I expect it happens about 100 times / day - most just don't make it to here. I've had a false copyright claim on a video I posted - it was a recording of a church service where a historic hymn was sung - out of copyright years ago. The algorithm matched it to another recording of the same tune, but different words, and they claimed copyright. I clicked the appeal button, and explained that it was out of copyright. I heard nothing back.
As the video was only a test, I only expected about 3 views, and it didn't block the video, just take the revenue, I ignored it.
I've posted about this here before, but a lot of people who upload their own videos of classical music on youtube and get copyright-warned or copyright-striked are too spooked to file a counter-claim. If it was a bot that automatically filed the claim against you, there's a very good chance the claim will be automatically lifted if you counter-claim.
Yes, youtube will give you a big scary warning about how repeated violations could mean your account is shut down. Every time this happened I went ahead and submitted counter-claim anyway. On all but one occasion the copyright claim disappeared immediately. The one exception required a bit of escalation but I still wound up on top (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22488897 if you're curious).
I understand a good many people simply do not feel comfortable risking their youtube account being shut down from contested claims, but I suspect that for many the risk is a lot lower than they realize.
I got a copyright ding on YouTube for children singing come all ye faithful. I challenged it and they never responded, but the claim remained on the video for 30 days.
It's especially frustrating because the companies involved in claims and even the content is rarely identifiable and of course has no consequence.
Youtube is following the letter of law. They are acting on someone's claim of copyright infringement, and allowing the accused to dispute the claim.
Chances may be better going after the claimant. But this case, like many other, seems to be a false positive of a maybe slightly too sensitive system rather than some wild claim with absolutely no rational basis.
Does anyone believe it's possible to identify copyright violations with complete accuracy? If not, why is it such a terrible scandal if some erroneous claims are made, which can be disputed with a few clicks?
If you happened to be a musician, how many videos using your music unauthorised would you be willing to tolerate for avoiding a single erroneous claim against some video of yours?
Got hit with several ContentID claims on videos that I posted in 2013 with the work I was supposedly infringing on being created in 2014. My appeal was denied. Moronic algorithms.
This seems to be one of the less surprising false-positives of Youtube's copyright detection algorithm. You match millions of hours of copyrighted material vs. noise, seems like you have a multiple testing problem and at least one thing will inadvertently match somewhere in the 10 hours noise video
Wonder what Youtube can do here, except speed up dispute resolution. With datasets of their size, false-positives seem inevitable.
Do copyright-owners just set the system to auto-monetization or -takedown? If so, maybe Youtube should change their policy to require more manual action from copyright owners.
I have a youtube channel where I post videos of dance competitions. Because it involves music, I frequently get copyright claims from whatever rights group that wants to take my ad revenue (which is 0 anyway because I disable monetisation on principle).
When you get a claim, there is an option to appeal it, all the way to a formal counter-notification which will remove your strike and require the claimant to institute court proceedings against you.
I have even used that a few times, years ago when I still got fired up by this. Now, I just appeal it once on fair use grounds and if it doesn’t get dropped I move on with my life.
Has something changed that doesn’t allow this particular channel owner to challenge the claim? (Genuinely interested as a channel owner myself.)
I had someone steal one of my videos on youtube. I reported it for infringement and it was taken down in 30 minutes. I found that pretty impressive.
A month ago one of my videos about a reported and fixed XSS vulnerability was taken down for violating some rules (it didn't say what rules exactly). I submitted an appeal and it was reinstated a few days later.
Several years ago one of my videos that used some public domain footage was taken down for copyright infringement. I appealed it saying the footage was in the public domain and they reinstated my video several days later.
Last year I uploaded some old footage onto Youtube.. the footage was from WW2 that was filmed by US Gov. I saved it from a site that went down in 2000s and wanted to put it up for my cousin who was studying WW2 in HS.
In less than 24 hours, there were 4 different copyright claims by various companies. Over a 20 min clip. They obviously didn't own the copyright but they were claiming the clip as their own and wanted cuts of revenue.
About two years ago I uploaded an animation that I did in Apple Motion and it used stock sounds and music from Apple. Within a day of upload, I received a copyright claim by some company and they demanded I remove audio.
From my brief experience with Youtube/Google's Content ID system and the way they do business, I'm really glad I don't have to deal with this mafia on a daily basis.
- Can't identify when the user is the actual copyright holder who the accuser licensed the content from.
These automated systems are always going to have lots of false positives because they only know as much about the copyright status of a work as they have been told. The data entry process that drives them is inevitably going to be incomplete and error prone.
Copyright enforcement in the digital age is a hard problem that I've not seen a clear solution for. The legal system around copyright that exists today is not scalable enough to handle the volume of works being produced and distributed. It's not clear what sort of system could ever hope to handle the rate of disputes coming from a site like Youtube in a judicious and economical fashion.
People are using this system intentionally as a scam. Recently, I tried uploading a video which had video game music in the background, and youtube flagged a copyright claim on behalf of someone who made a remix of the original song. I did not have a license to use the song, so that's fair, but my choices were either to drop my video or run ads that give money to someone who wasn't even the owner of the song I was trying to use.
There was no avenue for recourse, or to report the person who was fraudulently making claims.
Some claimants are so hilariously (or nefariously?) wrong too. My partner uploaded a video of her playing Greensleeves on violin. Though it only has about 10 views, it received a claim from some random company in the states.
Greensleeves was written sometime in the 16th century. That a company set themselves up an automated tool to search for people playing this song tells me that they are either idiots, or greedily trying to steal revenue from YouTubers.
Agreed, not to mention that to fight any notice in YouTube, you have limited options - as in, you are presented with a form that has radio buttons, of which none of the responses are 'this claim is without merit'.
I've had to battle YT multiple times over music or content which I owned the rights to. In many cases, I was the creator of the content in question.
The poster isn't claiming that this is a valid DMCA suit. Nearly everyone who is at a mildly decent level and has posted their own recordings of classical musical to YouTube have received these claims _in their Copyright section_. YouTube itself prefixes this with some lengthy disclaimer about how this isn't the DMCA process but that they reserve the right to kick you off their site based on fraudulent matches made by their algorithms.
They are absolutely completely and utterly bullshit. Nobody with half an ear for music will mistake my playing of Bach's G Minor Sonata with Arthur Grumiaux (too many out of tune notes :-D). But yet, YouTube still manages to match this to my playing, probably because they have never heard it before now (I recorded it mere minutes before).
So no, it isn't a valid claim, but this algorithm trained on certain examples of work, manages to make bad classifications with potentially devastating ramifications for the creator (I'm not a monetized YouTube artist, but if this triggered a complete lockout of my Google account(s), this likely end Very Badly).
I think it's a very relevant comparison to the GP's examples.
YouTube says that, I've seen no evidence that they've ever actually punished a false claim, or even prevented that false claim from happening again.
For example, a video of mine was ContentID claimed for a public domain piece of classical music. I successfully contested the claim (the scammers give up quickly because their bread-and-butter is the 95% of victims who YouTube scared away from the "contest claim" button, or who never revisit the video page after posting). About a month later, I re-edited the same video and re-uploaded it, and I got the same fraudulent strike from the same scammer that I'd already successfully contested.
This could easily be fixed by having a consequence to fake DMCA reports. A fine or something. Something messed up that Youtube does is when someone files a copyright claim they get to take the money from your video. I have had times when I was sent a copyright strike for videos I have made and when I check my video is usually much older than the music that I am being accused of stealing.
I always win these disputes for obvious reasons but Youtube has never offered to make things right.
Basically the accused is guilty until proven innocent which is not how it should be.
Still sounds like a Youtube problem, not with copyright.
The amount of false positives Youtube's copyright system has generated is crazy. It's clearly broken and wide-open for abuse by bad actors.
Even with the complications of copyright there are so many examples of people having entirely fair-use videos taken down. It goes well beyond just the difficulties of two works one copyrighted/one not matching.
I had a video with 8 digit views get taken down and a copyright strike applied to my account because a “spiritual healer” said they own the copyright to the word “spirit” in any and all uses, and good old Google/YouTube sided with them after appeal.
I’d only used the word in the title (it was part of the name of a ship) and the video was just a video I had personally taken of the ship on a test day. I was authorised to do the video by the ship owners, and there was no talking or music.
I understand it’s a difficult issue to scan and check all the content, but when it goes to review and they STILL side with the bullshit fake claims? Bleh. My hatred of Google and the modern internet is immeasurable these days.
This is about disputed copyright claims, not all videos. Besides, most of these copyright holders probably file hundreds of automated claims (from examples in the thread: chiptune samples, royalty free drum loops, presidential speeches, CC licensed music). If it's obvious that it isn't copyrighted, YouTube can remove the fingerprint from the Content ID system and force the supposed copyright holder to issue a DMCA notice, which is much easier to dispute and works in favour of the uploader.
As the video was only a test, I only expected about 3 views, and it didn't block the video, just take the revenue, I ignored it.
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