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Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

There is sort of a weird point buried in the story. YouTube have Content-ID, so why don't they just use it to ID the same videos across the platform when a DMCA take down notice is issued? Why only remove the one specific video?

Surely a rights holder would be able to tell YouTube: Hey, these videos are mine. I don't want them on your platform.

Why does he have to excuse YouTube from any past copyright violation in order to have them use Content-ID to remove his films? I don't understand YouTube logic here. Sure a waiver would be nice, but it's not required for Content-ID to work.

As I read it, Vasallo want YouTube to use a tool they already have to police their platform.

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Copyright is probably YouTube's biggest legal risk. ContentID was developed in response to lawsuits over copyright. The DMCA has major problems, but I think the safe harbor provision is extremely important.

So does Google have liability for past copyright infringement when they quickly responded to his takedown requests? I don't think so. I'm not a lawyer, but if that's correct, signing a waiver won't cost anything. I understand why Google doesn't want to do more for someone who wants to sue them over their biggest legal risk.

I am not a lawyer, but i think there is a substantial difference. specifically, if you issue a takedown and they don't take every copy down, you can't sue them for that.

Basically, to me it reads as if any failures of the Content-ID system to protect your copyright are no longer youtube's problem, but yours. I can see why someone would not be okay with such a waiver.

Mind, I could very well be wrong about the legal interpretation - but if the copyright owner made the same reasoning, he'd still end up at this conclusion. Even if it turns out to be legally incorrect.

>but if that's correct, signing a waiver won't cost anything.

If that's correct, it also doesn't cost YouTube anything to remove it from the contract. Obviously youtube thinks those terms do something, otherwise they wouldn't mind taking them out of the agreement.

I see this all the time when it comes to contract negotiation. If one party has significantly less negotiation power, they're expected to immediately cave on ancillary terms under tortuous logic that they're unimportant.

It's fine to accept terms on a "I'm not losing anything, because I don't care about losing it" basis, but never on a "I'm not losing anything, because it doesn't change anything" basis.

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