YouTube Defending Select Videos Against DMCA Abuse

Galaga88 writes: It's not a complete solution, but YouTube is going to begin stepping up to defend select videos in court on fair use terms, including covering court costs. Will this help stem the tide of bad DMCA takedown requests, or just help the select few YouTube doesn't want to lose? From the blog post linked: We are offering legal support to a handful of videos that we believe represent clear fair uses which have been subject to DMCA takedowns. With approval of the video creators, we’ll keep the videos live on YouTube in the U.S., feature them in the YouTube Copyright Center as strong examples of fair use, and cover the cost of any copyright lawsuits brought against them. ... In addition to protecting the individual creator, this program could, over time, create a “demo reel” that will help the YouTube community and copyright owners alike better understand what fair use looks like online and develop best practices as a community.

Comments

Defense will be based on advertising dollars

[nitehawk214]

Google and Youtube really does not care about fair use or the legal rights of their users. All they care about is advertising money. Now that there are some alternatives to Youtube, big channels are threatening to leave if the flood of false DCMA notifications does not stop.

rights should not depend on a Corporation charity

[gurps_npc]

That's what this is - a large corporation deciding to charitably pay huge amounts of money to defend it's customer's rights.

While I understand their desire to do this, we need a legal system that does it automatically.

Most privacy violations are clear. No one puts someone else's songs up there 'accidentally'.

If all DMCA cases, we should have loser pays rule. Right now, the poster can be required to pay huge damages, so why shouldn't the claimant be required to pay double the court costs.

Between a rock and a hard place...

[H3lldr0p]

That is entirely of their own making.

They didn't need to create the ContentID system and allow it work the way it does. But they did.

By law they needed a way to respond to DMCA notices but they didn't need to automate it. And now those chickens have come home to roost.

All in all, Google stepping up to start sorting out this mess they made all by themselves is a good thing. I am hopeful they see it through by changing the way their system works and maybe taking out some of the automation that is one of the biggest problems with it. May they also push some sane legislation that will make it possible to do away with the worst abuses of the Notice system.

Re:Between a rock and a hard place...

[GuB-42]

Google had no choice.
Originally, YouTube was fueled by piracy, but content owners didn't really care : low quality videos and YouTube didn't have enough money to make a lawsuit profitable.
It changed the instant Google bought it. The content owners, now realizing that behind YouTube was sitting billions in cash quickly turned to Google and basically asked for their share. Google had no choice if they wanted to keep the service and not run it at a loss.

Re:Yeah, nice self publicity YouTube

[JackieBrown]

Call me back when they've made it their policy to protect every video that has a strong fair use defense.

You forgot to list your phone number.

Never mind, we can probably get it from Google.

Re:Dailymotion/Vimeo

[Greyfox]

Yeah, the Worth a Buy Shadow of Morder review alleges that Warner Brothers was threatening to issue DMCA takedowns to youtube reviewers who didn't have a branding agreement with Warner Brothers. I've been hearing similar allegations about other games from a number of reviewers. Obviously that didn't happen with Mack's video, as it's still up, but it highlights the kind of abuse that's possible under existing laws.