I've already stated this many times, I'll state it again.
Get your shit out of YouTube and any other Google product.
Google is a dumb, faceless, fully automated company only interested in extracting as much data as possible from its users, force them to swallow as many ads as possible, all without caring about listening to them (both consumers and creators), under the faulty assumption that they're too big for users and consumers to live without them. They simply don't deserve anybody using their shitty products anymore.
The error in this case is quite obvious. YouTube's scanner incorrectly identified the teacher's recording of Moonlight Sonata as a copyrighted reinterpretation of the same piece of music originally written by a guy who actually died 200 years ago. And I can't completely put the blame on Google's AI: the notes are technically the same, the beat might also be the same, if you calculate an FFT of the audio you'll probably also come up with similar spectral signatures. But a human listener will IMMEDIATELY notice that was played by the teacher IS NOT the the same as the copyrighted piece of music.
The problem is: who is accountable for these mistakes? Who shall I reach out to if Google's foggy algorithms make a mistake? And, in the case of educators and creators who actually do that for a job, who will compensate them for the revenue they have lost because of algorithmic errors?
Until Google can provide an answer to these questions, I repeat: keep your ass away from anything that has their name on it. They are not reliable, the risk of losing your data, your account or your followers because of random automated decision is very high, and the probability of getting a real human to assist you is very low.
I agree with your assessment of Google; however, what is a reasonable alternative for a content creator who wants to publish their videos and be able to build an audience? You kinda have to go where the audience will be if you don't already have one and I'm not aware of any video discovery platforms with anywhere near the reach of YouTube. I've managed to get out of Google products almost entirely--YouTube remains the exception.
Moreover, let's say a new site comes along and dethrones YouTube. Remember that this whole mess started because of lawsuits that were ultimately ruled (or settled) in favor of copyright holders. Any player in this space will need a method for handling vast quantities of copyrighted material scanning and, like Google, will be heavily incentivized by legal precedent to have that system "err on the side of caution."
I'm not a fan of Google; but, the villain of this story is the horribly outdated and corporate-lobbied copyright system that will push any player in the video space to this kind of draconian approach.
> however, what is a reasonable alternative for a content creator who wants to publish their videos and be able to build an audience?
I think it's more instructive to look at it from the other side. What's the reasonable alternative for a video hosting service to doing this kind of policing? Remember it's not really an option to just throw video over the fence, DMCA requirements mean you have to be responsive. And thus there's a built-in incentive to cut a deal with the content owners to preemptively prevent the DMCA claims (which are expensive!) by doing this sort of automated policing.
It's true that not every host does this, but every host that doesn't do this either does it in violation of the law or eats significant overhead that needs to be recouped in some other way (i.e. by paying their content creators less! Check the author's channel, this is someone who's clearly on youtube for revenue. Would even she jump ship given that it would probably cost her money?)
Really, this isn't something Google can fix. It's a problem with the legal regime that imagines that all infringement is a bright line definition and that preemptive takedowns are the best solution.
Completely agreed. I'd love to see Google (and let's get Twitch in there as well, while we're at it) working with content creators to push for legal change. To me, that's what's most disappointing: Google will spend millions on lobbying to legally collect more and more information about me; but, they don't have the inclination to use their size and scale to push a significant expansion of Fair Use Doctrine (or, if they do, they certainly aren't vocal about it).
It was out of self interest of course, but, Google did just finish a decade long, costing probably hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees, battle with Oracle to fight for reasonable copyright interpretation for software developers.
This current situation on YT is the result of another multi-billion dollar legal fight with the music industry. I don't like how YT handles this either but I put most of the blame on the music industry for it.
Also remember Google Books, which was a huge (seriously, huge) project that spent years with full funding only to be killed by the publishing industry because they couldn't justify it under the notion of "fair use" we're stuck with.
you are getting to things confused here: fair use of copyrighted material, and being responsible and responsive for a quasi judical algorithmic process and its mistakes.
(remember its beethovens moonlight sonata, one of the most famous classical pieces period. i dont think you even could copyright a part of it, at least not just the sequence of notes)
The alternative is to responsibly scale your service. If your platform is so big that it can only be moderated by algorithms, and the algorithms don't work, then it's too big. Scale down until, at the very least, you can hire enough humans to review complaints when the algorithm does something wrong. Even better would be to have a human review every flagged violation to confirm it.
Obviously, hiring humans is expensive, and nobody is forcing them to do it, but that doesn't make it an unreasonable alternative. I consider it unreasonable to design an unethical system with the sole excuse that it makes more money that way.
So... which providers have responsibly scaled, in your opinion? All we have are tiny hosts (mostly porn) running by the seat of their pants and occasionally disappearing in a conflagration of lawsuits, and big folks like TikTok and Google and Facebook with draconian preemptive enforcement of various forms.
I think that argues strongly that the service you want to see is "unreasonable" given the regulation regime we have. You can't put this on the hosts, you'll just be disappointed. Call your representative.
To leave a ton of money on the table, and let the competition eat that space, because 0.1% of DMCA requests would be served with an overreaction?
Sorry, this is not going to make business sense. If you want a free video publishing platform that does user outreach for you, you got to pay a price; the false positives is a part of the price, alas.
Easy. Put the burden of legal fees and risk of censure on a DMCA mill for false positives. This means if a host takes down content to maintain their safe harbor status, and the person can prove the copyright claim was false or frivolous, you get a cause of action to counter-sue the original claimant. Moonlight Sonata is in the public domain. The teacher's performance != anyone elses. Therefore, false, therefore it should have reprecussions for the signing attorney. If it was pre-emptive by Google without a DMCA request from an external entity, that's a different issue.
People don't get it. Perjury actually means something. When you have the blade of perjury over head, it is absolutely the case that as a human being, if you have doubt, you should be saying it, or you're misrepresenting the truth of the matter.
The level of perjury inherent to generating these claims via automated process is absurd. It is absolutely reasonable that when you have a group going around and using the legal system as a cudgel, the proper response is to return the favor.
This process should not scale at all if people would punch back. Perjury should be trivial to prove when no one even looked at the content in qustion aside from an analysis suite.
Regardless; there is always the self-hosted option.
I definitely don’t have a general case solution. A solution for this case would be something like “a provider of video hosting services is not allowed to take down videos automatically without having a human review each request.”
well what kind of a monstrosity is this buisness sense then when it is strcturally incompatible with any moral whatsoever (as seems to be more or less the consensus of the first couple comments here)
>I think it's more instructive to look at it from the other side.
I'm cynical, so I feel it's much more likely that a competitor will push actual change to come (be it through google self improving, or through future lawsuits challenging the current laws) than for a current monopolistic entity to finding alternatives to problems that don't inconvenience them at large.
>Remember it's not really an option to just throw video over the fence, DMCA requirements mean you have to be responsive
"Responsive" is the key word to be challenged here. I'm unsure if automating a removal at the behest of any barely or unverified account is the bare minimum "reponsiveness" required legally. The big problem that won't be resolved without someone legally challenging it is that there's no negative consequence to filing a DMCA claim. Or at least, there wasn't as recently as 4 years ago.
> And thus there's a built-in incentive to cut a deal with the content owners to preemptively prevent the DMCA claims (which are expensive!) by doing this sort of automated policing.
You need to pay a human being at $15/hour or more to spend a few minutes to review the claim and response, on videos that on average are probably making you a dime or less in ad revenue. These companies receive a lot of DMCA claims, most of which are absolutely valid.
> what is a reasonable alternative for a content creator..?
Insurance? I'm only half kidding. No individual youtuber has the deep pockets to stir the slumbering Googlebeast enough to get it to notice and correct its mistake, but all youtubers certainly do. Conversely, perhaps there's a market for a we-only-get-paid-if-we-win lawyers to spring up here, as they have with workplace injuries and such. Youtube's resolution process may not be friendly to creators, but juries probably will be, if the creator bypasses Google and sues the party making the claim. "Sues for what?" I dunno - emotional damages? Tortious claims? They'll figure something out, I imagine.
Maybe those are silly ideas, but they're certainly less silly than waiting for Google to fix things...
I'd disagree slightly with the parent post here: the conclusion shouldn't be "get away from Google" so much as "If you have to use Google, understand what you're getting into." If you deal with unsavory people, things will go south eventually. If you deal with Google, sooner or later things like this will happen. Expect it, build it into your strategy, but don't be surprised by it.
How do you "build that into your strategy"? That is so easy to type, but unactionable. A piano teacher can't build her own streaming platform, and if she goes to a different platform she'll die in obscurity.
Concretely, what should she have done differently?
> If there isn't enough marketing advice out there about finding as many channels and methods as you can, I'll eat this comment with barbecue sauce.
The advice is all there, all right. It's just that most of it is "join a platform that's NOT being used by literally everyone on the planet", which is not very effective when "literally everyone on your planet" is the "raw material" that you fish your viewers out of.
Do many people watch through embedded videos or do people watch in the YouTube app? There's a convenience in having all your videos in 1 place. I've had a couple podcasts move to Spotify only and I stopped listening even though I have a Spotify subscription.
I'd say that accurately defines the entire entertainment spectrum in a nutshell. Content creator, game developer, asiring actor, etc.
Problem is few make enough money to get to your last step. And those that do can pay others to deal with the quicksand and are no longer interested in the fight to clean it up for good.
If I was a creator I’d use YouTube, but also have backed up local copies of videos. Preferably hosted elsewhere in case the channel gets in trouble too.
You have to be where the users are and YouTube is by far the best video streaming service (with the largest audience).
> what is a reasonable alternative for a content creator who wants to publish their videos and be able to build an audience?
I've noticed several tech-related content producers copying their videos over to LBRY/Odysee as a backup in case the YT algorithm decides to cancel them.
These are great solutions to keep your content if Google decides to lock you out or destroy your content; but, they aren't platforms on which you can build a content creation side of a business.
There are ways to avoid these copyright guys going after you with a truly decentralized system where node stores only a fraction of the content and there is no central place to ban content. Just like the concept of internet was DODs answer to a threat nuking communication there must be an answer to the threat of copyright trolling. I am very much waiting to a decentralized content platform to show up that is immune to content filtering abuse and much easier on the ISPs bandwidth wise than the current YT or similar sites.
I'd honestly never heard of PeerTube so I searched it. Ah, they have a "about peertube" video! Should be great! In the first 30 seconds of the video, there were 1-3s long hiccups 4 times. Not exactly a confidence-inspiring start. After figuring out how to find more videos, I tried to play some--but, experienced more hiccups or load times from 20s to a full minute--and some just flat out didn't play at all.
I'm not saying PeerTube doesn't look like interesting tech; but this is clearly aimed at a far more tech-savvy crowd and to put it out there in response to asking for a, "reasonable alternative for a content creator who wants to publish their videos and be able to build an audience" is just totally missing the mark of what makes YouTube successful for creators and viewers alike.
PeerTube is not one single website. It is a decentralized platform, where everyone can set up their own server and it will work as a part of the whole system (like emails work). This is why it will never be owned by a single entity like Google.
You probably chose a slow server. It does not mean that the whole PeerTube is slow.
As stated above, I watched the promotional video from PeerTube themselves on the JoinPeertube.org website and experienced multiple hiccups in under 30s. If their own hosting isn't cutting it, what chance does anyone else have?
> You probably chose a slow server.
I didn't choose a server. I chose a video. The moment the service asks me to think about what server is hosting it is the moment I don't care enough to jump through those hoops. Never underestimate the value of a consistent experience.
Once again, I don't want to be disparaging to PeerTube--it's a cool concept and I understand the foundations behind it. But, spending 10 minutes with it earlier today made it obvious that it's not going to challenge YouTube as a content discovery platform.
Edit: Corrected the URL from "PeerTube.com" to "JoinPeertube.org" -- I typed "PeerTube.com" in haste and just assuming the URL.
PeerTube.com is not "PeerTube themselves". This is one of the servers, not the best one. This is the official PeerTube website: https://joinpeertube.org. It will show search results on many servers.
> The moment the service asks me to think about what server is hosting it is the moment I don't care enough to jump through those hoops.
You only choose your server once, like you chose Youtube once. You do not need to jump through hoops.
> If their own hosting isn't cutting it
PeerTube (actually FramaSoft) is a non-profit organization. You shouldn't expect huge resources from them. Also peertube.com is not their server AFAIK.
I corrected the URL in my post. I was on JoinPeertube.org and watched the, "What is PeerTube?" video that is embedded in that page. If I watched it again, it might not buffer at all. Maybe it was a bad moment. But I consume a lot of content on YouTube and I can't remember the last time a video buffered a single time--let alone several times in the first 30 seconds.
I'm honestly done with this ridiculous strawman about whether the video works. PeerTube is not a viable alternative to YouTube from a content creator's perspective for many reasons which I've already stated; but, I'll summarize:
1. It lacks even a tiny fraction of the distribution and discovery reach offered by YouTube.
2. It lacks the monetization features that allows YouTube to become part of a business.
3. It requires me to provide my own hosting and technical setup which is far more involved than dropping a video into your browser like you get with YouTube.
4. If I, as a consumer with no knowledge or interest in how PeerTube works, "choose the wrong server," I get a crappy experience with videos buffering for ages so I'm disinclined to continue to use the platform leading to reduced audiences on the platform and the feeling of, "doing extra work for nothing."
You can defend it all you want; but, your responses so far have been thinly veiled, "You're too stupid to get it right." I guess maybe I am; but, I'll stand behind that being the single biggest reason that PeerTube simply cannot be a platform to rival YouTube.
>I can't remember the last time a video buffered a single time
happens quite often when trying to switch resolutions. Becuase Google wants to continually tell my 200 Mb/s connection that 480p is the optimal streaming solution, and now that is spreading to mobile as well.
> your responses so far have been thinly veiled, "You're too stupid to get it right."
I didn't get that impression at all, and I think we interpreted this thread very differently. The point wasn't that PeerTube would be the new Youtube, it would be that if you don't have terabytes of local storage to keep your videos, you can upload it to a place where DMCAs won't mean your videos being lost in the void.
> 3. It requires me to provide my own hosting and technical setup
This is wrong. You choose someone's server and use it just like you use Youtube.
> "You're too stupid to get it right."
I never said or implied that. Yes, using PeerTube is slightly harder, but the benefit you get is huge. If it is not worth for you, you can give your live to Google...
The beautiful thing about technology is that anyone can do it. You feel like people are implying you're too stupid to do it, which no one will ever (or should ever) say since part of everyone's coming to terms with tech is screwing up in all the myriad ways required until you get it right.
Before YouTube, people self-hosted. That is still an option. You can drop your work product on a server, configure it to only accept requests from servers or locations you control, then link in your content til the cows come home. You may need a cache to handle higher traffic loads, but once you find a setup that works for you, you're golden.
Use Youtube for discovery all you want, but understand that someone else's computer will never be as immune to external sources of disruption and malicious bureaucracy as something you own and independently operate.
If it's important enough to become a revenue stream, it's important enough to accomodate some cap and op-ex to ensuring you have a fallback option for. The rest of the world can be relied upon, however, to want to get their licks in whenever somebody has nice things. Plan accordingly.
This is why we all can't get along and just have nice things.
> I'll stand behind that being the single biggest reason that PeerTube simply cannot be a platform to rival YouTube.
Well, I would count the greens first and then for rival, a joke. They can never share the love alphabet can share with the tube. You have to give money to take money.
That is a lot harder to do, and only the most successful content creators will be able to find sponsors on their own. In addition, that is a lot of extra work for a small content creator.
... or the small content creator gets a random permanent ban for "REASON WE CAN'T TELL YOU SO YOU CAN'T GAME US", and the easy road turns out to be a dead end.
> under the faulty assumption that they're too big for users and consumers to live without them
It is, unfortunately, not a faulty assumption. I'm a piano teacher on YouTube, and I'm able to make money there. My entire audience was developed through the platform. I put videos on platforms like Vimeo or even Peertube, and I've had more views in one day on YouTube than their entire lifetime on those other platforms combined.
The network effect is a cruel mistress, but short of some kind of global exodus no one has the ability to change that. I hate it as much as anyone.
Any creator with established audience can bring those people to alternative platform, e.g., Peertube. Start from posting videos on both platforms and advertise the other one. Then post videos on Peertube earlier.
That will only work for a select group of viewers. Waiting a day or even a week isn’t a huge deal for me as a consumer, and I’m familiar with it because Patreon people often put their videos up in patreon earlier than their YouTube ones.
My understanding gained from watching various kickstarters and patreons is that creators don't need a million views, they need a few thousand engaged fans and they can be self sufficient at that point.
The question, always, is what's the alternative? Rumble?
This is simply incorrect. I have seen many creators and businesses try this and simply not find movement, for example RoosterTeeth which owns many different channels and brands and has a very comprehensive video streaming site, yet their videos get 1/1000th the viewership on their own platform vs youtube. The platform is captive.
In all fairness, I think Mixer employing this exact strategy showed that it is extremely hard to migrate communities. Even with creators making millions of dollars a year.
More and more, ordinary people are not citizens in a nation, with a balance of rights and responsibilities afforded to them, but simply cattle: a resource to be cultivated, controlled, and harvested. This is true online, but also increasingly off. People are still operating under the outdated notion that corporations, banks and government institutions can be held to account because they are in some way vulnerable to the displeasure of ordinary people. They cannot, and are not.
Youtube does not care about your happiness. Their business model is unrelated to it. Youtube, like Google, is in the business of gathering up a bunch of delicious users and bolt-gunning and butchering them so they can be served up to ad partners for a tidy sum. In this arrangement, the happiness of the livestock hardly matters.
I hate copyright law and agree it's broken, but it's not at fault here. Compositions can be copyrighted, but obviously Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata is in the public domain and has been for a long time. Performances can be copyrighted, but obviously a performance isn't the same thing as a composition.
There's no legal grey area here. This is completely on Google/Youtube. Why isn't there a way to assert the copyright status when uploading, beyond saying you ownt he copyright or not? The answer would seem to be that it would take some work on the company's part, and they don't want to put it in because it's unlikely to yield any additional revenue and the occasional bit of bad publicity doesn't hurt them enough.
What about the copyright trolls that are filing claims for content they don't own, forcing Google into an arms race with them.
Even when the system is working "correctly" it is broken. If I take a video of my kid dancing to a song, I often can't share it with my family on YouTube. That's messed up.
Suppose your video goes crazy viral, has 12 million views, you monetize it, earn some modest figure on the thing. What forces you to pay the song's creators/copyright holders? What would make you think you should not pay them?
Obviously, this is an unlikely scenario, but where's the threshold at which it becomes important? Monetization? First million views? Theoretical monetization? Actual payout?
that notion is why I imagine Google added a threshold before a channel can be monetized. So the payment details here are moot unless you are already an established channel who should know this. Regardless, this is less about a random user "making money off music they don't own" and more about the potential that users aren't instead going to Vevo to make the music company ad revenue.
I have my qualms on DMCA as a whole, but this is ultimately tangential to the real issue of the lack of consequences for perjury.
Many, many creators who's content is not youtube friendly are hosting their videos off platform (no shortage of options there) and only posting previews on youtube to direct their subscribers and anyone who happens upon their videos to an external site.
Google makes this moderately difficult of course, but it seems to be a viable option when coupled with patreon (where you usually get more content/early access/more creator engagement) or some other external subscription where the same is offered.
To answer your question succinctly, no, you don't want "other youtube" you want something sufficiently different to avoid youtube's pitfalls.
>To answer your question succinctly, no, you don't want "other youtube" you want something sufficiently different to avoid youtube's pitfalls.
I argue "other youtube would suffice". We see this with Youtube streaming needing to actually compete due to Twitch existing, and vice versa. There's still the likely issue that they both fall into legal troll pitfalls, but I argue that they will avoid more of them in an attempt to compete for a better service.
With video hosting, Youtube doesn't need to compete.
Google's extension to copyright and lack of accountability is the only thing broken here. That, and the fact that they have multiple monopolies.
Boycotting Google is the only way to go. One can also advocate for regulation in this are.
As for your question: They can put the video in Nebula or Patreon, for instance. Maybe there can be more of those, perhaps for music teachers. Maybe that's also an opportunity for someone new to jump into the streaming game and provide some competition.
Those proposed alternatives don't address why the content creators like this piano teacher put their tutorials on Youtube:
++ $0 in hosting and bandwidth costs: self-hosted costs money that's often unpredictable, and Vimeo has platform membership fees
++ ad revenue to help make the effort of producing a video worthwhile : Peertube does not have relationship with ad sponsors
++ audience size & reach : Vimeo/Peertube/selfhosted/etc don't have comparable viewers. For niche content such as piano instruction, this makes building a financially sustainable audience more difficult
++ discovery recommendations from the platform: Vimeo/Peertube/selfhosted don't have the network effect ecosystem of other videos on music that can lead viewers to the piano teacher's tutorial videos.
When frustrated Youtubers ask "And put your content where?", they're not looking for dumb hosting sites to upload some mp4 files. Their question is really a short version of: "And put your content where that has the audience reach and monetization to make the video production worthwhile?"
A content creator like this piano teacher wants to make some extra money with Youtube videos. It's not the end of the world if she can't do that but the extra income could help offset the cancellation of in-person lessons because of pandemic social distancing. I don't think lecturing people repeatedly about Vimeo and Peertube is helpful.
EDIT reply to: >But the other rely to this comment makes a very good point - post in as many places as possible/desired _in addition_ to YouTube, and point to all the other places in that YouTube posting.
You're still losing sight of this thread's topic: the piano teacher is losing ad monetization money to a fraudulent claim of copyright. If she hypothetically uploaded her Moonlight Sonata tutorial to Peertube/Vimeo/selfhosting, she still gets $0 in ad share revenue from those alternative video hosters which makes the advice irrelevant.
Your "syndication" advice to distribute the videos to multiple sites solves a different problem such as de-platforming. E.g. Youtube deletes/censors her video or her entire channel.
That's not the problem she has. Her video is still there and viewable. But she doesn't want the ad monetization money stolen from her by a fraudulent claim.
But the other rely to this comment makes a very good point - post in as many places as possible/desired _in addition_ to YouTube, and point to all the other places in that YouTube posting.
Also a good way to inform viewers about Google's shitty policies and forewarn them that the much more reliable sources are All The Others.
>But she doesn't want the ad monetization money stolen from her by a fraudulent claim.
she's making $0 now regardless. May as well do a small jab in spite of it by promoting other places. More likely she'd probably just stop hosting videos and switch to a different format, like private tutoring.
You can put your content anywhere you want but you can't choose where the audience is. YouTube is in practice a big monopoly because there's no audience in the "alternatives." If you want to be seen you have no choice but YouTube, you can prepare for the worst and upload simultaneously to other platforms and include links in your video description but you can't avoid YouTube.
People are using this system intentionally as a scam. Recently, I tried uploading a video which had video game music in the background, and youtube flagged a copyright claim on behalf of someone who made a remix of the original song. I did not have a license to use the song, so that's fair, but my choices were either to drop my video or run ads that give money to someone who wasn't even the owner of the song I was trying to use.
There was no avenue for recourse, or to report the person who was fraudulently making claims.
Can you reach out to the original composer of the game music? They would likely care about the bogus claims. Particularly if it is a smaller studio. It’s not a great solution, but it might work.
Im not excusing what happened, but was the remix author actually making claims? Or did they just add a song to ContentID’s database? If it’s the former, that’s despicable and (almost certainly) illegal. If it’s the latter, it’s not their fault, but Google’s for having an overzealous system.
When I was at Google they had a mission statement that went something like "Organize the worlds data and make it available." But the reality seems to be it was "Seize the world's data and hold it for ransom." The latter of course being the better business model.
In the case of YT, it's not clear there's much "seizing" going on. YT "users" are uploading petabytes even without being asked to do so. Not clear what the ransom letter says, either.
The business model is closer to "use network effects and really well implemented streaming technology to build a monopoly on video hosting, and then use the insane level of viewership to extend our advertising business"
I still don't think that this constitutes "seizing". YT provides the streaming service for the uploaded video, claims the ad revenue in exchange. I don't like it, but it's not "seizing".
Also, boring as it is, and aware as I am that I am in a tiny minority, I do not use a mobile device, and on my browser(s) I have uBlock Origin installed, as well as 69k entries in /etc/hosts to block any and all access to a huge number of known-to-serve-ad domains. I essentially never see YT ads.
>you are protected from Google's unpredictable moves.
Am I? It seems I am still influenced by their moves. Of course doing nothing is a good protection against any failure except perhaps a total failure to deliver anything useful? It is predictable, yes but I am not sure we can count it as protected result. It is more like protected nothing
> The problem is: who is accountable for these mistakes? Who shall I reach out to if Google's foggy algorithms make a mistake? And, in the case of educators and creators who actually do that for a job, who will compensate them for the revenue they have lost because of algorithmic errors?
Given that we've had to endure this nonsense for more years than I can count now, and Google and other companies refuse to budge, it sounds like a great opportunity for legislation to enumerate users' rights in situations like this, and to enumerate penalties should companies like Google violate them.
I just want to emphasize that Google are not the only ones,
I had my Sony Play Station account banned for 2 months with no exact reason and no way to appeal, on short the Sony message was like "you did something wrong, something about our policy on sex and violence, our moderators are perfect so there is no mistake and there is nothing you can do".
I think we need something that addresses all such issues and not a Google only workaround, the solution is regulations.
> Get your shit out of YouTube and any other Google product.
Any video hosting service that you will move to will behave in a very similar ways, in order to avoid getting sued out of existence by the media lobby.
If you want to solve this problem, the solution can only come from dismantling the parasitic parts of the media industry. That requires political action.
If you think that's step 2, then all you'll be doing is playing whack-a-mole as the MPAA/RIAA will either sue hosts out of existence, or strong-arm them into implementing something functionally identical, or worse than ContentID.
The MPAA/RIAA aren't stupid, and they can smell money. Hosting firms have money. Users uploading infringing content to a service gives them a stick to beat the hosting firm until money falls out.
Everyone uses youtube. Local businesses use youtube. I took driving lessons and they use it. Small tech companies use it to host their promo videos, and so on. So people use it without even needing the "reach" that youtube can provide - it's just being used for hosting.
Again and again the same basic "but it's free" refrain.
Sure, building on quicksand is free. No one wants to pay for a service that is as undependable, and impossible to appeal in case of fraudulent or just mistaken bans.
So go ahead and build on that quicksand... but do it knowing so, and stop complaining when the quicksand swallows you.
There might not be much land around the edge of the quicksand patch, but it's solid ground.
I think the point here is that users don't have much option, not the hosts. If the DMV uploads instructional videos to Youtube, it's hard to boycott google if you want a license.
Meanwhile, I don't think the State govt.is going to care much about convoluted processes against takedowns. That's just Tuesday for them, they aren't gonna fight google on this despite technically having the resources.
Genuine question, what should I replace Firebase with? I have a responsibility to my customers there, not just myself. I want to fulfill that responsibility by migrating off of Google while continuing to provide the product performance they expect.
All that is true of course but I think the bigger issue is that the copyright system has to go or at least change dramatically. People walk around with video cameras now 24/7, they want to add music to their video. We should facilitate this.
Without a viable and better alternative this wouldnt make sense. But what would be a viable alternative? Well, it could use only non-copyrighted material, which is feasible nowadays, there is tons of CC0 music to dress any video
You can escape Google's algorithms, but you can't escape these sorts of dumb algorithms generally. People get all sorts of bogus DMCA notices, spit out by some application that scours the web.
There is no viable alternative and there won't be without changing the law. And the law won't be changed due to lobbying (any success would be temporary)
The more stories like this crop up, the more I wonder what the source is. Google's pervasively horrible treatment of both free users and paying customers reflects its extraordinary fetish for using computers to do a person's job. The worse it gets the more I start to think this is coming from someone in particular. How could they be so incapable of improvement unless someone powerful is stomping on it? Who is it? Who in the top twenty Alphabet/Google executives has this godawful obsession?
As a content creator, you want the platform to protect your copyright and at YouTube's scale, copyright scanners are the only way to implement this.
Will they produce false positives? Of course. Do the benefits to content creators outweigh the costs of these false positives? Yes if you believe creative content should be protected.
The only other viable model for content creators are subscription based services like Patreon and they have/will also be pressured by the entertainment industry or even the content creators themselves to flag copyright infringement once the platform gets large enough.
> As a content creator, you want the platform to protect your copyright and at YouTube's scale, copyright scanners are the only way to implement this.
Is this really true, though?
Google certainly doesn’t want to pay for people, but automated systems can be used as a first-pass filter, before human are brought-in to make a second-pass judgement.
So what is the rate of false-positives? And how many automated flags are triggered per day?
As it stands, someone can make a remix of your song and make claims against anyone using your original song. It all happens through youtube's automated system, and you won't see a penny for your work.
Like some have suggested, the automated system should only be an input for a team of humans to then review and consider. They should then contact the potentially breaching party and get some feedback as well as doing some due diligence to check if the complaint came from a proper right holder.
Yes this costs money but it is the only way to do the job without being a scumbag and a general burden on the world.
Furthermore it should cost the person sending a complaint somethings to file it, which then is refunded if the complaint is found to have merit.
Lastly, some of these steps could and should be skipped if a particular account or multiple accounts determined by some other means to be the same person are repeatedly found to be in violation.
Similarly if a person keeps making unfounded accusations the refundable fee might increase in steps.
That's all great in theory, but current US copyright law isn't really in favor of implementing any of that. If Google tried to do it, they'd likely get flooded with massive lawsuits from the media conglomerates because they'd lose the DMCA safe harbor.
Why would they lose the DMCA safe harbor? We're talking about YouTube's own scanner here, not DMCA takedowns. There's no requirement in the DMCA to implement an internal scanner that has many false positives, and not investigate the scanner's output.
But the difference between composition and performance is well delineated in copyright law. What technical barrier is preventing Google from setting up scanners to detect similarity, get a hit, and then identify a video as a performance of 'Moonlight Sonata', look that up, and OK it on the basis that everything written by Beethoven is long out of copyright?
>Will they produce false positives? Of course. Do the benefits to content creators outweigh the costs of these false positives? Yes if you believe creative content should be protected.
False positives are absolutely unacceptable when it comes to anything dealing money. I sure wouldn't stick with a bank if they said "oh well, false positives happen. you'll get your money next week... maybe".
but there are several banks that help ensure that security. There are no checks to google allowing for such false positives.
Get your shit out of YouTube and any other Google product.
Google is a dumb, faceless, fully automated company only interested in extracting as much data as possible from its users, force them to swallow as many ads as possible, all without caring about listening to them (both consumers and creators), under the faulty assumption that they're too big for users and consumers to live without them. They simply don't deserve anybody using their shitty products anymore.
The error in this case is quite obvious. YouTube's scanner incorrectly identified the teacher's recording of Moonlight Sonata as a copyrighted reinterpretation of the same piece of music originally written by a guy who actually died 200 years ago. And I can't completely put the blame on Google's AI: the notes are technically the same, the beat might also be the same, if you calculate an FFT of the audio you'll probably also come up with similar spectral signatures. But a human listener will IMMEDIATELY notice that was played by the teacher IS NOT the the same as the copyrighted piece of music.
The problem is: who is accountable for these mistakes? Who shall I reach out to if Google's foggy algorithms make a mistake? And, in the case of educators and creators who actually do that for a job, who will compensate them for the revenue they have lost because of algorithmic errors?
Until Google can provide an answer to these questions, I repeat: keep your ass away from anything that has their name on it. They are not reliable, the risk of losing your data, your account or your followers because of random automated decision is very high, and the probability of getting a real human to assist you is very low.