
Blackmailers use false copyright claims to shut down victims' YouTube accounts - Keverw
https://boingboing.net/2019/01/30/moderation-at-scale.html
======
phantom_oracle
> The small number of humans available to review contested claims means that
> people who fall afoul of machine error, sloppiness and criminal mischief are
> often unable to get a fair hearing or justice.

This is possibly one of the key points in this report. Google is synonymous
with their blackbox/magic "AI".

These systems become remarkably interesting to game (their ad platform has
been subject to fraud, but on a different layer). I wonder how many levels of
"AI" they think they can automate before they realize that it's probably not
possible.

For some good news though, there was a story a little while ago for some
educational platform that noped out of YouTube and migrated to self-hosted.

~~~
duxup
We thought it would take some sort of super AI to take over the world just
make arbitrary / unfair at face value / decisions that can't be appealed or
undone.... naw we just needed companies like Google.

~~~
fucking_tragedy
Both AI and bureaucracy are sufficiently opaque enough to be indistinguishable
when it comes to ascertaining their decision making processes.

~~~
duxup
I think for Google at this point we can be sure, there simply isn't a decision
making process. Nobody is deciding things, nobody is responding, it's just a
black hole where a process leads to and ends.

~~~
sova
/Dev/null/goog

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paulgb
I hate to cheer on a crime, but I actually think this is a positive
development. Fake copyright takedown claims are already used to chill speech,
but it flies under the radar so the process stays broken. If this type of
ransom takes off, YouTube will be forced to actually address false takedowns.

~~~
shard972
Or not, they will just protect the bigger channels that would get articles
written about them and hurt their ad revenue. Everyone else though will just
get the classic google cold shoulder.

~~~
sametmax
Most probably yes. Google hasn't been friendly to his content makers for a
while.

They were nice before they had the monopoly. Now they don't care.

That's why I really hate all those speeches about how it would be great if
everybody used chrome.

A lot of thing the privacy savy tech community predicted about Google 10 years
ago arrived exactly as expected. And the reason is not that they are seers
seing the future, but because it's always the same story with entities growing
and getting power.

~~~
chii
YouTube has always had the monopoly - not on video distribution, as many
mistakenly assume, but on monetization.

Twitch has recently encroached on that front, and therefore YouTube Livestream
was made.

The real reason YouTube doesn't care about content creators is that they are
trying to woo more mainstream media onto their platform. With the decline of
ad revenue since the ad-pocalypse of 2015-ish, they are trying to change their
platform to look like traditional media where big advertisers would pay for
spots (the likes of Coke and Nike).

~~~
busterarm
YouTube tried to show me a 25 minute video today as a mid-video advertisement.

The fuck.

~~~
dotancohen
I suspect that those 10+ minute advertisements are aimed at people who just
leave Youtube open in a background tab playing music all day.

25 minutes seems to be a new record. Congratulations!

~~~
DanBC
I've had a few, and that's not how I use Youtube.

I did wonder if it was an experiemnt to see just how far they could push ad-
tolerant people like me.

~~~
dotancohen
The old adage about giving an inch definitely applies here.

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WalterBright
One way to cut down on such is to require copyright claimants to post a bond,
which is forfeited if the claim cannot be substantiated.

~~~
cm2187
But it massively rate limits the ability of an individual who doesn’t have
large means to enforce a valid copyright.

Also if the outcome is determined by some capricious and unpredictable
algorithm, it creates a massive risk for the copyright holder.

~~~
crowbahr
Require a bond for the counter claim and give both to the winner.

Or we could develop a functional copyright system...

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mnm1
That's what happens when there are no consequences for bad actors. Is anyone
surprised? A legit copyright claim can take down a copyright violator and
"restore" the copyright holder's control of the copyright just as easily as a
bad actor can take down a YouTube publisher with lies based on the DMCA. The
law equally protects both actors. Greed makes lawmakers look stupid when in
fact they are just vile when creating their laws. Then Google comes in, looks
at the same problem, and concludes that the law is enough because their
content producers are not customers (they are the product, you guessed it) and
therefore should be exploited rather than protected. Abusers of this law will
simply not be punished. Undoubtedly this sentiment is shared across a variety
of major platforms whose only incentive is to pretend like the systems they
set up are effective at enforcing a law that's simply unenforceable. And so
the charade continues with people's livelihood and creative works as the
cannon fodder in this stupid war of greed. Someone should get together and
start filing such claims against content the big media corps provide. I
guarantee you Google fixes this problem in hours.

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gesman
This also a repeated lesson to never trust 100% of your business to some
platform you don’t control.

YouTube, Adsense, PayPal, eBay... the list is long and stories are plenty.

Use platform for what it’s good for and have plan B always ready and active

~~~
gpm
I think youtube is actually one of the best demonstrations of why that
attitude is incorrect.

Obviously it's better if you haven't trusted 100% of your business to a
platform you don't control. But for some businesses (such as many youtubers)
the choice is either do that or don't have a business (since that's the only
place with a large enough audience). In such a case it can make sense to do
so.

~~~
gesman
Many YouTube publishers also maintain their own successful portal with paid
subscriptions, memberships, product affiliations etc...

There is always plan B.

Google of course prefer 100% dependence on their platforms.

~~~
gpm
It depends on the youtuber of course, a few of them have an audience that
legitimately allows for a plan b.

For most of them there isn't. They might have seperate portals which they earn
money from, but the business still goes poof fast if they get banned from
youtube. Without publishing on youtube they won't reach enough of an audience
to have a sustainable business.

Twitch alleviates this somewhat for some youtubers. But we don't have to go
far back in time to consider an era before that existed.

~~~
yowlingcat
Not sure I agree with this. Beyond a certain level, subscriptions to a given
creator are to that creator, not via the platform. It's true that a lot of
consumers won't take the effort to follow the brand off platform, but that's
not always the case. I think the recent development of the influencer
marketing industry as a whole is proof of this.

Of course, how you ever get remotely famous or established in the first place
if the content you create is remotely vulnerable to false copyright claims is
another question entirely...

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samstave
Why arent supposed copyright holders required to prove their copyright in
order to affect the takedown?

Why then arent we seeing rampant copy claims against huge channels.

~~~
Joakal
I haven't heard of any 'perjury' prosecution for false DMCA claims or even
DMCA counter-suits? Wikipedia even lists many cases of criticisms and abuse:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act)

Youtube being sued by Hollywood company with big pockets vs angry uploaders of
personally-generated content who don't have much money. At the moment, it
makes business sense for Youtube to ignore angry uploaders.

~~~
Qwertious
YouTube's "safe harbour" takedown system is a bit stricter than what the law
requires - it doesn't require an actual DMCA takedown (which, when falsifies,
results in a fine of $800), but simply using YouTube's internal system (which
has no such falsity fine).

~~~
ikeboy
If you're referring to Content ID, you're correct that it's not a DMCA
takedown, but if disputed and appealed the claimant must file a DMCA to keep
the claim active.

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cabalamat
Thank you, music industry. Your contribution to making the world that bit
shittier has been noted.

~~~
yeahitslikethat
Is all because of the dmca which hurt the music industry and gave Google etc
the freedom to pirate content as long as they let someone report it.

People sharing music at home got fined heavily and yet Google does the same
and nothing. Even worse Google earns money on it.

This content id system is aruse. And they lover because they can see we are
not only effective but TOO effective.

And yet I can watch pirated content with ads on it on YouTube 24x7 - forever.

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JshWright
Hank Green posted a video just yesterday that gives a lot of good context
about the YouTube ContentID system, its challenges, and the broader impacts of
copyright, creativity, and culture.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL829Uf2lzI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL829Uf2lzI)

~~~
pdkl95
Th8a recently posted an outstanding overview of the YT ContentID situation:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_dhZjLxUzw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_dhZjLxUzw)

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gbuk2013
I have a youtube channel where I post videos of dance competitions. Because it
involves music, I frequently get copyright claims from whatever rights group
that wants to take my ad revenue (which is 0 anyway because I disable
monetisation on principle).

When you get a claim, there is an option to appeal it, all the way to a formal
counter-notification which will remove your strike and require the claimant to
institute court proceedings against you.

I have even used that a few times, years ago when I still got fired up by
this. Now, I just appeal it once on fair use grounds and if it doesn’t get
dropped I move on with my life.

Has something changed that doesn’t allow this particular channel owner to
challenge the claim? (Genuinely interested as a channel owner myself.)

~~~
jobigoud
> which is 0 anyway because I disable monetisation on principle

I also disable monetization on principle, but I think if a video is claimed by
a copyright holder, then YouTube will add adverts in it, even if you disabled
it.

As to your other point, a claim is different from a strike from what I
understand. A strike is a more serious offense that may lead to blocking the
account entirely. A strike can come if you dispute a claim and the claimant is
considered to be in his right.

~~~
gbuk2013
I know the distinction between a claim and a strike - I have direct experience
of both. ;)

You can appeal a strike and it will be removed unless the claimant provides
documents that they have instituted proceedings within a fixed period of time.

You have to provide your contact details if you appeal a strike.

Description of the various stages of the process:
[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797454](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797454)

------
larkeith
We _desperately_ need another major video streaming site. Google has been
consistently acting in an atrocious manner for users and content creators,
with negligible cost due to their functional monopoly - even massively popular
creators are able to recover their videos only in the rare situation of
widespread media attention [1].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18758758](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18758758)

~~~
bad_user
I use Vimeo.com for hosting video tutorials for my website.

Works well. You don’t get YouTube’s traffic, but the traffic I want should
come from my website anyway.

~~~
jobigoud
I've decided to use it to host some artsy stuff as well. I don't know what
will happen when I reach the 5GB total storage limit though. I'm not keen on
paying a monthly fee for the rest of my life so my videos, including the older
ones, stay available...

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jonny_eh
In addition to hiring an infinite number of human reviewers, what's the
solution?

~~~
lozenge
They could fall back to the legally required process (DMCA takedowns). There
is no law requiring Google to take down channels because of reports on a few
videos, or requiring Google to keep content down after the uploader has re-
affirmed it is not breaking copyright law (called a DMCA counter-notice).

~~~
yeahitslikethat
Dmca ruined the Internet. We thought it was good but it wasn't.

~~~
pilsetnieks
That's not even remotely what we're talking about here. Anyway, this has
nothing to do with DMCA but with Google's Content ID system which is much
worse than DMCA.

~~~
yeahitslikethat
No dmca. No Google content ID system.

~~~
nitrogen
No, that's not how it happened. ContentID is a proactive system that goes well
beyond what the DMCA requires and skirts around the DMCA penalties for false
claims.

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tzfld
I'm a little tired of all this creators complaining how broken is Youtube (and
other platforms) and still investing lot of their time and effort in building
channels, accounts and entire businesses relying on these platforms.

~~~
jobigoud
That's just what monopolies look like I think.

For them moving to another platform doesn't make sense because they wouldn't
get the same reach/make enough to justify the time and effort put into their
channel in the first place. So it's either they are on YouTube and complain of
its faults, or they aren't anywhere and you don't hear about them.

~~~
ric2b
There's a third option that makes the most sense: Be on multiple platforms at
once.

There's minimal effort in uploading to multiple sites, making the video is
what takes multiple hours/days.

~~~
Faark
Until the platforms push exclusivity contracts... I do remember a twitch
streamer being happy about his contract being old enough to allow him
streaming on youtube while temporarily being banned on twitch. Sure, you can
fault the individual for signing something like that, but an effective
monopoly will hardly leave you an other choice.

