
YouTube shuts down music companies’ use of manual copyright claims - lladnar
https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/16/youtube-shuts-down-music-companies-use-of-manual-copyright-claims-to-steal-creator-revenue/
======
Someone1234
Still seems like YT's version of "Fair Use" is significantly more constrained
than the legal definition.

This is a step in the right direction, but YT's system is extra-judicial in
nature, and they've decided to be more copyright holder friendly than the law
itself requires (likely so the law isn't used, which is cheaper for YT).

I suspect in my lifetime governments will need to create better frameworks for
content networks. The whole "they're a private company, they can do anything!"
argument is growing weaker by the day as these companies have more influence
in our lives (with both good (e.g. anti-hate content) and bad (e.g. copyright
holders stepping on small creators) consequences).

~~~
koboll
The fact that creators are _still_ required to edit out sound from _audio from
passing cars_ is insane. It's a system designed to be a money grab for the
music industry, not follow any sort of legal definition of copyright. The idea
that a music company could sue someone over a copyright claim for posting a
video in which part of a song is fuzzily heard for a few brief moments as a
car passes is risible.

~~~
fenomas
Dumb question - when someone films outside in public, why is audio of music
from a passing car considered a copyright issue but video of a passerby in a
Mickey Mouse t-shirt isn't?

Is it just because one industry lobbies YouTube and the other doesn't, or is
copyright law materially different for the two cases?

~~~
londons_explore
If that t-shirt was in a film, you can bet there would be someone in the legal
department getting the right permissions...

~~~
fenomas
Presumably the same would be true of music in a film, so I'm not sure how it
bears on my question.

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waitwhatwhere
For those that prefer to avoid TC spam/spin (there are dozens of us!):

[https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2019/08/updates-
to-m...](https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2019/08/updates-to-manual-
claiming-policies.html)

~~~
saagarjha
> Claims created by the Content ID match system, which are the vast majority,
> are not impacted by this policy.

Will this end up having an impact?

~~~
ravenstine
Maybe not in the grand scheme of things, but it might help with the draconian
banning of things like covers of game music, fair use of audio and video
clips, instrumentals, etc. I've seen that stuff taken down, and maybe it was
due to Content ID, but I question that when the composition of the content is
original. I may be in the minority, but I would be glad to have niche fan-
created content stick around without seeing messages like "This video was
deleted because of a claim by Universal/Nintendo/Disney/Viacom".

~~~
grawprog
I've never understood why companies choose to delete videos rather than just
monetize them. I've uploaded videos with copyrighted music, rather than get
deleted the owners chose to have ads shown in my video(my channel is
unmonetized) and I'm assuming they make money from it.

~~~
jonas21
There are certainly some cases where this makes sense. In the extreme case,
suppose someone uploads a full copy of a new movie. It seems unlikely the
studio would make up for the revenue from lost ticket sales with just ads.
They might be violating contracts with their distributors as well.

~~~
grawprog
Yeah I wasn't necessarily thinking full movies or things like that. More like
things that maybe skirt the line for fair use.

------
sansnomme
Considering how advanced GOOG is at ML, instead of blocking they should just
filter out the music instead. You don't even need ML for this if you have the
original music piece. This way they can insert themselves as a middleman and
act as a marketplace. If the video creator wants to pay for music and music
companies wants to profit from it, they can go through Google directly. The
two parties don't ever have to even meet each other or know who each other is.

~~~
otakucode
The problem is, in the USA at least, there is a legal right to Fair Use of
copyrighted works. Analysis of Fair Use issues is not simple and is impossible
to automate. Music companies have been consistently breaking the law with
their claims. The law requires them to do a proper Fair Use analysis prior to
lodging any complaint under the DMCA. While it might be possible for Google to
automate removal of a given scrap of music from a video, and providing that as
an option to the music companies as an alternative to blocking the entire
video or disabling monetization might be a good idea, it leaves a few problems
on the table. Music companies would still be legally obligated to perform
proper Fair Use analysis on every single video they do this to. Additionally,
there is no such thing as a central copyright registry that Google could use
to verify that the people filing the claims have any right. Googles systems
can be, and actively are, abused. It's the sort of situation that I imagine
Google really dislikes, as the law in this area is basically impossible to
automate. So, they will probably just automate destruction of Fair Use because
the groups most likely impacted have fewer resources to fight it.

~~~
basch
Ive never understood fair use to be a right. Fair use is a weakening of right
holders rights, a defense that can be used to get a case dismissed, despite
copyright infringement having technically occurred.

~~~
nkurz
This was a traditional understanding, but the decision in Lenz is largely
based on the conclusion that "fair use" is explicitly an "authorized use", and
not just a defense of infringement. Universal made the essentially argument
you are making, and the court soundly rejected it:

"We agree with the district court and hold that the statute unambiguously
contemplates fair use as a use authorized by the law. Fair use is not just
excused by the law, it is wholly authorized by the law."

In defense of this (among other arguments) they cite portions of the US code
that explicitly refer to fair use as a "right":

"See also 17 U.S.C. § 108(f)(4) (“Nothing in this section in any way affects
the _right_ of fair use as provided by section 107 . . . .”"

[https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-
courts/ca9/13-161...](https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-
courts/ca9/13-16106/13-16106-2015-09-14.pdf)

So while your understanding of fair use as merely a defense against
infringement may be widely held, and arguably is even the historically
accurate position, it doesn't reflect the way that the courts currently
interpret the statutes.

~~~
basch
Thanks. I hadnt read Lenz and understood it more to be saying its not ok to
make bad faith claims you know you will lose.

Now I agree with your interpretation to an extent, however its only the 9th
circuit court. Lenz is also odd in that the person claiming fair use is the
plaintiff, and the suit itself is that a DMCA claim was frivolous. The video
was restored after her counter-notification, and her lawsuit was later.

A DMCA taketdown request is itself not a lawsuit. So my interpretation of the
ruling is not that "you cant sue someone" but that you "cant blast out DMCA
notices." I read it as an anti-intimidation ruling. It is clear, that it sees
fair use as authorized by law, but it also still categorizes fair use as an
affirmative defense.

Ergo, fair use gives you a defacto right to not be harassed.

------
btown
Removing adverse incentives is a step in the right direction! Now, any
employee at a copyright holder assigned to send out manual copyright claims
will become a _cost center._ No longer will copyright holders be able to
justify such assignments via _captured revenue from creators_ \- instead, they
will legitimately need to value the cost of the claiming against the actual
damages done to the copyright holder made by the sharing of copyrighted music.

On the other hand, there are a lot of music videos on YouTube that copyright
holders might have been fine allowing to exist, and now their only option is
to nuke them from orbit. Mashups, etc. may suffer. Essentially, this is a move
that may reduce spurious claims, but may come at the expense of certain grey-
zone expressions.

~~~
judge2020
Content ID content owners have a lot of options when dealing with their
content appearing in videos.

For one[0], they can choose "block" \- prevents it from showing in some/all
countries, "monetize" \- takes the videos's revenue (note that there is now
revenue sharing so that claims don't always take 100% of the revenue[1]), or
"track" \- just track the video analytics.

It might be worth it to set up "if 2 minutes or less of my 4 minute song
appear in a video, monetize", "if 30 seconds or less is used, just track it",
and finally "if the entire video is my song or uses my song in its entirety,
block it". Not sure how advanced the Content ID system really is since it's
easier to get the Copyright Match Tool than Content ID, but I wouldn't doubt
Google's ML had something like "match certainty" copyright holders can use to
filter content like mashups and remixes. It's most likely up to the content
owners to use this to filter, though, since the entire purpose of Content ID
is to help both YouTube and Copyright holders avoid DMCA lawsuits.

0:
[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9245819?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9245819?hl=en)
("Content ID" wrapper)

1:
[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3301938](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3301938)

------
ben7799
This part is a great step for some of the people uploading videos.

Content ID will not catch stuff like a guitar teacher teaching a 30 minute
lesson on soloing in E minor Pentatonic and playing 5 notes of a copyrighted
song with a totally different tone than the original song.

Manual ID was causing the record company to be able to claim all the revenue
for the whole 3 minute lesson as if the whole video was a performance of their
whole song.

------
doh
For the curious ones, this policy change impacts slightly less than 10% of all
potential claims (not claims that were made, but could've been made).

Quite large portion of these potential claims are short videos that are being
re-uploaded from other platforms, like TikTok and Instagram.

Disclaimer: I run a company that monitors YouTube and other platforms for
analytical purposes, some related to copyright. Our system is able to identify
segments as short as 0.5 second which allows us to produce this kind of
information.

------
rhacker
Maybe the fix is to require the submission to include the timestamp start and
end. And if there is also copyrighted imagery, that the submission include
black boxes around the restricted imagery (for video imagery the would include
the timstamp start and end).

Then, the resolution would be to wipe out the original audio and black out any
imagery similarly. Thus if a car drives by playing something copyrighted, it
would simply cut the audio for a few seconds. No loss of revenue to the
original poster. And beyond that, provide the video poster a chance to edit
the video without the original sound/images. If they re-upload it with the
sound/images still included, then they can have negative consequences for
their account. If they re-upload with everything "fixed" then they shall have
no negative marks on their permanent record.

~~~
doh
> Maybe the fix is to require the submission to include the timestamp start
> and end.

This is already a requirement [0] that was introduced couple of weeks back.

[0]
[https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/9566717?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/9566717?hl=en)

------
sucrose
They didn't shut it down completely. They only removed the ability to profit
from your copyright claims. You're still able to have videos removed or
blacklisted for copyright infringement.

~~~
iscrewyou
They did remove a predatory practice which should help the content creators.
The monetary incentive to block is gone.

------
jotjotzzz
I feel the music companies would have been making more if people can use
samples of songs in the first place -- as most would promote the music and
people would buy or listen to them if they really love them. But since they
take down everything, no would dare to use music due to fear. It's ridiculous.

------
dafty4
"However, YouTube expects that by removing the option to monetize these sorts
of videos themselves, some copyright holders will instead just leave them
alone."

Uh, no. Why would copyright holders do that?

~~~
Applejinx
I've had multiple videos ContentIDed for years now, off and on, by certain
'copyright holders'.

The infringing 'works' are white noise.

Literally. I make open source software plugins and use Logic's signal
generator sometimes to demonstrate the spectral content of these plugins. I'll
get copyright strikes specifically for the purpose of hijacking the ad revenue
of these videos, specifying that it's the noise (or filtered noise) content of
the video.

They don't try to knock the video off YouTube, they are trying to mass claim
all white noise on the platform to get whatever revenue they can until the
real creator reassert their rights to their original content (at some risk:
you are saying 'no, that is original content' to the YouTube machine and
depending on the adversary to withdraw their claim in hopes of finding someone
who is paying less attention)

This would directly affect those trolls, and those guys would indeed skulk
away: it's what they do when you challenge them, because they want to operate
without calling attention to themselves.

------
golemotron
It would be great to see a technology that did _audio subtraction_ of the
offending snippets of sound rather than blocking the entire video.

------
Circuits
I really just don't see how YouTube can support this argument. A car passing
buy is playing a song and that sound bite ends up in a creators video and
therefor what exactly? What exactly are they claiming that means? That it was
the song bite and not the content of the video that's earning the creator
money? Aside from polling every person who watched the video how could they
possibly justify that conclusion?

