[morganvachon]

When it comes to criminal law, the standard is "knew or should have known". At the very least, Sony and possibly YouTube are liable for the results of a flawed algorithm causing them to break the law. It's been in (mis)use for many years now, and it's obvious it's a horribly inaccurate method of determining copyright violations. Without human intervention to investigate and ensure each and every claim is legitimate, YouTube and the copyright claimants are committing fraud and perjury on a massive scale.

[icebraining]

YouTube and its system doesn't issue DMCA takedown requests; what law are they breaking?

It's not illegal to takedown whatever videos you want from your own platform, nor to allow a partner company from choosing videos to take down.

[morganvachon]

YouTube acts upon DMCA requests from companies claiming copyright infringement, using an algorithm that YouTube employs. When said request is known or should be known to be perjurious, the parties involved should be held liable.

While you are correct that YouTube reserves the right to remove whatever they want to from their site, they do not have the right to monetize on behalf of a third party (Sony, et. al.) content you create and own the copyright to, nor claim copyright on behalf of that third party, just by waving around the DMCA. However, that is exactly what they are doing, and are doing it under color of law, and while committing perjury to boot.

[icebraining]

Why do you say they are using the DMCA? My point is exactly that: if you own the platform, you don't need the DMCA to take down videos from it!

they do not have the right to monetize on behalf of a third party (Sony, et. al.) content you create and own the copyright to

Why not? YouTube can put ads on any video, why couldn't they distribute that income with whoever they want to?

[morganvachon]

> Why do you say they are using the DMCA?

Here's a great example of what I'm talking about:

https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-deal-with-universal-blocks-...

> YouTube can put ads on any video, why couldn't they distribute that income with whoever they want to?

It's a matter of trust. YouTube implemented a monetization policy to encourage regular folks to create viral content, and reward that effort with monetization for original works. However, YouTube is gaming their own system and stacking it in favor of Big Content. They are breaking the trust they asked their users to place in them, and breaking their own policies to support their biggest customers.

[icebraining]

> Here's a great example of what I'm talking about:

While the email mentions a DMCA notice, I doubt there was one. Content-ID probably detected it, and UMG blocked it without needing to send any DMCA notice, just using YouTube's backend tools. If you search on the DMCA database that Google/Youtube uses, ChillingEffects, there's no match for a notice sent by UMG: https://chillingeffects.org/notices/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&te...

Essentially, my point is that the DMCA is a legal mechanism to force hosting services to comply, but it isn't needed in this case, since YouTube complies voluntarily.

> It's a matter of trust.

Oh, absolutely, I never meant to say that YouTube aren't being assholes by behaving like this, but we were talking about legal rights, and I don't see them violating those.

And playing Devil's advocate, I'm not sure YouTube is all that interested in implementing these mechanisms - their customers are the advertisers, not Big Content. I'd say it's more like paying protection money after getting the proverbial horse head in the bed - or in this case, the barrage of lawsuits they got between 2008-2012.

[serge2k]

There is no law that says you have to treat your customers well.