
Content ID and the Rise of the Machines - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/02/content-id-and-rise-machines
======
danso
One data point: I tried submitting "His Girl Friday", one of the most famous
movies to have fallen into public domain, from the copy hosted on archive.org:

[https://archive.org/details/his_girl_friday](https://archive.org/details/his_girl_friday)

As soon as it was finished uploading, I was notified that a copyright owner
(Sony Pictures, which I guess owns the remnants of the defunct studio that
produced His Girl Friday) had issued a takedown notice. Amusingly, a minute
later, I received the usual "Congratulations, your video is now on YouTube!"
email that you get when successfully publishing a video.

After getting a takedown notice, you have the option to dispute it, which I
did, providing evidence that His Girl Friday is indeed in the public domain. A
short time later, I got a note saying that my dispute was rejected, and that I
could choose to fight it -- but that the decision would be up to the rights
holder (Sony). However, if the rights owner chose again to deny me, my YouTube
account would be penalized and I could possibly lose uploading capabilities.

I didn't really care enough to fight it (though I've kept the screenshots and
emails to document the process)...anyone else get to this stage and succeed
(or fail)?

~~~
JoshTriplett
This is exactly the fundamental problem with YouTube's ContentID system as
compared to the DMCA system (and I never thought I'd be observing a case where
the DMCA is an _improvement_ ). On sites relying on the DMCA notice and
counter-notice mechanism, you can file a counter-notice and your content will
go back up. The site can rely on that, and the party making a claim over your
content has to go after _you_ rather than the site.

With that system, if you're confident something is public domain, or fair use,
or any number of other reasons why a claim is invalid, you can just say "put
it back up". There's no option for the claimant to "reject" your "dispute".

------
TazeTSchnitzel
Content ID is possibly the worst thing about YouTube. It's stifling. It's an
incessant pain for anyone who produces any type of review, analysis or
critique of popular media, particularly combined with YouTube's 3 strikes
system and lack of decent appeals process. Content creators frequently see
their channels disappear entirely from YouTube without explanation or means of
recourse, only having them restored by fans mass-emailing Google in protest.

~~~
rryan
While you're right that Google's implementation of Content ID doesn't handle
fair use well, Content ID is critical for indie creators. Facebook's lack of
protections lead to tons of lost revenue for them (and for indies, it
matters!).

This video changed my opinion on Content ID when I saw it last year:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7tA3NNKF0Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7tA3NNKF0Q)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Well, videos get plagiarised on YouTube anyway and nobody bats an eyelid. And
Content ID can't do anything about Facebook.

------
minimaxir
Another good resource discussing abuse of DMCA on YouTube is Jim Sterling's
rant on the subject:
[https://youtu.be/d9mTOq6mP2I](https://youtu.be/d9mTOq6mP2I)

What the EFF article doesn't discuss deeply is that YouTube doesn't provide
much assistance when a YouTuber counterclaims; which is particularly odd since
YouTube has inventive in keeping their content creators happy.

Lax copyright enforcement one of the reasons Blip.tv was popular (and the site
Doug Walker used) until its closing. Now, YouTube has a functional monopoly in
video hosting (No, Vimeo does not count) and no reason to play nice.

------
bdrool
What's telling is that Google / YouTube will use this technology to defend the
copyrights of big media companies, but won't do anything about homemade, viral
videos uploaded by individual users which get blatantly copied, re-uploaded,
and monetized. If they wanted to, they could easily make it so that the
"original" version of any given video was the only one users ever saw, but
they don't. They know which side their bread is buttered on.

~~~
infinitesoup
How do you determine which video is the "original" version? That is, how do
you tell which uploader owns the content? There isn't really a way to know
until the content owner makes a compliant (anyone can file a DMCA takedown,
not just big media companies).

~~~
pyre
The system is stacked in favour of the entity making claim against the video
and there is no attempt to curtail bad actors on that side of the table. The
system was built with large entities like the movie studios in mind and even
those movie studios overstep their bounds.

~~~
infinitesoup
> there is no attempt to curtail bad actors on that side of the table

Do you have evidence to back that up? According to YouTube's Help Center, they
do revoke Content ID access from those who abuse the system[0].

[0]:
[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370)

~~~
pyre
How many "mistaken" claims will it take for (e.g.) Universal Music to have
their ContentID access revoked? I posit that they would have to be _VERY_
egregious to get kicked out of the system. Same thing for other larger
corporations.

I'm not saying that Google won't kick small-time abusers out of the system,
but the big players would have to do something _really_ bad to get kicked out
of the system.

------
loup-vaillant
If bandwidth was symmetric, this would never have happened.

Technically YouTube and other services like it are not needed. People need a
means to distribute their videos on the internet —possibly starting with a
link from the web. With symmetric bandwidth and a suitable peer-to-peer
protocol, there would be no need for a centralised service. Just serve your
videos from your home router and be done with it.

Now that there's millions of authors instead of a single YouTube, copyright
notices and subsequent takedowns suddenly becomes much harder. No more
automated process, they have to (e)mail _you_ a legal notice.

Sure, they could still go after your ISP, have it spy on your communications,
and take down your very internet connection. However that would cause even
more obvious human rights problems (the internet is the only medium through
which freedom of speech is a reality —journals, TV, are much too guarded and
centralised for the people to actually speak in them), _and_ it would be
solved just as easily as the bandwidth problem: stop the monopoly on the
internet connections: we need more providers. Hundreds, thousands of them.

It's not hard either: to encourage the existence of many small providers, we
just have to take down economies of scales in pricing. One solution would have
the state build the lines (such as the fibre), and lease the resulting
bandwidth to providers ( _without_ bulk offers).

\---

That way, takedowns becomes prohibitively expensive. As it should be. Now we
can concentrate on taking down the _real_ bad guys.

------
dragonwriter
The article conflates ContentID (which is _not_ the DMCA notice/counternotice
process) with the DMCA process. ContentID, AFAICT, doesn't follow the DMCA
rules, and doesn't provide either side of the DMCA safe harbor -- OTOH, since
its more favorable to the participants (who are the copyright holders most
likely to file costly suits) it is just as good for the infringement liability
side of the safe harbor, and, for the counternotice side, losing the safe
harbor against users isn't important, because Google has structured there
terms of service (like _every other provider_ ) to minimize the possibility
that there would ever be liability to a user for taking down content or even
shuttering an account, so there is no _need_ for that side of the safe harbor.

------
mgraczyk
If you're like me and are more interested in how Content ID works, check out
this Google paper on the subject.

[http://cs.nyu.edu/~eugenew/publications/icassp07.pdf](http://cs.nyu.edu/~eugenew/publications/icassp07.pdf)

At a high level, the content search algorithm uses a finite state transducer
which operates on trained Gaussian Mixtures.

------
krapp
I strongly suspect Youtube no longer wants to be a general purpose streaming
site. They want to be a curated distributor, the next Netflix with a strong
social component. Of course they have a paid tier now, but the next step in
their transition is to encourage high-risk, low-value channels to _leave_.

Obviously, Youtube's claim system is intentionally designed to favor rights-
holders, they would probably have half a dozen Viacom lawsuits on their hands
if it weren't as aggressive as possible. But I believe the dispute resolution
system is designed poorly on purpose so that channels that receive numerous
takedowns will be encouraged to disappear, or to no longer use copyrighted
content _regardless of whether or not it 's covered by fair use._

Youtube wants that content to only be distributed by the rights-holders
through official or approved channels, and eventually only through the paid
tier, and they want to prove to media companies that they're capable of
exerting that degree of control over digital distribution. Which means they
also couldn't care less about Doug Walker, Jim Sterling or GradeAUnderA. They
do care about Sony and Disney and what will make money in the future.

This is just speculation on my part, but it feels true. Given their recent
debacle with G+ integration, they seem to regard Youtube as a problem to be
solved, rather than a service that deserves to stand on its own.

------
nabla9
I think that Fair Use can be outscored to robots if it's done right.

Doing it right means that they should think like economists. If mass sending
sending false positive DCMA requests has very small cost to the sender, it's
profitable to do so and let the receiving end pay the price.

Invalid takedown request should have a cost. It could be waiting period of X
days before new takedown request can be send, or it could be money needed to
lift the waiting period. Google has big enough volumes that they can afford to
hire few people who review cases based on statistical sampling. It should be
possible to find equilibrium that minimizes the harm caused by incorrect DCMA
request.

------
cortesoft
Just because a video is fair use doesn't mean that youtube has to host it. It
is a reasonable business decision for them to make to just block all of it.

~~~
throwaway2048
private (self) censorship is a critical and fundamental part of a state where
where censorship becomes the norm.

~~~
cortesoft
So you think youtube should be required to host all content that isn't
illegal? I am not saying you can't be mad or boycott youtube for removing fair
use content, I am just saying it is well within their rights to decide to so
so.

------
mst
I am somewhat confused as to why brief clips interspersed with other material
wouldn't be automatically marked as fair use and left on their own.

------
destroyThemAll
The answer to all this is to simply post nothing but obnoxious gruel at all
times. Spam endless amounts of sarcastic nothingness shot through with
zombified imitation teenage drivel.

Nonsense so unbearable that it enrages humans on the other end, so they
consider suicide, as they wade through this drek which they must now consider
as possible violation in a civil dispute.

There are humans in this loop. Bet on it. And make them pay.

------
rryan
What do people think of this video?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7tA3NNKF0Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7tA3NNKF0Q)

IMO Content ID is essential for a healthy video creator ecosystem. Google's
implementation may give the big media companies too much power, but for indie
creators it is crucial. Facebook, on the other hand, seems to not care about
video piracy at all and as a result small creators suffer.

~~~
jsnell
My primary reaction is that I'm not going to click on a link that you've
posted three times in a 20 message comments section. Just posting it once will
be quite sufficient, and less likely to cause the spam avoidance instinct of
readers to kick in.

