> According to YouTube, about 6 percent of removals from July to December 2023 were abusive, along with 10 times more attempted abusive removals
I uploaded the recording of my father's funeral to youtube, to share as an unlisted video. It attracted two copyright claims - for hymns written in the 18th century.
These were claims - not takedown requests - but I didn't think it was appropriate to share a link to the family that was unable to attend in person that would serve them ads. So I instead made the video private and shared it a different way.
But if I don't contest the claims, how can youtube possibly count them as abusive?
YouTube matches a lot of classical music even if it was played by a different person. I mean, I uploaded a recording of myself playing something and it was flagged. But you can just contest it and most of the time it just goes away.
>But if I don't contest the claims, how can youtube possibly count them as abusive?
I'm not saying Alphabet/Google/Youtube did this, but they do things on a massive scale and they could "look into" a reasonable sample of claims all on their own and generate very good statistics. (always good to remember, statistical significance is independent of population size, only dependent on sample size, and rather small samples have a lot of significance, see birthday paradox)
Scale is part of the problem. It actually hurts small businesses.
There is a probably on Google Maps where a marketer will setup a website, a lot of business listings, and get a Google Business Profile for a "local business" which doesn't actually exist. This is all setup to attract unsuspecting customers to share their information which is then sold to local contractors often without informing the customers and/or the local contractors.
It's a practice known as lead gen and/or rank-and-rent.
For an example, you can look up a "business" called Seattle Grease Trap Services on Google Maps. It's part of a network of fake businesses run by marketer in Hawaii. Check the profiles of the people who leave reviews to find some of the others.
Another example is found by searching for deck builders in Chicago. There are several variations of Koval, TOD, CPC, and similar companies. This is all operated by a local marketing company that I managed to identify in less than an hour.
I report these frauds, nothing happens. I escalate. Nothing happens. So I've given up, but I know that these listings cost local businesses actually work. And even though they're against Google guidelines, nothing happens.
I don't think it's right that statistical significance is independent of population. 1 sample out of a population size 1 is plainly more significant than 1 in 100.
It gets a little complicated around old pieces like that.
As usual, I am not a lawyer, consult a legal professional before making any decisions based on this information.
Even though an old work like that is in the public domain, if it was played as a recording, whoever owns the rights to the recording still has a claim to copyright.
But even if it was played live and sung by the attendees, that doesn't necessarily mean the sheet music is public domain. Pianos from hundreds of years ago didn't play exactly like a modern piano, so there may have been an intermediary step where the original piece was modified to work on a modern piano when the sheet music went to print. The modifications to the sheet music could grant the person who sold the book a copyright.
Doesn't necessarily mean the person has a valid claim, but it's not impossible.
The piano thing is basically nonsense, but you're in the right general area.
The copyright may have elapsed on the original composition, but a specific arrangement of a public domain composition may be entitled to copyright protection as a derivative work. For example, the song "Scarborough Fair" pre-dates the modern concept of copyright, but Simon & Garfunkel's performance of the song contains novel elements that are subject to copyright.
> Even though an old work like that is in the public domain, if it was played as a recording, whoever owns the rights to the recording still has a claim to copyright.
I am aware of that. In this case it was played from sheet music by a professional organist.
> The modifications to the sheet music could grant the person who sold the book a copyright.
> Pianos from hundreds of years ago didn't play exactly like a modern piano, so there may have been an intermediary step where the original piece was modified to work on a modern piano when the sheet music went to print.
Even if the claimant's sheet music is used, how do they know that it is their sheet music specifically, and not someone else's transcription of the same music?
They could include "paper towns" in the music, but that's not what these automated systems are looking for.
I can confirm from my experience that Google also automatically scans private videos.
My YouTube account was recently mistakenly suspended; luckily, after a few minutes of panic, Google reinstated it.
I discovered the suspension because my kid wanted to see a video on my TV's YouTube app (LG webOS), which showed an error without further explanation. Trying to find out what happened, I saw an email from YT about my account breaking the ToS with a video. "WTF!? I got pwned!" was my first reaction (followed by panic as YT uses my Google account). But, no, the culprit was a screen recording in 2015 that I did at work to showcase a UI prototype about a key-based VPC setup workflow I was working on. The video was private and unlisted, and I didn't remember it as I did it as a quick capture to share an idea with the team. I hypothesize that the video got flagged because the algorithm confused it with a "crack/hack tutorial."
I was happy to see my account reinstated the same day. However, the whole experience didn't leave good taste: a small algorithm mistake can make your life miserable, and you don't have any human or support to correct it. Also, the "private" moniker in YT videos is an illusion.
Probably YouTube scanned it, found something potentially actionable, automatically informed the representatives. The video was unlisted, which is not private, technically totally accessible to anyone with the link.
Last year I uploaded a recording of the mass for the wedding of my sister's sister in law (the husband had terminal cancer) My homebrew recording was expected days before the official recording.
Youtube decided it was agaisnt community guidelines or something. Religion? Music? Child abuse (the ones spreading flowers)? Who knows. My appeal was successful like 6 months later.
For the time being, upload it to somewhere else than youtube, like pcloud, dailymotion, etc. Youtube is the best techwise, but the legal situation is not stable. Best left for professionals (influencers)
Recordings are copyrightable even if the underlying music is public domain. If you record a performance of Mozart's 40th symphony on your phone, you can be sued for copyright violations by the concert hall. (Don't be surprised that concert halls perform for more than just the attendees.)
To me it seems he didn’t win, he just lived to fight another day. Winning would be if YouTube would treat him as if or better than if this never happened, or if the guy got in trouble, or if it would be harder to do this in the future.
> No one knows how much copyright abuse occurs on YouTube. According to YouTube, about 6 percent of removals from July to December 2023 were abusive, along with 10 times more attempted abusive removals. But if a significant number of users never flag abuse—out of fear they could be sued for contributing to copyright infringement—then the true figure could be higher.
Sounds like the YouTuber won a DMCA fight with YouTube, as well.
If a provider does nothing and they're wrong, they become legally liable for lawsuits. So they default to accepting the request because it is legally safer to do so.
Unfortunately, improving this will probably require changes to the DMCA, and given the general state of politics I would honestly prefer to let sleeping dogs lie on this one.
Dmca is under prejury laws. However content id has no legal protection. You can sue google for false accusation if you want (good luck winning since their terms of service allow this - you would have to also argue the terms of service should not apply)
Some comments are wondering how DCMA claims work and where ads revenue go to. So here is the gist.
The current YouTube DCMA system is broken. Here's how it (mal)functions:
- Creator uploads video, gets ad revenue.
- First valid claimant gets ad revenue.
- Subsequent claimants are ignored, first claimant keeps all revenue.
This leads to a first-come, first-served system where the first claimant wins all, regardless of the actual IP ownership.
Would need to implement proportional revenue allocation and a more transparent with arbitrage claiming process, e.g moderators with subject expertise chiming in.
That's if YouTube wants to fix this. But they are rather worried about a/ being accused of copyright infringement for not taking "some" action and b/ aggravating their profit making distribution agreements with major content owners.
To note there is also an automated id system which applies primarily on audio fingerprints, to a degree visual frames as well.
- Creator uploads video, id system finds matching fingerprint against a large DB of copyrighted content and send ads revenue to whoever owns the match.
Also to note, that applies to largely most audio content at this point. Not much to big films (studios are still onto trying to keep distribution via their own streaming platform, to be platform or preferred partner platform).
We are in this mess, not because YouTube is dragging its feet, but because the IP laws simply aren't reconcilable with the way we create and consume content these days.
A brick needed to build a more fair revenue distribution system could be to revise legislations, e.g banning distribution exclusivity. That would give incentive for innovation, a startup could build an engine that redistribute somewhat fairly.
Ultimately, creators own their arts and can pretty much dictate how their works can be used, and call out their licensing fees. But when intermediaries step in and figure out exclusivity would milk more cash from consumers, it goes all the way to effectively lobby for the laws to remain crooked to their advantage.
> Subsequent claimants are ignored, first claimant keeps all revenue.
Are you sure? I remember Jim Sterling used to show content from multiple companies because multiple claims locked them all out from monetisation. Maybe it's changed since, though, that was years ago.
If the first-come first-serve is true, what prevents a creator from self DMCA-ing all his videos so as to get all the revenue? Possibly by embedding a copyrighted sound that belongs to a company they create just for that purpose.
Perjury charges. They're almost never pursued because of the difficulty of proving what someone knew or didn't know, but DMCA'ing yourself is perjury per se because you cannot infringe your own copyright. The RIAA/MPAA would absolutely lobby to make pursuing those perjury charges a priority.
How does detecting the emails were fake address the DMCA claim on his YouTube channel? It’s my understanding that YouTube won’t intervene in DMCA claims even if the claims were false.
the most important thing here seems to be that the fraudulent claims were retracted by the person who sent them, and the statement from nintendo that the claims were not legitimate.
but it's not true that youtube won't do anything about false claims. both the DMCA and youtube's pseudo-dmca takedown process care that about the identity of the person making the claim. if you claim "i am an authorized agent for Nintendo of America" and that's not true, then they'll throw out your claim. as long as you are who you say you are and are an authorized representative of the company you claim to represent, then google tends to trust you even if you're claiming ownership of content you don't actually own.
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I uploaded the recording of my father's funeral to youtube, to share as an unlisted video. It attracted two copyright claims - for hymns written in the 18th century.
These were claims - not takedown requests - but I didn't think it was appropriate to share a link to the family that was unable to attend in person that would serve them ads. So I instead made the video private and shared it a different way.
But if I don't contest the claims, how can youtube possibly count them as abusive?
YouTube matches a lot of classical music even if it was played by a different person. I mean, I uploaded a recording of myself playing something and it was flagged. But you can just contest it and most of the time it just goes away.
I'm not saying Alphabet/Google/Youtube did this, but they do things on a massive scale and they could "look into" a reasonable sample of claims all on their own and generate very good statistics. (always good to remember, statistical significance is independent of population size, only dependent on sample size, and rather small samples have a lot of significance, see birthday paradox)
There is a probably on Google Maps where a marketer will setup a website, a lot of business listings, and get a Google Business Profile for a "local business" which doesn't actually exist. This is all setup to attract unsuspecting customers to share their information which is then sold to local contractors often without informing the customers and/or the local contractors.
It's a practice known as lead gen and/or rank-and-rent.
For an example, you can look up a "business" called Seattle Grease Trap Services on Google Maps. It's part of a network of fake businesses run by marketer in Hawaii. Check the profiles of the people who leave reviews to find some of the others.
Another example is found by searching for deck builders in Chicago. There are several variations of Koval, TOD, CPC, and similar companies. This is all operated by a local marketing company that I managed to identify in less than an hour.
I report these frauds, nothing happens. I escalate. Nothing happens. So I've given up, but I know that these listings cost local businesses actually work. And even though they're against Google guidelines, nothing happens.
As usual, I am not a lawyer, consult a legal professional before making any decisions based on this information.
Even though an old work like that is in the public domain, if it was played as a recording, whoever owns the rights to the recording still has a claim to copyright.
But even if it was played live and sung by the attendees, that doesn't necessarily mean the sheet music is public domain. Pianos from hundreds of years ago didn't play exactly like a modern piano, so there may have been an intermediary step where the original piece was modified to work on a modern piano when the sheet music went to print. The modifications to the sheet music could grant the person who sold the book a copyright.
Doesn't necessarily mean the person has a valid claim, but it's not impossible.
The copyright may have elapsed on the original composition, but a specific arrangement of a public domain composition may be entitled to copyright protection as a derivative work. For example, the song "Scarborough Fair" pre-dates the modern concept of copyright, but Simon & Garfunkel's performance of the song contains novel elements that are subject to copyright.
(see article 802.6) https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap800/ch800-performing-art...
I am aware of that. In this case it was played from sheet music by a professional organist.
> The modifications to the sheet music could grant the person who sold the book a copyright.
Do you have a citation for this?
This is preposterous.
They could include "paper towns" in the music, but that's not what these automated systems are looking for.
My YouTube account was recently mistakenly suspended; luckily, after a few minutes of panic, Google reinstated it.
I discovered the suspension because my kid wanted to see a video on my TV's YouTube app (LG webOS), which showed an error without further explanation. Trying to find out what happened, I saw an email from YT about my account breaking the ToS with a video. "WTF!? I got pwned!" was my first reaction (followed by panic as YT uses my Google account). But, no, the culprit was a screen recording in 2015 that I did at work to showcase a UI prototype about a key-based VPC setup workflow I was working on. The video was private and unlisted, and I didn't remember it as I did it as a quick capture to share an idea with the team. I hypothesize that the video got flagged because the algorithm confused it with a "crack/hack tutorial."
I was happy to see my account reinstated the same day. However, the whole experience didn't leave good taste: a small algorithm mistake can make your life miserable, and you don't have any human or support to correct it. Also, the "private" moniker in YT videos is an illusion.
Can they just iterate through the URL keys?
Last year I uploaded a recording of the mass for the wedding of my sister's sister in law (the husband had terminal cancer) My homebrew recording was expected days before the official recording.
Youtube decided it was agaisnt community guidelines or something. Religion? Music? Child abuse (the ones spreading flowers)? Who knows. My appeal was successful like 6 months later.
For the time being, upload it to somewhere else than youtube, like pcloud, dailymotion, etc. Youtube is the best techwise, but the legal situation is not stable. Best left for professionals (influencers)
https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap14.html
Recordings are copyrightable even if the underlying music is public domain. If you record a performance of Mozart's 40th symphony on your phone, you can be sued for copyright violations by the concert hall. (Don't be surprised that concert halls perform for more than just the attendees.)
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Deleted Comment
There is not a single note of that song in the video. The opposite in fact, the video was used for the song. With no attribution.
The video/film is from the Australian ABC afternoon show GTK, which way predates the song.
Sounds like the YouTuber won a DMCA fight with YouTube, as well.
Unfortunately, improving this will probably require changes to the DMCA, and given the general state of politics I would honestly prefer to let sleeping dogs lie on this one.
The current YouTube DCMA system is broken. Here's how it (mal)functions:
- Creator uploads video, gets ad revenue.
- First valid claimant gets ad revenue.
- Subsequent claimants are ignored, first claimant keeps all revenue.
This leads to a first-come, first-served system where the first claimant wins all, regardless of the actual IP ownership.
Would need to implement proportional revenue allocation and a more transparent with arbitrage claiming process, e.g moderators with subject expertise chiming in.
That's if YouTube wants to fix this. But they are rather worried about a/ being accused of copyright infringement for not taking "some" action and b/ aggravating their profit making distribution agreements with major content owners.
To note there is also an automated id system which applies primarily on audio fingerprints, to a degree visual frames as well.
- Creator uploads video, id system finds matching fingerprint against a large DB of copyrighted content and send ads revenue to whoever owns the match.
Also to note, that applies to largely most audio content at this point. Not much to big films (studios are still onto trying to keep distribution via their own streaming platform, to be platform or preferred partner platform).
We are in this mess, not because YouTube is dragging its feet, but because the IP laws simply aren't reconcilable with the way we create and consume content these days.
A brick needed to build a more fair revenue distribution system could be to revise legislations, e.g banning distribution exclusivity. That would give incentive for innovation, a startup could build an engine that redistribute somewhat fairly.
Ultimately, creators own their arts and can pretty much dictate how their works can be used, and call out their licensing fees. But when intermediaries step in and figure out exclusivity would milk more cash from consumers, it goes all the way to effectively lobby for the laws to remain crooked to their advantage.
Are you sure? I remember Jim Sterling used to show content from multiple companies because multiple claims locked them all out from monetisation. Maybe it's changed since, though, that was years ago.
but it's not true that youtube won't do anything about false claims. both the DMCA and youtube's pseudo-dmca takedown process care that about the identity of the person making the claim. if you claim "i am an authorized agent for Nintendo of America" and that's not true, then they'll throw out your claim. as long as you are who you say you are and are an authorized representative of the company you claim to represent, then google tends to trust you even if you're claiming ownership of content you don't actually own.