
As Curiosity touches down on Mars, video is taken down from YouTube  - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/as-curiosity-touches-down-on-mars-video-is-taken-down-from-youtube/
======
wtracy
It's time for penalties for false DMCA takedown notices.

~~~
novas0x2a
If it was a content id takedown (which it sounds like it was, and Ars thinks
so too), the DMCA is not involved at all; Google's content id system allows
takedowns that do not use the DMCA system and thus do not expose the filer to
a perjury charge. Google might penalize the company some other way, but it
doesn't seem like it from the outside.

~~~
knowtheory
Well, I'm not sure I condone this behavior, but the Fox News thing to do here
is for NASA to blackball Scripps, and to refuse to grant them interviews or
access to their events.

~~~
ars
Isn't Content ID automatic? Could be Scrips just says yes automatically to
every hit generated by Content ID.

~~~
knowtheory
That doesn't absolve Scripps of their responsibility to make sure that the
content going into their system isn't owned by someone else.

If one were the sort to blackball others, the fact that an algorithm did it
for them, on the basis of data that they fed in is essentially no excuse for
me.

~~~
ars
> that the content going into their system

I thought it was a mistaken identification? I.e. it was youtube's fault, not
Scripps.

~~~
knowtheory
“We apologize for the temporary inconvenience experienced when trying to
upload and view a NASA clip early Monday morning," a Scripps spokesman told
Motherboard. "We made a mistake. We reacted as quickly as possible to make the
video viewable again, and we’ve adjusted our workflow processes to remedy the
situation in future.”

~~~
ars
I repeat myself: "Could be Scrips just says yes automatically to every hit
generated by Content ID."

So they have some responsibility for saying yes (i.e. their workflow was
select all, yes), but it was youtube that misidentified the video, not that
Scrips uploaded a video from NASA into content ID as you wrote.

------
ojosilva
I think we need legislation or, at least, some sort of groundwork regulation
that protects user-generated content from company-issued end-user agreements
tied to private takedown workflows, such as Google's content-id system. Such
agreements tend to give publishers and copyright owners far too much power.
I'm even thinking of left-field cases here, such as the right to control and
redistribute content in the backdrop of Craiglist vs. PadMapper -- regardless
of who's right or not, these two websites are fighting over content that
_wasn't actually produced by either one of them_. It's come to the point where
websites and their business partners have become _de facto_ copyright owners
of anything ever produced by mankind. What I'm saying is quite hyperbolic, I
know, but just imagine a glitch in Time-Warner's top-notch automated content
takedown workflow that takes down from You Tube, Vimeo and DropBox, almost
instantly, a homevideo of my 8-year old son's rendition of Bach's Suite for
Cello, due to a striking similarity to some piece of content supposedly owned
by a prominent customer of theirs. Sounds familiar?

For instance, under my hypothetical legislation, Google would only be allowed
to take down NASA's video if NASA accepted such action via an email
notification that warned of a copyright claim by a third party. Such
legislation would limit Google's liability (even further), protecting it from
legal action by Scripps Local News, but most importantly, limit its power over
the user's content published in its website, thus effectively (and I hope
positively) diminishing Google's role as a copyright claim desk. The burden
now would be on Scripps Local News to "threaten" (warn) the end-user of
impending legal actions. This system works better the less anonymous and more
accountable you, or your profile, are. OTOH, it reduces Google's
persuasiveness when it comes to partnering with large media producers, which,
all in all, is the heart of this content removal fever. Google's stance is to
beg the user to bear with these takedown "glitches" because that's how we'll
get to watch the full Beatles concertography for "free".

This fantasy takedown and redistribution noob legislation of mine, which has
been addressed before [1], has many limitations (ie legal inconsistencies
across borders), but I feel something needs to be done to better protect UGC
since its existence, despite its metamorphic nature, has remained a constant
for as long as we've had the internets.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-
generated_content#Legal_pr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-
generated_content#Legal_problems_related_to_UGC)

------
pasbesoin
How about a three strike or six strike rule for false take down notices? Pass
that threshold, and no more DMCA for you.

/snark, but also seriously

~~~
Vivtek
YouTube doesn't require DMCA takedowns - they just trust the copyright holder.
So "no more DMCA" wouldn't even stop this. The problem is Google's fire-and-
forget method of automated interaction with humans.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
This is how they took down Megaupload's Ad.

------
yk
Does anyone know how these DCMA/ ContentID calims work in practice?

As I understand it currently, the news segment was probably send to someone
who fingerprints it and crawls youtube for infringement. They then send Google
a take-down notice and some bot at Google takes down the video and sends a
mail to NASA, where for the first time a human notices that some news segment
did copy a video from NASA.

