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YouTube Says Content Owners Made $1B Last Year -- So Music Labels Should Stop Complaining (recode.net)
Peter Kafka, reporting for Recode: Here's the latest salvo in the back and forth between YouTube and the music industry: A report from Google that says its video site's copyright software has allowed content owners to generate $1 billion in the last year or so. Or, in other words: Hey, music guys! Stop moaning about money -- we're making plenty of it for you. Google's formal message comes via "How Google Fights Piracy," a 62-page mega-pamphlet it is releasing today. Google adds that its Content ID tool, which lets copyright owners "claim" their videos that users upload to YouTube so that ad money can be made off it, has garnered $2 billion since 2007. This is Google's response to a growing concern from the music industry that YouTube doesn't pay well, its Content ID isn't a solution, and that the video platform is built on stolen material.
Google just trained 2 millions Indians.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
ACtually, no, that's not how copyright works at all. The copyright OWNER is responsible for finding and reporting infringement, the service provider needs to provide some means for the content owner to report and request a take down. Youtube automatically scans content, flags are copyrighted, then layers ads on it sending the revenue to the content owner, or outright removes the video Every single asshat "musician" complaining about youtube is doing so because they are attempting to launch their own service and it sucks.
One thing that came up in the original Youtube lawsuit was that the content owners themselves can't tell what is infringing and if they can't, how do you expect Youtube to manage?
The billions aren't going to YouTube. They're being paid out to the content holders, the people complaining. Or are you suggesting that youtube stop paying the content holders to build a monitoring system that can monitor 100% of user submissions, which is about 5 million hours of video ever day?
It's Kafkaesque...
I hope you are trolling...
What is a "content owner"? Oh, the person who owns the recording.
For those of you who don't understand the big issue, there are two kinds of "owners" for a piece of recorded music - the guy who owns the actual sound recording (master) and the person/people who own the copyright on the underlying work (the writers). These are often not the same people, particularly in commercial music where a record label typically owns the masters.
Writers get paid statutory rates for sound recordings or digital downloads, known as a mechanical royalty rate. For a song that's 5 minutes or less, it's 9.1 cents per copy, with a 1.75 cent/minute increment above 5 minutes. They also get paid for broadcast uses of their works (this is what BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC handle in the US). The issue with Youtube is that there's no good way to pay writers, so they get screwed. Frankly, the labels are getting screwed, too, as $1B isn't a whole lot of money after it's sliced a million ways. I doubt Youtube's ads bring in enough money to pay out more, anyway. ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC pay writers some from Youtube if the song is recognized in the content-id system, but the money is paltry.
Writers are really getting screwed on streaming and Youtube, and while people used to be able to make a decent living as a writer even 10 years ago, it's getting quite difficult now. I have a niece trying to get into the business and I'm telling her she has to perform as well as writing so she can make a good living at it.
Anyway, that's the issue.
Do you have ESP?
Google has absolutely no obligation to police any other party's copyrights, and the web would be a poorer place if they did.
A copyright is your own private monopoly on a piece of content. It is a granted right, and something of a legal fiction: we have collectively agreed to treat this non-scarce good as if it were scarce, to serve an economic purpose. We, collectively and severally, have no further obligations to you. Neither Google nor any other third party is responsible for your private property, absent a specific agreement to that effect. The DMCA makes no provisions that Google do anything more to protect your property than [a] not to block tools used to detect infringement and [b] to respond expeditiously to takedown requests. ContentID is a wholly voluntary program, whose primary purpose is to reduce the number of DMCA requests they have to process.
Forcing Google to police all content submitted would not only be contrary to centuries of jurisprudence, but it would probably kill off user-submitted content entirely. In point of fact, there's not been any clear ideas proposed on how exactly to do so, because the content industry knows very well that their position is legally indefensible. It's not like they have had any issues buying favorable legislation before, after all. This is a public campaign and not a K street one because they don't want a change in law, they just want more money. This is a shakedown, pure and simple.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Great idea... let's also make the phone company responsible for what everyone talks about on the phone. I can't really tell if you're a troll, shill or just retarded but there's nothing wrong with Google's business model. If they manage to choke Google, it'll be the end of user supplied content as we know it - as was the point all along. How long do you think it'll take /. editors to review every comment in case somebody posted something copyrighted without permission? Particularly when there's no centralized archive over all that is copyrighted or who has granted rights under miscellaneous licenses. Sure, a lot of things are well known and would be flagged but they'd never know the long tail of no-name bands who may or may not have given their music away for free.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
In fact, Google outright removes just about anything any company complains about, whether the infringement is real or not, thereby depriving thousands if not hundreds of thousands independent artists ad revenue or just removing personal videos with bird noise in the background.
That's the real issue.
Looks like Google made about 6 billion dollars on Youtube last year, so something like 17% of what they make goes to the people whose actual content is being played. (Reference: http://www.businessinsider.com... ).
Of course, the people who write and perform got only a tiny fraction of that. They'd probably prefer a model where they actually get paid, instead of google giving away their performances for free and then raking off a few cents for advertising, of which the performers get a fraction.
> Well guess what: that isn't the copyright holders problem. If your business model is such that you can't monitor everything, then YOU NEED TO FIX your business model.
This is utter nonsense. One, that's not how the DMCA is set up--this burden is squarely on the copyright holder to identify and issue takedowns.
Two, it shouldn't work the other way. You see, copyright relies upon PERMISSION. So even if I upload a "leaked' video that looks completely pirated to an outsider, if I have permission from the copyright holder, it's legal. Given that the copyright holder is the only one who can reasonably be expected to know who they have and have not given permission to, they are the only reasonable party to do so. If you think this example sounds far-fetched, then you need to go back and read Viacom v. YouTube, because Viacom did exactly this and had to remove "infringing" videos they'd given permission to from the case. Twice. After extensive review by expensive lawyers. If their own lawyers with all that information can't get it right, what hope does a 3rd party have?
That this burden is unreasonable is of no concern to the rest of us--it's simply not our property, so it's unreasonable to expect the rest of the world to manage it for them.
Well of course, infringement is not what it is all about. That is a lie put out by the publishers. The problem is old content competing with new content, they want to bury the old content, so they can charge a premium for new content and of course pay fuck all for that new content, just like the old days. So they attack all over the place and want infinite copyright and infinite patents and the right for corporations to be able to print their own cash when ever they feel like, which is of course what they do via the US Fed, they just want the sole right to do that globally. Everything from them is double speak and lies.
They don't give a fuck how much you tube makes or how much it pays, they want you tube dead because it keeps to much old content alive and produces way too much new content. For me the most annoying thing about you tube is not being able to block content you have no interest in, and guess who that content is I would most like to block and pretend it doesn't even exist, the lame types like the biebers and taylors of this world, not interested in the PR bullshit marketing. It is high time you tube allowed the rest of us to block content and let's see the reality of who gets the most blocks. Who is really unpopular because blocks are the most accurate measure of all and not likes. Just plain disinterested please do not show me this shit any more on the you tube home page, make it worth while to log in. You bet main stream publishers and the shit content will end up being buried the deepest. We'll be happy and they'll be happy, when their content is buried beyond end user blocks, well, of course they will be extremely unhappy to have their content blocked but, meh, fuck em.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
.
The best way to break into songwriting is to start with a hot body, then take guitar and voice lessons. The days of Bacharach and David are long gone.
Looking at what's on the Billboard top 100 at the moment, this does not seem to be the case. A few of the performers are hot, but not a majority.
(And I'm not sure about the guitar and voice lessons, either. But that's always what us old guys say-- "This modern music is nothing but noise! Not like the music when I was a kid!")
Actually no, that IS how it works. It isn't up to the copyright owners to monitor every video sharing site or search through Youtube. It is the responsibility of the site that is providing the service to make sure they arent SERVING copyrighted content they haven't licensed it. That is what the PRO-IP act was for.
WTF are you smoking? The PRO-IP act did nothing to remove the safe harbor provisions for site owners, which was established in the DMCA. It increased infringement penalties and allowed the DoJ to proactively go after infringers, rather than relying on copyright owners to initiate action, but nowhere did it do anything to require site owners to police content.
You apparently think site owners should be responsible for policing user-posted content, which is fine for you, but that's not what the law says, and I think the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions are a very good thing myself. Without them, no organization would dare host a site that allowed user-uploaded content. Slashdot might have to shut down, for example, or risk having to police user posts for material from copyrighted books.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
There is some validity to what you are saying, and many people would agree. While they are at it, they should have to responsibility of removing unwanted videos on people with bad thoughts. Those people who think and look differently should not be allowed on the the platform either. No content should be posted unless it meets certain criteria. Some people call that censorship. We call it keeping the peace by controlling the masses.
I'm pretty much done purchasing music. There is more entertainment content that I can consume in my lifetime. Getting rid of Youtube or Pandora is going to net them $0 from me as a consumer.
Yeah, especially when their content producers are dishonest about how they "earn" that money.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/7...
Kriston
Are you claiming that YouTube ought to require each uploader to provide evidence that he owns copyright in the video (or has an appropriate license from its copyright owner) and that it is not an unlawful derivative work? If so, what steps would an uploader need to take to provide this evidence?
The article states that YouTube already reviews each uploaded video by machine to ensure that it is not an unlawful derivative of a work owned by a user of the "Content ID" staydown system. Are you claiming that YouTube ought to do so by hand as well? If so, and if you were running YouTube, how would you organize and fund such manual review?
Those Somalians better watch out then.
Ah, you mean Google fights _copying files they don't want to be copied_? Then tell it like it is instead of calling it grandiose names that have little to do with reality.
That is THEIR problem.
If YouTube were to spend some of its billions on hiring you to solve the problem, how would you go about it? As soon as you specify a practical method of doing so, it'll become practical for the U.S. Congress to add a staydown clause to the OCILLA (17 USC 512).
Well you know what they say: "Anything is easy if you don't know what you are talking about"
Did Whipslash personally review your comment for copyrighted content before it was allowed to be posted?
You are wrong.
To which claims in Tenebrousedge's comment does this apply?
"Centuries of jurisprudence" is a joke.
If you present a practical staydown solution, the U.S. Congress and President can wipe out said "joke" with a stroke of a pen. I'm interested to hear it.
The act of complaining for the movie/music industry is in itself an industry, with """unlimited funds"""...
I can't call that English
Hey wanna hear some recorded music? Just turn on the radio and see/hear it for free, courtesy of the Radio Station's Advertisers.
Hey, they provide the signal, DJ, and paid to license the airwaves, so they should make most of the money?
You see, copyright relies upon PERMISSION. So even if I upload a "leaked' video that looks completely pirated to an outsider, if I have permission from the copyright holder, it's legal.
This requires that A. the entity that you claim to be the copyright owner is in fact the copyright owner, and that B. the permission that you claim to exist actually exists. I think 110010001000 is trying to suggest to research some way to represent proof of A and B, and that YouTube and other sites accepting user-uploaded works should have finished this research before accepting even the first upload.
When road construction and maintenance firms start being responsible for the crime that happens on their roads,
when car manufacturers start being responsible for the crime being perpetrated with their cars,
when the HDD manufacturers start being responsible for what their HDDs are being used for,
and so on and so on,
that's when your stupid incoherent and unrealistic argument will start being legitimate.
Till then, your statement has no legitimacy.
There's a big difference. FM radio, Sirius XM radio, and Pandora don't give the user much control over what is played beyond the genre. Spotify and YouTube, on the other hand, are what 17 USC 114 calls "interactive services". An interactive service plays a particular song on demand, which is a much closer substitute for buying a phonorecord* than a radio-style service is. Avoiding the "interactive service" designation is how Pandora can negotiate such lower royalty rates than services like Spotify and YouTube.
* "Phonorecord" is legalese for a copy of a sound recording. It doesn't mean specifically vinyl.
It's also about "corporate content" versus "user created content." If users are able to create good enough content by themselves, that might reduce demand for corporate produced content. So if you can find some very minor copyright concern in the user uploaded content (there's 5 seconds of music playing from someone walking by in the background), you can knock these "competitors" offline and push more of your corporate produced content.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The article you linked is about undisclosed advertisement-like behavior by WB Games. But this has nothing to do with the record industry. Even Warner Bros. Records has nothing to do with WB Games anymore since Time Warner spun off Warner Music in 2004
They're fighting hard to make content owners look good by not pissing off their audience (and hence content cabal's customers), but over and over, they find a way to spit on YouTube's services.
Remember when basically everyone pirated music and didn't give a dime to the artists? Well, at least with Youtube, they're getting some compensation. What do they want? More hand jobs and blow?
Bye!
YouTube need to reign in their ContentID system because it's stealing money from the content creators, i.e. the people making the videos. The false positive rate is insane, and the moment it decides a video uses some bit of content all the revenue gets siphoned off and can never be recovered, even when the mistake is corrected.
Content producers are resorting to deliberately including some copyright material at the end, from a company that doesn't allow commercial use such as Nintendo. Just a few seconds of Mario, say. Then Nintendo flags the video as "no monetization", which blocks all the other arseholes trying to leech off if. Unfortunately it also means that the video owner can't get paid either, so it's a choice between being robbed or working for free.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
How can you "steal" something if you making a copy of it deprives no one of the original?
Tell your niece that art makes a great hobby and a lousy profession.
For 99.99% of the musicians out there, that's reality. There are literally billions of people in the world who play a musical instrument, or sing, or dance. Hundreds of millions who do so competently. Tens of millions good enough to perform publicly. Of those, how many can actually make a living at it? I know far more people who have a garage band, or do the occasional gig for beer money. I think they enjoy it more as well, because there's no pressure to sell, sell, sell - they can do their music for enjoyment.
Far better to find a career that will actually earn a living, and enjoy your music on the side. If lightning strikes, one can always shift the balance later.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Youtube has been annoying about the automatic revenue transfer away from small publishers too. I recently had my Youtube revenue transferred to a big recording label. The offending music in my video was one of Youtube's own royalty free music tracks. In addition, the link to file a complaint was broken, so I simply removed the audio and the situation
So she is getting a raw deal from YouTube, causing her to miss hitting the mark of earning 1 million dollar a day.
She has also turned feminist because she believes that, as a woman, she has been held back in her career.
Fuck off. :D
Google just trained 2 millions Indians.
1. They just announced the program. Training has not yet started.
2. They are training these guys in android development, not hiring and training them to manage youtube content.
It would also not be stealing to make a replica car or food dish. Misappropriating IP has several names depending on exactly what you are doing, but none of them is "stealing". And AFAIK, none of them are criminal in the U.S. (they're all civil offenses).
It's only theft if the thing being stolen is removed from the person possessing it.
He effected a bored affect.
Google just trained 2 millions Indians.
I'd say they also need to train a few chiefs then...
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
People always say "Well Google can't monitor EVERYTHING on youtube! There are too many videos to find all the infringing ones!" Well guess what: that isn't the copyright holders problem. If your business model is such that you can't monitor everything, then YOU NEED TO FIX your business model. Spend some of those billions in cash and hire 50,000 people to monitor video submissions. It can be done, but Google just wants the cash with minimal expenditure.
EXCUUUUUSE ME!! But isn't that what being a disruptive force in the market is all about, ignoring the rules, regulations, laws, etc. through automation? Hire 50,000 people? That is SOOOO last century!!!
Copyright infringement is not stealing. Whatever you might think about the ethics of it, the definitions of the terms are different. See for example - https://www.quora.com/Intellec...
Is "training" India's 31 state and territorial chiefs the new politically correct code word for lobbying?
ACtually, no, that's not how copyright works at all. The copyright OWNER is responsible for finding and reporting infringement, the service provider needs to provide some means for the content owner to report and request a take down. Youtube automatically scans content, flags are copyrighted, then layers ads on it sending the revenue to the content owner, or outright removes the video. Every single asshat "musician" complaining about youtube is doing so because they are attempting to launch their own service and it sucks.
Yahh, no. Courts have already spoken in other cases about this. When you are operating a whack-a-mole operation pretending to observe DMCA requirements, all the while knowing you have copyrighted material on your service, in fact depending on that material for your profits, then it is your (the service provider) responsibility.
That Google hasn't been hit harder over their YouTube operation is in large part because they have the money for a lot of lawyers.
If your business model is such that you can't monitor everything, then YOU NEED TO FIX your business model.
Just to be absolutely clear: Are you referring to requirements under current copyright law, or are you suggesting changing the law? If the former, then what invalidates YouTube's defense under OCILLA (17 USC 512)? Citation please.
For the most part the state owns the roads and sub's out the construction and maintenance (some times with kick backs). Any ways it's like saying that the sate is responsible for the crime that happens when there is no cop there to stop it.
Are you claiming that YouTube ought to require each uploader to provide evidence that he owns copyright in the video (or has an appropriate license from its copyright owner) and that it is not an unlawful derivative work? If so, what steps would an uploader need to take to provide this evidence?
The short answer, for those who don't understand how copyright works, is that it would be literally impossible for Google to require such evidence, because in most cases there isn't any. Copyright is automatic. For you to own the copyright on your own creative works, you are required to do literally nothing.
Breakfast served all day!
Google has at least made some minimal progress towards making the system less abusive to content creators. From what I hear, you can actually get your money back if you counterclaim successfully.
What Google needs to add is a more automated system for movie and game reviewers to counterclaim. Being a reviewer isn't a "get out of copyright free" card, and it's not like YouTube can ignore the claims, but they can make it easy for e.g. a movie reviewer to counterclaim fair use by checking a couple of boxes.
What we as a nation can do is fix copyright law for YouTube-style derivative works. Some sort of mandatory FRAND licensing to protect everything from people uploading "lyrics on screen" song videos, to internet radio stations. Keep the licensing costs legally to a point where the artists gets the ad revenue, but that's it, no takedowns, and public radio stations can reasonably afford the licenses they need for an internet "station".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Every time google redistributes material without having a license from the copyright holder, they are violating copyright. Doesn't matter who uploaded it (they are in the same boat, but not nearly as much as google in terms of the number of infringements).
Register the work (video, book, other creative work) and you are allowed to sue for up to $150,000 per individual infringement. No need to give notice, same as the RIAA doesn't have to give anyone a notice before suing them. The DMCA notice and notice provisions are about removing infringing material - the lawsuits are about money. I'd rather have the money.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
And before everyone screams about the safe harbour provisions in the DMCA, 95.6% of the world's population isn't governed bu US law.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Do you think that Google operates youtube as a charity? They knew about the copyright problems before they bought it, and figured "screw it - we're big enough to get away with it." Sort of how banks are too big to fail.
If they can't get a valid license to redistribute, then they shouldn't do it. Same as the Pirate Bay, MegaUpload, etc.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
For you to own the copyright on your own creative works, you are required to do literally nothing.
This is true except in one case: "protection for a work employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully." (17 USC 103(a)) When George Harrison wrote the song "My Sweet Lord", he unwittingly "used unlawfully" a portion of the song "He's So Fine" written by Ronald Mack and lost a million dollar lawsuit over it. Another way in which a work can be accidentally "used unlawfully" is a claim of fair use pursuant to section 107 that a copyright owner disputes, such as the Harry Potter Lexicon case.
You're "stealing" the money you didn't pay. The word makes sense. Taking-without-paying is stealing. Just as it makes sense to call it "stealing" if you don't pay for a service you consume. Not all theft is equal of course - the losses due to piracy are pretty theoretical, and I don't care much about them, but some money is certainly lost to it.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
In the same sense that 95.6% of the world isn't under the finger of the RIAA either though. Someone in Argentina posting a Taylor Swift video to Youtube will have it taken down under a DMCA claim just as fast as someone in the US will. Because Youtube is governed by DMCA law and has to deal with the RIAA.
And its already enough of a hassle trying to deal with takedowns without trying to do it by geolocation (which would then require geolocking which would then turn into Netflix-style VPN blocking attempts and so on.. and having to properly deal with individual country's copyright laws rather than just going for the lowest common denominator of removing anything anyone anywhere files a complaint about.)
If you can find a streaming service hosted in and limited to a country not subjected to US copyright law, or at least not bothering to enforce it then I'm sure you'll be able to find all the TS videos you can stomach. But Youtube sure doesn't fit that bill.
I agree with your premise but the issue is scale. The reason Content ID exists is because Youtube can't possibly manually review everything. Unfortunately the reverse is also true -- they can't possibly manually review every single counterclaim either if they made the counterclaim process easy enough that everyone Content ID screws can potentially counterclaim.
I don't really have a solution (and I'm sure the people at Google trying to find a solution are much better suited to the job than I am, and they still haven't found one either.) Its absolutely not in Google's best interest to be taking down valid content -- it makes them look bad and also reduces their own revenue stream a bit -- so its not like Google is teaming up with the RIAA here to screw the little guy.
Google is, I'm reasonably sure, doing everything in their power to make the situation as positive as possible for everyone but unfortunately if they don't make a profit, all videos will be taken down (because Youtube won't exist) so doing something like hiring 10,000 reviewers to try and keep up with manual workload isn't really possible and we're stuck in a situation where all they can do is try to tweak the automated systems in hopes of getting incremental improvements.
Also, for everyone who continually complains about false negatives -- there's also a right boatload of false positives. You can find practically anything on there if you hit the right search terms (especially if that "anything" is more than a couple years old) and it often remains available for weeks or months before it gets taken down -- and there's usually a replacement or 3 just another search away.
I'm not saying either of those failure modes is a good thing, but ignoring half the problem just because it benefits you isn't really helping anything and makes you sound just as far off from reality as the RIAA lobbyists -- and they're at least getting paid to ignore reality in their rants.
No it won't. Especially in the realm of music, there's thousands of great musicians out there. The problem is that nobody's ever heard of them.
The music "industry" isn't about making music so much as its about advertising music -- expensive music videos and massive stage shows and radio time and whatever else. Very little of that is available to your average garage band no matter how good their music happens to be.
Movies and video games are a different story because they legitimately require big budgets for actors/programmers/special effects/etc if you want to compete on the AAA scale. You have to have an amazing story or gameplay (Minecraft!) in order to compensate for the lack of everything else since very few people have $10-100mill just sitting around waiting to dump into their pet project.
But music doesn't have those limitations -- anyone creative enough with a decent voice and instrument skills can put together an album just as good as major studios for at most a few thousand dollars, and frequently much less if you use a lot of synthesized sounds (less studio time required) and are happy to go with purely digital distribution (save on the cost of physical discs, covers, etc.)
But then they have to figure out how to get people to notice them and that's where the big money gets spent for the most part -- big money your average garage band probably doesn't have. The internet and digital distribution has certainly made it easier but its still hard to compete against songs that are continuously played on the radio and artists that are being paraded around on TV and written about in magazines and newspapers all the time.
if YouTube simply shut down for a week. Just one week. I rather suspect the drop in sales would have those music "industry" fuckers screaming like stuck pigs. Then maybe they'd just STFU about how YouTube is destroying their profitability. In a year or so they'd start bitching again. Lather, rinse, repeat. After a few wash cycles maybe they'd even catch on.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
It's youtube, if you everyone starts blocking undesirable content the hidden content will start to peek out and spread, should people decide to spread it via, word of video. It's not fast but once end users have much better control of the content that floods their home space, those garage bands will come through, being able to block crap your not interested will clear the fog of content and new light will shine through. The little guy and gal, getting a chance to break through is all about people being able to block corporate content they are sick of, all the shitty recommended corporate videos who pay to flood your personal space with their shit, seriously, fuck you youtube for not allowing blocking of content people are not interested to sell more commercials, arseholes.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
"The reason Content ID exists is because Youtube can't possibly manually review everything."
It's not YouTube's job to review *anything*. The DMCA obligates them to take down content when they get a claim, and to put the content back up when their is a counter claim. That's it. The Content ID system actually works outside of any legal requirement.
Depriving someone of their property is stealing. It has nothing to do with someone getting something for free. Your understanding of this is comical.
Actually that sounds like the issue. Too many hands in the pot. Too many middlemen. However writers and artists allow this to happen for their own profit (or not). Change your business model if it isn't working for you.
The times they are a changin'! (They would probably want royalty for just using that quote) They have been changing for some time now. Trying to use legal machination as your only method of prolonging your business model is not going to work forever.
They would have to review the claims. Content ID is a measure to help avoid being directly sent 150,000 claims every day by (attempting to) beat the claimants to the punch.
Is it "fair"? Of course not. But its essentially necessary to do this in an automated way at some level. You could argue that it should be the content owners that write some equivalent of Content ID but then Google is stuck in a position where:
a) They're getting dozens of individual formats from each owner's system which is a pain in itself and would still require automation due to the scale of the issue, and
b) Without any neutral control over Content ID, you can guarantee that the false positives would be orders of magnitude more than what they currently are. In this case, Google's of course not entirely a "neutral" party but they're about as close as you could get to one because they're the only ones in a position to balance the two sides -- they get extra revenue when videos are NOT taken down but they also have to remain within the law.
So yes, you're right in that Content ID isn't required by law specifically any more than its a requirement that a takedown be implemented by "rm" instead of "delete" (or more likely some proprietary command since I doubt they use a standard ext2 or NTFS file system!)
Its just a tool to assist in doing the job and any alternative you can propose would be just some other tool for doing the same job, and it would necessarily also be automated with all of the same (if not worse) failings as Content ID due to the scale of the issue.
That's all fine and good except the majority of people are NOT sick of the "corporate" content. If they were, they'd have already stopped buying it and the content would change.
The RIAA and friends might fight tooth and nail against changing their business model, but they've got no qualms about changing the style of musicians they hire as tastes change -- that's already part of the business model and has happened dozens of times over the years.
"Popular" music is called that for a reason. That doesn't imply that its "good" music (and 99% of pop songs are generally forgotten about a few weeks or even days after they stop getting airtime.)
But it does mean that the probability of everyone (or even a significant minority) arbitrarily starting to block it is unfathomably small even if Youtube allowed it.
Heck, sites like Facebook and Twitter already essentially provide what you describe -- a way to receive word of mouth about things from the friends you care to pay attention to and can block/ignore anything you aren't interested in. Yet somehow, the music revolution still hasn't happened and we all still listen to boxed boy bands like we have basically since radio became widespread.
Who says they have to post it to youtube? Besides, my point, which you ignore, is that the DMCA is not a get out of jail card for distributing other people's copyright materials. Especially since google has a presence in many countries where the DMCA means shit, but copyright law is still the law.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"They would have to review the claims."
The DMCA specifically forbids them from reviewing DMCA claims. They are expected to operate form the presumption that any claims and counterclaims are valid
The powerful media companies in Hollywood have shown great results earlier. For instance, the White House threatened Russia trading with raised toll fees, unless Russia shut down an illegal MP3 site. Which Russia did. In Sweden the PirateBay was attacked by the government, in fact there are wikileaks diplomat mails proving this (site in swedish http://falkvinge.net/2010/12/2... ) that every new swedish law/investigation about "fighting terrorists" was in fact, commanded by the powerful media industry in Hollywood. For instance, Taylor Swift left Spotify, because she didnt earn any money. But Spotify said they paid millions to her. But her media company took the lion share and gave her tiny fraction so she left Spotify. In response, Spofity declared they pay 70% of all money they receive, to the media companies in Hollywood. And if the artists dont earn anything, it is not Spotify's fault. The media companies take everything. In fact, Spotify hardly earns any money because they pay so much to Hollywood. Thus, Google telling Hollywood that they earned 1 billion is chicken shit. They want more. Much more. They want 70% of what Google earns - just like Spotify. They will not be content with 1 billion.