[anigbrowl]

YouTube isn't a scrappy little startup with no resources left over after keeping the servers up and running 24-7. They absolutely have the talent, capital, and legal resources to innovate in this area and to assess things like public domain claims.

The concept of public domain resources is not a difficult one, you don't need special legal training or advanced math to understand the idea that copyright expires and that works whose copyright has expired are free to all. There is no mechanism to even assert public domain status on Youtube.

You have to wait and offer it as a defense if subjected to a copyright infringement claim, and the copyright infringement claim is presumed to be valid and the claimant is the first judge of the public domain assertion.

Youtube didn't invent the system, but they are far from being helpless victims as you imply.

[jchw]

I don’t think it can be made clearer: YouTube fought the battle and lost. This is the compromise. Sure, they aren’t a scrappy little startup. Can anyone please propose what they’re supposed to do after losing the lawsuit?

[stubish]

Sue the companies making false claims for damages. Time spend by employees sorting out the mess after fraudulent ownership claims has a measurable dollar figure. And then there is the damage to the brand and loss of business, which a lawyer with chutzpah would claim at billions. If they don't do this, they will just keep bleeding business to companies that do push back or are in better jurisdictions.

[kristopolous]

Somehow we can get draconian international agreements on copyright enforcement that the biggest corporations and countries have to bow down to but when it comes to things like child labor or climate change our hands are magically tied.

[moksly]

We have laws on those areas. They are both stricter and more harshly enforced.

Unfortunately it’s lucrative enough for companies to exploit loop holes by utilising subcontractors, paying the fines and so on.

The real issue is the proof, but it’s nothing new. When the banana industry first took off a “magical” amount of small banana farmers disappeared or sold their lands to militant groups in South America, these groups then sold the land to companies like Chiquita.

Chiquita tried to buy the land the normal way first, when that didn’t work they then made I known that they were buying the land in circles that could “get” the land. Chiquita never actually hired anyone to do the dirty work though.

Every piece of hardware I own is made immorally, yours is probably too, exactly because of companies using these methods of having other parties do the dirty work, but because they have more money than governments it’s impossible to come after them in a legal manner, at least without making some radically different legislation.

Maybe we should do that, but it probably wouldn’t be healthy for democracy.

[kristopolous]

Disagree. We have an almost Gilbert&Sullivan level comic opera where we theater consequences.

Some headline catching big fine that gets quietly reduced to insignificance. Some giant parading announcement of a commitment to zero carbon and no meaningful action taken after the cameras leave.

It's pure political theater.

After we landed once on a plane, air marshalls came on before anybody could leave and escorted a passenger off. What happened? He smoked a cigarette. That's actual consequences.

Nobody arrested Exxon or BP executives for their gross negligence in their extremely avoidable ecosystem destroying oil spills. They didn't suffer any personal consequences. There was no tribunal for lying about climate change through propaganda campaigns since the 1980s

The FBI never showed up at Phil Knights house on charges of child labor or call in to question the very peculiar legal acrobatics of subcontractor shell games Nike uses to create liability distance.

It'd be like if the guy smoking on the plane had one friend light it and another hold the cigarette as he puffed it and we were like "Well I guess that's too complicated for the law to handle so it's no longer a crime! Carry on!"

[moksly]

How do you figure that we disagree? Seems to me that we agree quite a bit.

[incompatible]

It's a shining example of international harmony, where even supposed "rogue states" like North Korea and Cuba have signed up to life + 50 years.

[Mindwipe]

The notion that nations do not have international agreements that bind countries much more tightly with more rigorously enforced penalties on child labour or climate change than copyright infringement is flat out laughable.

If child labour exploitation was enforced as loosely as copyright infringement most of the world's children would be in workhouses.

[anigbrowl]

I missed the evidence of them having fought the battle. How do I file notice with Youtube of public domain or fair use assertion with regard to a video I'm uploading?

[jchw]

Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc.

[thaumasiotes]

> the week before the parties were to appear in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a settlement was announced in March 2014, and it was reported that no money changed hands.

That's not fighting the battle and losing. That's fighting the battle and surrendering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y...

They won every time their case was argued. When did they lose?

[jchw]

They had been facing lawsuits and legal scrutiny since 2007; the only parties that ever won were the legal departments. Until relatively recently, YouTube wasn’t even profitable, and Content ID itself was, according to Google, over $100 million of investment to develop over the years. Given the scale of YouTube, I actually think it’s fair to take this at face value.

Ultimately I am not a lawyer and I can’t analyze how and why the case ended the way it did. However, I do think it is obvious to anyone that Content ID is a key component of how YouTube managed to escape further lawsuits and legal scrutiny. And as can be seen in the Oracle case, fighting something all the way into legal precedence can backfire in enormously painful ways, like having APIs all be eligible for copyright.

[howaboutnope]

That's not the "battle" for allowing users to tag Public Domain content, and to have moderators confirm that status where it applies in the case of legal disputes, because they never even fought that "battle".

[jchw]

That is absolutely the battle YouTube fought that lead to Content ID and the claims system that doesn’t have the leniency you wish that it did. It’s not even ambiguous; this is the system that we got. In fact, the system actually improved vastly since it was initially implemented.

Really. It was all a direct reaction to the lawsuits: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118161295626932114

When I say it has improved, I mean it genuinely has. Back in 2008 the usual outcome of copyright strikes were deleted videos and deleted channels. Copyright cartels monetizing videos they didn’t make due to dubious Content ID matches may seem like an unreasonable response, but it is still a better compromise than content flying down blackholes.

And yes. It would be great if all of these problems could just be solved. I’m sure they’ve heard every idea imaginable. There is no one obvious way to solve everything. So asking “why don’t they just do this?” is not productive. What we could ask is “how did we get here?”

And the answer to that is that copyright is broken. And if we could fix that, or at least make it less broken, some of these problems would literally disappear.

And if you don’t believe me, there’s tons of backup from people more persuasive who have perspectives of being in the direct line of fire. Like Tom Scott: https://youtu.be/1Jwo5qc78QU

And yeah YouTube could do better, but all too often you get the perspective that this is all their fault because they could solve it with one easy trick. It’s easy to say that when none of the competition managed to stick around to prove it.

Instead, the opposite happened instead, when Twitch had its own copyright reckoning.

We knew copyright on the internet was fundamentally broken in the Napster days. Did we forget?

[howaboutnope]

> I’m sure they’ve heard every idea imaginable.

And they didn't try the one that is the actual subject of this subthread.

> asking “why don’t they just do this?” is not productive

That doesn't make your answer to it valid.

> the answer to that is that copyright is broken

Why not go further back? Why is there greed? Why aren't all humans brothers? If only we could fix that, some of these problems would literally disappear!

[thaumasiotes]

> I don’t think it can be made clearer: YouTube fought the battle and lost.

Oh? When did that happen?

[beebeepka]

Well, they "tried" is more like it. YT is going to do whatever makes them more money.

[CamperBob2]

Keep fighting.

[sumedh]

Why should Google keep wasting money. If its that important then people can protest to change the laws.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Is Google presently restrained from helping users to organise alternative legislation and general protest?

[sumedh]

The question is, why should Google do that?

[CamperBob2]

Because they aren't paid to enforce unreasonable copyright laws, yet they still have to do so. It's not just the users that are penalized by the status quo, it's the service itself.

[adrianN]

But they already implemented a system to do this and have contracts with the relevant rights holders. This gives them a competitive advantage over other video platforms who don't have the resources to develop a Content ID clone and an army of lawyers to write contracts.