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YouTuber Says He Was Accused of Infringing His Own Song (cnet.com)
CNET reported this week that a musician, who plays guitar and has lots of viewers on YouTube, received an unusual email from the company alleging that he had copied a tune he wrote himself two years ago. From the report: But last month, Paul Davids says he got a rather unusual email from YouTube. The Content ID system had flagged a tune he wrote himself, two years ago, for infringing on someone's else's newer video. Someone who, it seems, stole his backing track to create a new track of his own. [...] "Someone took my track, made their own track, uploaded it to Spotify, YouTube, whatever, and I get a copyright infringement notice? Wait, what?" said Davids. The story has a happy ending -- Davids used YouTube's appeals system to quickly work things out, and let the other artist keep on using his tune. (Davids tracked him down on Facebook Messenger, and the guy apparently admitted he'd downloaded 'a couple of guitar licks' on YouTube.) But it's weird to think YouTube would flag an old video for infringing on a new one, no?
I'm sure the story going viral had nothing to do with a relatively speedy settlement of this issue for the guy.
If only we all could get our grievances with YouTube to go viral, the other half a million people who have been shafted one way or another might get an appeal.
An "appeal"? Most of them didn't even get a trial.
The way youtube works is that you get a notification telling you something is wrong and you have 48 hours to "correct" the video (except you can't replace a video, you can only take one down and put a new one up, losing all the likes, etc).
After 48 hours your video is reviewed by humans and you're judged guilty or not.
The problem? At no point are you allowed to send them a message, provide evidence, or do anything else in your own defense.
No sig today...
Welcome to the new world where you are guilty until maybe, maybe, maybe proven innocent, and the judge is a secret algorithm.
In a world where copyright "infringement"" is worse than murder, we need a system that turns copyright claims into toilet paper.
ex lead singer of Creedence Clearwater Revival. Was sued in the '80s by his own former record company for releasing a single, "The Old Man Down the Road", that allegedly sounded too much like "Run Through the Jungle", a CCR song to which CCR's record label held the rights. Ultimately the label's claim of infringement was rejected, but not without substantial sums spent on litigation. (The subsequent litigation over attorney's fees went all the way to SCOTUS.)
So yeah, being accused of plagiarizing yourself is nothing new.
...that Google has proven its AI/algorithms just don't work.
There's an ancient BBS days 'tagline' joke about this:
Politically Correct programming: "The AlGoreRhythm".
--
Humor is the essential ingredient of a democratic society.
If we're going to do this "three strikes" policy, it needs to go both ways. If you copyright strike someone three times, they are successfully appealed, then you need a court order before a takedown happens. Seems only fair.
I've been subject to a youtube copyright detection myself, and that's my experience too. The entire appeals process consisted of a drop-down box of possible reasons, none of which applied in my case (The music was public domain, the copyright having long expired). At no point was there even an option to contact a real person. The process was entirely automated.
No. This is the second time in a few days that we have one example out of millions of applications of the algorithms not working as expected.
Anecdotes are not data.
While I'm no fan of google, their algorithms seem to work 99.999% of the time. If there is criticism to be levied, it's that their error correction method is lacking.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Also most of the views of a video happen in the first 48 hours, so it screws the person out of nearly all of the ad revenue they might make.
The 48 hour review window is perfectly designed to screw content creators out of as much revenue as possible.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Yep. How hard would it be for them to let you type a message they can read during the review process?
The truth is they simply don't care. They're not short of content. Your work might have taken months to create, it mean the world to you, but it's nothing to them.
No sig today...
We used to think the first uses of Time Travel would be to go back and kill Hitler's grandma or something but now I think we see that it's to go back and post hitsongs to youtube under your own username. Likewise people will write articles about articles that will be written in the future.
So now we have the first evidence of time travel.
Time travel will be used to play pranks on people in the past. For example, in the future we will discover that the late steven hawking was really a time traveler. How do we know this, well recall he threw a party for time travelers and guess who was the only person who showed up? Steven Hawking.
message posted from my iphoneMLXVII
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
This often happened to a buddy of mine. He'd write a song, play it on his guitar and post it. Then some random music company claimed it was theirs. It got to the point where he got tired of being flagged and stopped posting on YT for this reason.
This happens more frequently than you think.
I write and make music with a modest following, and have had youtube take down several of my songs due to the auto-trawling bots that run around claiming everything is theirs and auto-issuing DMCA takedowns via youtube.
This problem happens to my band on the regular. While promoting our new record, we were hit with multiple copyright infringements across multiple platforms. Interestingly, the party claiming the infringement violations had no agreement with us and was merely associated with a physical record distributor that had no real claim to the copyright of the music. It has become a complete handicap for our promotion efforts and stymied metrics that are used promoters at music festivals who determine our potential draw and therefore billing. Overall, in 12+ years of making music with this group, the digital landscape has become increasingly hostile and one sided to independent content creators, which is antithesis to the initial promise of liberation online.
I have a couple of videos that use classical music that falls under Creative Common licenses. Every week I get a warning from Youtube saying that some company is claiming that I infringe on their copyright. I contest and always win... Then repeat again the following week, sometime from the same 'company' for the same song! I've so far had about 40 different companies claim copyright on songs that are not theirs. It's beyond frustrating. Youtube's process is clearly broken.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
Technically, anecdotes are data; they are just not systematic data, and thus hard to use effectively for meaningful purposes.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
NASA's live stream of the landing of the Curiosity rover in 2012 was interrupted as well. A news station integrated parts of the stream into a report. Since the station was a media partner of YouTube, the service assumed that the news report was the original and automatically interrupted NASAs live stream during the landing.
...that Google has proven its AI/algorithms just don't work.
Not really. It did it's job, it matched the song. The algo has no way to know, and it's not designed to know, which version came first (music, after all, does predate Youtube by a little bit so video A is older than Video B doesn't really work). You could say it's an overall problem with the whole system, but nothing is going to be perfect. How many correct actions are taken for every one of these incorrect ones? I'd bet it's a pretty large ratio.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
I had my account terminated a couple of weeks ago. I had the 48 hours to appeal, however I didn't have any idea what I was appealing. Because whatever I did (or did not do) was considered 'grievous' no warning, just termination. They don't have to tell you what terns of service violations you may or may not have committed. Just a link to a page with all of the possible things you may or may not have done wrong. My account was pretty small, some songs I've written over the years, some videos of 'how-to' for protools and a few vids that I did voiceovers for. I wrote an 'appeal' that was pretty generic, that basically said, "hey, could you tell me what I did wrong. I'll fix it and promise to not do it again." Their reply, 48 hours later, "your terminated." I didn't really care about the content, the worst part is that I no longer have a youtube account and lost my history and all the stuff I used to like to watch. Now if I go to youtube, it's all cat videos, makeup tips and the top viral crap I don't care about. Yea, youtube needs to get their act together on this stuff, at least tell you what you did so you can appeal it properly. sucks.
Many google tech is designed to appease their corporate partners, so it's a feature, not a bug.
And languish in obscurity? Youtube is where the viewers are. That means anyone who wants their video to be seen needs to use youtube.
Strange, I beat a dozen or so claims accusing me of using copyrighted material in my videos when the pieces were actually in the public domain. But I was careful to make sure that the specific performances I used were also in the public domain.
Specifically, I used several pieces of classical music to accentuate some Let's Play game videos (William Tell Overture, Flight of the Bumble Bee, etc.), but I made sure to use performances by the US Marine Corps Band, the US Army Band, etc. When my videos got flagged by "AdShare MG for a Third Party" and "rumblefish", for example, I simply disputed their claim, selected "The content is in the public domain" from the list of options, and provided the following explanation:
The William Tell Overture was composed by Gioachino Rossini and premiered in 1829. Rossini died November 13, 1868. Therefore, this work is in the public domain in the United States, and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or less. Additionally, this particular recording was performed by "The President's Own" United States Marine Band. According to 17 U.S.C. 105, copyright protection is not available for any work of the United States Government, which is defined in 17 U.S.C. 101 as "a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. government as part of that person's official duties." Therefore, this particular recording is also in the public domain. Therefore, rumblefish and AdShare MG for a Third Party have NO copyright claim to any music contained in this video.
I never lost a claim.
Apply punitive damages to both Google and the claimant for false notices.
Make no mistake, all those little "oops, the algorithm got it wrong" add up to a considerable amount of money for the record companies.
With Google trying to get premium content into YouTube, they are massively incentivised to game it exclusively towards the big premium content producers.
By that logic, there are no public fora anywhere on the internet
Largely correct.
Your constitution applies only to the actions of the government, not private individuals.
situations where private property is also a publicly accessible areas for the public to get together doesn't get treated the same way that a private office building would where there's only specifically authorized people allowed to come and go.
You are incorrect.
Please provide citations to support your position. Google has any number of links to articles, summaries and commentary that all say the same thing - the constitutional protection for speech applies to the government, not private individuals.
Here's one.
You may also want to take a look at the Wiki article on forums.
You may be confusing a state granting additional rights or protection of free speech with those protected by the constitution. See Pruneyard Shopping Center vs Robins. I would strongly recommend reading the summary at the bottom of the article which includes reactions by other states, test cases and judicial commentary.
I'm just curious, was the money from Ajit Pai worth losing what little self-respect you might have had?
You may have a touch of the Dunning-Kruger going on. Might want to reign in the insults while you get that sorted.
You know what, I'll go ahead and say it. I've become entirely against the idea that a private company acting as a public forum with a monopoly, near monopoly, or companies part of a small oligarchy over something can do whatever the fuck they please with no obligations on basic fairness. We need stronger consumer protection laws in these situations. They want the benefit of being a giant public platform with virtually no competitors? Then so sorry, there should be responsibility that comes along with that to not be completely arbitrary and capricious because you love the taste of the RIAA and MPAA's nethers. Prompt ability to appeal to a human when a financial issue is at stake is a no brainer.
Kevin McLeod stated publicly on Twitter that Adsense pulled its ads from a section of his website (or perhaps all of it) because it contained "copyrighted content."
He's the one who made around half of Youtube's initial audio library for use by Youtubers on Youtube's own website.