The Fine Bros abandon attempt to license reaction videos after criticism
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It's literally a web form, and your videos are taken down regardless of who requests it or why - until you prove otherwise. The process can take weeks to months for a YouTube representative to allow you to appeal your case, and in some situations you can't even appeal it (if you have appealed recently, etc.)
In my experience, I had a number of videos taken down by a teenager because he wanted his (similar videos) to rank above mine in search. It took three months to get my videos back online, the guy trolled me over email and after YouTube put them back online (fyi, they don't compensate your revenues) - they let the other guy who falsified his claims just keep making videos like he was previously.
YouTube is not an open, or fair platform like it used to strive to be. It is now very much a revenue stream where creators (who bring traffic to the site) are often disregarded and/or considered disposable.
Here's the form: https://www.youtube.com/copyright_complaint_form
Click "copyright infringement" and "infringing on me", add the target video's URL and it will be taken down automatically. It won't be restored until the appeal process is finished (usually several months).
While most of the content on YouTube is just "random junk" the most watched / popular content belongs to large networks, large networks work with YouTube through their content ID program which is treated slightly differently when it comes to DMCA claims.
Things get slightly more tricky because videos can have Multiple content ID's tagged to them by YouTube so if you upload a video with various music clips one owner can decide to mute it while another decides to block it completely.
That said if you are an original content creator once you've submitted content to YT's content ID program and you prove that you own exclusive rights for that content it pretty much protects you from the normal DMCA process.
There are few enough (more than 100, less than 1000) major YouTube distributors that YouTube just manages the relationships individually. This is often cited as a perk of joining a distribution company - they have greater clout in resolving disputes with YouTube because they have access via back channels due to representing so many content creators.
The entire abuse process on YouTube is far more manual and bureaucratic than most people on the Internet seem to think.
So what could YouTube possibly do to you for misusing the process? It's not a federal legal thing anymore. I suppose the takedown-ee could sue you for missed revenues if they really wanted to, but seeing as how there's nothing preventing bogus-named accounts from filing takedowns....
Nothing.
If YouTube doesn't act aggressive enough at taking videos down, Viacom et al. start having their lawyers breathe down Google's neck.
If YouTube is too aggressive in taking things down, businesses are inconvenienced yet again at the whim of a platform owner that they zero negotiating power with. The people who do have negotiating power with YouTube already have bigger things that they want from YouTube and, if they do care about takedowns, can probably get most-favored-nations status in the dispute process.
I have an idea I'm exploring that would involve making YouTube videos and that (and other things I've heard) would make me hesitant to follow through on the idea.
Though the YouTube ToS might forbid something like that, it'd be nice to see people going after the people who spam bogus notices.
While it's being abused some what it's usually due to automated content tagging systems from various IP protection/management firms, if you intentionally troll people with dmca you can get into a heap of trouble.
Second, the 'perjury' part of the DMCA only applies if they falsely claim ownership of an infringed work. So if I make a bogus claim that your work infringes on something I actually have copyright over (however tenuous), it doesn't trigger the actual perjury bit. But if I claim to own, say, a Beatles album (which I do not) , or to be their copyright agent (which I am not), then it's a violation.
[EDIT: Just to clarify the above, this is to mean that I claim someone infringe on a Beatles album which I don't own or that I'm their agent when I am not. Thus, it's when my claim of ownership over the allegedly infringed upon work is a lie that this triggers, rather than any dispute over the ownership of the allegedly infringing work.]
I think that (unless barred somehow in YouTube's ToS), that a large enough group might be able to sue the groups making false claims for their ad money.
It's rather murky whether you could go after people who are, e.g., claiming copyright over public domain works, but with sufficient evidence of bad faith, maybe you could get somewhere.
The main problem is that federal lawsuits are really expensive and the amounts of money here are usually not all that large. It's not clear to me whether there are damages in an amount sufficient to make a class action worthwhile or anyone with deep enough pockets to pay a judgement even if one were obtained at great expense.
Or maybe someone could do a class action against YouTube as a whole for upholding bogus claims, but I'm not sure that you don't agree not to hold YouTube liable somewhere in some ToS and even if you do, I'm not sure if it's enforceable.
Disclaimer: IANAL, this isn't legal advice. If you have an actual legal issue, consult a lawyer, not random internet comments.
Making a bogus claim is a violation of YouTube's EULA/Terms of Service and filing one can result in your account being suspended and this has happened before.
If you filing a copyright claim the only way to follow through it is through the DMCA channel (and it is very clear[0]) if the claim is bogus you have violated the DMCA it self, committed a federal offense and open yourself to civil law suits.
There are also a few other channels to take down content for infringement [1] which do not directly fall under the DMCA primary various trademark / brand abuse issues these issues are covered by YouTube's own content policy, you can also of course always issue complaints over content for various other violations of YouTube's content policy.
[0]http://www.youtube.com/t/dmca_policy [1]https://www.youtube.com/copyright_complaint_form
>[EDIT: Just to clarify the above, this is to mean that I claim someone infringe on a Beatles album which I don't own or that I'm their agent when I am not. Thus, it's when my claim of ownership over the allegedly infringed upon work is a lie that this triggers, rather than any dispute over the ownership of the allegedly infringing work.]
If I understand this correctly you are suggesting that a party A can file a claim against party B for content that is potentially owned by party C without being a custodian of said content or being an agent of party C.
You can't do this, if you go through the complaint form and select "I don't own the content" it will tell you that they cannot process your claim and direct you to their DMC policy [2].
Interesting reading. It seems like one can send 'free-form' notifications (proper DMCA notices?) independently. Their form is certainly modeled after the DMCA, and I could reasonably believe that a judge would consider it a DMCA process for some purpose, I'm just not 100% sure of that due to YouTube's on process not having a proper put-back (the part cited above where they 'affirm' that it's really infringing and YT cuts you off).
> If I understand this correctly you are suggesting that a party A can file a claim against party B for content that is potentially owned by party C without being a custodian of said content or being an agent of party C.
Just to clarify, I was trying to give an example of something which triggers the 'perjury' clause of the DMCA, so I'm somewhat heartened to hear that YouTube explicitly tells people not to do that.
Its the "proper" way of doing things. If Youtube does anything differently, they would be held criminally liable through the DMCA (1996 law, which establishes the regulations of the modern internet)
Read up on laws before criticizing. There have been a ton of calls to rewrite DMCA to something more sane, but that requires:
1. A Political force to take on Hollywood (who lobbied to put such laws into place)
2. Congressional action, even though the current Congress can't even pass a freaking budget.
I personally think its a waste of time to even push on this front, there are more important issues in this country. But if you feel like this issue angers you enough, there are plenty of lobbying groups and activists you can join to call for DMCA reform. (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)
For the most part, everyone will just continue to complain about the laws that Hollywood lobbied and put into place, and then not do much about it. But just an FYI: this really isn't Youtube's fault.
There's no way to objectively check the validity of each claim in depth without a massive (and expensive) infrastructure of copyright specialists.
Instead, they created tools that do a reasonable job of detecting copyright infringement.
For the cases that can't be verified, an assumption can be made that most takedown requests are done in 'good faith'. If assumptions aren't good enough the cases can be tracked for statistical relevance.
From the subset of takedown requesters, an even smaller subset will be cases where content was taken down maliciously and/or because it exists in a grey area between illegal/legal fair use.
In those cases, take the content down defensively and consider a closer assessment if the user makes enough noise.
They can't outright blacklist content creators because they're a commercial platform that draws revenue directly from those same content creators. At best, they could track and exploit the bad actors as leverage during contract negotiations.
The reality is, for as much as MPAA and BMG threw at politicians to get the DMCA passed. It is pennies on the dollar compared to the cost of the infrastructure required to enforce copyright protection.
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We need a logical fallacy to describe assumptions where (insert all seeing all knowing super organization)'s ability to magically affect change absent realistic constraints.
Unlike technology, people-based solutions are very expensive and really don't scale well at all.
It's like people who cry 'we need more oversight' into tracking government usage/spending when that oversignt often times can cost as much as the materials those people are responsible for tracking.
Google has probably the best capability that mankind has ever witnessed to solve problems that can be solved with current technology. Unfortunately, not all problems can be solved with technology alone.
>, add the target video's URL and it will be taken down automatically.
There's got to be a little more to it than that (at least for bigger channels) because it would mean that random people could take down Psy's "Gangnam Style" video[1]. I haven't tried it but I really doubt submitting a simple web form will get that video with 2 billion views removed.
Therefore, I'm guessing there's a whitelist of special userids (e.g. WarnerBrosMusic, TaylorSwiftVEVO, etc) or adminstrative overrides to prevent vandals from shutting down legitimate videos. In other words, if there's an automated system for takedowns, there's another more god-like automated system that ignores abusers submitting them.
The interesting question is: How do "nobodys" get that "benefit of doubt" treatment for their videos?
You should be angry at how copyright law works in the U.S., not at the fact that YouTube has to follow it. The way that DMCA works is that when YouTube receives a takedown request, they have to honor it and take down the video as long as the request has all of the required information. Appeals take 10 days, which is also spelled out in the DMCA laws. If they don't follow the the laws, they could lose the safe harbor also provided by DMCA. There's a flowchart here of what the whole process looks like: http://readwrite.com/2012/02/23/how_dmca_takedown_notices_wo...
It's a web form probably to make things easier on their end; they probably get hundreds of thousands [0] of these requests every day, and I can't even imagine trying to process that amount through letter mail or faxes.
And while the web form may look simple, it's still a legal process. You need to sign into your account to use it, and they suggest that they punish people who are abusing the process: "Do not make false claims. Misuse of this process may result in the suspension of your account or other legal consequences." [1]
> YouTube is not an open, or fair platform like it used to strive to be. It is now very much a revenue stream where creators (who bring traffic to the site) are often disregarded and/or considered disposable.
I don't think there's any evidence to back that claim.
[0]: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121211/16152021352/dmca-...
[1]: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2807622?hl=en
You could send them a DMCA takedown, but why would you? Their system favors the person trying to remove content even more than the DMCA does.
Content ID is an automated takedown, but if you dispute a content ID claim, then the content owner has to respond with a DMCA takedown request if they want to continue the process.
All other takedowns (including that web form) are DMCA takedowns.
Then web services were invented, and now the law doesn't match up with how people typically use the internet. The laws need to be updated, and to do so we will have to fight against the Hollywood political lobby.
You see, the DMCA is a perfectly acceptable law if you were hosting videos on your own server. YOU would get the DMCA notice, and then you can decide whether or not you want to be held liable in court.
Today, you put your video on Youtube. Therefore: Youtube gets a DMCA notice, and Youtube administrators need to make the decision whether or not to go to court about the issue. The admins don't want to stick its neck out for millions of users using its servers for free, so they just comply with the DMCA notice and take down the video.
Its the reality of the current situation. If you're not paying for server space, you have no power. I'm not entirely sure that's a "bad" thing either, but I can admit that you can feel powerless as a user.
Just how profitable does your business have to be before you can start hiring people? Apparently not even Google or Facebook or Apple have enough money to hire a bunch of minimum-wage help-desk employees to police content on their own sites.
Of course, we know it's not a matter of ability, but desire. They know people come to YouTube to be able to find whatever content they want. Content ID and their DMCA process is just paying lipservice to the idea that they are playing by the rules. They want this system. It keeps the new content churn high, which keeps users refreshing the page, which gets new ads served to them.
But beyond that, WTF were they thinking? On YouTube, your viewers are younger kids who are also creating their own videos. If they're really a fan of your content, they're going to copy you - shamelessly. Did they really think their viewers were just going to sign over royalties from their videos to the Fine Bros and not be pissed off about it? Is it really a good idea as an entertainer to go after your most dedicated fans?
All I've seen them trying is to allow people to legitimately do a copy of their show. I wouldn't never try to copy that format, I wouldn't be afraid to make my own "react to" but I would try to be different, original, with the concept. Having access to their format, their contents, etc... that could be a good way to try, to start, a way that I wouldn't dare taking because of copyright, but would be interesting for simply 20% of literally not much revenue.
Stopping React World does nothing else than stopping legitimate copy...
Nothing is stopping you from making a total rip off of their show and its format today - and you don't need to get permission or pay royalties. That's how it should be; it's not like anyone is using copyrighted characters.
But what Fine was doing was claiming that people were copying them and then trying to lock up the format behind their trademarks.
It's like if you invented the wheel and people started also making wheels, and then I came along and started claiming everyone stole it from me several decades later.
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/43g6em/fine_brothe...
I think the risk was losing those sponsors due to the backlash to their licensing plans.
I still mean what I said, they potentially will get contacted by people with too much money on their hands, to try to capitalize on their new publicity & media spotlight.
The publicity probably helped them if anything.. They play the whole "we are sorry we were misinterpreted, oops, we are going to revert/retract the trademarks and the react world idea." And no one can really say that the fine bros were purely malice.. So you might consider it bad publicity, but really, it was good publicity. All they had to do was retract an idea that would have probably failed anyways.
They went from YouTube famous to actual celebrity / news famous. That's not an easy line to cross.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_subscribed_us...