
“My ten hour white noise video now has five copyright claims” - ryanlol
https://twitter.com/littlescale/status/949032404206870528
======
TipVFL
I used a song, with permission from the artist, on a demo reel and got a
copyright claim on YouTube. I was surprised to find that the claim was on
behalf of a French band who covered the song and added lyrics to it. I tried
to dispute the claim, but there was no option or possible way to indicate that
their match wasn't correct, you could only dispute whether or not you had a
license to the track they matched.

In the end I just gave up, and let some French band monetize my video that
contained a song written and recorded by my friend's dad. Enjoy the 25 cents
you earned!

~~~
gwbas1c
US copyright law has very stiff penalties for false copyright claims. Just sue
YouTube directly.

~~~
ubernostrum
No, it doesn't.

For example, in a DMCA takedown notice the only thing asserted under penalty
of perjury is that you are, or are authorized to act on behalf of, a copyright
holder. And YouTube doesn't even use the DMCA system; it uses its own separate
terms-of-service-governed system.

~~~
chris_wot
Yes, it does.

17 U.S. Code § 512(f) states:

(f) Misrepresentations.—Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents
under this section—

(1) that material or activity is infringing, or

(2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or
misidentification,

shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred
by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s
authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such
misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such
misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity
claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to
disable access to it.

\---

This has been tested in Online Policy Group v. Diebold, Inc. - and Diebold
lost and had to pay $125,000 to Online Policy Group.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Policy_Group_v._Diebold...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Policy_Group_v._Diebold,_Inc).

~~~
ubernostrum
The Diebold case is basically the only time anyone's ever made that work,
though, because the bar for it is so high. It's not enough to prove "they made
a complaint and it turned out it wasn't their stuff". You have to prove that
they _knew_ , which is next to impossible unless you basically have a
notarized statement from them saying "Yes, I was aware it was wrong and did it
anyway", and the payout is a pittance.

Meanwhile, the idea that DMCA notices carry some sort of super-strict ruinous
penalty for errors remains completely false. And YouTube -- as I said in the
original comment -- uses a separate takedown system governed by their terms of
service, so the whole thing is moot.

~~~
chris_wot
Well, that's not actually what you said. You actually said:

> _in a DMCA takedown notice the only thing asserted under penalty of perjury
> is that you are, or are authorized to act on behalf of, a copyright holder_

And the Diebold case didn't have anyone with a notarized statement that you
speak about. I don't think what you are saying is necessarily supported by the
facts of that case.

~~~
ubernostrum
It is true that the only thing asserted under penalty of perjury in a DMCA
notice is that you are or are authorized to act on behalf of a copyright
holder. The rest of the notice is _not_ made under penalty of perjury.

The notarized statement comment was hyperbole to make a point about how hard
it is to prove, sufficiently for a court, that someone "knowingly" and
"materially" misrepresented information in a DMCA notice in order to trigger
512(f). In the Diebold case you had the perfect storm, because Diebold's
lawyers basically _admitted to the court_ that they knew they were using the
DMCA not for copyright enforcement but to take down something that embarrassed
them. That is literally what it took to get a judge to nail someone for DMCA
abuse.

And even then: the judge only found that they knowingly/materially
misrepresented for a subset of the material, and they only paid out $125k,
which is literally _nothing_ to a company of Diebold's size.

Meanwhile, DMCA abuse remains routine and rampant today, in large part because
it's next to impossible to get someone penalized for it.

------
jboggan
This video of the ending of Star Wars without John Williams' music got a
copyright claim from the rightsholder to Williams' score [edited from original
post, not actually claimed by Williams himself]. The little bit of music at
the beginning is from Gustav Holst and is public domain.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj-
GZJhfBmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj-GZJhfBmI)

edit for more context: [https://www.wired.com/story/the-star-wars-video-that-
baffled...](https://www.wired.com/story/the-star-wars-video-that-baffled-
youtubes-copyright-cops/)

~~~
jcoffland
John Williams stole (borrowed) a lot of music from Gustav Holst and many
others. He's famous for it. Specifically parts of Holst's _The Planets_. Does
this sound familiar?:
[https://youtu.be/Isic2Z2e2xs?t=4m24s](https://youtu.be/Isic2Z2e2xs?t=4m24s)

~~~
meri_dian
There's a long history - I suppose it's a tradition - of composers leaning on
one another for inspiration. Sometimes this takes the form of them outright
copying another's melody and elaborating upon it.

Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Bach, Mendelssohn, Brahms etc. all did this. Put in
this context what Williams has done in borrowing from Holst and others isn't
scandalous whatsoever and shouldn't be thought of as such.

~~~
visarga
Just let me fix a few words, for science:

> There's a long history - I suppose it's a tradition - of composers _claiming
> copyright on someone else 's work and sending DMCA takedowns automatically_

That's how absurd it has become.

------
jimrandomh
Every so often, I come across an old blog post or other content with a YouTube
video embedded in it. About half the time, it'll have been taken down by a
false-positive copyright claim. It seems that YouTube videos can't be
permanent, only ephemeral; as a long-term hosting service it simply doesn't
function.

~~~
Digital-Citizen
Yet another reason not to host on YouTube. Here are some more reasons not to
host with YouTube:

\- some YouTube videos use nonfree Javascript to implement DRM.
[https://notabug.org/GPast/avideo/](https://notabug.org/GPast/avideo/) is a
youtube-dl variant that avoids running that JS code. notabug.org seems to be
down as I type this, perhaps it will return later. \- should you wish to allow
your video to be downloaded, YouTube sets up needless barriers to allow
downloads. \- hosting with YouTube means you and your users are being tracked
by Google (which owns YouTube). \- YouTube doesn't make it clear how to
download the precise video file the submitter uploaded; users get rewritten
videos instead. \- YouTube only hosts videos, not arbitrary kinds of other
media.

All of these problems are easily solved: use the Internet Archive (at
[https://archive.org/](https://archive.org/)) and your own hosting instead of
YouTube. IA offers a download URL which is static and will redirect to your
uploaded data. You can use this URL in an HTML5 video or audio element to
embed the data in a webpage (again, no JS needed). IA will (by default)
rewrite certain kinds of files, but your original uploaded file is also
available and machine-determinable (via an XML file that clearly indicates
which is the source file and which are derivative files). IA can be used fully
without JS turned on (no need to worry about executing code to get files). IA
hosting is gratis (zero cost), as is YouTube.

I have no evidence which indicates IA tracks users akin to how Google does.

I encourage you to consider hosting your media with the Internet Archive and
your own website instead of YouTube.

~~~
loup-vaillant
How about distributing one's videos through BitTorrent instead? Should scale
pretty well. Granted, viewing the video becomes a hassle. But it works.

~~~
progval
Or with PeerTube, which makes videos available in the browser AND uses a
bittorrent-like protocol:
[https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube)

------
Keverw
I think automatic systems like Content ID should be illegal. Plus I doubt a
robot can consider things like fair use. Well maybe they could do some machine
learning of past cases where videos were complained about but ended up being
fair use...

I think a real human should have to spend all day finding content and manually
doing the work. Kinda like how some states have banned red light cams.
Technology is not perfect. I heard of those cams going off even when it's
legal to turn on right. A real human swearing under penalty of perjury or
giving sworn testimony seems perfect for accountability.

At least the money is held until you do a dispute now with Youtube. I know if
you license royalty free music - the system will even flag it. I know someone
personally who had that problem. I guess the systems aren't linked so no idea
you had a license but annoying. So say you made a video for a client and
uploaded it, and embedded to their website. Even though you didn't monetize
it, your client website now has ads for their competitor as they'll allow the
video to stay up but with ads where the money goes to whoever claimed it! I
guess the way to protect that is to upload as unpublished or unlisted then
dispute it before publishing it when you already purchased a license.

~~~
flukus
It shouldn't be illegal, google can do what the want on their hardware. The
problem is that everyone has centralized to googles hardware, and issues like
this will happen for as long as that remains unchanged.

We need a path back to the distributed web where people upload videos to a
server they own and control. Instead of IoT juicers we need "video
broadcasting in a box" solutions.

~~~
Keverw
Yeah... It seems like some search engine for some decentralized video might
work.

Some search engine indexing, videos hosted on independent sites(regular http),
favorites/playlists can be stored in something like Dropbox privately or
shared.

Probably could be just a video tag with additional elements and builtin
functionality.

Some advertising spec too... Sites can either implement third party ads or
host their own ads for example. So instead of being told your content isn't
advertiser friendly. You could run your own ad server that's in the video
metadata or use a external one agreeing to their terms for video content. So
total freedom to go out and get your own advertisers or signup for a service
and plugin a URL and they get to handle that part.

So say you just want to make videos, not doing controversial or political
stuff and not really into being a sales person just use this ad network... or
maybe you are a very political channel, point to this other ad network that
targets that audience. Maybe you are a non-profit, run your own ad server with
your own in-house fundraising ads.

Not sure how you'd go about handling sensitive stuff some people might not
want to see, maybe at the search engine part using AI/machine learning but
also allow sites to indicate certain things within the spec itself...
Decentralizing the search part even better.

But ideally you'd have a consistent UI sorta like YouTube but all content is
fetched from servers like a web browser, you'd have subscriptions, sorta like
RSS, etc...

But I guess subscribers counts and commenting/liking would need to be apart of
it too. Maybe use somthing like OpenID. but sites that want to host videos
apart of it would provide certain metadata and some callback urls to post to
for like comments, getting commentings, likes, etc.

Just thinking out loud... One of the benefits of YouTube is discovery and
organizing your watch later, subscribers, etc. So some sort of formal spec for
a video app would make sense.

Searching random sites, signup and comment and have like 10 sites to check for
new videos would get annoying.

~~~
progval
You may be interested in PeerTube:
[https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube)

------
djaychela
I've had a number of claims against tracks I've made where the basis of the
claim is a sample I've used - not a sample of a commercial track, but one from
a sample library that I've bought and used legitimately, but where said sample
has been used and published on YouTube before the track I've done. There
seemed to be no worthwhile way of contesting it as responses seemed to go
nowhere. It's not a big issue for me as there's no income from YouTube for us,
but I'm sure there are cases where it is a significant problem for a
legitimate user.

~~~
memsom
I had a copyright claim once on songs my band wrote and performed. Original
material. Our original material. None of which vaguely sounded like any one
else's songs. The person I had to talk to to resolve the issue was very
difficult to deal with and we went round in circles until I managed to prove
we owned the copyright and publishing on our _own_ material.

------
cwkoss
1\. Assemble a botnet

2\. Automatically download and reupload popular videos, with extremely subtle
modifications.

3\. File automated takedown notices against each copied (popular) video

4\. Destroy youtube's ad ecosystem for cheap

~~~
zitterbewegung
Or, use an adversarial DNN to transform videos into ones that will get
copyright claims. Extra points if you figure out to how to have it using
reinforcement learning to improve itself.

~~~
myhf
Demonstrating that the system is broken is not an effective strategy. It is
impossible to get someone to understand a fact when their salary depends on
not understanding it.

~~~
Spivak
That's like saying that grocery stores are broken because you can just print
out bar codes and use them at the self-checkout. Stores have enough security
for their needs and balance it with customer convenience. I don't think even
Google would claim that their system is perfect, only that it's currently good
enough to stave off ravenous lawyers and keep them from losing safe harbor.

------
chanandler_bong
What I don't get is how when I post a 15 second video that has some music in
the background at a coffee shop and I get a YouTube-bot telling me I have
violated copyright but then bazillions of others post full HD rips of
Hollywood movies and commercial albums.

~~~
Cthulhu_
They might post them but the money goes to the rights holder, which I guess is
why they'll tolerate it.

------
drawkbox
Youtube copyright claim system and ContentID shows us a glimpse of what
happens when unchecked AI in many cases reports and handles the report by just
removing it.

It can be cold and inhuman even if it is a needed service, very vogon-like.

------
laci27
YouTube copyright claim system needs to add penalties for false claims with
the same banning system that they have in place for youtubers with too many
take down claims. This is just insanse...

------
anonemouse145
YouTube grants all monetization to the claimant instantly, for the entire
period of the claim, even if it's bunk.

So take an algorithm that can flag a million YouTube videos, and maybe you
steal $10,000 of monetization over cost in a few days. Nobody can afford to
sue you hard on the false positives because you're mostly only hitting "nice
guys" who will just change the sound and reupload. So you up the algorithm to
be more profitable, wash, rinse, repeat.

That's why this is really happening.

------
MikeBVaughn
I'm surprised there isn't a claim from John Cage's estate.

~~~
erric
That would be silence, or, the absence of music; not white noise. Seriously
this is insane that there is a claim against this.

~~~
stcredzero
If you amplify almost any recording enough, you can get some form of noise.
Any white noise of a sufficient duration is effectively a recording of that
one John Cage piece.

~~~
brooklyn_ashey
no, it isn't, because that piece is unconscious- it is meant to be what
happens without any intention. A crank up to noise is a definite intention of
the performer. In 4'33", the performer does nothing but open the score and the
keyboard, mark movements, and bow at the end.

~~~
stcredzero
If you go through enough generations of analog copies of a recording of that
performance, you get 4'33" of noise.

------
bwang29
It would be silly if actual human file these claims so the claims are very
likely to be filed by some algorithm, which somehow found matching pattern in
the noise.

Maybe:

1) Some copyrighted music has a period of noise that closely matched the
segment of noise of the video.

2) There is adversarial pattern in the noise in the video that confused the
hunting algorithm.

~~~
stordoff
Three of the claims are for other white noise recordings. It's arguably not
even an algorithmic mistake, but a result of someone claiming they have rights
over a recording of white noise.

~~~
theoh
What's wrong with copyrighting a particular concrete example of white noise? A
particular string of randomly generated bits? The fact that an algorithm just
hears generic white noise is the algorithm's problem.

~~~
dboreham
What's wrong is that copyright doesn't work that way:

"must have been created independently and contain a sufficient amount of
creativity"

from :
[https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf](https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf)

US copyright of course, ymmv but I doubt other countries are going to be more
likely to allow white noise / PN sequences.

~~~
taneq
How do they define "creativity"? Because surely, a specific sample of properly
random white noise would have maximum density of unique information (useful or
not - but then is a song "useful"? Where's the line?)

~~~
gh02t
It's not a precise standard, the exact boundaries of "creativity" would be
left up to a judge to decide in a case where it was truly ambiguous. I'm
pretty sure that this specific case would count as a minor modification to a
work in the public domain, which does not qualify.

[https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-
copyr...](https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-
copyrightable-works/creativity-requirement/)

~~~
taneq
Yeah, that was kind of my point. Including non-precise words in a legal
document is like saying "a wizard did it".

~~~
xg15
Using deliberately undefined or "non-precise" words is a core concept in legal
documents. It provides leeway and "escape hatches" where humans can decide if
a law actually makes sense in a specific case. This is why we are talking
about "spirit" vs "letter" of the law.

------
mncolinlee
I had the same problem happen years ago with video using a song that's way out
of copyright and already adjudicated in courts as being in the commons. I
think most use automated systems to attempt to claim copyrights over your
video. At the time, it was very hard to contest claims.

~~~
user5994461
While a lyrics or a melody might be public, it doesn't mean the song is.

~~~
loopbit
While a song might be public, it doesn't mean that a specific recording of the
song is.

The owners of the rights to the recording can only exercise rights over their
recording, not on the song itself.

Sorry to nitpick, but if we are going to talk about legal issues let's, at
least, be precise.

~~~
user5994461
Yes, that's what I meant.

------
excitom
I recorded a video once and added ocean wave sounds to it. I googled "ocean
wave sounds" and used part of someone's recording of the ocean. When I posted
it to Facebook it got taken down for copyright infringement.

I appealed and they put it back, so there's that.

~~~
newman8r
IMO that actually would be a legitimate case of copyright infringement (not
that I'm a proponent of it) - I'm surprised you were able to get it put back.

~~~
poizan42
There needs to be an element of creativity for a work to be copyrightable in
the US. If it's just the same sound as you would hear from going to a beach on
any windy day then it may be hard to argue that there is any creativity to it.

~~~
newman8r
An audio professional would probably argue that there's a level of creativity
required to create and edit such a recording for commercial use, but I'm no
expert on the subject so you may be right.

------
m3kw9
Just imagine if they all claim each others videos lol

~~~
krapp
Jim Sterling adds multiple instances of copyright infringing material to some
his videos to take advantage of a similar effect[0].

[0][http://www.thejimquisition.com/copyright-deadlock-the-
jimqui...](http://www.thejimquisition.com/copyright-deadlock-the-
jimquisition/)

------
jftuga
Ridiculous

~~~
vkou
All of these claims have been filed under penalty of perjury.

There has to be a reason for why not a single copyright troll has been
prosecuted for it.

~~~
mikekchar
On my youtube channel I use Kimiko Ishizaka's open source bach recordings
(under CC0) as background music. I got copyright claims every single time
(from the same trolls -- forget their name). Eventually, when replying I got
the idea to say, "You have made a claim on the same recordings for every
single one of my videos. You have subsequently relinquished the claim when you
discovered that I had a license to use this music. Given that you know that I
have a valid license, you seem to be acting in bad faith. Please do not flag
my videos again".

And, you know what? It seems to have worked. They never flagged me again.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Write a letter to your state DA asking them to pursue barratry charges against
the lawfirm.

~~~
mikekchar
Unfortunately (?) neither I nor the company claiming infringement are in the
US. I think the reason they actually gave up is not for legal reasons, but
because they have to abide by Youtube's terms of service in order to make
claims. If Youtube kicks them out, they lose their revenue stream, so
potentially serious for them.

~~~
Applejinx
I have a video of my own noise generator audio plugin. It's repeatedly been
copyright struck by somebody who's put white noise into YouTube's ContentID.
Every time I notice this pop up again I dispute the claim and they give up.

They're not in the US. I think they were East German? This is not new, I'm
sure it's literally the same people.

------
tripzilch
A common misunderstanding: There is no formal/legal claim of infringement
being made anywhere in the ContentID process, it's just the automated process
YouTube uses to decide whether or not to take down a video.

Any formal/legal claims of infringement should be made by the right-holders
industry towards _YouTube_ (which YouTube _really_ wants to avoid) not the
uploader. The DCMA was made to facilitate this, but for a huge platform such
as YouTube it just falls short. Here's the important part, let it sink in very
clearly:

ContentID is a _deal_ that YouTube made, demanded by the larger players in the
right-holders industry that goes (something) like: IF the big right-holders
can easily make large amounts of claims, and YouTube provides some sort of ML
detecting filter to scan for possible infringements, and when flagged the
ContentID process will handle these cases _such and such_ , THEN the big
right-holder industry people won't file gigantic claims of infringements and
take down requests to YouTube.

From the perspective of the little uploader, no courts, claims or legal things
are involved. You have no legal relation with the right-holders when YouTube
takes down your vid for infringement. You can't sue YouTube for taking down
your vid since as a US corporation they have every right to take down any
video for whatever reason (and TOS, but mostly because big corporations just
get to do whatever). And that reason is mainly: Whatever keeps the big right-
holders happy.

YouTube is first and foremost interested in keeping the big right-holders
happy, and of course keeping their advertisers happy. That's it. They're not
interested in being fair or even ethical (as the recent Logan Paul drama has
shown us--considering that YouTube's trending videos are hand-picked by humans
...).

ContentID is not at ALL about YouTube dealing with copyright infringement _in
general_. If you write, perform and record an original song with your band and
upload it, ContentID is not going to protect you. It's just there to help the
big players scan for their own stuff and then flag whatever. If they
accidentally flag the wrong thing, original content or even the actual
original sample (if it's not licensed to the big right-holders) that was used
in a newer big right-holder licensed work, then it's going to get removed. A
false positive is only a very tiny little "oops" for YouTube, they don't
really care. The dispute thingy is just a pacifier.

They have literally zero reason to reduce their false positive rate. The
software works; the big right holders are happy.

------
z3t4
Youtube is about taking culture and adding your own touch to it. Mostly fair
use. This copyright thing is just as stupid as software patents.

------
BrandoElFollito
I do not really understand what the problem is about (I am not a lawyer) : why
not simply respond "sue me" and request 10 M dollars of prejudice for false
accusations?

The next copyright claim should be more careful, I guess

------
Iv
To be fair, the copyrights claims are from other videos containing white
noise. An algorithm that matches two white noise audio by claiming they
contain the same information is doing its job pretty well.

------
Double_a_92
Maybe the white noise messes up the AI trying to find songs in it...

------
stevenroose
There really should be penalties for filing an incorrect complaint.

------
SubiculumCode
It would be nice to see a timeseries correlation.

------
betolink
Have you guys listened to Justin Bieber samplings? I bet he is the one
claiming copyrights for all that white noise.

------
djsumdog
The edge case to this classification problem is quite literally noise. If you
filter out noise, you're kinda in a pickle ... a Pickle Rick! ... I'll let
myself out..

