Still seems like YT's version of "Fair Use" is significantly more constrained than the legal definition.
This is a step in the right direction, but YT's system is extra-judicial in nature, and they've decided to be more copyright holder friendly than the law itself requires (likely so the law isn't used, which is cheaper for YT).
I suspect in my lifetime governments will need to create better frameworks for content networks. The whole "they're a private company, they can do anything!" argument is growing weaker by the day as these companies have more influence in our lives (with both good (e.g. anti-hate content) and bad (e.g. copyright holders stepping on small creators) consequences).
The fact that creators are still required to edit out sound from audio from passing cars is insane. It's a system designed to be a money grab for the music industry, not follow any sort of legal definition of copyright. The idea that a music company could sue someone over a copyright claim for posting a video in which part of a song is fuzzily heard for a few brief moments as a car passes is risible.
> This is a step in the right direction, but YT's system is extra-judicial in nature, and they've decided to be more copyright holder friendly than the law itself requires (likely so the law isn't used, which is cheaper for YT).
Bingo. Content ID came out right around the settlement of Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc. Even though the courts consistently upheld YouTube's claims, it wasn't exactly a smooth ride and more appeals were coming. I also imagine every other traditional media companies saw the potential and were equally interested in bring lawsuits.
I agree with your assessment: governments need to enact better laws to handle media as it is produced and consumed today. Until then companies of years past will try to suck every dime they can from their competition on their way out.
Could YouTube's handling of copyright be improved? Of course. Do I see systems like Content ID going away without a change in law? Absolutely not.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/after-more-decade-liti...
"It all started when Lenz posted a YouTube video of her then-toddler-aged son dancing while Prince’s song “Let's Go Crazy” played in the background, and Universal used copyright claims to get the link disabled. We brought the case hoping to get some clarity from the courts on a simple but important issue: can a rightsholder use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to take down an obvious fair use, without consequence?"
It required only a decade of litigation to get it back up.
> I suspect in my lifetime governments will need to create better frameworks for content networks. The whole "they're a private company, they can do anything!" argument is growing weaker by the day as these companies have more influence in our lives
The better solution is to prevent individual private companies from holding so much power in the first place. If the major tech companies weren't allowed to drastically consolidate and push out competition, we wouldn't be in this situation.
> This is a step in the right direction, but YT's system is extra-judicial in nature, and they've decided to be more copyright holder friendly than the law itself requires
Most hosts are more copyright-holder-friendly than the law requires, because of the structural incentives in the law. (Many structure there relationship with content-submitters so that they have no liability risk from an unnecessary takedown, and thereby avoid needing to do anything with the DMCA counter-notice process, which only provides a safe harbor against claims stemming from the takedown.)
>The whole "they're a private company, they can do anything!" argument is growing weaker by the day as these companies have more influence in our lives
This simply isn't true at all, and if fact the opposite is true. The reality is that corporations are becoming ever more powerful, and voters are enabling this with their choices in the voting booths, and electing administrations that very much believe private companies should be able to do whatever they want. It's not getting any better, it's getting worse.
Yep. It's because there isn't actually a legal definition of fair-use. The closest thing we have to a legal definition is the set of four factors typically used in deciding deciding whether the fair-use defense has merit.
Be aware there is no “legal definition” of fair use. There are four factors that would typically be considered together as a defense against a claim of copyright infringement. Which isn’t quite the same thing.
Having private entities, or the government for that matter, control hate content is only a good thing when their definition of hate happens to coincide with your definition of hate. It's all fun and games until one day you discover their definition of hate has expanded to include your beliefs. By then the train is going too fast for you to have any chance of stopping it from squashing you.
Considering how advanced GOOG is at ML, instead of blocking they should just filter out the music instead. You don't even need ML for this if you have the original music piece. This way they can insert themselves as a middleman and act as a marketplace. If the video creator wants to pay for music and music companies wants to profit from it, they can go through Google directly. The two parties don't ever have to even meet each other or know who each other is.
The problem is, in the USA at least, there is a legal right to Fair Use of copyrighted works. Analysis of Fair Use issues is not simple and is impossible to automate. Music companies have been consistently breaking the law with their claims. The law requires them to do a proper Fair Use analysis prior to lodging any complaint under the DMCA. While it might be possible for Google to automate removal of a given scrap of music from a video, and providing that as an option to the music companies as an alternative to blocking the entire video or disabling monetization might be a good idea, it leaves a few problems on the table. Music companies would still be legally obligated to perform proper Fair Use analysis on every single video they do this to. Additionally, there is no such thing as a central copyright registry that Google could use to verify that the people filing the claims have any right. Googles systems can be, and actively are, abused. It's the sort of situation that I imagine Google really dislikes, as the law in this area is basically impossible to automate. So, they will probably just automate destruction of Fair Use because the groups most likely impacted have fewer resources to fight it.
You very much do need ML for that, because the EQ distribution of the music in a video is going to be completely different from the original, and both volume and EQ distribution will vary even within fractions of a second as the sonic environment changes as objects move.
The only time it's closer to trivial to filter out is when the music has been edited in as an audio track, and no additional filters/EQ have been applied. But even then, subtracting a lossless original will leave funky-sounding audio compression artifacts, a "ghost" of the song left behind.
Youtube already offers the option to either just mute the relevant section, or remove the music only. It's marked as beta and doesn't always work, but it's there.
I'm not sure if ML can solve this problem in a decent way.
For example, let's say most of your voice falls within a range of 120hz to 160hz and there is a guitar playing in the background at various frequencies where a majority of it happens to match your voice's frequency. Now your goal is to cut out the guitar, leaving a pristine copy of your voice.
How would ML or any strategy be able to differentiate a voice or guitar at 140hz?
I deal with a similar problem when recording my voice for video courses in a non-treated room. I have to set up a noise gate to lower the volume of certain frequencies (background computer fans, etc.) until you can't hear them. They tend to give off a low frequency compared to a human voice, but the more loud the fan is relative to my voice requires setting the noise gate to a higher frequency.
If you try to filter too much, then your voice gets cut off for those frequencies and it sounds horrible. It either cuts out entirely or you sound super dirty and metallic since your wave forms are all jaggy instead of smooth lines.
I'm no ML expert but I think this problem would be insanely hard to solve in a way that's high quality. You can bend your voice's frequencies and the frequency of various instruments in a similar way. Then on top of that, there's going to be situations where the singer's voice is going to happen while you're talking. That'll be even harder to separate if you criss-cross frequencies. And on top of that, you might have 2-3 guitars, drums, keyboard, a singer and your voice all hitting the same frequencies. So much overlap!
I'd love to hear the quality of a tool that claims it can remove only the songs out of any audio footage that may include your voice, background voices of other people talking as well as other ambient sound (water falling, people shuffling around, cars honking, etc.). If I were watching someone's vlog I would want to hear the atmosphere of the place. Making it completely mute except for their voice would be extremely weird and unsettling (and still crazy complicated to do I bet).
Removing adverse incentives is a step in the right direction! Now, any employee at a copyright holder assigned to send out manual copyright claims will become a cost center. No longer will copyright holders be able to justify such assignments via captured revenue from creators - instead, they will legitimately need to value the cost of the claiming against the actual damages done to the copyright holder made by the sharing of copyrighted music.
On the other hand, there are a lot of music videos on YouTube that copyright holders might have been fine allowing to exist, and now their only option is to nuke them from orbit. Mashups, etc. may suffer. Essentially, this is a move that may reduce spurious claims, but may come at the expense of certain grey-zone expressions.
Content ID content owners have a lot of options when dealing with their content appearing in videos.
For one[0], they can choose "block" - prevents it from showing in some/all countries, "monetize" - takes the videos's revenue (note that there is now revenue sharing so that claims don't always take 100% of the revenue[1]), or "track" - just track the video analytics.
It might be worth it to set up "if 2 minutes or less of my 4 minute song appear in a video, monetize", "if 30 seconds or less is used, just track it", and finally "if the entire video is my song or uses my song in its entirety, block it". Not sure how advanced the Content ID system really is since it's easier to get the Copyright Match Tool than Content ID, but I wouldn't doubt Google's ML had something like "match certainty" copyright holders can use to filter content like mashups and remixes. It's most likely up to the content owners to use this to filter, though, since the entire purpose of Content ID is to help both YouTube and Copyright holders avoid DMCA lawsuits.
This part is a great step for some of the people uploading videos.
Content ID will not catch stuff like a guitar teacher teaching a 30 minute lesson on soloing in E minor Pentatonic and playing 5 notes of a copyrighted song with a totally different tone than the original song.
Manual ID was causing the record company to be able to claim all the revenue for the whole 3 minute lesson as if the whole video was a performance of their whole song.
For the curious ones, this policy change impacts slightly less than 10% of all potential claims (not claims that were made, but could've been made).
Quite large portion of these potential claims are short videos that are being re-uploaded from other platforms, like TikTok and Instagram.
Disclaimer: I run a company that monitors YouTube and other platforms for analytical purposes, some related to copyright. Our system is able to identify segments as short as 0.5 second which allows us to produce this kind of information.
Maybe the fix is to require the submission to include the timestamp start and end. And if there is also copyrighted imagery, that the submission include black boxes around the restricted imagery (for video imagery the would include the timstamp start and end).
Then, the resolution would be to wipe out the original audio and black out any imagery similarly. Thus if a car drives by playing something copyrighted, it would simply cut the audio for a few seconds. No loss of revenue to the original poster. And beyond that, provide the video poster a chance to edit the video without the original sound/images. If they re-upload it with the sound/images still included, then they can have negative consequences for their account. If they re-upload with everything "fixed" then they shall have no negative marks on their permanent record.
They didn't shut it down completely. They only removed the ability to profit from your copyright claims. You're still able to have videos removed or blacklisted for copyright infringement.
I feel the music companies would have been making more if people can use samples of songs in the first place -- as most would promote the music and people would buy or listen to them if they really love them. But since they take down everything, no would dare to use music due to fear. It's ridiculous.
"However, YouTube expects that by removing the option to monetize these sorts of videos themselves, some copyright holders will instead just leave them alone."
I've had multiple videos ContentIDed for years now, off and on, by certain 'copyright holders'.
The infringing 'works' are white noise.
Literally. I make open source software plugins and use Logic's signal generator sometimes to demonstrate the spectral content of these plugins. I'll get copyright strikes specifically for the purpose of hijacking the ad revenue of these videos, specifying that it's the noise (or filtered noise) content of the video.
They don't try to knock the video off YouTube, they are trying to mass claim all white noise on the platform to get whatever revenue they can until the real creator reassert their rights to their original content (at some risk: you are saying 'no, that is original content' to the YouTube machine and depending on the adversary to withdraw their claim in hopes of finding someone who is paying less attention)
This would directly affect those trolls, and those guys would indeed skulk away: it's what they do when you challenge them, because they want to operate without calling attention to themselves.
There is no incentive to block an infringing video. The presence of the sound is accidental anyways and does not damage the claimants revenue (it is not a replacement good). So the claimant wont directly (video revenue) or indirectly earn money from these claims.
I really just don't see how YouTube can support this argument. A car passing buy is playing a song and that sound bite ends up in a creators video and therefor what exactly? What exactly are they claiming that means? That it was the song bite and not the content of the video that's earning the creator money? Aside from polling every person who watched the video how could they possibly justify that conclusion?
[+] [-] Someone1234|6 years ago|reply
This is a step in the right direction, but YT's system is extra-judicial in nature, and they've decided to be more copyright holder friendly than the law itself requires (likely so the law isn't used, which is cheaper for YT).
I suspect in my lifetime governments will need to create better frameworks for content networks. The whole "they're a private company, they can do anything!" argument is growing weaker by the day as these companies have more influence in our lives (with both good (e.g. anti-hate content) and bad (e.g. copyright holders stepping on small creators) consequences).
[+] [-] koboll|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devrand|6 years ago|reply
Bingo. Content ID came out right around the settlement of Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc. Even though the courts consistently upheld YouTube's claims, it wasn't exactly a smooth ride and more appeals were coming. I also imagine every other traditional media companies saw the potential and were equally interested in bring lawsuits.
I agree with your assessment: governments need to enact better laws to handle media as it is produced and consumed today. Until then companies of years past will try to suck every dime they can from their competition on their way out.
Could YouTube's handling of copyright be improved? Of course. Do I see systems like Content ID going away without a change in law? Absolutely not.
[+] [-] readams|6 years ago|reply
It required only a decade of litigation to get it back up.
[+] [-] Wowfunhappy|6 years ago|reply
The better solution is to prevent individual private companies from holding so much power in the first place. If the major tech companies weren't allowed to drastically consolidate and push out competition, we wouldn't be in this situation.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|6 years ago|reply
Most hosts are more copyright-holder-friendly than the law requires, because of the structural incentives in the law. (Many structure there relationship with content-submitters so that they have no liability risk from an unnecessary takedown, and thereby avoid needing to do anything with the DMCA counter-notice process, which only provides a safe harbor against claims stemming from the takedown.)
[+] [-] magduf|6 years ago|reply
This simply isn't true at all, and if fact the opposite is true. The reality is that corporations are becoming ever more powerful, and voters are enabling this with their choices in the voting booths, and electing administrations that very much believe private companies should be able to do whatever they want. It's not getting any better, it's getting worse.
[+] [-] tylerl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexmlamb2|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ghaff|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mountain_Skies|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waitwhatwhere|6 years ago|reply
https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2019/08/updates-to-m...
[+] [-] saagarjha|6 years ago|reply
Will this end up having an impact?
[+] [-] sansnomme|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otakucode|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Paul-ish|6 years ago|reply
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2902117?hl=en
[+] [-] crazygringo|6 years ago|reply
The only time it's closer to trivial to filter out is when the music has been edited in as an audio track, and no additional filters/EQ have been applied. But even then, subtracting a lossless original will leave funky-sounding audio compression artifacts, a "ghost" of the song left behind.
[+] [-] Felk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickjj|6 years ago|reply
For example, let's say most of your voice falls within a range of 120hz to 160hz and there is a guitar playing in the background at various frequencies where a majority of it happens to match your voice's frequency. Now your goal is to cut out the guitar, leaving a pristine copy of your voice.
How would ML or any strategy be able to differentiate a voice or guitar at 140hz?
I deal with a similar problem when recording my voice for video courses in a non-treated room. I have to set up a noise gate to lower the volume of certain frequencies (background computer fans, etc.) until you can't hear them. They tend to give off a low frequency compared to a human voice, but the more loud the fan is relative to my voice requires setting the noise gate to a higher frequency.
If you try to filter too much, then your voice gets cut off for those frequencies and it sounds horrible. It either cuts out entirely or you sound super dirty and metallic since your wave forms are all jaggy instead of smooth lines.
I'm no ML expert but I think this problem would be insanely hard to solve in a way that's high quality. You can bend your voice's frequencies and the frequency of various instruments in a similar way. Then on top of that, there's going to be situations where the singer's voice is going to happen while you're talking. That'll be even harder to separate if you criss-cross frequencies. And on top of that, you might have 2-3 guitars, drums, keyboard, a singer and your voice all hitting the same frequencies. So much overlap!
I'd love to hear the quality of a tool that claims it can remove only the songs out of any audio footage that may include your voice, background voices of other people talking as well as other ambient sound (water falling, people shuffling around, cars honking, etc.). If I were watching someone's vlog I would want to hear the atmosphere of the place. Making it completely mute except for their voice would be extremely weird and unsettling (and still crazy complicated to do I bet).
[+] [-] chrisseaton|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] btown|6 years ago|reply
On the other hand, there are a lot of music videos on YouTube that copyright holders might have been fine allowing to exist, and now their only option is to nuke them from orbit. Mashups, etc. may suffer. Essentially, this is a move that may reduce spurious claims, but may come at the expense of certain grey-zone expressions.
[+] [-] judge2020|6 years ago|reply
For one[0], they can choose "block" - prevents it from showing in some/all countries, "monetize" - takes the videos's revenue (note that there is now revenue sharing so that claims don't always take 100% of the revenue[1]), or "track" - just track the video analytics.
It might be worth it to set up "if 2 minutes or less of my 4 minute song appear in a video, monetize", "if 30 seconds or less is used, just track it", and finally "if the entire video is my song or uses my song in its entirety, block it". Not sure how advanced the Content ID system really is since it's easier to get the Copyright Match Tool than Content ID, but I wouldn't doubt Google's ML had something like "match certainty" copyright holders can use to filter content like mashups and remixes. It's most likely up to the content owners to use this to filter, though, since the entire purpose of Content ID is to help both YouTube and Copyright holders avoid DMCA lawsuits.
0: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9245819?hl=en ("Content ID" wrapper)
1: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3301938
[+] [-] ben7799|6 years ago|reply
Content ID will not catch stuff like a guitar teacher teaching a 30 minute lesson on soloing in E minor Pentatonic and playing 5 notes of a copyrighted song with a totally different tone than the original song.
Manual ID was causing the record company to be able to claim all the revenue for the whole 3 minute lesson as if the whole video was a performance of their whole song.
[+] [-] doh|6 years ago|reply
Quite large portion of these potential claims are short videos that are being re-uploaded from other platforms, like TikTok and Instagram.
Disclaimer: I run a company that monitors YouTube and other platforms for analytical purposes, some related to copyright. Our system is able to identify segments as short as 0.5 second which allows us to produce this kind of information.
[+] [-] rhacker|6 years ago|reply
Then, the resolution would be to wipe out the original audio and black out any imagery similarly. Thus if a car drives by playing something copyrighted, it would simply cut the audio for a few seconds. No loss of revenue to the original poster. And beyond that, provide the video poster a chance to edit the video without the original sound/images. If they re-upload it with the sound/images still included, then they can have negative consequences for their account. If they re-upload with everything "fixed" then they shall have no negative marks on their permanent record.
[+] [-] doh|6 years ago|reply
This is already a requirement [0] that was introduced couple of weeks back.
[0] https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/9566717?hl=en
[+] [-] sucrose|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iscrewyou|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jotjotzzz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dafty4|6 years ago|reply
Uh, no. Why would copyright holders do that?
[+] [-] Applejinx|6 years ago|reply
The infringing 'works' are white noise.
Literally. I make open source software plugins and use Logic's signal generator sometimes to demonstrate the spectral content of these plugins. I'll get copyright strikes specifically for the purpose of hijacking the ad revenue of these videos, specifying that it's the noise (or filtered noise) content of the video.
They don't try to knock the video off YouTube, they are trying to mass claim all white noise on the platform to get whatever revenue they can until the real creator reassert their rights to their original content (at some risk: you are saying 'no, that is original content' to the YouTube machine and depending on the adversary to withdraw their claim in hopes of finding someone who is paying less attention)
This would directly affect those trolls, and those guys would indeed skulk away: it's what they do when you challenge them, because they want to operate without calling attention to themselves.
[+] [-] jaggirs|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pxia|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] golemotron|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Circuits|6 years ago|reply