YouTube's aggressive robot approach to copyright

December 13, 2013 6:56 AM

A furious 18-minute rant posted Wednesday has drawn attention to YouTube's new automatic content ID system, implemented in earnest this week.

VentureBeat: YouTube suddenly begins flagging hundreds of game-related videos for copyright violations
Ars Technica: YouTube goes nuts flagging game-related content as violating copyright

Any copyright claim against a video immediately results in the removal of ad revenue at the moment the claim is made, even if 1) that content is clearly fair use, 2) the game companies who own the content say they're not making a claim (like Deep Silver, which posted a statement assuring reviewers they "will not be alone in this"), or 3) the claim comes from an odd third party who doesn't appear to have a clear ownership interest. Kotaku has good quotes from gamers who strongly disagree with YouTube's claim that "channel owners can easily dispute Content ID claims if they believe those claims are invalid." Earlier today, Angry Joe posted a calmer, more detailed 31-minute video: Whats Broken & How to Fix it.
posted by mediareport (74 comments total)

From the VentureBeat link:

The odd thing is that YouTube Content ID is naming companies in these complaints that do not hold the copyrights to many of these games, as first reported by YouTube news site Tubefilter. For example, one uploader got a notice for publisher Deep Silver‘s Metro: Last Light (a horror-themed first-person shooter) from a company called 4GamerMovie, which is some kind of Japanese gaming website.
posted by mediareport at 6:57 AM on December 13, 2013

From Kotaku:

"As soon as you receive a content ID notification, it immediately comes into effect, there's absolutely no disputing it," a gamer named Nathan who runs a small channel called Analog Reviews told me. "The monetization feature is immediately removed from that video and it's impossible to ever add it again. There is the option to dispute the claim but Youtube can take months to get back to you. When they actually respond, they're generally not helpful at all."

Some YouTubers also fear that disputing a claim could get their channel killed on YouTube. A Content ID match alone doesn't penalize a channel, but disputing a content claim and having that claim rejected can result in a copyright violation notice. A few of those and you lose your channel.
posted by mediareport at 7:00 AM on December 13, 2013

If there was anything on the web begging for a real competitor, it's YouTube. But with the Google behemoth behind it, it makes for a daunting task.
posted by tommasz at 7:04 AM on December 13, 2013 [15 favorites]

Surely the first part of a copyright claim should be the bit where you show you own the copyright.

If I was Deep Silver I'd be asking Youtube how the fuck 4GamerMovie got past that bit.
posted by fullerine at 7:04 AM on December 13, 2013 [5 favorites]

There is the option to dispute the claim but Youtube can take months to get back to you. When they actually respond, they're generally not helpful at all.

Which is pretty much SOP for Google (who owns YouTube, of course) Their system is logical, efficient, and infallible, so there's no sense in investing in any actual customer/user service.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:06 AM on December 13, 2013 [13 favorites]

Seems like you could just file copyright claims for anyone you've got a grudge against to disrupt their channels and videos. Are there any checks against abuse in the process?
posted by msbrauer at 7:06 AM on December 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

This isn't exactly a new policy(this may have been addressed, I have not yet RTFA'd). They've been doing this since at least around 2008. Many a Scientology protestor had their vidoes auto removed because Scientology made the copyright claims even when it was just protest footage. This lead to a decent revolt within Project Chanology to move to Vimeo (and was my first exposure to Vimeo).

Its pretty irritating practice, though I understand that due to their huge volume some automation is required. Still, its ridiculous that you don't even have to be the copyright owner to make the claim.
posted by Twain Device at 7:07 AM on December 13, 2013

Are there any checks against abuse in the process?

So far, the answer seems to be "If there are, YouTube has no interest in them."
posted by mediareport at 7:07 AM on December 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

YouTube is absolutely clearly in the wrong here.

That said: I was previously unaware of Angry Joe.

What a dick.
posted by flabdablet at 7:15 AM on December 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Seems like you could just file copyright claims for anyone you've got a grudge against to disrupt their channels and videos

Already happened.

I do feel a little sympathy for Youtube in this case. They followed the DMCA to the letter, still got sued. Nintendo had been making noises about people using it's content earlier this year. They really don't want to be your lawsuit shield anymore. Lets Plays revenues have been exploding in the past year or so, and the number or them has increased as people are attracted to the lure of ad dollars. It was a matter or time.

I do think the FPP is a bit off with the phrase

that content is clearly fair use,

There is no clearly fair use. Fair use is not a bright shining line, it is a balancing test, which means that you have to judge it on a case by case basis. Also, given that the first factor in determining fair use is whether or not the person infringing is making money off of it, and we are talking about the monetization of Youtube videos, this isn't a slam dunk.
posted by zabuni at 7:20 AM on December 13, 2013 [9 favorites]

So use this for social protest. Once the big guys started getting inconvenienced, the rules will change pretty quickly.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:20 AM on December 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Hey I'm going to try to look at the bright side: does this mean folks will go back to writing text walkthroughs for games instead of posting videos? Because I am old and I don't have time to watch your 18-minute video demonstrating how to finish the puzzle at the end of dungeon X, son. I'm sure it's thrilling but I just want the highlights.
posted by trunk muffins at 7:26 AM on December 13, 2013 [26 favorites]

Statement from Rebellion, who seem uncharacteristically reasonable for a games company.
posted by Artw at 7:34 AM on December 13, 2013

ContentID isn't new, YouTube's been doing this kind of automatic copyright detection since 2007. What's new is the way this is being applied to game content. A screencast of a computer game by nature includes a huge amount of copyrighted content (the game assets), usually without a license. The problem is that most game companies are delighted to have that content being used in this way and ContentID is too aggressively taking down videos all of the sudden.

The new enforcement seems connected to Youtube's management of Multi-Channel Networks. I don't fully understand this stuff, but basically a video channel like Machinima aggregates video content from many producers, puts ads on them, and shares the ad revenue with the producers. Google recently introduced new management options for MCNs and part of that has to do with how copyright claims are handled. It appears that Google is now enforcing those rules and we're discovering that their automatic handling of copyright claims is not well suited to game videos.

ContentID is processing 400 years of video a day. It's not an easy system to get right, particularly the legal parts of it.
posted by Nelson at 7:34 AM on December 13, 2013 [4 favorites]

Trunk muffins - Gamefaqs.com has text walkthroughs of essentially every game in the history of mankind. Also, many of the more complicated games now have their own wikis... Dragon's Dogma, which I'm playing through, has a pretty good one.

I really enjoy LP videos and hope that Youtube's typical incompetance doesn't kill them. It's a great way to be exposed to new games you might not otherwise try and it's a huge source of free advertising for the companies involved. Really win win for all parties.
posted by selfnoise at 7:35 AM on December 13, 2013 [6 favorites]

On the one hand, playthroughs can be damn handy for my Minecraft-loving kiddo. On the other hand, lots of them feature cursing and really inappropriate comments for an 8-year-old.

And then there's the insistent Google "are you SURE you don't want to subscribe using your REAL name???" stuff that you can't turn off. And the comments themselves.

Maybe I don't need so much Youtube in my life.
posted by emjaybee at 7:36 AM on December 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

What a dick.

Whatever. In today's video, Joe spends a lot of time carefully going through the odd music claims against his videos and exploring how they're working and what's wrong with the system. From 13:40 to 17:40 he discusses a claim from Video Copilot, which makes software specifically to create music for use in YouTube videos, and which he bought four years ago. Now it's coming up as flagged at YouTube, and Video Copilot is now able to monetize the videos Angry Joe made using short music clips from its software until he can email them with the order number for the order he made four years ago.

It's pretty thoughtful and interesting, and gets to a root question: should Video Copilot whitelist all of its music at YouTube so it doesn't attack the folks who bought its software and are using it for its intended purpose, or should it continue to inconvenience everyone who bought its software by making them go through the process of first figuring out why their videos are being flagged and the ad revenue taken away, and then contacting Video Copilot with proof of purchase and then going through YouTube's molasses-slow process to get their ad revenue back?

Is that really the best way for Video Copilot to fight piracy?

It's pretty well-done, for a one-take YouTube video, and flabdablet is very off-base in his characterization.
posted by mediareport at 7:45 AM on December 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

I'm wondering whether there is or could be a secondary market for copyright infringement claims, where somebody could come along and buy the rights to a claim and any monetary damages that might ensue (somewhat the way patent trolls buy up patents these days), and Google is worried about being sued for serious money by an entity which owns thousands of claims.
posted by jamjam at 7:55 AM on December 13, 2013

The DMCA is the wrong way of doing this. Those who own rights have to flag what might infrige, rather than those who upload have to prove they aren't infringing. And then auto-flagging goes nuts and everyone is unhappy. Like, Joe could have radio-buttons to check that he bought the music from Video Copilot & never run into that issue.
posted by dabitch at 8:01 AM on December 13, 2013

Nelson: It's not an easy system to get right, particularly the legal parts of it.

Fair point, Nelson. But the immediate removal of ad revenue without notice or any possibility of rebuttal of the claim is ridiculous.

Particularly so given that 1) we know a significant proportion of these claims are bogus and 2) YouTube has demonstrated very little commitment to quickly responding, let alone resolving, claims from users that their videos are perfectly legal.

YouTube is being greedy, lazy and insulting here. It's reasonable to ask for a simple change that alerts the user to a claim, allows the ad revenue to continue but sets a 30-day deadline for demonstrating that the usage is legal. That would still be a huge burden on the video uploader, especially in the face of dozens of bogus claims, but YouTube doesn't even have the decency to do that. Why? It would be work and cost money for YouTube, I imagine. Better to just shit on users' heads and make them do all the work, while committing almost no resources at all to helping them fight back against bogus claims.
posted by mediareport at 8:04 AM on December 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Between this and the G+ debacle, it looks an awful lot like YouTube is deliberately committing suicide.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:14 AM on December 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm curious to see how this will ultimately affect Twitch. They seem to have been flying under the radar with all these issues. I imagine that the integration with the PS4 and XBox One things will be changing how things are flagged on there.

I watch a ton of LPs on YouTube and I often wonder if any of the talent have long term plans. There's so much money being made right now but I can't see it being sustainable.
posted by MaritaCov at 8:14 AM on December 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Actually I've been meaning to throw this out as an AskMe, but what are everyone's favorite LP channels? I subscribe to a few (and Giantbomb, of course, which is sort of a pro LP), but I feel like I'm missing out.
posted by selfnoise at 8:33 AM on December 13, 2013

YouTube is being greedy, lazy and insulting here.

I think making this so emotional isn't appropriate, although I imagine it certainly feels emotional to the video creators. YouTube itself is a product without human attributes like "lazy". The people who work on YouTube are a variety of things, but I think "lazy" and "insulting" is unlikely to describe many of them. This whole flareup is less than a week old. I feel certain there's a group of folks inside Google running around trying to figure out what to do, and they need to do that quickly. (Personally I think they should pause all ContentID flagging until they fix the problems.)

ContentID in general is kind of a crappy compromise. It's all an awkward system for Google to allow anyone to upload any video all the time, while also trying to respect the rights of copyright holders enough that it's not sued into oblivion. Part of what we're learning this week is the dispute process is too manual, too slow, and doesn't scale. That's not a new problem and I'm skeptical if Google will ever fix it.

(Meanwhile, YouTube remains an archive where you can find a copy of pretty much any popular music recording made in the last 50 years. And yet you can't find a single Simpsons clip that isn't from a cell phone pointing at a TV with Spanish dubbing.)
posted by Nelson at 8:34 AM on December 13, 2013 [7 favorites]

The automated flagging system has long been deeply flawed.

I regularly receive takedown requests for songs I have posted on YouTube. My own songs. For which I am the sole copyright holder. Filed on behalf of me by a robot representing the online distribution company that represents my songs.

I expect we are not far from a future in which robot lawyers contact me to tell me I have infringed upon myself for uploading a video of my own image without having obtained my permission first.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 8:40 AM on December 13, 2013 [22 favorites]

If this harms one hair on Sips_'s grey, blocky head, I will flip my shit.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:40 AM on December 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

"Youtube is wrong and horrible: Here's some Youtube videos explaining why!"
posted by Big_B at 8:48 AM on December 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

That sucks, Bunny Ultramod, and wouldn't be happening if youtube made it so that you proved&they knew you're the holder from the start. I'm sure that happens to a lot of bands, actually.
posted by dabitch at 8:49 AM on December 13, 2013

If there was anything on the web begging for a real competitor, it's YouTube. But with the Google behemoth behind it, it makes for a daunting task.

Doesn't this pretty much describe DailyMotion, right down to the "not pursuing copyright claims" part?
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:50 AM on December 13, 2013

The content ID system leads to some pretty stupid situations, such as multiple media companies trying to claim copyright on the same public domain NASA footage. There ought to be some kind of three-strikes rule for content owners, where if they incorrectly claim ownership too many times their content ID privileges are revoked.
posted by Pyry at 8:51 AM on December 13, 2013 [13 favorites]

There is, actually. You'll lose your flagging privileges if you constantly make bogus claims. It kicks in very early too, I wouldn't be surprised if it was the magical number three.
posted by dabitch at 8:52 AM on December 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

Part of what we're learning this week is the dispute process is too manual, too slow, and doesn't scale.

We learned that long ago, which is exactly what makes YouTube's recent ramping up of enforcement without notice absurdly insulting.

I mean, I appreciate the generosity of spirit you're demonstrating here, Nelson, and agree I have a terribly negative view of at least the beancounters, if not the engineers, at YouTube/Google. But the decision YouTube folks have made to place the burden completely and unfairly on the video uploaders whose content has made YouTube folks rich (instead of at least requiring some sort of demonstration of ownership before allowing a claim to take anything down) is indeed a lazy approach.

After years of continued non-responsiveness on YouTube's part, and continued immediate removal of content and/or ads, now ramped up significantly this week, without any changes....well, at some point you have to wonder why YouTube isn't fixing this stuff but is instead doubling down on a deeply, utterly flawed way of handling this stuff.

"They're being greedy" is pretty much the Occam's Razor solution to that one.
posted by mediareport at 8:55 AM on December 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm curious to see how this will ultimately affect Twitch.

This is a key point. If you look at the Socialblade numbers for the biggest independent content producers on Youtube right now, many are Minecraft-based let's plays. Mojang just added Twitch integration to Minecraft, so LPers can directly stream without needing to use third-party programs, like Fraps.

It may sound arcane, but this means that Twitch is now very well positioned, as the favoured solution by the game company, to take a good fraction of Youtube's most popular, most lucrative producers away from them. This is like AMC stealing Game of Thrones from HBO.
posted by bonehead at 9:00 AM on December 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

That sucks, Bunny Ultramod, and wouldn't be happening if youtube made it so that you proved&they knew you're the holder from the start.

Mandatory Google ID + mandatory proof of identity for uploaders? I'd rather Youtube just died, to be honest. The internet is turning into a giant border checkpoint.
posted by forgetful snow at 9:01 AM on December 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

I can flag content that has/is my copyrighted works (I am one person, doing this manually, not by machine, time consuming for me), I had to fax youtube a copy of my passport and sign a bunch of forms years ago. The people uploading would simply carry on, and often re-upload the very next day. Youtube never saw their passport.
posted by dabitch at 9:03 AM on December 13, 2013

It's easy for me to empathize with the folks at Google because I used to be an engineer at Google (years ago) and understand something about how hard legal policy is at a company of their scale. I don't know anything specific about YouTube though. End of the day there's a group of well meaning product people at YouTube who want to do the right thing by video producers. And there's a bigger group of self-interested strategic people at YouTube who realize that if they screw the video producers too much, they'll destroy their own successful product.

I agree with the statements above that YouTube needs meaningful competition. Vimeo and DailyMotion are reasonable video hosting alternatives but they lack the social network and advertising that makes YouTube the platform of choice. But end of the day no one is forcing a Let's Play producer to put their content on YouTube and cash checks from Google for ads. The market just doesn't have enough alternatives.

Twitch is definitely an interesting alternative. It's a different thing, being live content instead of archives of edited content. But it's very vital right now. Not coincidentally YouTube just expanded YouTube Live. They're pretty far behind in adoption though.
posted by Nelson at 9:09 AM on December 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Just another reason that I want to move to the parallel universe where Google bought Flickr and Yahoo bought YouTube. Because then Yahoo would have driven that sucker straight into the ground, probably annihilating themselves in the process, and we'd have something a lot better by now.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:18 AM on December 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

I hope this doesn't screw things up for the Rad Brad! I've gotten really hooked on his videos. His commentary is really endearing, and it's a good way to keep current with gaming even though I no longer have a gaming system.

A while back I directed the music video for an Abby Travis song, and I've gotten a few copyright violation notices on Youtube. I keep fightin' them, and they keep coming. I don't know if it's a robot thing, or if it's some misguided Abby fan.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 9:19 AM on December 13, 2013

I had an extra exciting one a while back - a dance remix of a video I put up, followed by 4 seperate agencies claiming a violation based on the fact that some bits of that video matched the words in the remixes. Burn them all, but especially the repeated offenders at Kontor New Media.

A story not so disimilar to mine: http://blog.factorfiles.com/youtube-kontor-new-media-and-their-bogus-content-id-claims/
posted by jaduncan at 9:25 AM on December 13, 2013

Twitch archives streams too, so there is some history there. What Twitch does not yet do, and why the game people still prefer YouTube, is allow for edited episodes. This means, you can't play for a few hours, edit out the boring bits (or your mistakes), add music or effects and then upload an "episode". That's still YouTube's killer app, and biggest money maker from these folks.
posted by bonehead at 9:30 AM on December 13, 2013

Ursula Hitler, it probably isn't a misguided fan, in order to be able to flag for copyright one has to jump through several "Sign this in duplicate and mail/fax us the forms" hoops at Youtube and send them copies of ones passport etc. Then for each item one flags, you swear that you are the copyright holder of [describing exactly what X in video flagged] and your typed out name is your signature and there's five radio-buttons to check that you understand you can be sued if you're filing a bogus claim under [quoting applicable laws here], and so on.

It's not something every youtube account holder can do.
posted by dabitch at 10:13 AM on December 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

It's an hour and a half long but I think this week's Address the Sess was a pretty thorough look at the subject.
posted by MaritaCov at 10:23 AM on December 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

What you see here is why you shouldn't just unleash some automated algorithm on a whole library of back content. If it is was instead only applied to new content, then people would have a chance to adjust. Like if you are going to get flagged for a 10 second snippet of music in a 30 minute video, you'll probably start making sure you don't have any background music playing.
posted by smackfu at 10:27 AM on December 13, 2013

Yep, the automation is the thing making the mistakes here, but I can totally understand why automation happened as a response to the DMCA system where copyright holders have to scour youtube to find their infringed stuff, rather than uploaders proving before uploading that they're not infringing. It's likely that many man hours were wasted clicking radio-buttons, only to see the same content re-appear in twenty other places on youtube only moments later, like playing a game of whack-a-mole. Solution: make an automated script.
posted by dabitch at 10:32 AM on December 13, 2013

I posted a four and a half minute video with no audio at all and was instantly taken down by a claim from John Cage's publisher.

Yes I'm lying
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:35 AM on December 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Related, from EFF: Dancing Baby Files Opening Brief in DMCA Abuse Appeal

Stephanie Lenz’s effort to hold Universal Music Group accountable for abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) to take down a home video of her toddler “dancing” to Prince in the kitchen is one step closer to fruition. [As they explain in the brief] the case concerns whether Internet users—from Ms. Lenz to remix artists to scholars to documentary filmmakers—have any real protection against wrongful accusations of copyright infringement.
posted by KatlaDragon at 10:36 AM on December 13, 2013

I can't wait until that's settled so we can all dance to Prince as regulated under the First Amendment.
posted by dabitch at 10:44 AM on December 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

Maybe off-topic a little, but why are there suddenly so many videos of full albums on YouTube, and why aren't those taken down for the same reasons?
posted by Clustercuss at 10:56 AM on December 13, 2013

Dabitch, that is so weird. This was the official music video, Abby's record company is on board. The next time I get flagged for violation, I'll look into who is behind it. So far I've just clicked the Youtube boxes confirming I have the rights, and that's fixed it. I thought it was probably bots, but now it sounds like something screwy is going on.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 11:19 AM on December 13, 2013

Maybe because not every copyright holder in the world has signed with youtube's special (costly&clumsy) autotagging system?
posted by dabitch at 11:20 AM on December 13, 2013

Ursula Hitler, definitely something screwy going on then. Sounds like a very simple fix for you to just radio-button it back up too. I mean, I thought it would be more cumbersome requiring similar amounts of signed documents ad passport copies. They seem to love having that sort of thing faxed over.
posted by dabitch at 11:22 AM on December 13, 2013

Maybe off-topic a little, but why are there suddenly so many videos of full albums on YouTube, and why aren't those taken down for the same reasons?

It's actually very similar to what is happening here. The difference is that YouTube doesn't necessarily take stuff down for copyright now. The copyright owner has options and can say "leave it up, but run ads on it, and I get the money." That's fine in most cases, and is why so much copyrighted stuff is on YouTube nowadays, but introduces a conflict when the uploader also wants to run ads on the video.
posted by smackfu at 11:25 AM on December 13, 2013

How does one say "leave it up but I want the money generated from ads ..." ? I'd be very interested in doing that instead of taking stuff down.
posted by dabitch at 11:28 AM on December 13, 2013

dabitch, see https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/106964?hl=en. I don't know if you have to be a big content partner or whatever to have access to that.
posted by jjwiseman at 11:47 AM on December 13, 2013

Interesting, thanks! It won't let me in at all, apparently I need a content manager account and it's in Beta and I can't find how to get one/get in. *pokes around*
posted by dabitch at 12:08 PM on December 13, 2013

Oh I see why. I don't have a youtube channel, I don't post content on youtube, I am not a youtube content manager.
posted by dabitch at 12:20 PM on December 13, 2013

What would happen if the uploaders were not trying to monetize videos (that use 3rd-party content)? Or, in every case are uploaders fairly sharing/distributing proceeds of monetization with the original content creators? Or am I missing the point?
posted by KokuRyu at 12:21 PM on December 13, 2013

I think for those infringed, it's irrelevant whether infringers are monetizing it or not, as either way it may be diverting traffic from the copyright holders site(s) and/or youtube channel.
posted by dabitch at 12:50 PM on December 13, 2013

Off topic-ish, but I banned my kids from watching Let's Play videos because they would ask for a game as a birthday present, and by the time I bought it they'd have watched videos of every level and would just cruise through to the final cutscene which they had seen over and over. I gave them the choice of:

* watch all you want instead of buying a game
* don't watch, and figure stuff out yourself

Then we talked about how looking at the answers is kind of like cheating ... gray area I guess.

Half the fun of games for me is being surprised, and getting stuck on things for a long time then finally figuring them out. I'm old ... I remember text games where I'd drop it for weeks then in the middle of a class I'd think "Ooo!!", then go home and try it and it would work. Without that sense of accomplishment, games are no fun for me.

"Santa will know if you watch Wii U videos and he won't bring you a Wii U!"
posted by freecellwizard at 12:55 PM on December 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

I think that's one reason the Minecraft LPs are so popular. MC is a pretty shallow game really. Within hours you can "beat" the game. That's not really the point though. Most LPs focus on shared world-building, exploration, and sometimes competition, shenannigans and co-op play. In otherwords, the game is just an envrionment for creative play, not an end in intself. The other games which generate lots of LPs are similar. Many are tournament games like dota or TF2 or league of legends, where watching LPs is as essential to improving as studing matches is to chess.
posted by bonehead at 12:59 PM on December 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

If this harms one hair on Sips_'s grey, blocky head, I will flip my shit.

If any of this disrupts my nightly Yogcast viewing I will be a very sad panda.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 2:44 PM on December 13, 2013

I recently circumvented this by doing a dramatic re-enactment of my Frogger game by releasing a frog along the side of the road and driving back and forth past him a bunch of times but he didn't hop into the road. Despite 400 hours of footage, I could not replicate my 'lets play Frogger' game footage. Given that frogger is copywrighted and I don't want this footage to go to waste, I'm calling the whole video 'Amphibian Vehicular Assault' and I will be using atonal bagpipe playing as the accompanying audio track.
posted by Nanukthedog at 2:49 PM on December 13, 2013

What would happen if the uploaders were not trying to monetize videos?

I've had this happen, with an LP no less. The video gets claimed and YouTube slaps ads on it with profits going to the claimant.

It's important to note that the current debacle is not just LPs. Angry Joe, who is actually a really hoopy frood, specializes in game reviews that often run 30-60 minutes themselves. He and other YouTubers are a great source of relatively independent reviews.

While for the most part these copyright claims are coming from third parties and not the publishers themselves (most publishers have come out this week strongly in favor of YouTubers), it's damn shady business when "outsider" reviews are squelched because they used clips from the official trailer.
posted by jess at 3:34 PM on December 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

It doesn't seem unlikely that user-generated content, whether it be music or whatever, becomes more popular. Already, 50% of the stuff I watch on YouTube is entirely original stuff (very slickly produced trainspotting videos), and the rest of it has been uploaded by the copyright owner (a music label or the band itself) to YouTube.
posted by KokuRyu at 4:18 PM on December 13, 2013

But Youtube has been trying to scuttle indie, original content for a while. I am far from the only Youtuber whose views took a huge dive a while back, and many of us blame it on Youtube trying to marginalize folks like us. (Among a dozen other gripes, when you watch my videos now the "suggested videos" often don't include the next one in my series. Way to kill momentum!)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:18 PM on December 13, 2013

We all saw this coming:

Steve Jobs: "Google's "do no evil" is bullshit"
posted by Vibrissae at 8:50 PM on December 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

So, what countries don't have DMCA type laws in them? I'm surprised no one has gone to Cuba or wherever and set up a YouTube type site with very strict standards of what you have to do to get videos taken down.
posted by Canageek at 10:20 PM on December 13, 2013

That said: I was previously unaware of Angry Joe.

What a dick.

After watching his half hour video, I'm mystified by this response to it. What makes you say that?
posted by the bricabrac man at 6:40 AM on December 14, 2013

I simply found myself completely unable to muster any sympathy at all for the well-groomed man having a shouty little tantrum about the fact that a toy that was given him for free doesn't work the way he wants.
posted by flabdablet at 9:14 AM on December 14, 2013

flabdablet: on the other hand, without the community Youtube is just a technically inferior version of Vimeo.
posted by jaduncan at 10:59 AM on December 14, 2013

Canageek, wasn't that what Megaupload was?
posted by dabitch at 4:31 PM on December 14, 2013

Hidden Within The TPP: The RIAA's Secret Plan To Screw Musicians Out Of Their Rights
posted by jeffburdges at 8:28 AM on December 19, 2013

DOJ Releases Some Megaupload Evidence; Actually Shows Difficulty Of Running Cloud Service
posted by jeffburdges at 8:47 AM on December 24, 2013

USTR Sued For Failing To Reveal TPP Details In Response To FOIA Request (previously)
posted by jeffburdges at 8:50 AM on December 24, 2013