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YouTube Promises Changes To Copyright Claim Policy (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: YouTube has set up a new team dedicated to weeding out false copyright claims and subsequent erroneous takedowns, responding to community criticism. Complaints have accused the video streaming site of a lazy approach to monitoring content, and using an unreliable automated system, Content ID, to enforce copyright policy. In response to these allegations, YouTube has announced that it will be introducing a workforce focused entirely on minimizing mistakes that delete legitimate videos. The tech giant has also promised to improve transparency into the status of monetization claims, and help strengthen communications between video creators and its support teams.
Should lead to automatic denial of the next 2 claims from the same claimant. The second false claim should lead to automatic denial of the next 4 claims (and so on). I think that would solve the problem pretty quickly.
Facts have a liberal bias.
Until false claims carry some penalty, false claims will continue.
The penalty doesn't need to be particularly harsh. I'd say 3-strikes and you can no longer submit automated take down. After you've falsely accused 3 videos, all further accusations will go into a queue for human review
It would allow a company to police its trademark and take down any flagrant violators, but dissuade automated scripts that flags dozens of videos on flimsy grounds.
That's just my suggestion, there are certainly more options to punish false accusers. Until some punishment is in place though, youtube's words are hollow.
This signature is false.
After receiving thousands of false, incomplete, and otherwise invalid claims from one company, Comcast starting ignoring them. The court ruled Comcast was therefore liable for the claims they ignored. Under current law, the ruling against Comcast was more or less correct (it was borderline, arguable, under current law).
So while "three strikes and you're out " may be a sensible policy, YouTube can't really do that under current law. The DMCA REALLY needs an amendment that strongly discourages improper notices. Something along the lines of "three strikes and you're out" would greatly reduce the number of wrongful claims, which is actually the one big problem with the DMCA. Congress has to do that, though, not Youtube.
If that were fixed, and people were educated about counter-claims under DMCA, it would actually be a pretty good law. The DMCA system works pretty well in cases where the complainant isn't being reckless about filing improper claims.
I'd like to see a "repeat offenders" classification for copyright claimants like the copyright holders want for alleged infringers. If more than a certain percentage of your copyright infringement claims turn out to be bogus, your claims get diverted for review and won't be acted on until someone's checked the content and checked with the uploader. Same standard for any automated system, if it can't maintain at least the same level of accuracy expected of claimants then it's results can't be used until after human review.