The Verge: How we built a copyright strike

[D13H4RD]

YouTube's copyright system has been an absolute shithole for a long time now. I seriously doubt YouTube even cares since they seem more interested in promoting clickbait, low-quality nonsense due to advertising revenue than protecting some of their major assets from abuse of the very systems that they have put in place.

 

And Vox Media, we've largely moved on from this fiasco, but you just had to bring it back into the spotlight, did you? It's a wonder why we have classified you as scum, and will continue to do so.

[Curufinwe_wins]

8 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

YouTube's copyright system has been an absolute shithole for a long time now. I seriously doubt YouTube even cares since they seem more interested in promoting clickbait, low-quality nonsense due to advertising revenue than protecting some of their major assets from abuse of the very systems that they have put in place.

 

And Vox Media, we've largely moved on from this fiasco, but you just had to bring it back into the spotlight, did you? It's a wonder why we have classified you as scum, and will continue to do so.

People do realize that youtube's copyright system is a direct reflection of industry and governmental pressure to make dramatically faster and harsher penalties over the clusterfuck that is DCMA, right?

 

Youtube gives 0 fucks of its own volition if people upload illegal/inflammatory shit, as evidenced quite clearly by how hard governments and advertisers have been trying to bend their arms to remove stuff like hate speech or whatever.

 

Hate the game.

 

from the other relevant topic here:

Quote

Context is ludicrously hard for automated systems to discover, but corporations,  governments and copyright holders want magically instant responses, which effectively requires automated systems for these things, and google only knows how ludicrously long the backlog of appealed cases are. 

 

Not trying to give an excuse, but it's more of a reality check. SJ and PC censorship is demonstatively against the basic monetization principles of these companies. They wouldn't bother if other groups weren't trying to force them to do so. So let's not try to pretend like youtube or FB are particularly pro-censorship at the same time 'the powers that be' go out of their way to try to criticize and force those companies to combat the 'extremism or piracy or whatever else they object to'. 

 

[mr moose]

7 hours ago, leadeater said:

Correct but legally what is the argument you are going to use? Breach of contract? I agree there should be some kind of legal challenge to Youtube about their process as it does actually effect businesses and their operation, in effect they are acting as a judicial system with final say over all matters so maybe you could argue they are acting beyond the legal capacity they should be allowed to.

 

I don't know what they would use, hence why I said earlier that surely a lawyer has looked into this.  I just haven't seen any yet. 

 

Personally I wouldn't be surprised if because they have monetized the whole system that they are no longer entitled to the "internet service" status and would be legally considered a publisher.  You know what would happen to a book publisher if they published a book that turned out to be word for word the same as "gone with the wind"?    I wouldn't be at all surprised if it gets a lot more messy before it gets any better.

[Emberstone]

 

I think it's back boys.

[Spotty]

9 minutes ago, Emberstone said:

I think it's back boys.

Youtube isn't done fucking him over just yet. Video is stuck at 360p

 

[Beerbuddy]

Verge is almost as bad as Buzzfeed... I was in an argument with some guy yesterday about how Apple rips people off and he was trying to tell me that he knows more than me because he worked at an Apple store and now is a journalist for Verge...  It was a public forum on FB so I bit my tongue... But all I could think about was that awful Verge PC build video and how funny it was he was trying to say being a journalist for Verge makes him credible about anything tech.  Verge should just go away.

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

People do realize that youtube's copyright system is a direct reflection of industry and governmental pressure to make dramatically faster and harsher penalties over the clusterfuck that is DCMA, right?

 

Youtube gives 0 fucks of its own volition if people upload illegal/inflammatory shit, as evidenced quite clearly by how hard governments and advertisers have been trying to bend their arms to remove stuff like hate speech or whatever.

 

Hate the game.

 

from the other relevant topic here:

 

Sure Youtube can give zero fucks. But creators do. And Youtube without creators is nothing. It'll come to a point when people will simply stop doing anything on Youtube and platform will collapse onto itself. No content creators, no displaying of ads, no revenue, Google will go in full panic mode only when it'll already be too late. When they could solve this dumpsterfire years ago, because this shit isn't new, it just got really really bad recently.

[cmusic52]

1 hour ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

People do realize that youtube's copyright system is a direct reflection of industry and governmental pressure to make dramatically faster and harsher penalties over the clusterfuck that is DCMA, right?

granted the only reason the Government pressures youtube is because of lobbyists pressuring the government, which brings the circle back to the large corporations trying to bully small creators

[SpaceGhostC2C]

Hey, Verge, Barbara says hi!
 

Spoiler

 

And Linus thought it made sense SIs woudn't want to block Secret Shopper... It takes one unwitting man in the wrong position, and apparently that can happen in companies of all sizes...

[cmusic52]

1 minute ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

And Linus thought it made sense SIs woudn't want to block Secret Shopper

Granted I don't think it works half as well trying to Copyright Strike into silence a channel of a 1.3mil subscribers as it does for a channel of 8.2mil+ subscribers

[Taf the Ghost]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

 

I don't know what they would use, hence why I said earlier that surely a lawyer has looked into this.  I just haven't seen any yet. 

 

Personally I wouldn't be surprised if because they have monetized the whole system that they are no longer entitled to the "internet service" status and would be legally considered a publisher.  You know what would happen to a book publisher if they published a book that turned out to be word for word the same as "gone with the wind"?    I wouldn't be at all surprised if it gets a lot more messy before it gets any better.

YouTube itself exists in with a Sword of Damocles over it. Even with ContentID, YouTube is making money off the copyrighted material of both the RIAA and MPAA companies. This is why ContentID, Vevo and a lot of other things happened with YouTube. If anyone was a serious threat to YouTube's position in a Western country, they'd find out really fast they simply will not be allowed to exist.

 

The Ad-pocalypse has to be viewed in this light, as well. That was really some of the big media companies yanking on a bunch of chains to prevent YouTube from eating up too much of the Advertising Revenue market. YouTube gets allowed to exist because Google is one of the world's most powerful spy agencies, but that doesn't mean they get to trample on the territory of other groups that can end YouTube via litigation. YouTube is most definitely a "publisher", in the current legal sense, without any of the protections that other platforms on the Internet get, thus it is in flagrant violation of the copyrights of others and general copyright law. However, it isn't necessarily "profitable" to Viacom to kill YouTube. YouTube is especially happy to "Trend" anything that Viacom or Comcast companies are putting out.

 

This doesn't mean YouTube isn't one of the worst managed major companies in the USA, because it is, but there are certain approaches they will take that have nothing to do with them being stupid or worthless. They let this type of stuff happen with ContentID and Strikes because it serves their long-term interests, but just not in the way that they'll ever say.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Spotty said:

Youtube isn't done fucking him over just yet. Video is stuck at 360p

Finding the real crime in all of this, 360p!

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Sure Youtube can give zero fucks. But creators do. And Youtube without creators is nothing. It'll come to a point when people will simply stop doing anything on Youtube and platform will collapse onto itself. No content creators, no displaying of ads, no revenue, Google will go in full panic mode only when it'll already be too late. When they could solve this dumpsterfire years ago, because this shit isn't new, it just got really really bad recently.

If only there was another platform creators could use to float their ideas to viewers through the clouds that is the internet, some sort of floaty plane thing.

[Spotty]

https://twitter.com/bitwitkyle/status/1095941247124963331

 

 

For those who wish to watch Bitwits video, here it is.

[RejZoR]

39 minutes ago, leadeater said:

If only there was another platform creators could use to float their ideas to viewers through the clouds that is the internet, some sort of floaty plane thing.

Are you shilling something here

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Sure Youtube can give zero fucks. But creators do. And Youtube without creators is nothing. It'll come to a point when people will simply stop doing anything on Youtube and platform will collapse onto itself. No content creators, no displaying of ads, no revenue, Google will go in full panic mode only when it'll already be too late. When they could solve this dumpsterfire years ago, because this shit isn't new, it just got really really bad recently.

The problem is that Youtube is essentially too big to fail at this point. Making another service which can rival it is unfeasible. And if some platform were to ever get even close to the same size, it would swiftly be put into the same position Youtube is in today.

 

Youtube is in a tough situation because they have to appease the companies actually giving them money to fund the platform, and at the same time they have to appease their content creators which usually wants the exact opposite of the advertisers.

 

 

Advertiser: We want only things we approve of to be on your platform, or else you won't get any money.

Users: We want more freedom to do whatever we want on our platform (or else we won't give you any content).

 

The part in parenthesis is not actually being said right now, which is why there is only one logical and practical choice for Youtube, to implement exactly the changes the big players (advertisers and companies like Disney, Fox, Viacom, etc) to implement.

 

 

This entire copyright system is actually a consequence of a number of lawsuits filed against Youtube from the likes of Viacom and English Premier League for allowing users to upload copyrighted material. The entire Viacom case was a shit show and if there had been justice in this world Viacom should not have been allowed to exist anymore.

 

Fun fact about the Viacom case, Viacom demanded, and the court ruled that Youtube had to hand over the watch habits of all Youtube users to Viacom. Not just the ones who had watched some specific clips. The entire watch habits of every single user on the site, which included things such as watch history, username, IP addresses, etc. Luckily for us Google fought and managed to get the court to agree that the data should be anonymized before handed over to Viacom.

 

Here is another fun fact about the Viacom case:

Quote

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube. Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Spotty said:

"they need to start manually reviewing copyright strike claims or letting creators dispute the claim *before* any disciplinary action is taken to avoid all this madness"

https://twitter.com/bitwitkyle/status/1095941247124963331

That is impossible. The problem is that the DMCA is horrendously broken.

 

Google gets about 2 million DMCA takedown notices EVERY DAY. That translates to about 23 notices EVERY SECOND, 24 hours a day.

 

According to the DMCA, any online service provider has to promptly block access to alleged infringing material when they receive a notification. Failure to do so is essentially the same as assisting in copyright infringement, which Google has been sued for BILLIONS of dollars for in the past.

Google could be sued for billions of dollars if they merely stopped checking DMCA notifications for a day or so. Couple that with the fact that they get over 2 million notices a day, and you quickly see the problem.

 

The DMCA and automation of copyright notices has put them in a position where they are slaves to copyright holders, even those who have been found in court to deliberately upload their own content using disingenuous tactics, pretending like it wasn't them uploading it, for the sole purpose of suing Google.

 

Some other disturbing facts about the rampant DMCA abuse. Back in 2009 Google said that 57% of all takedown notices were sent by a business targeting a competitor. A theoretical example from me would be that Volkswagen might have sent a DMCA takedown for a Ford ad.

37% of all takedown notices were also found to not be valid. I would not be surprised if this number has dramatically increased in the last 10 years, with the explosive growth of automation systems for this (and we all know how reliable those are... right?).

 

 

What I think should happen, is that a law needs to be passed which makes companies liable for misusing DMCA takedowns. It is already illegal, kind of, but only because the sender commits perjury. A better system, which is probably extremely hard to create would punish those mega mega corporations sending thousands of DMCA takedowns every day with a percentage of their total revenue, and individuals sending out single takedowns with a fixed fee.

The money should be split between defendant, service provider (if one exists) and the US court system.

 

So if PewDiePie gets falsely flagged by, purely hypothetical example, Alinity, Alinity should have to pay a static fine of for example 200 dollars where 100 goes to PewDiePie, 50 goes to Youtube and 50 goes to the US courts. Or if PewDiePie hosted his own content on his own site, he would get 150 dollars and the US court 50 dollars.

 

If Viacom were found to have filed 10000 false copyright claims over a year's period, they might have to pay 1% of their annual revenue, which would be split in a similar fashion.

 

 

The problem with such a system would be:

1) Hard to fine tune the amounts, but they would have to be high enough to actually hurt abusers.

2) It would discourage people who are not sure if someone is breaking their copyright from sending a takedown, which would most likely result in more infringements going around and harming the small creators.

[RejZoR]

@LAwLz

The thing with advertisers is absolute horseshit anyway. Who honestly believes Coca Cola ad played before Alex Jones meant Coca Cola endorses whatever he said? Like, COME ON. That's the level of idiocy like saying Volkswagen ad played before Nazi documentary meant VW supports nazis. But that's their excuse and they keep on running with it. We all know ads before videos are drawn from ad pool and displayed randomly. Advertisers don't give a damn where their videos are played, for as long as they are played to as many people as possible. And on TV no one cries "endorsment", but on Youtube, they do. Allegedly. I still think it's bullshit excuse to have leverage over people when they feel like it and just deny them income with an excuse they aren't "advertiser friendly".

[Stefan Payne]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

The problem is that Youtube is essentially too big to fail at this point.

people thought the same about Yahoo and myspace at one point

Or "BIG BLUE" aka IBM...

[Stefan Payne]

3 hours ago, Spotty said:

https://twitter.com/bitwitkyle/status/1095941247124963331

I was wondering why they did it. Seemed strange to me at first.

But then I remembered that there was this controversy about a name registraton from a channel that does a certain kind of videos.

And then I looked at that Channel. ANd they have 18 Million Subs...

 

So in other words, its one of the core things where Youtube might actually make money on, that is in danger because of the Vox/Verge Copyright strike to a "react to" Video. Because that's essentially it.

So if they wouldn't have backed him, the snowball would be rolling and those react things would be taken down one by one.

 

So in other News:
its about a whole bunch of money. 

Possibly 20% of the Revenue of Youtube. Maybe even more than that!

As most of the stuff is kinda React and Commenting on.

 

The Big Hollywood companys might be too big for Google/Youtube right now.

But the Verge/VOX might be small enough so that Youtube can tell them to take a hike.

 

 

[conspiracy mode off].

[EldritchMoose]

4 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Who honestly believes Coca Cola ad played before Alex Jones meant Coca Cola endorses whatever he said?

Considering Alex Jones's audience, they may actually be the exception here

 

To be honest, though, the way brand identity works has changed dramatically in the last few years. Brands can be buried if the wrong social media crowd gets offended at any connection to something controversial. We've moved quite far from the time where "no such thing as bad publicity" was accurate.

 

While I don't quite think that the general population would easily associate, say, modern day Hugo Boss with Nazi Germany, companies are notoriously risk-averse, so it doesn't surprise me that they'd rather just take a step away from that spotlight just in case.

[Curufinwe_wins]

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

The problem is that Youtube is essentially too big to fail at this point. Making another service which can rival it is unfeasible. And if some platform were to ever get even close to the same size, it would swiftly be put into the same position Youtube is in today.

 

Youtube is in a tough situation because they have to appease the companies actually giving them money to fund the platform, and at the same time they have to appease their content creators which usually wants the exact opposite of the advertisers.

 

 

Advertiser: We want only things we approve of to be on your platform, or else you won't get any money.

Users: We want more freedom to do whatever we want on our platform (or else we won't give you any content).

 

The part in parenthesis is not actually being said right now, which is why there is only one logical and practical choice for Youtube, to implement exactly the changes the big players (advertisers and companies like Disney, Fox, Viacom, etc) to implement.

 

 

This entire copyright system is actually a consequence of a number of lawsuits filed against Youtube from the likes of Viacom and English Premier League for allowing users to upload copyrighted material. The entire Viacom case was a shit show and if there had been justice in this world Viacom should not have been allowed to exist anymore.

 

Fun fact about the Viacom case, Viacom demanded, and the court ruled that Youtube had to hand over the watch habits of all Youtube users to Viacom. Not just the ones who had watched some specific clips. The entire watch habits of every single user on the site, which included things such as watch history, username, IP addresses, etc. Luckily for us Google fought and managed to get the court to agree that the data should be anonymized before handed over to Viacom.

 

Here is another fun fact about the Viacom case:

 

 

 

That is impossible. The problem is that the DMCA is horrendously broken.

 

Google gets about 2 million DMCA takedown notices EVERY DAY. That translates to about 23 notices EVERY SECOND, 24 hours a day.

 

According to the DMCA, any online service provider has to promptly block access to alleged infringing material when they receive a notification. Failure to do so is essentially the same as assisting in copyright infringement, which Google has been sued for BILLIONS of dollars for in the past.

Google could be sued for billions of dollars if they merely stopped checking DMCA notifications for a day or so. Couple that with the fact that they get over 2 million notices a day, and you quickly see the problem.

 

The DMCA and automation of copyright notices has put them in a position where they are slaves to copyright holders, even those who have been found in court to deliberately upload their own content using disingenuous tactics, pretending like it wasn't them uploading it, for the sole purpose of suing Google.

 

Some other disturbing facts about the rampant DMCA abuse. Back in 2009 Google said that 57% of all takedown notices were sent by a business targeting a competitor. A theoretical example from me would be that Volkswagen might have sent a DMCA takedown for a Ford ad.

37% of all takedown notices were also found to not be valid. I would not be surprised if this number has dramatically increased in the last 10 years, with the explosive growth of automation systems for this (and we all know how reliable those are... right?).

 

 

What I think should happen, is that a law needs to be passed which makes companies liable for misusing DMCA takedowns. It is already illegal, kind of, but only because the sender commits perjury. A better system, which is probably extremely hard to create would punish those mega mega corporations sending thousands of DMCA takedowns every day with a percentage of their total revenue, and individuals sending out single takedowns with a fixed fee.

The money should be split between defendant, service provider (if one exists) and the US court system.

 

So if PewDiePie gets falsely flagged by, purely hypothetical example, Alinity, Alinity should have to pay a static fine of for example 200 dollars where 100 goes to PewDiePie, 50 goes to Youtube and 50 goes to the US courts. Or if PewDiePie hosted his own content on his own site, he would get 150 dollars and the US court 50 dollars.

 

If Viacom were found to have filed 10000 false copyright claims over a year's period, they might have to pay 1% of their annual revenue, which would be split in a similar fashion.

 

 

The problem with such a system would be:

1) Hard to fine tune the amounts, but they would have to be high enough to actually hurt abusers.

2) It would discourage people who are not sure if someone is breaking their copyright from sending a takedown, which would most likely result in more infringements going around and harming the small creators.

Quoting the whole thing because it deserves the second exposure. This. So much this.

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, EldritchMoose said:

Considering Alex Jones's audience, they may actually be the exception here

 

To be honest, though, the way brand identity works has changed dramatically in the last few years. Brands can be buried if the wrong social media crowd gets offended at any connection to something controversial. We've moved quite far from the time where "no such thing as bad publicity" was accurate.

 

While I don't quite think that the general population would easily associate, say, modern day Hugo Boss with Nazi Germany, companies are notoriously risk-averse, so it doesn't surprise me that they'd rather just take a step away from that spotlight just in case.

Yeah, these days you can play safe and only use cars. Just to then get crucified because you used too many white cars because that perpetuates white supremacy and literally makes you a nazi overlord, HITLER HIMSELF! Yeah, it's impossible not to offend anyone these days coz everyone gets offended over most petty shit imaginable.

[ObscureMammal]

 

[WkdPaul]

Been busy these last few weeks, and the week I finally have more time, I come back to this???

 

WTF Vox Media? Seriously, The Verge has MULTIPLE article complaining about the abuse of copyright strikes on YT ... Also, "Streisand effect" much?

[Trik'Stari]

3 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

Been busy these last few weeks, and the week I finally have more time, I come back to this???

 

WTF Vox Media? Seriously, The Verge has MULTIPLE article complaining about the abuse of copyright strikes on YT ... Also, "Streisand effect" much?

I decided to downvote their last 5 videos.

 

Cuz fuck em.