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Game Critic Uses Workaround for YouTube's Copyright System (2016) (kotaku.com)
224 points by CraneWorm on Dec 16, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 79 comments



This video blew up a few days ago on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz14Ul-r63w The author shows how to sort of turn the tables on the copyright abusers by producing an original song (if you could call it that), distributing it through a distributor (1) and then using it in your own video to be able to claim your own video for a 50/50 revenue split with the abuser. Seems slightly related to this one as well. In the end stuff like this goes to show that Youtube's systems are a complete and utter joke, but since Youtube has zero competition, it won't change.

1: The creator used CD Baby, if you're going to do this, I recommend DistroKid, it is about a zillion times better than CD Baby. Even the CD Baby creator endorses DistroKid.


Could you make 99 original songs, and make 99 Content ID claims, and share 99/1 with the abuser?


Interesting math problem would be to make a 30 second audio sequence that could match against the greatest number of ContentId copyright works. Could a deliberate mix be crafted where 100+ different unique songs (not good, presumably purpose built for this 30 second clip) all contain ~20 seconds of the 30 second audio clip and would allow 100 unique claims on the content.


There is a part 2 video where he addresses this: theoretically, yes, practically, you would have to compose 99 original (original/unique enough for ContentID to match them) tracks and include a 20 seconds snippet of each for it to work. He stuck with a single one, because he started using it for his outro. Theoretically he could compose another for the intro and make it 66:33, but after that, I have a feeling the viewers would start dropping off rather quickly.


Or have a really long version of the outro where you get 33 mins to pick which other video to watch


Interesting info but what an annoying video. A good intro, and then an over-the-top montage. Skip to 2:00, ah wait at 2:29 he thanks about his sponsor. At 3:08 the content starts. Of course he rambles too much because I guess he needs to fill 10 minutes for more $$$?


.. or to conform to Wadsworth Law:

> For EVERY youtube video, I always open the video and then immediately punch the slider bar to about 30 percent.

> For example, in this video [referenced video of length 1:42], it should have just started at :40. Everything before :40 was a waste. This holds true for nearly every video in the universe.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/kxfxy/and_so_ends_20_...


Tip: use the keyboard shortcut '3' to jump to 30%


Yes, that's the reason - exactly 10 minutes is a sort of magic number for YouTube, because that's the threshold at which you can place more than one ad on a video and control their placement. Notice how the runtime is 10:02? That's a sure sign that the creator had to stretch their video out.


It is the case that the algorithm seems to favor long videos, so it's kind of unavoidable.


I know it's only a small part of the video, but I think the best part was the fact that he recreated the South Korean bootleg version of his own video just to get that source of profit back.


This is a neat trick. I had already heard about the article's technique, but I like this one better because it at least lets you monetize.


I’m currently working on a new platform in the long form video space, it offers a new take on video other than just what YouTube and Vimeo do. My question is, how willing are people to try something new in this space? Are you?

I’m planning on launching next month and I’m just trying to gauge the market


Vimeo is targeting a specific market, they're not looking for the next Unboxing Therapy or LTT or whoever. Others, like say, BitChute, become filled with all the nutters who've already been deplatformed by YouTube. Dailymotion is covered in adds, and I don't think they really want to cater to people posting anything longer than a few minutes. As someone without cable, I'm happy to try anything, but it might help to get some big names on board. I know @eevblog Dave Jones will happily post anywhere he can.


There is a huge huge hunger for a new platform without all of YouTube's issues. Even today floatplane was launched as a subscription service for each creator which has zero recommending algorithm. I think a lot of the failures of others to get a platform is their lack of commitment to making it a social platform. YouTube in the early days has all sorts of social aspects like a messaging system, create playlists from other people's videos, and rather than just a 'trending' or 'popular' and 'news' tab it had like 20 or more categories of popular where if that category had only small amount of views creators would try to make a video in that category . I'm pretty sure the videos were manually flagged but they worked. Now they still do it but their algorithm flags everything and it just sucks. I'm missing tons and tons of features that no longer exist but it feels like the social part is what made YouTube.


This kind of "gaming" (ha!) the system has been around for a while now - another channel (Internet Comment Ettiquette) had a video called the "Copyright Claim Olympics" which featured a whole bunch of different types of content from many different copyright holders (olympic footage, movie footage, music videos, distorted audio/video, etc. etc. even mixed and dubbed over each other in order to make it even more difficult for content ID) to the tune of "if I can't have my ad revenue for my other videos that were clearly fair use/parody, nobody can have any ad revenue, fuck you Youtube content ID claim abusers!"

Unfortunately it was taken down (probably 20+ copyright holders complaining about a single video forced Youtube to do something about it) but can still be found on Vimeo with a simple Google search.


Yes, that's the exact same trick as Jim Sterling's "Copyright Deadlock".


It actually wasn't taken down. He unlisted it himself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ9bK_mkmu8


Note: story is from 2016. It's been three years, so it's unclear how relevant this story is to the current status of ContentID, copyright identification, and monetization on YouTube.


I regularly follow the relevant creator, he definitely still does this and still occasionally talks about it. From the handful of YouTube creators I follow it seems like the problem has only become worse in intervening years.


If you email the mods using the footer Contact link, they’ll append (2016) to it.


I'm surprised YouTube hasn't killed his account. That would seem to be the obvious next step.


Content ID is such bullshit. Here we are years later and it still doesn't permit fair-use like critique; one of the shown matches is barely 21 seconds in length. How is that a substantial copyright infringement?


The DMCA is the issue, not Content ID. There’s no presumption of innocence if accused of a copyright infringement and it costs nothing to make an accusation. On the other hand, a service provider has to accept the accusation or they can leave the content untouched but then open themselves up to secondary liability. All the while the accused has to certify under penalty of perjury that their content is not infringing (there’s no equivalent for the accuser).

Content ID is a bandaid on the tumor of IP law. Yell at your government not Google for this.


I don't agree that companies should be absolved of blame simply because they're acting in fear of a lawsuit. You are right, the DMCA is the culprit here but equally disgraceful is the sheer cowardice on Google's part. They can afford to fight for their users and techno-utopian ideals but it's far cheaper to employ half-baked technological solutions instead.


So if I understand correctly:

1. Youtube makes money from ads.

2. Jimquisition is funded from Patreon, and despises ads on his content.

3. To resolve this paradox, Jim has found a way to (allegedly) infringe on multiple parties' copyright

4. Youtube's technology doesn't allow multiple monetizers, and therefore in this situation allows none.

If Jim disagrees with the funding stategy of YouTube, why bother with YouTube at all? Is free riding on youtube video distribution that valuable?


His use of others copyrighted content falls under fair use since he's doing reviews. It's YouTube and mega corporations fucking over and taking country the laws. Fair use does not mandate the original copyright owner be paid in anyway.


> It's YouTube and mega corporations fucking over and taking country the laws.

But it's precisely because YouTube is a megacorp attached to another megacorp that Jim can even upload videos without paying for distribution.


Is this relevant? The bastards are constantly changing the terms of our interactions with them, while banking billions and destroying the fabric of human life. They can't also complain that we're not "honoring the spirit" of those terms.


Video hosting is expensive, like really expensive. I started a site (scrim.tv) to try and disrupt YouTube for the reasons that are often expressed in posts like these and I'm pretty convinced at this point that YouTube basically breaks even in terms of profit.


Youtube isn't broken out from Google in their quarterlies/annuals, so outsiders can't easily know. I think the common belief is that YouTube the video service operates at some amount of a loss, supported by other parts of Google. This is justified (by Google the business) on the basis of market share, free video test data, ads, etc. This does make it particularly difficult to compete with in isolation, of course...


Every analysis I have ever seen that says that Youtube is losing money relies on paying commercial T1 provider rates for internet traffic, considering that Google is peered directly with pretty much every single ISP on earth, this titanicly overestimates costs.


If you solve a technology problem and ignore the legal one and it hasn't resulted in a profitable enterprise then capitalism should do its job.


Sure, and Time Warner is currently the only (practical) reason I can access the internet, though I can imagine a better way.


Fair use is fair use. It is the law.

YouTube and these other companies should follow the law.

And I support strategies, such as this one, that forces these companies to follow the law.


Incorrect. Youtube allows his videos to be on the platform without ads, which he does.

The problem is other parties claiming copyright on his videos, placing ads, and getting the payment from those ads.


Read the post you are replying to again, you're not disagreeing with each other.


The parent was insinuating that Youtube required all videos to have ads through 1 and "free riding on Youtube", and Sterling was somehow cheating Youtube by having ad-free videos. This is incorrect, since Youtube allows ad-free videos.

Sterling's problem is with 3rd parties placing ads on his videos through copyright claims, not Youtube themselves placing ads. I'm sure he'd react differently if it was Youtube themselves mandating the ads.


And yet the original post in this subthread says simple "YouTube makes money from ads" and says that Stirling "disagrees" with Youtube's monetization, which is inaccurate. YouTube has a flawed system for allowing third parties to claim infringement, and Stirling is trying to work around the consequences of that system. The original post is misleading, and the post you are replying to points that out.


Why should a company doing copyright trolling on youtube get money from a fair use video? Who's really free riding here?


> Is free riding on youtube video distribution that valuable?

I'd think so. The only reason I ran into him at all was due to YouTube, and I can't help but think that's for the majority of people (minus those who came to him via The Escapist). I don't know how else I would have discovered him, unless we want to rely on convoluted word of mouth.


The problem isn't YouTube per se. The problem is third parties abusing the copyright claiming system to claim what is not theirs. YouTube is only involved because it's their system that allows such abuse.


Interesting but note the article is from 2016.


Great for making your video ad-free. But things have moved on since then, you can now guarantee 50% of the ad revenue.

https://youtu.be/Mz14Ul-r63w


The point is to prevent ads. If you can set the monetization preference to "not allowed" on your own song, then the new trick might work. It seems rather bazaar for 50% ads + no ads = no ads rather than just being taken down. I wouldn't be surprised if this edge case was fixed already and the system just leaned towards take downs. When people used to add copyrighted music to videos at one of my previous companies (2016), YouTube would immediately take the video down. Rarely did they allow it to stay up with monetization.


Saw the headline and knew it'd be Jim. But yeah, this is ancient. Last I'd heard, the old tricks were starting to fall.


IANAL, But doesn't monetizing the video and giving the proceeds to the claimant of the original copyright (nintendo) consitute infringement against the derivatives work author(Jim), assuming that the derivative work falls under fair use? Shouldn't Jim be able to sue both nintendo and youtube?


This falls apart as soon as it encounters the Terms of Service. https://www.youtube.com/static?gl=GB&template=terms

> the Content you submit must not include third-party intellectual property (such as copyrighted material) unless you have permission from that party or are otherwise legally entitled to do so. You are legally responsible for the Content you submit to the Service

> By providing Content to the Service, you grant to YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable licence to use that Content (including to reproduce, distribute, modify, display and perform it) for the purpose of operating, promoting, and improving the Service.

> You also grant each other user of the Service a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to access your Content through the Service, and to use that Content (including to reproduce, distribute, modify, display, and perform it) only as enabled by a feature of the Service.

Once you upload something of yours to Youtube, your only recourse is to take it down again.


A company claiming copyright over fair use would be a violation of the derivatives legal rights and could easily be a lawsuit, YouTube would not be a party to it and it requires the content owner to have the money for a multi-year court case.


Given the terms pcj50 quotes, I wouldn't think you have any grounds to sue anyone. To me it reads you give them a license to do whatever they please with the uploaded content, that would include monetizing the content and giving the proceeds to someone else.


You wouldn't be able to sue YouTube (but you can sue abusers). Abusing DMCA takedowns allows for civil liability (Online Policy Group v. Diebold, Incorporated). The problem is that nobody has bothered suing YouTube DMCA plunderers, because it could get expensive. It wouldn't surprise me if there were a class, so it's surprising that it hasn't happened yet.


My understanding is that copyright holders aren't typically filing DMCA complaints against YouTube. They're using YouTube's internal resolution mechanisms which lack the DMCA's disincentives for abuse.


This is correct.

Additionally (possibly off-topic) people often misunderstand what sort of abuse the DMCA penalizes.

The DMCA prohibits claiming you own the copyright on some work that you don't. It does NOT prohibit claiming that anything infringes that copyright.

For example, pretend I'm Nintendo. I own the copyright on Mario. Someone posts a video of Mario. I claim that they infringe my copyright on Mario. Valid claim. No perjury penalty.

Someone posts a video of Doom. I claim that they infringe my copyright on Mario. Invalid claim. No perjury penalty! (This is the scenario people think is prohibited.)

Someone posts a video of Doom. I claim that they infringe my copyright on Doom. Invalid claim. Perjury penalty! I don't own any copyright to Doom!

It's the latter (rarely seen) case that the DMCA prohibits. AFAIK YouTube also prohibits that in their ToS.


> Someone posts a video of Doom. I claim that they infringe my copyright on Doom. Invalid claim. Perjury penalty! I don't own any copyright to Doom!

Nor is this necessarily perjury. The actual statement you make under penalty of perjury is "that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed." If you believe the statement that you own the copyright on Doom to be true, then it is not perjury, even if you do not actually own it. A case where this would matter a great deal would be the Happy Birthday song--Warner/Chappell believed they owned a copyright that they did not, and thus they could send DMCA takedown notices for people singing that song without fear of perjury (at least, until the courts ruled that they did not own the copyright).


This is factually incorrect.

DMCA claimants are required to consider whether or not actual copyright infringement is occurring, including whether or not the use of copyrighted material is protected by fair use. See Lenz v. Universal Music Corp.

As far as I know no one has litigated this with respect to the perjury penalty specifically, but civil DMCA penalties for filing false DMCA claims absolutely do apply, and it seems likely that if a prosecutor would actually prosecute this criminal ones (perjury) would too.

(The grandparents point that youtubes copyright system these days doesn't really involve the DMCA is still valid).

IANAL


> Someone posts a video of Doom. I claim that they infringe my copyright on Mario. Invalid claim. No perjury penalty! (This is the scenario people think is prohibited.)

It is prohibited in some parts of Continental Europe, but not in USA.


ContentID is not DMCA. It is a voluntary company policy which Youtube implemented to appease the lawyers at Viacom. You can't abuse DMCA if you never submit a DMCA takedown request.


> Shouldn't Jim be able to sue both nintendo and youtube?

Sure. And if he had infinite time and money, he might even win.


I'd like to hear if anyone has a better solution than ContentID considering the scale, laws, and stakeholders involved.

Everybody likes shitting on it but it's the best solution to the problem.


I particularly love hacks like this. Use the system against itself. Open source exemplifies this, but this is yet another example of the technique.


I can't get past this guy's Nazi aesthetic. I know gamers love Nazis but damn at least be subtle about it.


It's played up in jest. He's acting like he's some great authority that everyone worships but in reality he isn't (and he knows it, that's the joke). Jim Sterling is big on showmanship, so much so that he eventually got into being a wrestler on the side despite having terrible back problems.

It's like Jack Black's band Tenacious D claiming to be the greatest band that ever lived, knowing full well that they aren't, but pretending they are is part of their shtick.


Just to play devil's advocate, Tenacious D doesn't use imagery that, say, evokes ISIS.


Naw, Jim is a good guy. Uses inclusive language, I've never heard him say anything racist.

The circles he runs in are all EXTREMELY progressive.

In fact he actively advocates for gay and trans rights.


Jim Sterling is as far from a Nazi as you can get, though.


It`s parody.


What a garbage website. Please autoplay video advertisements for me. That is so helpful. Oh wait, who owns it?

p.s. Jim Spanfeller is an herb: Slate Web results The Media-Sensational Rise and Fall of “Jim Spanfeller Is a Herb”: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/11/jim-spanfeller-i...


Most articles I've seen about the YouTube system are wildly misinformed.

Here's the facts: in almost all cases [0], anyone can easily get rid of any abusive claim by simply disputing it, and filing a counternotice if and when it is elevated to a DMCA notice (copyright strike). The only way for the copyright holder to prevent this is by actually filing a lawsuit, and being as this requires a lawyer to sign off on, is extremely unlikely to happen for frivolous cases. Any article that claims that this can't be easily disputed, or that the burden of proof is on the YouTuber who uploaded the video (outside of the exception discussed below) is wrong, full stop.

[0] there is an exception for a small number of content owners. See https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property/guide-to-yo... and https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/11/casualty-youtubes-cont.... As far as I can tell, the only company known to be part of this is UMG.


There are 2 different ways Copyright-Owners can interact with Content Creators via Youtube:

1. manually file copyright strikes. If a Content creator has 3 of these at once, their entire channel gets taken offline. The dispute resolution mechanism leaves the video in whatever state the copyright owner chose (for possibly 2 months), and they get to keep the revenue from the dispute period, even if they lose (its possible that youtube has changed this).

2. ContentID. Copyright-Owners just give Youtube a copy of your copyrighted works, and tell it if you'd like videos containing your content to be left alone, monetized for your adsense account, or have the video taken down until the offending content is removed. This can be manual, or automatic. Contesting these is basically impossible (its possible that youtube has changed this).


It's possible it worked that way in the past, but it's certainly not the case now.

If disputed within five days, all revenue is escrowed until resolution. And content ID claims can be easily disputed and must be turned into a DMCA claim if not withdrawn. See my post at https://www.reddit.com/r/YoutubeCompendium/comments/aga8yl/h... which goes into extensive detail on the process with sources. See also the eff links in my above comment which has the same information.


This doesn't go into the "three strikes and you're shutdown" which has been used extensively against small creators. For example (and notwithstanding the rest of the issue) how 2k Games knocked the Borderlands 3 leaker (SupMatto) off YouTube, permanently, by making dozens of copyright notices against their channel. There's also the case of Alex Mauer (a song writer) who took several channels offline as a side effect of her legal battle with a videogame creator.

Also, the strikes remain until the disputes are resolved entirely, so even if you dispute everything, you can still be taken offline.

As a side note, the revenue escrow is very new. It took YouTube over a decade (Content ID was introduced in 2007) to come to this fairly reasonable middle ground. Just... don't take a vacation, OK?


3 unopposed strikes and you're shutdown.

>Also, the strikes remain until the disputes are resolved entirely, so even if you dispute everything, you can still be taken offline.

Note that per https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2814000?hl=en

>If your channel is in the YouTube Partner Program, you are eligible for a 7 day courtesy period after 3 copyright strikes before your channel is disabled. During this period, your copyright strikes won’t expire and you won’t be able to upload new videos. Your channel will remain live and you will be able to access it to seek a resolution for your strikes. If your strikes are resolved through a retraction, or we forward your counter notifications and they are ultimately successful, your channel will not be disabled.

The Youtube Partner Program is the system that allows for monetization, so everyone that's making money off Youtube ads is in it. I.e., everyone who's making money off Youtube ads has 7 days from receiving the strikes to file counternotices, and by my reading their account will remain active until those are resolved one way or the other. It says the channel won't be disabled if the notices are successful, implying that it isn't disabled even temporarily.

Regarding your examples, yes, if there's actual legal action then the creator will be in trouble. But that's true regardless of whether they got strikes or filed a counternotice. I stand by my claim above that legal action in obvious fair use cases is "astonishingly rare".


Once again, I would point out that most of these creator friendly policies and programs are quite new. Angry Joe has a video that covers when they were put in place, and most of those occurred in the last year, after a decade of creator-hostile policies.

> you are eligible for a 7 day courtesy

Seven whole days until your channel is closed forever. How generous. See: Vacation, holidays, natural disasters (or PG&E disasters)

Also, why doesn't the copyright claimants also only have a maximum of 7 days to respond? We're talking about Content ID claims here, as a reminder, not DMCA.

> resolved through a retraction, or we forward your counter notifications and they are ultimately successful

Which can take upwards of 30 days per step in the process, no matter how quickly the creator moves. So, your channel is in hiatus for more 30 days. This is an eternity in a business which relies on consistent and frequent content output to remain soluble.

> there's actual legal action then the creator will be in trouble

Which was not the case in either of the situations I posted. The actions only involved YouTube.

> I stand by my claim above that legal action in obvious fair use cases is "astonishingly rare".

Does that really matter, if Content ID claims alone have devastated the channel's viewerbase?

Jim Sterling from the article has many a horror story of spending between 6 months and 2 years fighting copyright claims and associated from corporations and CEO's. So does sidalpha and Angry Joe. Can we really claim in good faith that they're lying by pointing at Google FAQs?


Most of the policies I'm referencing are a few years old. My reddit post I linked is from around a year ago and talks about all these policies except for the 7 day courtesy period, so I don't know exactly when that went into effect.

Anyway, if people are linking articles from 2016 I'm going to point out the current state of the policies.

>Seven whole days until your channel is closed forever. How generous. See: Vacation, holidays, natural disasters (or PG&E disasters)

It's not forever, you can always file a counternotice after it's been taken down. But yes, you should be prepared to defend your business. You want passive income, you can be prepared to check your email at least once a week.

> >Also, why doesn't the copyright claimants also only have a maximum of 7 days to respond? We're talking about Content ID claims here, as a reminder, not DMCA.

That's a fair criticism. Presumably Youtube feels that they need a longer time to satisfy claimants and avoid DMCA filings. Remember, content ID claims do not harm the channel at all, so there's no real rush to get them removed except for getting the ad revenue out of escrow.

>So, your channel is in hiatus for more 30 days.

On my reading you can keep uploading while the counternotice process continues.

>Which was not the case in either of the situations I posted. The actions only involved YouTube.

Looks like Alex Mauer was involved in legal action https://leonardjfrench.com/2017/06/30/imagos-softworks-v-ale.... Not familiar with the other case but looks like it's not obviously fair use to share leaked content, could be wrong.

>Jim Sterling from the article has many a horror story of spending between 6 months and 2 years fighting copyright claims and associated from corporations and CEO's. So does sidalpha and Angry Joe. Can we really claim in good faith that they're lying by pointing at Google FAQs?

What are they claiming? Have they claimed to have submitted a counternotice that was rejected? Can you link me to someone going through a timeline, with dates on what was disputed when, showing that Google FAQs are wrong? Because I've not seen that. I have seen someone posting about getting a counternotice rejected mistakenly and getting it overturned by tweeting at Youtube. And then there's the UMG exception as my first comment noted.

But most horror stories I've seen are people who get a bunch of claims and don't even seem to consider filing a counterclaim, or think it's too risky based in bad info. Or, very very rarely, people who actually get sued.


For people who make their livelihood through YT disputing a claim can be quite dangerous - the brand that you're maintaining (so many subscribers following such and such a name) can easily evaporate if the account is banned - then you need to build it all back up from scratch.

Yea, you're in the right, and yea, that absolutely sucks - but that's the way YT works right now, in part due to the hilariously terrible DMCA but also due to internal policies to minimize costs.

YT doesn't care if you get banned (unless you're going to lose them a bunch of eyeballs) so they're not going to defend you - and how much money do you think most content creators have to throw around in lawsuits against big corporations?


This is incorrect. The account will not be banned if you submit counternotices to all complaints.

You don't need to sue: as I explained, it's the company alleging infringement that needs to sue to keep the claim going. This is astonishingly unlikely for a clear case of fair use.

DMCA is a great policy: it's what permits YouTube to reinstate videos after a counternotice is received. Otherwise they'd just keep everything removed for fear of liability.

I'm currently suing a large company [0] for false IP claims against my Amazon account. Those are under trademark law, not copyright law, and so there's no similar ability to send a counternotice and get the claim reversed. I wish there was a similar DMCA framework applied to trademarks, it's just so much better than the status quo.

Also, YouTube has a fund to defend fair use.

[Case is Thimes Solutions Inc v Tp-link et al if you want to follow it]


[flagged]


What's interesting about the two positions you conflate is that they're actually complete opposites.

The prevailing narrative on Amazon is that it's overrun by infringement and it's too difficult to file complaints and too easy to avoid them.

The prevailing narrative on YouTube is that it's overrun with false infringement complaints and that it's too easy to file complaints and too difficult to dispute.

My position on Amazon is that it's more complicated than the prevailing narrative says, that there's a large amount of abuse of the complaint system. And in fact I've filed a lawsuit against someone who abused the system.

My position on YouTube is that, due to the DMCA shifting the burden of proof, the whole problem is much smaller. There's no provision on Amazon to shift the burden of proof of infringement back to the person alleging infringement, instead, it's guilty until proven innocent. While on YouTube as a direct result of the DMCA, one can force the other side to prove their case.

I would absolutely love if DMCA was extended to trademark infringement allegations. It would make the problems on Amazon shrink by orders of magnitude. You'd no longer have 7 and 8 figure businesses destroyed by some brand that would like their product to sell for more money and is willing to lie to achieve that goal.

Now I don't know how you can take these two positions and lump them together as "pro-corporate". Surely if one is pro corporate then the position I'm arguing against on the other company is pro corporate?


What part of the comment you're replying to do you classify as an opinion, as opposed to a factual claim?


>is there any massive online firm that does any of the horrible things its users have documented it doing?

The multibillion dollar one I'm currently suing for doing horrible documented things to me (Thimes Solutions Inc vs TP-Link et al, also mentioned elsewhere in this thread)

I'm not particularly pro or anti corporate. It depends on the individual case. In these cases, I know a lot about the topics from personal experience or extensive research (re Amazon, extensive personal experience, re Youtube, research: you'll note I linked a post of mine from almost a year ago that is sourced extensively on the topic).

The standard media narrative is laughably wrong in both cases, and, I assume based on Gell-mann amnesia is similarly wrong in cases I don't have extensive knowledge about. Whenever I comment accusing the media or others of getting it wrong, I try to stick to pointing out the facts that can be easily sourced. And yet, I constantly see people apparently determined to back up the prevailing narrative. Even on this thread, someone replied to my post with sources with outdated information (that money is not escrowed and that content ID can't be disputed).

Amazon does plenty of horrible things as well. The most corrupt I've seen is asking sellers for invoices purportedly to prove authenticity and using those to go around the seller and source from their supplier, but there's plenty of others. Here's links to articles I've submitted that are anti-Amazon or at least pointing out issues with or abuse of their system: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21484250, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21127715, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20834972, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20716059, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20615756, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20404674, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19865355, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17999282

But instead of focusing on those documented abuses, all too often I see people pushing conspiracy theories about how Amazon supposedly can't track commingled inventory. And even when I point out that their policy explicitly says otherwise and that it's actually rather trivial to track, people right here on HN have asserted that they must be lying without any evidence.

People have a right to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.




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