

YouTube Flags Democrats’ Convention Video on Copyright Grounds - mtgx
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/youtube-flags-democrats-convention-video-on-copyright-grounds/

======
mhp
Google's automatic copyright recognition system is absolute crap. I've spent
hours upon hours emailing them different documents showing them that we have
the licenses (purchased from the exact company that is claiming infringement
through the automatic system) and just get automated responses back.
Eventually it gets cleared up, and then 3 months later, the same thing happens
again.

Now I've started getting infringement claims against classical music that we
are using (that we have also licensed) because a different company owns the
license to a different performance of that piece. When I stated we had a
license to this piece through another company, it was rejected and the video
was removed from monetization. The only way to get out of that black hole was
to contact the CEO of the company directly and appeal to him to read the
license agreement we had.

I don't have the links handy, but when I started researching this problem
(automatic copyright detection and fair use or works in the public domain), I
found hundreds of people experiencing the same problem. Google is in a really
tough place. Wedged between the typical youtube uploader and the recording and
movie industries, this system makes sense. The problem is that all of the well
intentioned people are getting swept up in the solution, and now high profile
people are showing how broken it is. A system that makes your genuine users
frustrated and exasperated does not have a bright future.

~~~
famousactress
At the very least it seems like the system would benefit from a graduated-tier
of trust. Once you've demonstrated to them that you're very likely to have the
licenses for your content, it seems the burden of proof and benefit of the
doubt ought to shift in your favor.

~~~
Rudism
Something like that probably wouldn't last very long, since it could be easily
gamed.

1\. buy a cheap license to something that will get flagged by the auto-
detecting algorithms

2\. go through the red-tape of proving you have licensed the material, thereby
flagging your account into a higher level of trust

3\. post mad amounts of commercial content on your account and monetize the
pants off of it, making insane amounts of cash before finally getting noticed
and shut down

4\. set up a new account, rinse and repeat (maybe even with the same licensed
material you used the first time)

------
btilly
It is not entirely clear whether this was some internal monitoring, or a DMCA
takedown notice.

If it was a DMCA takedown notice, then section g.2.C of
<http://images.chillingeffects.org/512.html> says exactly how Youtube has to
act. In particular the 10 day delay before putting content back up is pretty
horrible.

If internal monitoring, then the fact that Youtube is aware that the content
is copyrighted means that Youtube _no longer qualifies_ for the DMCA safe
harbor. (That is my reading of section c.1.A.i of
<http://images.chillingeffects.org/512.html>. I am not a lawyer, but read it
for yourself.) This is inevitably going to lead to internal policies that err
on the side of caution and not exposing yourself to copyright infringement
liability.

Perhaps now that Barack Obama has been on the receiving end of copyright
policies that his administration supports, he'll rethink his positions? Not
likely. But one can hope.

------
cabalamat
The Democrats (together with the Republicans) are responsible for 90% of the
copyright bullshit in the world, so they deserve to have it rebound on them.

~~~
yen223
This needs to be said more. As much as I like Obama, his administration's
position on digital copyrights is truly shameful.

~~~
cabalamat
During the 2008 election, McCain had problems with incorrect DMCA takedown
notices affecting his camapign. (McCain was one of the people resonsible for
the DMCA). His response? Not "we goofed, let's make the law better", no it was
that politicians should be exempt from the law.

That attitude disgusts me.

------
mtgx
Remember when MPAA was telling us that SOPA and PIPA would never be used to
censor political speech? Yeah, it seems even DMCA is enough for that, and it's
already happening. SOPA would've made it just that much worse.

Of course, Google also takes a huge part of the blame here for their automatic
takedown system, which shouldn't even exist in the first place. Maybe they
should follow in Usteam's footsteps and permanently suspend their system as
well.

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res0nat0r
Is there any evidence that this takedown was in any way incorrect? I'm sure
NBC news has perfectly valid copyright on Brian Williams' banter during the
DNC, and also so does MSNBC of Rachael Maddow.

Just because this is another claim (which possibly is a perfectly valid one)
doesn't mean automatic (or not) copyright claims are destroying the free
world. Youtube scans 100 _years_ of video every day with ContentID. It works.

~~~
knowtheory
No, it doesn't work.

The problem is not the fact that they scan and (correctly) ignore a vast bulk
of material. It's a question of what false positives it hits, and how
important those false positives are.

So far we've had two high profile false positives one of which is directly
relevant to American civic life.

At some point if your errors are high profile enough, or damaging enough, it's
irrelevant how few errors you're making, damage is being done.

This is a problem, and it needs to be dealt with.

~~~
res0nat0r
I'd love to know the percentage of false positives out of their overall scan
dataset. I'm sure it is _extremely_ small.

Note I haven't seen anywhere yet that the claim related to this story is
actually incorrect? DNC cable coverage is perfectly copyrightable and you
don't have an inherit right to watch NBC's coverage on YouTube of a political
convention.

~~~
mhp
They should tweak it so there are NO false positives. Maybe they miss a bunch
of videos that have to be brought manually to their attention, but then at
least the people playing by the rules are not punished.

The majority of copyright usage on Youtube is probably illegal or
unsanctioned. Most of the time Youtube is doing the right thing and taking
down bad videos.

But for the small number of people who are playing by the rules, and trying to
do the thing they have asked us to do, you can't keep making them jump through
hoops. They are punishing the good guys!

~~~
res0nat0r
I'm sure that they would love to see that in action, but I'm pretty sure
efficiently scanning the 100 years of video that is uploaded every single day
isn't quite as easy as you think. Also if the group of engineers at YouTube
are having a hard time getting it 100% correct you can believe it is a hard
problem to solve.

I'm sure the large majority of people are playing by the rules, just these
small exceptions always keep getting posted to HN like they are the end of the
world, but in reality they are the _extremely small_ exception.

~~~
mhp
I don't think it's an extremely small exception. If you have content that
could be copyrightable (i.e. classical music, or anything that you've licensed
yourself) it will definitely get caught by the automatic filters. Here's
dozens of videos in response to a company using the filters fraudulantly
<http://goo.gl/eI8kj> I've done the research and this affects a large
percentage of legitimate users (yes, overall its a small percentage of the
TOTAL users, but a large percentage of legitimate users who have copyrighted
material in their videos).

------
biff
Noticed that I didn't hear about this happening to the RNC. Funny thing is,
they were using a live cover band featuring GE Smith for the event where the
DNC seems to be using snippets of the actual songs.

So I wonder if that's what's getting them. With all the fun with
SOPA/PIPA/ACTA and domain takedowns there's a smidge of poetic justice to it.
Hopefully they get to enjoy the same response and support for resolving the
problem as is offered to the average person.

------
VengefulCynic
The worst part of this and the Ustream debacle
(<http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4471213>) is that many of the takedowns on major
video-streaming services to date have been entirely voluntary. You can only
imagine what would happen if the government gave the MPAA/RIAA a bigger stick
(i.e. SOPA and/or PIPA) than the business deals that they're currently
leveraging for this sort of thing.

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jellicle
See also:

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/09/04/hugo_awar...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/09/04/hugo_awards_ustream_science_fiction_webcast_blocked_by_rogue_copyright_bots.html)

There's a great opening for someone to make a billion dollars running a video
service from a country other than the U.S. "We won't shut down the video of
the event you just spent millions of dollars creating and promoting" is an
easy selling point. You just have to make it almost as easy or as easy to use
as existing services, and promote it a bit to broadcasters.

~~~
Retric
CDN's have made the more professional version of this a commodity.

As to leaving the US, Megaupload demonstrates that this is not enough.

~~~
marquis
Megaupload's servers were in Virginia. If they weren't, it may have played out
differently.

~~~
Retric
They also made an effort to comply with DMCA take down notices.

~~~
nvmc
Management (including Dotcom) also emailed each other about downloading
infringing material from their own service. And while they did better with
DMCA notices than the likes of Oron, they were still pretty slack.

------
protomyth
We've had article after article on a secret copyright treaty and Megaupload.
Perhaps, this event will prompt the government to reconsider its copyright
policy. More likely, they will just get mad a youtube and not the policies and
environment they create.

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dman
Maybe its time to stop using music at public events

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gitarr
These copyright blockage debacles are slowly turning from inconvenient to
dangerous.

As a musician, content producer and programmer copyright just makes me sick.

