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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Still seems like YT's version of "Fair Use" is significantly more constrained than the legal definition.

This is a step in the right direction, but YT's system is extra-judicial in nature, and they've decided to be more copyright holder friendly than the law itself requires (likely so the law isn't used, which is cheaper for YT).

I suspect in my lifetime governments will need to create better frameworks for content networks. The whole "they're a private company, they can do anything!" argument is growing weaker by the day as these companies have more influence in our lives (with both good (e.g. anti-hate content) and bad (e.g. copyright holders stepping on small creators) consequences).

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The fact that creators are still required to edit out sound from audio from passing cars is insane. It's a system designed to be a money grab for the music industry, not follow any sort of legal definition of copyright. The idea that a music company could sue someone over a copyright claim for posting a video in which part of a song is fuzzily heard for a few brief moments as a car passes is risible.

Along the same lines, if music from passing cars could be heard in the video, how was it not an unauthorized public performance when it occurred in the first place? Why doesn't the music industry go after people who unlawfully distribute their copyrighted material up and down the street at 100 dB?

This sort of event is either strictly incidental, or it's not. Which is it? The copyright industry can't have it both ways, or at least shouldn't be allowed to.

Because the people distributing their copyrighted material up and down the street at 100db don’t have a monetization plan, and, even if they did, don’t have a convenient platform to target.

>The idea that a music company could sue someone over a copyright claim

You can sue for anything. "Its just a car driving by" would usually be a pretty solid defense that youre in the right, both in that its not substantial and doesnt hurt the original work.

Perhaps we need some sort of "cry wolf" doctrine, where you can sue an entity for "suing people too often for spurious reasons" and, if proven (e.g. if 99% of their proposed suits would have been thrown out of court if they had gone to trial), remove their ability to sue others.

That would be very impractical in the real world. How would you prove that 99% of the suits would be thrown out without having 100 trials?

I meant "thrown out in preliminary hearing." You can work through 100 preliminary hearings (especially when it's essentially the same suit, just with different subjects) pretty quickly, especially if you parallelize it across a bunch of the judge's analysts.

Sounds like you're referring to something along the lines of anti-SLAPP laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...

There's also the notion of a "vexatious litigant": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexatious_litigation

Interesting. It doesn't seem like the concept of vexatious litigation has been applied to corporations. I wonder why not?

"could win a suit" on those grounds is a more precise way of phrasing what I meant.

The system is a CYA policy for YouTube. It wasn't designed for that. Copyright holders just saw it as an opportunity to abuse a system for some extra cash. The lawsuits would be unlikely to hold up in court.

But moving it out of court and into an internal demonetization process has lessened the ability for creators to seek redress over spurious claims.

Would "seeking redress for spurious claims" be a practical solution? Which creators could use it?

If labels were forced to actually push these into the court system a lot of people would fold and settle but not everyone... those who actually got in front of a judge would likely win the case, probably even being awarded by the court for the prosecution having filed such a spurious claim.

Right now there is no cost to labels for submitting these AFAIK, there at least appears to be no cost even if the usage would be covered under fair-use.

Wow, TIL.

ris·i·ble /ˈrizəbəl/ adjective

such as to provoke laughter.

"a risible scene of lovemaking in a tent" synonyms: laughable, ridiculous, absurd, comical, comic, amusing, funny, chucklesome, hilarious, humorous, droll, entertaining, diverting, farcical, slapstick, silly, facetious, ludicrous, hysterical, uproarious, riotous, sidesplitting, zany, grotesque

I’ve never heard this either, but I guess it’s related to “Are you trying to get a rise of me?”

Dumb question - when someone films outside in public, why is audio of music from a passing car considered a copyright issue but video of a passerby in a Mickey Mouse t-shirt isn't?

Is it just because one industry lobbies YouTube and the other doesn't, or is copyright law materially different for the two cases?

If that t-shirt was in a film, you can bet there would be someone in the legal department getting the right permissions...

Presumably the same would be true of music in a film, so I'm not sure how it bears on my question.

Just because youtube chooses to penalize it, doesn't mean a court would agree its a copyright violation. There is virtually zero chance something that isn't free use 100% in the clear.

It's not that the Mickey Mouse shirt isn't, it's just that companies don't go after it (at least on the small scale in public spaces).

Both are fair use. I think it might be lobby stuff and how they are consumed. Great music can transform / enhance a pivotal moment in a movie whereas the presence of an Apple logo or Mickey Mouse shirt, not so much.

Companies can and have sued for licensing fees or if they feel their product logo was shown and misrepresented in film.

Back to the t-shirt example, on the movie/funded production scale, a lot of this is prevented by the wardrobe department making sure extras are not clothed in licensed stuff.

> This is a step in the right direction, but YT's system is extra-judicial in nature, and they've decided to be more copyright holder friendly than the law itself requires (likely so the law isn't used, which is cheaper for YT).

Bingo. Content ID came out right around the settlement of Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc. Even though the courts consistently upheld YouTube's claims, it wasn't exactly a smooth ride and more appeals were coming. I also imagine every other traditional media companies saw the potential and were equally interested in bring lawsuits.

I agree with your assessment: governments need to enact better laws to handle media as it is produced and consumed today. Until then companies of years past will try to suck every dime they can from their competition on their way out.

Could YouTube's handling of copyright be improved? Of course. Do I see systems like Content ID going away without a change in law? Absolutely not.

> Do I see systems like Content ID going away without a change in law? Absolutely not.

Considering the new EU Copyright Directive, especially with Article 17, if anything, the world is moving closer towards CID-like systems than away from it.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/after-more-decade-liti... "It all started when Lenz posted a YouTube video of her then-toddler-aged son dancing while Prince’s song “Let's Go Crazy” played in the background, and Universal used copyright claims to get the link disabled. We brought the case hoping to get some clarity from the courts on a simple but important issue: can a rightsholder use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to take down an obvious fair use, without consequence?"

It required only a decade of litigation to get it back up.

> I suspect in my lifetime governments will need to create better frameworks for content networks. The whole "they're a private company, they can do anything!" argument is growing weaker by the day as these companies have more influence in our lives

The better solution is to prevent individual private companies from holding so much power in the first place. If the major tech companies weren't allowed to drastically consolidate and push out competition, we wouldn't be in this situation.

> This is a step in the right direction, but YT's system is extra-judicial in nature, and they've decided to be more copyright holder friendly than the law itself requires

Most hosts are more copyright-holder-friendly than the law requires, because of the structural incentives in the law. (Many structure there relationship with content-submitters so that they have no liability risk from an unnecessary takedown, and thereby avoid needing to do anything with the DMCA counter-notice process, which only provides a safe harbor against claims stemming from the takedown.)

>The whole "they're a private company, they can do anything!" argument is growing weaker by the day as these companies have more influence in our lives

This simply isn't true at all, and if fact the opposite is true. The reality is that corporations are becoming ever more powerful, and voters are enabling this with their choices in the voting booths, and electing administrations that very much believe private companies should be able to do whatever they want. It's not getting any better, it's getting worse.

I think you’re actually agreeing with OP

I am, but I'm pointing out that society does not agree with him at all.

Yep. It's because there isn't actually a legal definition of fair-use. The closest thing we have to a legal definition is the set of four factors typically used in deciding deciding whether the fair-use defense has merit.

Be aware there is no “legal definition” of fair use. There are four factors that would typically be considered together as a defense against a claim of copyright infringement. Which isn’t quite the same thing.

Having private entities, or the government for that matter, control hate content is only a good thing when their definition of hate happens to coincide with your definition of hate. It's all fun and games until one day you discover their definition of hate has expanded to include your beliefs. By then the train is going too fast for you to have any chance of stopping it from squashing you.

What about the OP has anything at all to do with hate content?

That's a fine argument as a reply to a completely different post, than the one you replied to.

You're replying to a post about content networks lacking a legal framework to operate under, by complaining that hate content is currently poorly defined and content networks can do whatever they choose.

Your argument may have merit, or not, but odd place to make it regardless.

I agree this is a tangent we need not go down, but this person is directly responding to this line:

> The whole "they're a private company, they can do anything!" argument is growing weaker by the day as these companies have more influence in our lives (with both good (e.g. anti-hate content) and bad (e.g. copyright holders stepping on small creators) consequences).

I think it's fair to mention that censoring hate speech can indeed be a gray area. For example, there are cases were atheists that were formerly muslims speak out against their former religion, and are subsequently branded (by some, not all) as engaging in hate speech.

It's a gray area because "hate speech" isn't a valid concept. 1A already excepts for inciting violence but that's not what radicalized censorship-extremists mean when they use the term. They specifically mean anything that is not canon to their current worldview.

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