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Washing machine chime scandal shows how absurd YouTube copyright abuse can get (arstechnica.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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TL;DR: for a whole decade YouTube allowed a copyright troll to claim all the rights on a recording of a washing machine end cycle chime

The account of the copyright troll is still standing and it's not permanently banned

IMHO in this case YouTube should permanently ban at the first offense any copyright troll that maliciously claim as their property something that's in the public domain

Also: if it wasn't that it affected a big streamer with lots of followers, YouTube would have ignored the problem

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[-] [email protected] 57 points 3 months ago

That's it! When I grow up I won't become an astronaut or firefighter. I'm going to become a copyright troll!

I recommend people to read the comments in that thread, too. A lot of them are rather insightful; they get it - the problem is not just Google being a cheapstake, but also the copyright laws themselves.

This one is IMO specially insightful:

... and that is the strategy, right? It is cheaper for them [YouTube] to have a botched process that most people will not even try to fight, then to become more sophisticated (i.e., involve more actual humans) in order to preempt complaints. Alphabet / Google / YouTube are so big they can literally just ignore their users and still get away with it.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago

Yeah the DMCA really fucked things up for creative work. It’s way too easy to take down things you don’t like fraudulently.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

The DMCA process is pretty good. All you have to do is counterclaim and the host/platform can put your content back up unless the claimant actually files in court. Also, without the safe harbor protections, it would be almost impossible for sites to allow user content at all, because they'd potentially be liable for infringement of users.

ContentID goes way past DMCA requirements and proactively allows copyright holders to have content automatically taken down, without a clear and fair process to appeal, and without due diligence that holders actually legitimately own the content they're claiming.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Google also lost a court case and had this system forced onto them by the law. I believe it would literally take a change in the dmca (ideally just repeal it or strip all the anti consumer bs out of it) for them to be allowed to do anything different.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

The thing is that they're complying with the court case by letter, but not by spirit. Sure, there is a system to report and remove copyright infringement; but the system is 100% automated, full of fails that would require manual review, and Google can't be arsed to spend the money necessary to fix it.