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Comment by gwd | Hacker News Reader

I've posted this before, but I think it needs to look like this:

1. Claimant files a copyright claim with Google against a video owner. This immediately causes the video to be taken down / revenue to be redirected.

2. Video owner can contest the claim. This immediately causes the video to go back up / revenue to be refunded (or perhaps escrowed pending further procedures).

3. Claimant can now re-file the claim, but putting up enough money to have a real, trained human actually look at the case (I'm thinking on the order of $1000). Video is again immediately taken down, and revenue redirected.

4. The video owner can now re-contest the claim by putting up the same amount of money.

- If the video owner doesn't re-contest the claim, the money is refunded and the process is over.

- If the video owner contests the claim, they put up the same amount of money. A real, trained copyright lawyer looks at the case and decides. Whoever wins gets their money back.

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This is a good idea. Just have the revenue go into escrow immediately after the first claim though. That could reduce the motivation for fraudulent claimants since the payout is delayed. Also, to minimize overall cost, a creator can pay one fee to handle up to N open claims against them.

Overall, I’m not sure all of this addresses the asymmetric impact since it could disrupt the primary income stream of a creator, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

That would be better IMO. As it is, or in GP's example, what happens if the producer dies, or just stops making and caring about YouTube videos?

A shame if the historical ones are no longer available for anyone to enjoy because of spam copyright claims that nobody's present to contest.

So if you can’t put up $1000, but your counterpart can, you’re screwed?

Technically yes; but:

1. It's still better than the current situation, where you're screwed regardless

2. Not even a large corporation is going to be willing to lose $1000 over and over again. The only time it's rational to put up the $1000 is if you're pretty sure you're going to win, or if you're pretty sure the other guy can't pay. I think the chances of any random person being unable to come up with $1000 are reasonably low. So most re-claims should generally be actually valid.

3. Theoretically one could imagine services like bond lenders starting up, which will look at your case and front you the $1000; and if you win you pay them a cut of the refund ($50? $100?). If my predection at the end of #2 turned out to be false, there should be a reasonable market for this sort of thing.

> I think the chances of any random person being unable to come up with $1000 are reasonably low.

I want to live in the world you live in! In the one I live in 1k is a lot of money to a lot of people to gamble on an uncertain process.

We're not talking about mom and pop, here, really. This is presumably a population that is making money on YouTube. Yes, $1000 is a lot to the average person, but as a business expense it's really not much. And getting your channel banned is career (or business) ending.

We are talking about mom and pop though because the complaints are indiscriminate and automated.

Mom and pop have not much to lose on public YouTube content, content creators have.

These all sound great in one's head until you flip around the situation and imagine where the copyright holder is the small time creator and the infringer is the big corp. The big corp can absorb many $1000 claims, but the small creator cannot afford it.

Requiring money up front from either party isn't really a good way to achieve justice.

This is effectively how the normal DMCA works, though. If they file a counter-notice the content goes back up and you have to sue them.

I wonder if that would cause legitimate copyright holders who don't have $1000 to tie up to be blocked. YT blocking legitimate claims could cause them to lose legal protections, which opens them up to liability directly.

The # of content ID rightsholders impacted by this would likely be much smaller than the # of creators right now being impacted by claims (fraudulent or otherwise).

Blocking legit claims also would not threaten legal protections if done correctly. Under normal circumstances if a content creator is subject to a fraudulent claim they can file a DMCA counter notice, and the creator is required to sue to keep the content down. YouTube just asks the claimant 'is this legit'? And then tells the creator to go screw themselves, even though all they did was ask the claimant whether their fraudulent claim is fraudulent. They're not really following the normal process you're required to follow, they're following a special one they made to stop big companies from harassing them.

Parts 1 and 2 are what the DMCA calls for, except that step 2 includes information provided to contact the video poster directly. And Part 3/4 is done in a court of law (using the info supplied in Part 2 to file suit).

Is this proof of stake

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