YouTube is fighting alongside Russian media to create a legal precedent against the DMCA.

[Saearrin]

Why I'm Suing YouTube, by Business Casual

Not sure if this can be considered as tech news, so am posting it here, since this video definitely needs more eyeballs watching it.

Depending on future developments of the case, this could be HUGE, not only for YouTube, but for the whole idea of copyright, by mudding even more an already extremely subjective thing as 'fair use'. By RT and YouTube's logic, anyone could for example, take a LTT video, redub it in another language, reupload it to YouTube, and monetize it.

tl,dw: YouTube refuses to follow their own rules about copyright when the defendant is Russian state media, for seemingly monetary reasons, and is going as far as legally siding with the Russians against an American creator to undermine the DMCA.

[LAwLz]

Wow, this guy is annoying as fuck and the video is extremely drawn out.

From what I can tell, because I almost fell asleep when watching the video, here is a TL;DR:

 

1) RT used some of Business Casual's content in one of their videos. (Please note that the content from Business Casual's videos were small parallaxing clips created using public domain photos).

2) Business Casual responded by suing them for copyright infringement.

3) The court seems to have yet to decide whether or not RT's use of Business Casual's content is fair use or not.

4) Meanwhile, Business Casual is suing Youtube because they are not removing RT's video or banning RT's channel. The argument is that by hosting RT's videos that Business Casual claims to be copyright infringements, Youtube is also guilty of copyright infringement. The issue with this argument is that Business Casual agreed to let Youtube host his content when he uploaded the video. Because you know, otherwise Youtube would technically be committing copyright infringement simply by hosting Business Casual's videos on his own channel. When you upload content to Youtube, you allow them to host it. 

5) Youtube tried to get the lawsuit dismissed. Business Casual interprets this as Youtube "siding with Russians" and that they are turning a blind eye to copyright infringement. Another explanation, which I think is more resonable, is that Youtube simply does not want to get sued and would rather wait for the other court case to finish before they have the video removed. Also, Youtube hasn't really done anything wrong in terms of the law. 

Edit: 6) The court seems to have agreed with Youtube that there is no case to be made against them at this time, and the lawsuit against Youtube has been dismissed. The lawsuit between Business Casual and RT is however still going on.

 

 

My way of interpreting this is that Youtube does not want to take a side on whether or not something is copyright infringement when the case is being considered by a court. The situation is also pretty complicated because Business Casual's content was based on public domain photos, that he had cleaned up. If I download a public domain picture of the Mona Lisa and then remove some of the cracks and creases in photoshop, does that mean I own that version of the Mona Lisa? Or are others free to use it because my contribution was not transformative enough?

 

 

 

The video seems to mostly be revolving around Business Casual's feelings rather than facts. There is a lot of "Youtube did this, which I interpret as them being evil" and other bad faith arguments being made. He also claims that the video is not political, but he keeps brining up that RT is a Russian channel, and that "Youtube is siding with Russia", which seems like a cheap and shitty way of trying to manipulate viewers into siding with him.

 

Personally, I would be glad if Youtube won this lawsuit. We really don't need even more strict laws surrounding what is or isn't copyright infringement. A win for Business Casual would mean Youtube would be even more aggressive with taking videos down for copyright infringement (without considering fair use) and they would also be even more aggressive with banning accounts for copyright infringement. 

 

 

There is a lot of hate for Youtube and their way of handling copyright infringement, but we have to realize the system is the way it is because of previous lawsuits. Years upon years of lawsuits against Youtube has made them overly cautious and protective whenever the subject of DMCA and copyright infringement gets brought up. This lawsuit, which is basically "Youtube should ban this account because they used some of my footage, and if they don't ban them then I will sue Youtube!" is directly going against the direction I want Youtube to go.

 

 

The even more TL;DR would be:

Layman feels screwed over and tries to get revenge by suing everyone around him. Gets mad when it turns out his interpretation of the law (which would benefit him) does not match the legal interpretation of the law.

[LAwLz]

Also, the guy who currently runs Business Casual is not exactly to be trusted. 

 

The guy likes to present himself as some self-made and small time Youtuber who had to fight to be where he is. But the fact is that he bought the Business Casual channel when it was already pretty big.

Alex Edson, the guy in the video, also used to run an MCN called PowerTV which liked to screw people over, a lot.

 

Here is a person who got screwed over by Alex. He set up a deal with a Minecraft Youtuber called Rainimator and made a bunch of promises.

Then when the deal went through, he deleted all his previous promises and kicked Rainimator out from their own channel. Since I only have one side of the story it should be taken with a shovel of salt, but since other Youtubers shipped in with "PowerTV is an awful company" and "Stay far away from that sleazeball known as Alex Edson"

 

 

Some of the shady things he has done:

1) The contracts he had a particular Minecraft youtuber sign, containing promises to help them grow their channel, were presented as "12 month contracts", but the contract only went into effect when the content creator handed in a written notice that they wanted to leave the network. In other words, once the content creator realized they were being screwed over and wanted to leave, then the contract went into effect and they were not allowed to leave for another 12 months. 

2) The original deal that creator signed up for was a 90/10 revenue split, where 90% of the revenue went to the content creator and 10% went to PowerTV. However, once everything had been signed, Alex changed the deal to a 25/75 split with 75% of the revenue going to PowerTV and 25% going to the content creator. Why? Because during the contract signing, Alex had spent a lot of money on legal fees that, according to Alex himself were actually unnecessary but because of bad math and errors had ended up being paid anyway. So Alex was justifying the changed revenue split because Alex said he needed to recoup the legal fees. The previous 90/10 split would only go into effect after all legal fees had been recouped.

3) Content creators tried to pull out to which Alex replied that okay, you can stop being a partner 12 months from now. Alex also reminded them that the contract contained an NDA and the content creator was not allowed to tell anyone else about this.

 

Source:

 

 

I am not surprised that Alex is pushing for stricter DMCA laws, where videos should be removed and channels banned before courts decide if something is fair use or not. It seems to be just up his alley, even though he is trying to frame it as "I am a poor Youtuber who is getting screwed over". What he is actually after is more power and control to bully people.

 

 

Apparently Business Casual also thinks his story is so big that he is asking Trump to support him, and he complains about "liberal propaganda" in the video.

 

 

 

Please, don't jump in and side with this guy just because "Youtube" and "lawsuit" were mentioned in the same sentence.

This guy is an asshole and is trying to manipulate people into supporting him on his quest to get more power to abuse the copyright legal system.

[wanderingfool2]

There could very well be some good points brought up in the video, but I am not about to invest an hour and forty minutes watching a video about it.  Did notice he pretty much doxed the RT guy's email as well (he blurred it, but only lightly so you can make out most letters and can easily figure out what it actually was).

 

Like this kind of thing is pretty cut and dry.  DMCA, they have the right to dispute, and you have the right to sue the poster.  You don't automatically get the right to sue YouTube because they think it might be fair use.  It's up to the courts to rule that against RT.  Actually I'd say it goes further, by him suing YouTube it enforces a lot more of the YouTube mentality that to err on the side of caution ban people who are violators...even if it is fair use.

 

The bits that where I did skip to and heard some of their arguments, I can understand slightly but it really seems as though they are twisting the wording around a lot.  ie trying to paint YouTube and RT in a bad light by saying things that isn't entirely true.

 

e.g. Compare the following two bits of text, the one where they accuse the provided script "proves" they "stole" the script.

Quote

eventually paved the way for the establishment of the Federal Reserve and the permanent fixture of income taxes

Now tell me, do you think the following was "stolen"

Quote

thus leading to the creation of the Federal Reserve System

 

They are diving into history events, using historical photographs.  Sure you can have a copyright on it, but it's a lot weaker.  e.g. Webster dictionary adding a fake word and trying to sue other dictionaries for adding in that word to theirs by copying the word and going with a similar description.  It was ruled to be okay.

 

History events happen, and they by nature happen in specific orders.  Naturally if you take a 40 minute long video about JP Morgan, you will find that it follows probably similarly in the way they present things as Business Casuals as well.

 

Overall it actually comes off as them whining about YouTube.  Saying that YouTube presents themselves as not trying to be the  judge jury and executioner, yet somehow criticizing that YouTube for not pulling it down; and then saying their defense that it's fair use is them playing judge jury and executioner...in reality he could just have sued RT and seen what happens.  He is assuming he is correct and expects YouTube to play ball.

 

 

 

Okay, I did do a bit of looking.  And he's already initially failed at this.  Mar 2022 the judge dismissed the case without prejudice.; what I find funny is this quote

Quote

In its brief in opposition to this motion to dismiss,
Business Casual requested leave to amend its complaint to the
extent that any portion of the motion was granted. “It is the
usual practice upon granting a motion to dismiss to allow leave
to replead.” Cruz v. TD Bank, N.A., 742 F.3d 520, 523 (2d Cir.
2013). While it is doubtful that Business Casual can file an
amended complaint that is not futile, it should be given the
opportunity to do so.

lol, maybe I'm reading it wrong but it really seems like he's fighting a losing battle going after YouTube...and I think rightly so.  If he were to win against YouTube it would have so much more damage than YouTube winning their argument.

 

 

A few other notes:

He registered the copyright 2-3 months after it was claimed to be infringed.  Not as familiar with it, but seems like they might have registered the entire video?  Not just the parallax image?  Could be wrong.  So using a small snippet might not actually constitute a full infringement.

 

Either way, he is requesting attorney fees (which would only apply for registered copyrights)...but he registered the copyright 2-3 years after the published copyright and after the "infringement" took place...so even if he won he isn't entitled to attorney fees.

 

A note as well, it's a minute and a half of a 40 minute video.  The RT video was like 20 minutes, and the content was essentially parallax images...where the base image was a public domain image.  While yes, I do think that using a parallax image is copyright infringement...it's still stupid of him saying that they passed of BC's  video as their.  Unless if I am missing something, which I could be...I'm just going off what the guy said (didn't look up RT's video as there wasn't any easily links to follow)

 

3 hours ago, Saearrin said:

tl,dw: YouTube refuses to follow their own rules about copyright when the defendant is Russian state media, for seemingly monetary reasons, and is going as far as legally siding with the Russians against an American creator to undermine the DMCA.

The tl;dr is this.  YouTube is defending it's right under the DMCA because he is suing them (effectively trying to eliminate safe harbor).  Their arguments made in court are well reasoned to defend themselves against a lawsuit.  DMCA works like this.

 

1) Find infringing video

2) Alert platform (video taken down)

3) Submitter claims fair use under DMCA (video put back online)

4) Accuser has the right to sue in court the submitter (not YouTube) to get court order to take it down [and potentially get awarded damages]

 

YouTube doesn't get to decide whether or not it's fair use or not.  They might think it is, and thus put the video back up (vs keeping it down)...but ultimately they aren't responsible for deciding if it was copyright infringement.  If this guy wins (p.s. he already lost in mar once) they would have to honor any claim of copyright and now you have weaponized copyright strikes even more so now.

[Sauron]

I have no simpathy for the Russian government or RT but anything that undermines copyright law and the DMCA is good in my opinion. Sorry, I really don't care if you want to sue someone for using a part of your video in a piece of barely related content.

3 hours ago, Saearrin said:

By RT and YouTube's logic, anyone could for example, take a LTT video, redub it in another language, reupload it to YouTube, and monetize it.

Who cares? If it's dubbed then it's reaching an audience it otherwise wouldn't have anyway. I could see a problem with a full reupload with no changes (and even then only because of how screwed youtube's monetization system is) but a dub is fine.

[Arika]

just a brief note, with everything going on with Russia at the moment and people's views towards the country, doesn't automatically make anything they have touched somehow bad.

 

In this case, i actually agree with Youtube and RT. redubbing content should fall into fair use. Unless the creator of the base content is distributing their content with their own dubs, or subtitles in each language then i don't see an issue with this at all, as long as they don't submit the redubbed content with content ID, or falsely dub content to make the original creator look bad.

[LAwLz]

9 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I have no simpathy for the Russian government or RT but anything that undermines copyright law and the DMCA is good in my opinion. Sorry, I really don't care if you want to sue someone for using a part of your video in a piece of barely related content.

Who cares? If it's dubbed then it's reaching an audience it otherwise wouldn't have anyway. I could see a problem with a full reupload with no changes (and even then only because of how screwed youtube's monetization system is) but a dub is fine.

It seems to me like it wasn't even "RT dubbed the video and reuploaded it".

 

Maybe I am misunderstanding things because this seems so long and drawn out, but this is what it seems like to me.

 

The lawsuit is that:

• Business Insider edited a public domain photo to make it look cleaner and then showed it in one of his videos.
• RT took that image and showed it for about a minute and a half in their ~20 minute video.
• Business Casual got mad and sued them for copyright infringement.
• Business Casual requested Youtube take the video down as well.
• Youtube said they didn't want to act (because we don't know if it is fair use or not, and a court is currently judging it).
• Business Casual responded by suing Youtube because according to him, the video is clearly not fair use (even though the court has not decided that yet) and as a result Youtube is guilty of hosting it (despite Business Casual giving Youtube the rights to host the video when he uploaded it).

 

 

RT is not reuploading or dubbing Business Casual's videos. They are using some pictures that Business Casual has edited, and Business Casual is trying to get RT's channel shut down because of it. 

[Sauron]

15 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

It seems to me like it wasn't even "RT dubbed the video and reuploaded it".

Oh I don't know, I was just responding to OP at face value since I don't really take issue with that anyway.

[wanderingfool2]

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

Oh I don't know, I was just responding to OP at face value since I don't really take issue with that anyway.

Yea, based on what he said there were "28" instances of copyright infringement.  It was a 24 minute video posted, of which the claim is the copyrighted content was shown for under a minute.

 

The thing is he claims 28 instances but if he also claims that there is a registered copyright (which again he registered after the infringement and 2 years after the business casual video was published).  That means, since he's pursing a violation of the registered copyright, it's only 2 copyright infringements at best...since it's the same "work" that they are using.

 

6 hours ago, Arika S said:

In this case, i actually agree with Youtube and RT. redubbing content should fall into fair use. Unless the creator of the base content is distributing their content with their own dubs, or subtitles in each language then i don't see an issue with this at all, as long as they don't submit the redubbed content with content ID, or falsely dub content to make the original creator look bad.

Redubbing shouldn't ever fall under fair use.  That is ripe for abuse.

 

10 hours ago, Saearrin said:

By RT and YouTube's logic, anyone could for example, take a LTT video, redub it in another language, reupload it to YouTube, and monetize it.

That's what the guy is claiming, but what YouTube is saying isn't that.  The Business Casual guy is just trying to twist it that way.

 

Under this guys logic, YouTube should have to honor all copyright takedown requests no matter how ridiculous they are; and essentially saying that YouTube shouldn't follow the DMCA.  That is the point I want to bring across very very clearly here.

 

If he wanted the video removed, file a DMCA.  The submitter has the right to challenge the assertion.  If the assertion is challenged, the DMCA makes it clear that the next step is suing the submitter.  At no point during that process is the process "sue YouTube for reinstating the channel".  YouTube just needs to show that it looks like it could be fair use, and there you have it...they are protected.

[rrats]

The wojack-looking guy spends hour and a half explaining why a media using his restored version of a Public Domain photograph needs to be brought to the court. This case is so stupid not even Saul Goodman could help him with that lawsuit

[Spotty]

3 minutes ago, CheeseFM said:

Summary

YouTube once again shows its true colors in terms of compliance with its own DMCA guidelines when it doesn't do anything when the Russian media conglomerate / propaganda machine RT (Russia Today) clearly steals content / scripts from the channel 'Business Casual' and uses it both on the YouTube platform and broadcasted on public television. - It then claims fair use and appeals the claims openly stating it won't retract the appeals because it knows their assortment of 39 channels would be deleted.

Your post has been merged in to the existing discussion thread on this topic.

[venomtail]

18 minutes ago, CheeseFM said:

Summary

YouTube once again shows its true colors in terms of compliance with its own DMCA guidelines when it doesn't do anything when the Russian media conglomerate / propaganda machine RT (Russia Today) clearly steals content / scripts from the channel 'Business Casual' and uses it both on the YouTube platform and broadcasted on public television. - It then claims fair use and appeals the claims openly stating it won't retract the appeals because it knows their assortment of 39 channels would be deleted.

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

This video is clearly being buried by YouTube, it needs a secondary outlet like LTT or other to cover it. - This story is insane and I'm not a good writer, someone else may be able to summarize this video better because wow is it a doozy. 

 

Sources

 

I don't think the video is getting buried at all. Have seen it in my recommended feed every single day since it came out, I just haven't watched it yet cause of it being 101 of clear clickbait, regardless of the content within it matches the theme of the thumbnail and title or not.

 

Reading a few TLDR's, seems like nothing new and a case that happens every now and again with every yt channel. Glad I saved myself the hour and a half.

 

Regardless I hope RT has what is coming to them. Remove them from everywhere. Still amazed that a misleading, manipulative, hate stirring "news channel" is allowed to air on yt.