appear to be answering questions, that's a start.

Edit: apparently an AmA on Reddit too. From
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3640452>

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q7via/im_the_ceo_of_ru...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q7via/im_the_ceo_of_rumblefish_i_guess_were_the_newest/)

------
nextparadigms
The question here is not about Youtube's algorithm being perfected or not, but
about why they are having such an automatic censorship tool in the first
place?

They aren't doing anything illegal by _not_ having the tool, which means they
are doing it voluntarily, and since the tool is not perfect, Youtube itself
can be more abusive than the copyright owners asking for takedowns. Google
needs to stop this practice.

~~~
abraham
Because of all the lawsuits from media conglomerates.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Content_ID>

------
frankydp
The interesting part is that Rumblefish is the largest sync/track provider and
has a vested interest when it comes to increasing copyright ultra-
protectionism. Which is sad because you would think that there "process" as
they call it would be the non-legislative answer to audio copyright billing.

5,345,377 Social Soundtracks Licensed(and counting)

------
cgmorton
Geezus internet. How and why are so many people getting so damn angry about
this?

Rumblefish presumably gets thousands upon thousands of copyright infringement
claims every day. And so far, there has been one guy who had birdsong mistaken
for music. Instead of just writing an email and getting it fixed, he decides
to make a post about it to make people angry, and then once Rumblefish hears
what happens it gets fixed.

Let's look at the key elements here.

1) It got fixed!

2) Of course they use an automated system for confirming copyrighted audio
content. It's a second line of defense after Google's initial scan. The third
line of defense is called customer support, and in any other situation that
would be the obvious and trivial solution.

3) It's one guy! This happened ONCE!

4) It got fixed!!

And if you're still worried about your own stuff being falsely identified as
copyrighted music, rest assured you can always make an internet s __*storm
about it and your problem will be solved (this is clearly the ideal solution,
yes?)

Now can we please get on with our lives?

~~~
dkarl
_Of course they use an automated system for confirming copyrighted audio
content. It's a second line of defense after Google's initial scan._

It's good to pay attention to cases like this, if only to flush other such
cases out of the woodwork. You say it's once, but it's more accurate to say
it's at least once.

I also say that if I were greedy, I'd make my "automated system" confirm
everything as a violation. I'm not making that up as a crazy consume
conspiracy theory. That's exactly what robosigning was: mass-production of
claims that put the burden on consumers to figure out, and show evidence, of
whether the company was making a valid claim or not. Robosigning (or simply
returning "true" in this case) is extremely cheap, gets the job done in cases
where the company is in the right, and gets the job done in many cases where
the company is wrong because some people fail to jump through the hoops placed
before them. In either case, it softens people up a bit before the company has
to do any real work.

In the case of robosigning, it might actually have been profitable, even
though they got caught at exactly the wrong time, when people were mad as hell
about the crisis. At any other time, the penalty for getting caught would have
been lighter, and it's certainly profitable when you don't get caught. If the
strategy comes close to making money even in the worst possible case, I'd call
it successful, and any established means of gaining an advantage at somebody
else's expense merits a certain amount of vigilance. We put locks on our
doors, we have laws against fraud, and in cases like this:

 _rest assured you can always make an internet s_storm about it and your
problem will be solved (this is clearly the ideal solution, yes?)_

Exactly. I'm not any good at it myself, but I have to admit, it's the best way
to get things done as a consumer.

------
tensafefrogs
Just more evidence that the DMCA is broken. This isn't YouTube's fault, it's a
problem of Rumblefish harassing YouTube users.

~~~
vajrabum
No. On the face of it sounds like a problem of Rumblefish _stealing_ from
users.

~~~
Karunamon
It's not accurate when the RIAA says stealing like that, and it's not accurate
when anyone else does either.

~~~
rcfox
The ads on the video pay out to Rumblefish instead of the video's owner.

~~~
lukeschlather
The word "steal" still obscures the true nature of the problem, which is one
of demanding services they have no right to based on a flawed law. That's not
theft, though it could be described as fraud, extortion, or racketeering.

~~~
ajross
If you really want to be pedantic, "steal" is not a legal term. It's a term of
common English routinely used to refer to _any_ of theft, fraud, extortion and
racketeering.

~~~
Karunamon
I find it hard to equate an automated (bad) copyright takedown with any of
those terms. Or file downloading, for that matter.

~~~
ajross
Exploiting an automated takedown system for the purpose of extracting
advertising revenue from non-infringing content to which you don't own the
copyright is undeniably fraud.

~~~
Karunamon
Fraud requires intentional bad faith. You can't accidentally commit fraud.
(And there is no proof that this was anything but human error.. you could
probably make a good case for gross negligence though.)

~~~
ajross
You can't know intent in either direction. That's an issue of determining
_guilt_ , but this thread is a (ridiculous) digression on whether it's
linguistically appropriate to use the word "steal" in reference to the
takedown request. I assume you would therefore agree that it's valid to say
that Rumblefish has _allegedly stolen_ the ad revenue. So therefore you agree,
right?

------
utunga
has google published anything about how their audio copyright detection
algorithm works? i ask because i know some people faced with the (clearly
related, it seems) problem of automatically recognizing birdsong (as in -
identifying from background noise, and figuring out what species).

~~~
tomkinstinch
Apparently they licensed it from AudibleMagic:

<http://www.audiblemagic.com/>

(source:)

<http://www.csh.rit.edu/~parallax/>

------
murrain
The CEO of Rumblefish did an AMA on reddit as a result of all the press this
story received:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q7via/im_the_ceo_of_ru...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q7via/im_the_ceo_of_rumblefish_i_guess_were_the_newest/)

------
felixmar
The video in question: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPBlfeuZuWg>

Due to the low quality microphone the sound is a bit metallic. Perhaps that
throws off YouTube's recognition software. But if there are a lot of false
positives then Google should adjust its algorithm.

~~~
bentlegen
The author makes it sound like Rumblefish manually inspected the video after
the author disputed the automated claim, and Rumblefish still insisted the
audio was copyrighted.

------
bipolarla
It seems big companies fold to pressure from large companies and political
pressure. It is sad they see a creator as less valid then a bigger company. I
think they fear the legal teams of these larger companies. Many of them have
legal teams waiting around to file suit and since they are salaried lawyers it
costs the companies nothing extra to sue. On the other hand music companies
already lost billions on free music being used. It appears every industry is
either going through or will go through a lower cost or free model. Examples
are books, music, newspapers, and the list goes on. Who pay 15 for a cd when
it is easy to download for 0. I am happy many top music acts still make so
much that it doesnt matter. Firemen, teachers, and cops make pennies compared
to Snoop Dogg? Who deserves more? That's the dizzle for schizzle my nizzle!

------
rorrr
Small claims court. Sue them for damages (and punitive, if small claim courts
allow).

Also, report Rumblefish for sending fake DMCA requests, it's illegal.

~~~
brntn
Rumblefish hasn't sent a DMCA takedown request, they've used Google's provided
tool to say that they own the rights.

~~~
AgentConundrum
I don't know if the video was ever actually taken down, but it's available
now. Either YouTube has ruled in favour of the poster or Rumblefish is taking
a cut of the advertising on the video.

If it's the latter, then I believe that makes Rumblefish guilty of copyright
infringement, since they're profiting off the copyright (the video) of the
poster.

DMCA request or not, that seems like it would be actionable.

------
chjj
Youtube is only complying with DMCA safe harbor by doing this. It requires a
_speedy_ takedown of whatever content the claim was filed against. I'm getting
slightly sick of people claiming this is Youtube's fault. YT is required by
law to do this.

~~~
fadzlan
With that being said, it seems appalling that it is possible on Rumblefish
side to _claim_ copyright on bird songs, assuming that they have vetted the
audio personally.

Then again, should we not say that the algorithm that processes for
copyrighted audio is imperfect and therefore could be improved further to not
have false positive such as this?

I would bet that someone would have copyrighted sounds such as cash register's
ka-ching!. Although use of such sounds from a specific recording should be
copyrighted, I should be able to record a video of a real world cash register
without anybody in the world claiming my work to be theirs.

~~~
bigiain
"With that being said, it seems appalling that it is possible on Rumblefish
side to claim copyright on bird songs, assuming that they have vetted the
audio personally."

Two comments:

I wonder of Rumblefish intentionally err on the side of false positives, and
use that stance in marketing their service to copyright owners? Cynical-me
thinks perhaps this is just some viral marketing scam - with the birdsong
being used on purpose since there's no legal-entity who could be said to be
"the copyright holder" who could file fraud charges?

Secondly, I wonder if there's some recourse available to audit Rumblefish over
this? If they're accepting payment from Google for their alleged copyright
interest in the birdsong, how exactly are they disbursing that money and to
which "copyright holder"?

