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Comment by sempron64 | Hacker News Reader

Simply requiring a small fee for review is a great suggestion!

It would be difficult to structure this but simply allowing a video creator (or any fan of the channel!) to pay a Youtube analyst or a third-party auditor at cost ($10 seems reasonable for 15 minutes of even a decently-payed, English-speaking Western employee's time) to review the channel/video for 15 minutes for actual violations would be a huge boon to real content creators.

This would also allow Google to identify what takedown requests are blackmail botnets and block them from doing further harm.

If anyone at Google is reading this please consider it! So many viewers would be willing to pay that this need not even impact creators.

(Obviously this would have to be kept from getting out of hand and turning into Google racketeering with multiple takedowns of the same channel, but I trust them not to do that)

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Asking people to pay for a human reviewer is a recipe for bad PR. Inevitably, some content creator is going to pay $10 and disagree with a ruling even if it's justified. They'll then complain that it's all a scam. To be fair, there wouldn't be a way to prove that it's not a scam. Also, humans are inevitably wrong decisions, especially when it comes to videos that are borderline.

> Asking people to pay for a human reviewer is a recipe for bad PR. Inevitably, some content creator is going to pay $10 and disagree with a ruling even if it's justified.

I don't really see how this is any different now. Google is already generating bad PR by not having an appeal process for these issues and plenty of people are already complaining that it's all a scam.

If a nominal fee gets you a written report that details exactly how you offended YT's policies and creates a possible scenario which you're given the opportunity to course-correct perhaps, then it's a win. What you're arguing would happen is already happening.

> I don't really see how this is any different now.

Right now, blocking a video will lead to Google being unable to earn money from it. Their incentives are aligned with those of the video creator.

> What you're arguing would happen is already happening

No, right now you are not pressured into giving Google money to review their automated decisions. With the suggested system implemented, you might fork over $10 individually for each of your 452 videos and get humans picking mostly the same useless text block in response, not really helping you to understand their decision. You will feel kind of like now, except you notice that YT actually made more money by banning your videos and start to wonder if that is by design...

Courts are great, but have to be independent. Even arbitration can be skewed in favor of bigger companies, since getting their recurring business is in the arbitrators interest.

I'd still be in favor of setting up something like that for lower level decisions, but understand this can only happen if Google finds a way to stay out of the line of fire. And still keeps a way for them to overrule those third party decisions...

> "Right now, blocking a video will lead to Google being unable to earn money from it. Their incentives are aligned with those of the video creator."

I would say that's only true if the volume of video content was a bottleneck for their advertisers. They have more than enough content.

There's the problem that money is an incentive. So if you pay to review takedowns, it is an incentive for Google to do EVEN MORE takedowns, because then they would earn more money.

Another suggestion is to simply hold a small amount of ad revenue for review for larger channels.

The given channel was estimated to make $4 per video. Just holding a small amount of revenue for review would pay for the human time.

Losing $10 is vastly better for the monetized creator than losing the channel completely.

Fee can be refundable if review is not malicious. Win-win.

The bot that issued the takedown should be charged the $10 fee for every decision that is reversed. Today there is basically no consequence for automated false takedown notices if you are a big media cartel, so they don't care. They tune their systems to minimize false negatives at the cost of many false positives because nobody is stopping them.

Of course there are "no consequences" to YouTube for an incorrect anything. They are a private company. Why would they punish themselves?

This isn't about consequences to YouTube. It's about consequences to copyright holders for frivolous takedowns.

When you issue a DMCA notice, you're certifying that the content is yours, under (theoretical) penalty of perjury. But big content studios erroneously issue them using automated systems all the time, and the only way to actually enforce this is for you, the individual getting targeted by one, to personally take legal action against a multinational corporation.

Meaning that, for all practical purposes, the people this affects have zero recourse.

This is why automated content takedown doesn't use the DMCA. It's a system designed by the content cartels.

That is wrong.

Nearly 100% of people who receive a DMCA notice of alleged infringement (read: 'copyright strike') from YouTube have the option of filing a counter-notification.

In nearly all cases, YouTube responds to valid counter-notifications by informing the party that initiated the takedown. Counter-notification starts the clock on a 10-day window, within which the party alleging infringement must - if they want to keep the video down - sue you in federal court and prove to YouTube that they they have filed suit against you. Otherwise the video goes back up.

That procedure is almost always available. The downside, of course, is that you might get sued for an enormous amount of money that you may be held liable for. Statutory damages are scary. (But thy are a consequence of infringement, not notice-and-takedown.)

I’d argue that bot should be charged multiple orders if magnitude more than $10.

The only way to modify that behavior is to make it hurt.

Something I didn't make clear in the original proposal was that the "please treat me with respect" fee would have to be paid before any dispute.

Or the far more radical point of view that people who are economically dependent on Google are employees .. although that is probably impossible to define and unworkable.

Why not ask the reporter for the fee?

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