
Lon Seidman gets YouTube takedown notice for public domain video from NASA - codeka
https://plus.google.com/103031681861783472058/posts/aQDqgTaHMFe
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nicholassmith
I understand it's an automated system and so on, but given how often these
stories bubble up (and to make it even more egregious
[http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/8/6/nasa-s-mars-rover-
crash...](http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/8/6/nasa-s-mars-rover-crashed-into-
a-dmca-takedown) it hit NASA themselves), you'd think that Google/Youtube
would invest some developer hours into either acknowledging the issue and
dealing with it, or saying "It's not working and we're disabling until we can
get it done properly".

It's costing them a lot of face, I know people who perform who've had YouTube
videos disabled due to background music being licensed off by one of the big
studios and now refuse to use. It just _isn't_ working. There's no
understanding of context, no ability to detect what the usage is or whether
the rights holder is the rights holder aside from 'they uploaded it as well'.

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sp332
Identifying infringing content is not the point of ContentID. The point is to
keep content companies from suing them for $1,000,000,000 (billions) the way
Viacom did before this system was in place. It's a very expensive and
effective CYA move to show courts that they are putting real resources into
minimizing infringement. It doesn't have to actually "work".

~~~
nicholassmith
You make a convincing argument, but that still doesn't mean Google/YouTube
shouldn't be pouring developer time in if they don't want the people who made
YouTube to disappear to a rival content provider. People will get sick of the
randomised takedowns, even if it's simple to resolve.

~~~
sp332
Well they have put developer time in, not to mention massive amounts of
computing power. It processes _every_ video uploaded to youtube, and compares
it to _every_ video in the contentID system. It's pretty amazing. There's a
short TED talk on it
[http://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_stewart_how_youtube_thinks...](http://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_stewart_how_youtube_thinks_about_copyright.html)

~~~
nicholassmith
I'd argue that with the level of false positives it needs improvement.

I won't argue that the existing system isn't both impressive in terms of scale
and complexity, just that it's not working as well as it should over something
like blocking ma & pa's home video for the Britney Spears track you can hear
in the background.

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pasbesoin
Google: Lobby for a framework/interpretation in which you can X strike these
people. So many invalid takedown requests (under the auspices of the DMCA,
even if content ID pre-empts a formal DMCA request), and you stop honoring
their content ID and/or takedown requests. Or at least then make them go
through formal channels consuming the maximum amount of time before response
and doing the most to coerce them to prove the validity of the request.

These damned "strikes"... provisions are exactly what the "big media"
providers have been asking for. Well, make _them_ live by it, for a change.

Spend some hours and money sending _that_ message.

Just an idea, from yet another pissed off Google customer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
product point.

~~~
quanticle
_So many invalid takedown requests (under the auspices of the DMCA, even if
content ID pre-empts a formal DMCA request), and you stop honoring their
content ID and/or takedown requests._

The problem is that such a strategy won't hold up in court. If I'm a content
producer, and I file a thousand invalid DMCA takedown requests, YouTube still
has to treat request #1001 as a valid request. If they don't, they're liable
for contributory infringement, and on a site of the scale of YouTube, that can
be a billion dollar liability.

 _Or at least then make them go through formal channels consuming the maximum
amount of time before response and doing the most to coerce them to prove the
validity of the request._

A DMCA takedown request _is_ the formal channel. The only more formal channel
than that is a lawsuit.

~~~
nucleardog
I'm pretty sure the content ID stuff is self-regulation - not a formal DMCA
request. After the set number of strikes, stop allowing them access to the
content ID 'convenience' tool and require them to mail in a formal DMCA
takedown notice.

If someone had to fill in a DMCA takedown notice, print it out, stuff an
envelope, put a stamp on it and then drop it in the mail I imagine there would
be a few less "Oops, we didn't own the copyright on that." incidents versus
clicking a button, ignoring the entire "penalty of perjury" agreement and just
hitting "agree" and having their video taken offline.

You're still following the law, you're just not providing tools to make it
easier for scumbags and idiots to wreak havoc.

Make smart things easier, make stupid things harder.

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res0nat0r
ContentID a disaster? The number of misidentified takedown rants is extremely
small vs. the number of videos processed on YouTube each minute, but this
complaint will get blown into a fullscale meltdown of Googles ID system
because it plays into the 'Hollywood is bad and ruining everything' mantra all
over HN anymore.

According to the stats on Youtube ContentID is processing over 100 _years_ of
video every _day_.

I'd hold off on calling the system a disaster just yet.

~~~
cft
Youtube certainly became less attractive for me after the content ID system
was put in place. Studying Russian, I liked watching Soviet era films on
YouTube. These films cannot be copyrighted by definition, since they were made
in USSR. I needed to watch each movie several times. I discovered that often,
after going back to a movie that I watched, the ENTIRE channel (account) of a
user who uploaded it would be deleted for a copyright violation, together with
my NON-COPYRIGHTABLE movie.

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eschutte2
Why do you say a movie made in the USSR is not copyrightable?

~~~
nucleardog
Take a look at the state of copyright law in the USSR circa 1961
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_Soviet_Uni...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_Soviet_Union#1961_Fundamentals)).

Essentially, once something was published, it was pretty near free game.
103(4) grants:

> The permission to use scientific, artistic, literary, or oral works
> (speeches) in film, radio, and on television, provided the original work
> existed already in a form amenable to such use.

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ChuckMcM
_"And now Youtube says it might start running ads against content I created
and handing that money over to these crooks"_

Bingo. If you ever wondered "What are these people trying to achieve?" this is
it. By abusing the YouTube infrastructure and content systems they can get
Google to collect money from other peoples content and give it to them. Unless
Google can get out ahead of this problem they may find themselves fighting yet
another class action Youtube lawsuit. I am sure they would rather spend that
money on improving the YouTube experience than on lining lawyers pockets.

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antihero
If it's public domain they are totally allowed to do that, however they
shouldn't be taking the original down, hell no.

~~~
ChuckMcM
What 'they' are 'doing' in this case is telling YouTube they have rights to
stuff that someone else has posted, one of the 'remedies' available to the
rights holder is that YouTube will put advertisements into that other person's
video and then send the person who made the complaint any money that is
generated.

So I disagree with your assessment that 'they' (various news agencies) are
'allowed' to demand advertising revenue from another user's YouTube video when
that video contains no video to which they have any claim. But I may be mis-
construing your comment.

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noonespecial
Seeing as how there is no penalty whatsoever for misidentifying a video and
taking it down _(1)_ , I'm wondering if its a feature and not a bug. Remember
back in the bad old days of youtube, when everyone thought that Google was
crazy for acquiring them because there just seemed to be no way to get around
the _billions_ demanded in lawsuits (I wish that were hyperbole)?

This is the way. Just let the system run amok and get everyone talking about
how they just ban everything at the drop of a hat. No one can argue that
they're "not doing enough" when the idea is always percolating in the public
conscious that videos get banned all the time, even when they shouldn't be.

(1) And there really should be a small one, paid by the "owner" of the
material. You should have to think carefully about how much it might cost you
to turn on content protection for your material.

~~~
smashing
Are you suggesting licensing penalties for content owners?

~~~
noonespecial
No, penalties for issuing a false takedown. If it actually cost something
(even a little something) to claim you own something and try to have it
removed, but then it turns out you were in the wrong, it would be taken more
seriously.

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mikecane
WTF is wrong with Google? It'd be just as easy for them to run the NASA video
through their Content ID system to flag all of that as SAFE.

~~~
Symmetry
Under the DMCA they're not permitted to just ignore takedown requests. This is
hardly the first time stuff like this has happened.

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jkn
No excuse for Google here. Even if these were DMCA take-down requests, AFAIK
Google can ignore them if they are confident the requests are baseless. They
simply lose the safe harbor protection in case the complaint is legitimate.

~~~
quanticle
The problem is that "safe harbor", as I understand it, is an all-or-nothing
proposition. If they ditch the DMCA safe harbor clause for this one particular
video, they're opening themselves up to liability for any and every video on
YouTube. That is something that Google definitely does not want to consider.

~~~
jkn
Well that would suck. I cannot find a reference on this. Anyone?

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ColinWright
Anyone care to provide a summary for those of us who prefer not to log in to
Google+?

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gitarr
You didn't even try the link and therefore misleading people into thinking
that the post is in any way private, which it isn't.

You do NOT have to login into Google+ to read the post.

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DannoHung
I'm being asked to login and I have a fucking G+ account.

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gitarr
But you still can read the content right?

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dmethvin
Nope, not without logging in. Probably need to clear cookies or something. But
in any case, the grandparents are not lying or stupid afaict so stop
downvoting them.

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c3d
Many here wrote it's "big corporation vs. the little guy". The truth is
different. It's really YouTube implementing an automated system that is good
at identifying small fragments of contents, but totally lacks common sense
regarding attributions, fair use and such.

Here is what happened to me to prove my point. On the <http://www.taodyne.com>
web site, there's a small video. If you switch the sound on, you'll hear a
music I quickly put together in a few minutes using GarageBand. Despite this
being my own (not very good) creation, the YouTube system kicked in and told
me I was infringing on some other guy's rights. Why? Because that other guy
happens to have used the same loops I used for his own commercial music.

So there's no evil intent here, but a nasty side effects of YouTube's
automated content detection system. In my opinion, it is nobody's fault but
Google's: the corporations don't really have lawyers bent on claiming your
stuff, they just happen to take advantage of Google's offer to monetize on
what they do, and then they happen to have entered something in YouTube that
YouTube identified as similar to yours.

It's important to point out that there's no evil intent on Google's part
either. What they did is a great way to grant us the ability to use musics in
videos we post, compensating the artists with ad revenues. But given the
volume of data that enters YouTube every day, it has to be automated. And
right now, the automat is good at picking similarities, bad at analyzing
whether it's infringing or not.﻿

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bartl
It's high time that unjustified (unjustifable) takedown notices induce a high
penalty on the people who submitted it.

Excuses like "oops sorry that takedown notice was a mistake" just won't cut
it. Every mistake should cost them dearly. That's the only way they'd ever try
to fix their system.

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ktizo
Get a good legal team and do them all for fraud.

If you can show potential losses of over $5000 in a year, then you might even
be able to leverage the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act>

... _Knowingly causing the transmission of a program, information, code, or
command that causes damage or intentionally accessing a computer without
authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage that results
in:_

 _Loss to one or more persons during any one-year period aggregating at least
$5,000 in value._ ...

Otherwise, it is still an attempt to misappropriate money by deception, and is
plainly both unlawful and illegal.

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Buzaga
Youtube needs a takedown.

