YouTube Alters Copyright Algorithms, Will 'Manually' Review Some Claims

thomst writes "David Kravets of Wired's Threat Level blog reports that Google's Thabet Alfishawi has announced YouTube will alter its algorithms 'that identify potentially invalid claims. We stop these claims from automatically affecting user videos and place them in a queue to be manually reviewed.' YouTube's Content ID algorithms have notably misfired in recent months, resulting in video streams as disparate as Curiosity's Mars landing and Michelle Obama's Democratic Convention speech being taken offline on specious copyright infringement grounds. Kravets states, 'Under the new rules announced Wednesday, however, if the uploader challenges the match, the alleged rights holder must abandon the claim or file an official takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.' (A false takedown claim under the DMCA can result in non-trivial legal liability.)" Update: 10/05 11:24 GMT by S : Google has clarified its earlier comments. The user videos will be placed in a queue for manual review not by Google, but by the content owners.

Comments

outbreakofcommonsense

[Spy Handler]

as much as Google likes to believe its algorithms are infallible, they're not.

Re:outbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

The algorithms are almost perfect. They keep Google from getting sued while placating the major content providers enough so that they will host items on YouTube.

Were you assuming that the algorithms were designed to do anything else other than keep YouTube profitable?

Re:outbreakofcommonsense

[davester666]

I believe Google has issued a updating indicating that they are NOT manually reviewing anything, but the company that will make money off the video will be able to review the it.

I'm sure they will honestly evaluate each video, and then decline the revenue from any non-infringing ones, even though there are no negative consequences by continuing the fraud.

And Google has no interest in fixing their algorithm from having false positives, because the group it hurts has no power or influence.

non-trivial legal liability?

[NoKaOi]

Has a false DMCA takedown notice ever resulted in legal liability? I'm genuinely curious, we always hear about bogus takedown notices that don't result in anything bad happening to the evildoers.

Re:non-trivial legal liability?

[djl4570]

PBCS got raked over the coals by Thunderf00t et.al. Not sure what all happened to him. This case also pointed to a central problem with false DMCA takedown notices. Persons in foreign countries can claim rights under the DMCA but are not subject to DMCA jurisdiction for making false claims.

Re:non-trivial legal liability?

[stephanruby]

Yes, there was one case I remember, but it wasn't some random take down. It was about a designer initiating a take down on a youtube video because she felt the movie producer/aborigin artist was still owing her money for her design work. The designer lost big in court, especially because the movie producer/artist could prove that he was receiving real income from his art pieces and her take down had a real provable effect on his loss of income at the time.

Re:non-trivial legal liability?

[girlintraining]

Has a false DMCA takedown notice ever resulted in legal liability? I'm genuinely curious, we always hear about bogus takedown notices that don't result in anything bad happening to the evildoers.

That's because they only target people who don't have money. When RIAA started going after peer to peer users (file downloaders), they meticulously selected people for prosecution whom they knew would be unable to mount an effective legal defense. Then, when they lost, they used those cases to establish precident to go after other file sharers in the same jurisdiction. If an appeal did happen, or they targeted someone who did have money, they backed off, offering to settle -- or in the case of a certain infamous law professor who's students worked for free assisting in the defense of an otherwise indigent person, they made sure to make an example out of them by pulling every legal trick possible to cost time and money, and then demanded the maximum penalties across the board, ruining the person's life.

By doing this repeatedly, they managed to do things like neutralize the right to reverse engineer out of the DMCA. They've established that punitive amounts should be used instead of compensatory amounts. They have repeatedly lobbied to establish all of copyright law under the umbrella of strict liability, which requires no proof of intent, and makes no distinction between accidental and intentional harm. They have attempted (and often succeeded) in creating criminal laws where downloading is punished more harshly than rape, assault, or murder.

The reason you don't hear about false DMCA notices is because they're only made against the poor. Copyright law has always targeted the most vulnerable members of society -- the poor and disadvantaged, and punished them disproportionately in the same manner as the war on drugs has. The rich have licensing agreements and lawyers who can arrange settlements. From simple traffic violations to murder, money buys you a clean record almost every time -- unless you get noticed by the media, or you step on the toes of someone with even more money. Right now, in my own county, I was given a speeding ticket. As is common with people with a clean driving record, I was offered a chance to continue it for dismissal, a sort of probation -- if I don't get any more traffic violations, it falls off my record. It was never there. Ah, but there was a $700 "court costs fee" before the judge could offer it.

Don't kid yourself: Our judicial system has been corrupted by money. In time, it will be corrupted by other things as well, as has every other... over a long enough timeframe, every justice system fails. Every empire that acquired the rule of law has later lost it under pressure by the rich, the powerful, and slowly corroded under the weight of its own uncountable rules.

Re:non-trivial legal liability?

[HiThere]

My information is that if you have a "good faith" reason to believe that the copyright of someone that you are representing if violated, there is no penalty. And that there's no penalty for someone hiring a lawyer to file takedown notices lying to his lawyer. Or for the lawyer claiming to believe his client.

If this is so, then the penalties only affect those who are either poor or careless.

Additionally, I've never heard of anyone being prosecuted for a false takedown notice, but that is no indication that it hasn't happened.

Re:non-trivial legal liability?

[TapeCutter]

ThunderFooT forced PBCS to post a public youtube apology and remove himself from youtube for a year. PBCS did so and then came back. I really admire the way TF handled it, far more effective than getting the courts involved. TF also worked with PBCS's parents who were concerned about his behavior.

Re:non-trivial legal liability?

[TapeCutter]

Every empire that acquired the rule of law has later lost it under pressure by the rich

Not a student of history, eh?

official takedown notice?

[Hatta]

Why isn't YouTube requiring official DMCA notices in the first place?

Re:official takedown notice?

[ExecutorElassus]

Because responding manually according to the required procedure, for the (I'm estimating here) thousands of requests they receive would eat up a huge chunk of their administrative and support budget.

Re:official takedown notice?

[dreampod]

Because they don't have to. Since it is their property they can institute any rules or program that they want (provided obviously that it doesn't break the law) that will help them manage their service or please their partners. In this case they offered a content matching and content removal system to their corporate clients as a means to encourage them to use youtube heavily and stop suing them. The reason youtube is changing their policy is that it has been heavily abused and is starting to generate negative publicity and shift users elsewhere not because they have any obligation to.

They have always accepted DMCA notices but also allowed an alternative non-DMCA process too.

Re:official takedown notice?

[Hatta]

That "unreasonable burden" is the legally prescribed remedy. If you can be sued for doing the minimum required by law, it's not really the minimum required. That means there must be some other law that requires more from Google, which law is it?

Re:official takedown notice?

[ExecutorElassus]

Not entirely. ContentID works by checking uploaded tracks against a database submitted by rightsholders. If the content matches, it gives the holders power to force an automatic takedown, or derive ad revenue from it. However, if the uploader disputes the claim, there was no real recourse if the claimant denied the dispute. Further, DCMA notices have to be manually filed for each uploaded file. Since Big Media is a bunch of whiny bitches, they didn't want to do that, and would much rather google does all the legwork for them.

Re:official takedown notice?

[silas_moeckel]

The TOS protects them on one side and this automation comes from an agreement with large rights holders. Pretty much Google worked a deal with some big rights holders automatically take down content or do a revenue share deal. It just prooves that the DCMA is broken by design with just about any other court order third parties get paid "reasonable" fee's. I say "reasonable" as I remember charging several hundred bucks an hour for gathering data for the FBI and SS that last time I ran a hosting company.

Re:official takedown notice?

[Hatta]

Because if someone challenges the DMCA complaint and the DMCA complainer disappears, Google is the one who gets held liable.

That's absolutely untrue. The entire point of the DMCA is the safe harbor provisions for service providers. If you take an item down in response to a well formed DMCA complaint there is no valid cause against you, even if the DMCA complainer disappears.

Re:official takedown notice?

[Blakey Rat]

They could only look at ContentID providers who frequently have their claims successfully disputed. To be generous, YouTube could then help re-jigger their source videos to produce fewer false positives (for example, removing the stock Nasa footage from news service source videos). In reality, YouTube would find that something like 30% of them are simply frauds who uploaded source videos they don't actually have any rights to.

Similarly, if someone has been a successful YouTube member for several years with a clean copyright record, YouTube could manually review claims made against their account, and maybe even create a way to say "ok we trust this user, disable ContentID for their uploads".

Right now, as far as I can tell, they don't do any of this basic housekeeping-type work for the average Joe user. This announcement just says they'll maybe start looking into it for the high-traffic users. (Translation: not you. Only millionaires.)

We're not talking about needing an army of 50,000 employees to do this, we're talking about pulling 10-15 guys off click fraud duty (if only Google treated YouTube copyright fraud 1/100th as seriously as they treated click fraud!)

Easy to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

YouTube needs to charge a $1000 deposit on every takedown request, and that deposit is refunded only if the violation is confirmed. The the **AA won't want to burn money on false requests. YouTube should like the profit they make from this policy so everyone wins.

about damn time

[v1]

the alleged rights holder must abandon the claim or file an official takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.' (A false takedown claim under the DMCA can result in non-trivial legal liability.)

Though if they do file a counter-counter-claim, it'd still get taken down unjustly if you didn't have the money to buy back your justice with a lawyer. At least this will reduce the abuse of the system.

It's for reasons like this that I am occasionally happy to see processes get abused, publicly, to a degree that triggers change.

Currently in Dispute with YouTube

[Jonah Hex]

I uploaded a video on September 9th of all original music by my best friend's band. I am still waiting for the "current" dispute process to complete. What disturbs me the most is that as someone who wants to create new, original content I can have the "best time" for my video to draw hits and thus the most monetization redirected away from the producer. I haven't bothered with searching the Copyright Center on this video since frankly it's friends/family watching it and not a huge monetary draw for anyone, but what if this happens with original content with a huge amount of hits?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnI1QZfbRjs

For anyone interested, here is the text of the "Disputed Claim" with the link to their Copyright Center. (links to the individual claim removed)

Idiots Avant - Reunion/Demise Show
Your video may include the following copyrighted content:
Disputed claims
"There Goes Norman", musical composition administered by:
One or more music publishing rights collecting societies Your dispute awaiting response by 10/09/12
UMPG Publishing Your dispute awaiting response by 10/09/12
What does this mean?
After your dispute has been submitted, your video will soon be available on YouTube without ads for third parties. This is a temporary status and might change at any time.
Learn more about copyright on YouTube.

This claim does not affect your account status.

HEX

processing fees

[SgtChaireBourne]

Processing a DMCA take down request wastes a lot of resources for the recipient. Is there any reason sites like Google at not already charging a processing fee? They could have one fee plus a deposit. They get to keep the deposit if the takedown was invalid.

finally

[Tom]

if the uploader challenges the match, the alleged rights holder must abandon the claim or file an official takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.' (A false takedown claim under the DMCA can result in non-trivial legal liability.)

That is a long-needed step into the correct direction.

I recently uploaded 6 videos with background music that has a CC license. I even linked to the author's homepage AND his CC-licence page in the video comment. Still got flagged. Challenged it. After some weeks, flag went away, but I'm none the wiser as to the who and why.

I would love to be able to sue these fuckers. You don't mistakenly mis-identify original music creations. You can claim that if it's the music heard in the background of some video from a wedding or whatever, but not when I add a clean .mp3 as the audio track.

Now at least they'll have to formally withdraw their claim.

Next step - and just as badly needed - is that if they make a claim, it's a DMCA claim, i.e. penalty of perjury and all that.