Last year, YouTube released its first-ever copyright transparency report.

The streaming platform revealed that the vast majority of all claimed infringements were reported through the Content ID system. This pattern remained intact in the first half of 2022.

YouTube’s latest transparency report reveals that 99 percent of all unique claims were made through the automated system, despite the fact that only a tiny fraction of the rightsholders have access to it.

757 Million Claims

Hundreds of thousands of entities sent copyright claims to YouTube over the reporting period. Of these, just 4,773 actively used the Content ID system. This is a small decline compared to last year when 4,893 rightsholders used the automated anti-piracy system. The decline occurred despite more entities having access to the system today.

Interestingly, the decline doesn’t result in fewer copyright claims; the number of reported Content ID copyright actions increased to nearly 757 million, a five percent bump compared to last year.

YouTube’s Content ID system is mostly automated. More than 99 percent of all claims don’t involve any human intervention but the system does allow rightsholders to submit manual claims if the fingerprint filter fails to pick something up.

“For videos missed by automated identification, many Content ID partners have the ability to issue claims manually. While this tool covers an important gap, it accounted for fewer than 0.5% of Content ID claims made in the first half of 2022,” YouTube explains.

Manual Claims are Contested More

Interestingly, these manual claims are twice as likely to be disputed by YouTubers. This suggests that ‘human’ claims are more controversial than those identified by automated filters.

The Content ID system isn’t without controversy of course. YouTubers regularly complain about content being flagged in error. At the same time, many rightsholders are unhappy because they are not allowed to use the cutting edge tool.

YouTube says that it intentionally restricts access to the tool to the top echelon of verified rightsholders. This is partly done to limit abuse, as Content ID can wreak havoc when it ends up in the wrong hands.

“This is especially important because claiming can happen automatically, and while one copyright request removal made from the webform impacts only one (or a handful) of videos, just one invalid reference file in Content ID can impact thousands of videos and users, stripping them of monetization or blocking them altogether,” YouTube notes.

More DMCA Webform Takedowns

Aside from Content ID claims, ‘normal’ rightsholders can use the standard DMCA webforms or the copyright match tool to flag content. This represents only one percent of all flagged content on YouTube. That said, webform usage increased by more than 30 percent year-over-year.

Finally, it’s worth noting that YouTubers always have the option to contest copyright claims. During the first half of the year, 3,690,786 disputes were filed, which is on par with a year earlier. These disputes can pay off as more than half were resolved in favor of the uploader.

The three transparency reports YouTube has released thus far show the massive scope of the Content ID system, which processed more than two billion claims in 18 months. Going forward, it will be interesting to see how the various trends develop.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

One can only imagine the crew’s screams of pain when they discovered that a clerical error had robbed ‘Night of the Living Dead’ of its copyright protections.

George A. Romero’s masterpiece opened in 1968 to audiences largely unprepared for its genius. If anything, movie distributor Walter Reade Organization was even more unprepared.

The company’s failure to file for a new copyright after the movie ditched its original title ‘Night of the Flesh Eaters’ was the reason that Night of the Living Dead (NOLD) was quickly pushed into the public domain.

History has since shown us that due to the subsequent effect on the greater good, no suffering was in vain. NOLD inspired a whole genre of horror that has gained momentum with age. And for advocacy groups like the EFF, the story is tailor-made for showing how the public domain brings freedoms that can benefit society as a whole.

The EFF’s Q&A is very easy to understand and accurately reflects public domain theory, but nothing beats a generous dose of reality stomping all over the textbooks.

Night of the Copyright Claim

Last month a user of Reddit’s /r/copyright revealed that they’d used some footage from NOLD in a short film titled ‘Trick ‘r Creep (Horror Short Film)’. After uploading the film to YouTube, the Google-owned video platform fired back a message, reporting that a portion of the video had been flagged due to the content being owned by a third party.

Since this was an automated Content ID claim, no strikes were involved, but how public domain content (specifically the NOLD soundtrack) was able to trigger the system in this way remained unclear. The YouTuber decided to contest the copyright claim, but YouTube quickly rejected it, leaving nowhere to go.

The image above shows that YouTube matched the user’s upload with another YouTube video titled ‘Night of the Living Dead, Pt. 1’, which was apparently uploaded by someone called Jack Meakin.

The Content ID notice lists the copyright owner as INgrooves, on behalf of Plastic Records, and the video they reportedly own is embedded below for reference.

What’s curious here is that Jack Meakin’s YouTube channel has just one subscriber and his NOLD video, which appears to contain 31 minutes of audio from the original movie, has a note underneath stating that the content was directly supplied to YouTube by Ingrooves.

There are no content match notices listed on this video, something that cannot be said about fan video Night Of The Chopping Wood , discussion video Night of the Living Dead – Themes and Film Technique , and countless partial or full uploads of NOLD.

All appear to have been identified by Content ID as matching the video on the Jack Meakin channel. The video contains audio from the 1968 public domain movie and is used as justification for Jack Meakin/Ingrooves to generate revenue from NOLD content uploaded by other YouTubers.

So Who Are These People and What Do They Want?

Ingrooves is owned by Universal Music and describes itself as a global music distribution company providing marketing and rights management services for independent labels and artists.

Given the information provided in the Content ID notice, it seems possible that Ingrooves may represent Jack Meakin, who in turn might have some kind of arrangement with Plastic Records. While plausible, that fails to explain what connections these people have to public domain movie Night of the Living Dead, if any.

After we turned our focus to the mysterious Jack Meakin, a confusing situation somehow managed to get even more so. A Twitter search quickly turned up a DJ/electronic musician of the same name, but when we combined the name with the title of the movie, something even more unexpected entered the mix.

Jack Meakin Featuring George Romero

According to the Living Dead wiki , the music score of NOLD was not composed especially for the film but came from the libraries of WRS Studio and Capitol Records. Among the composers of that music was a man called Jack Meakin, who was born in 1906 and left for better things in 1982.

So was this the missing piece of the puzzle? Is it possible that the late Jake Meakin held some rights to his music in Night of the Living Dead? Were those rights passed to someone else after he passed away? If so, which of the compositions in the movie are his and why are Plastic Records involved, whoever they are?

We don’t have access to Content ID and given that YouTube is rejecting and refusing to discuss NOLD disputes, we decided to get a bit more creative. We found the Jack Meakin account on YouTube, hit play on the Night of the Living Dead video, fired up Shazam, and got a surprise instant hit.

According to our digital fingerprinting overlords, the piece is called ‘Chapter 1’ by a recording artist called ‘George Romero’. Wonderful…and thanks for nothing.

However, given that there are many links between Jack Meakin, George Romero and Night of the Living Dead on platforms other than YouTube, we turned our attention to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon and general Google searches. There may be other things at play here but someone may have some explaining to do.

What Was That DJ on Twitter Called Again?

The Jack Meakin we completely disregarded on Twitter (because he’s a young DJ who didn’t even exist in 1968) is also a techno/trance producer. He has tracks including “He Was Taught” and “Bodyskills” available to stream on Apple, Spotify, and other similar platforms. He sometimes collaborates with Seb James, according to his Twitter account, but never mentions zombies publicly – at least far as we know.

Interestingly, DJ Jack Meakin is also credited with several other compositions. These include the whole soundtrack to Night of the Living Dead, which is available on dozens of other music platforms around the world, including Apple Music .

Conducting a specific search for Jack Meakin on Spotify not only turns up zombies but what appears to be some kind of musical Frankenstein.

Born in 1906, authorized to issue copyright claims on the most famous public domain horror movie of all time (years after his death), yet still spinning trance tracks at 116 years old – it’s the one and only (honestly)….Jack Meakin.

Anyone in need of additional proof that this incredible hybrid person really exists can check out the panel provided by Google alongside searches for Jack Meakin.

With other sites like Discogs identifying the actual NOLD composer by his full name (Jack Brunker Meakin) and describing him as an American musician, orchestra leader, and film composer from Salt Lake City, someone has led Google to believe that Jack Meakin is an actor in two movies and also a composer in the Dance/Electronic genre.

TorrentFreak attempted to reach the only Jack Meakin who could possibly respond in person but despite emails sent to him and his record label, we have discovered no signs of life. Appropriate if nothing else.

As a result, we still cannot explain why a company owned by Universal is monetizing Night of the Living Dead on behalf of a man who has been dead for 40 years, under the name of a living man who just happens to share his name. But we could have a wild guess.

Is it even plausible that someone in the music business simply ticked the wrong box in error and inadvertently merged two artists’ existences to create a single undead-like entity, one with a hunger so great it can only be satisfied by automatically feasting on public domain works? Or did someone accidentally upload and attribute the NOLD soundtrack to DJ Meakin?

We honestly have no idea but one thing seems certain. Someone has commissioned YouTube’s Content ID to target regular YouTubers using a public domain work in good faith, and then sent them messages implying or even stating that they had no right to do so. Then, to remedy this supposed infringement of someone’s rights, they’re now taking all the money.

Nice scheme? Looks like a no-brainer.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

A class action lawsuit filed by Maria Schneider against YouTube more than two years ago has support from artists who believe big tech should do better.

While that opinion is widespread in the music industry, no musical artists of any description joined Schneider in the class action, despite the plaintiffs oozing confidence in their allegations.

Mass copyright infringement, failure to suspend repeat infringers, and breaches of the DMCA are all featured in a case that seems to have one key goal – Content ID access for all artists no matter how popular, so they can defend their work from pirates on YouTube.

YouTube hasn’t given an inch and believes all of the claims in the class action are without merit. At least one of the members of the putative class acted fraudulently, YouTube claims, and it can easily dismiss every other allegation. On Friday, YouTube informed the court that it will move for summary judgment in October. If the claims in its motion are deemed credible, a YouTube win is almost inevitable.

It’s Not Infringement if You Have Permission

According to YouTube, Maria Schneider’s allegations of mass copyright infringement plus violations of the DMCA due to YouTube’s removal of Copyright Management Information (CMI) simply cannot succeed.

In 2008, Schneider reportedly gave her publisher, Modern Works Music Publishing (MWP), the exclusive right to license her compositions. In turn, MWP granted YouTube/Google a blanket license to use all MWP-controlled works, which included Schneider’s entire back catalog. Furthermore, YouTube says it holds separate licenses to Schneider’s works, relating to any content uploaded by the musician or her agents to YouTube.

Schneider claims the MWP license is invalid, YouTube says, since her publisher didn’t get permission from her to license anything to YouTube.

“Even assuming that were true, it makes no difference because Schneider’s consent was not a condition precedent to MWP’s right to license her works. The license is valid and dispositive. And as to the other license, Schneider has said nothing at all,” YouTube’s motion reads.

Part of Schneider’s claims relate to YouTube’s removal of CMI from uploaded tracks but YouTube says the musician refuses to identify the tracks where this supposedly happened. Nevertheless, YouTube says Schneider’s claim still fails because the blanket rights license obtained from her publisher granted the company permission to reformat videos containing her works. Schneider can’t prove intent either (17 U.S.C. § 1202(b)), YouTube says.

Schneider Didn’t Move Quickly Enough

Do people ever read the Terms of Service on sites like YouTube? Sometimes perhaps, but if anyone is considering legal action, giving them the once over first can reveal some interesting restrictions.

“When Schneider created her YouTube account and uploaded videos to YouTube, she agreed to YouTube’s TOS, including its provision that any claim relating to YouTube’s services be brought within one year of accrual,” YouTube says.

“Beyond that, the governing statute of limitations requires her claims be brought within three years of accrual ( 17 U.S.C. § 507(b) ) — that is, when a plaintiff has actual or constructive knowledge of the claims.

“Schneider admits to having actual knowledge of dozens of her infringement claims years before she sued, and discovery shows she had constructive knowledge of even more. She also had actual knowledge of YouTube’s supposed § 1202 violations [CMI] more than three years before she sued.”

Supporting Evidence

According to YouTube, Schneider agreed to its Terms of Service (TOS) on several occasions, including when she created the ‘Maria Schneider Official Page” in 2012.

When users agree to the TOS, they give YouTube “extensive rights” to any content they upload, including a license for YouTube and YouTube users to use the content across the YouTube service. Any claims relating to the service must be brought within a year.

Schneider’s copyright infringement claims against YouTube relate to 78 works. 76 of those works are musical compositions but according to YouTube, Schneider’s copyrights only cover the musical compositions (i.e sheet music), not sound recordings. In respect of the two remaining works where she does own rights to the sound recordings, no infringement allegations are within the statute of limitations period.

One of Schneider’s central claims, that she was denied access to Content ID, is incorrect according to YouTube. MWP, which granted YouTube a blanket license covering her back catalog, used Content ID on Schneider’s behalf. When ‘infringing’ content was monetized, Schneider received payments from MWP.

“Schneider’s infringement claims fail on multiple grounds. The Works-in-Suit were licensed through MWP and the Terms of Service,” YouTube notes in summary.

“Schneider’s CMI claim fails because she cannot make out a prima facie case and because any removal of CMI by YouTube was authorized. And both her CMI claim and many of her infringement claims are also time-barred. Together, these overlapping grounds dispose of all of Schneider’s claims against YouTube.”

YouTube’s motion for summary judgment against Schneider can be found here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Many digital file formats allow creators to embed additional data to provide details of ownership or any other relevant information.

This metadata might include the name of the person who created the file but it can be much more comprehensive. Photographs may carry metadata identifying the exact location where they were taken, while MP3 files could include the title, artist, album, track number, and BPM, to name just a few possibilities.

This metadata can be useful to copyright holders, from conveying something as simple as their name and website address to management and monitoring functions. The problem is that metadata can be removed, so once third parties have access to a file, all bets are off.

The DMCA recognizes metadata (and other related marks) as Copyright Management Information (CMI) when “conveyed in connection with” a creative work. 17 U.S. Code § 1202 prohibits the intentional removal of CMI without obtaining permission from the copyright owner, when it is known that will “induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement.”

CMI Claims Against YouTube

A class action lawsuit filed by musician Maria Schneider against YouTube contains many copyright infringement allegations, including claims relating to CMI. While YouTube denies them all, at some point the CMI matter will need to be addressed.

In a 2017 blog post, Schneider described YouTube as a Wood Chipper on Steroids , complaining that when MP3s are uploaded to YouTube, they are converted into a different format and in the process, all metadata – Copyright Management Information – is lost.

“To strip CMI metadata ‘knowingly,’ or to distribute such works knowing CMI has been stripped, is potentially criminal under the law,” Schneider wrote.

“But until there is an actual court case on this issue, YouTube will continue to strip away metadata from literally billions of files, like a power chipper on steroids.”

Schneider ultimately took YouTube to court over its removal of CMI, but other cases dealing with similar issues were concluded first. One is of particular interest.

Photographer’s CMI Erased

Victor Elias specializes in hotel and resort photography. Between 2013 and 2017, Elias took photographs of hotels and licensed their owning companies to use them in promotional activities. All of the photographs contained embedded metadata, i.e Copyright Management Information.

The owners of the hotels later made the licensed images available to another company, Ice Portal, to facilitate their appearance on travel agents’ websites for promotional purposes. As part of that process, the original images were downloaded from the hotels’ servers and converted to a faster-loading format used by the travel agents.

The conversion from one format to another meant that metadata was sometimes lost. This meant that images on the travel agents’ websites didn’t always contain CMI as Elias intended. Copies of his images also appeared on other websites, again without the metadata.

Copyright Lawsuit, Violations of DMCA

In 2019, Elias sued Ice Portal (owned by Shiji Group) in a Florida district court for violations of the DMCA under 17 U.S. Code § 1202(a) and (b) .

Ice Portal/Shiji’s motion for summary judgment was successful. Elias failed to show that Shiji knew, or should have reasonably known, that its actions (removal of CMI) would “induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal a copyright infringement.”

The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit agreed, noting that liability under the DMCA is reliant on two factors – that the defendant knew that CMI had been removed and also knew that the removal would either cause or conceal an instance of future infringement.

“The court explained that the statute’s plain language requires some identifiable connection between the defendant’s actions and the infringement or the likelihood of infringement,” Stanford Libraries explains .

“To hold otherwise would create a standard under which the defendant would always know that its actions would ‘induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal’ infringement because distributing protected images wrongly cleansed of CMI would always make infringement easier in some general sense.”

Implications Moving Forward

A Bloomberg Law report says the Eleventh Circuit adopted a “heightened standard” towards CMI, with Trace Jackson, an intellectual property attorney at Rogers Towers, offering his understanding of what that means.

“It has to be the case that the person stripping the photograph of the CMI knows of some specific infringement that will or may occur because of that,” the attorney told Bloomberg Law.

Jackson believes the nature of the platform where the content was published could also provide guidance. Removing a photo’s CMI and putting it on a travel agent’s website would be different from placing it on “some website labeled ‘free public domain pictures here,’ where you’re kind of asking for infringement.”

Jackson also believes that to protect artists’ interests, future licensing agreements should carry clear language that prohibits the removal of CMI.

Copyright Management Information is protected under the DMCA for a reason but Schneider’s claims against YouTube won’t have been helped by the Eleventh Circuit’s affirmation of the lower court’s ruling in the Elias matter.

The Eleventh Circuit opinion can be found here (pdf)

——-

In Maria Schneider’s CMI article she talks about the moral rights of artists, including the right to attribution and the right of integrity. Few people would argue against these fundamentals and their importance to an artist’s identity. But artists have another basic right – the freedom to choose who to do business with. When business partners refuse to meet problems half way, another business partner might be a better option.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Given the very nature of the platform, right from the start YouTube’s future was never destined for plain sailing across a sea of tranquility, underpinned by promises of equality for all.

YouTube’s many achievements are hard to deny. It has provided the tools for ordinary people to achieve extraordinary things, but not all creators and artists are treated equally. Nowhere is this disparity more bitterly decried than in a 2020 class action lawsuit headed up by Grammy award-winning musician Maria Schneider.

Equality For All Artists, Big and Small

Even after more than two years of legal action, predicting a ‘winner’ seems premature but making a case for who should win only feels like announcing defeat for both sides.

Alongside calls for YouTube to offer the same anti-piracy toolkit to all artists, not just powerful ones, YouTube said that unfettered access would only lead to abuse of its Content ID system. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the very people demanding a better deal for artists were being accused of serious foul play themselves.

YouTube alleges that Pirate Monitor, a named party in the class action, conducted a fraudulent campaign in order to fabricate wrongdoing and then used that as a basis for its complaints against YouTube. According to YouTube, entities connected to Pirate Monitor uploaded content themselves and blamed YouTube for not doing enough to prevent piracy, to get access to Content ID.

If the allegations are proven, YouTube’s denial of access to advanced anti-piracy tools on the basis of abuse will be instantly vindicated. That should be a major concern to all artists hoping for equal content protection rights, better returns from their work, and an improvement in YouTube’s stance towards smaller creators.

Despite being the key focus of YouTube’s counterclaim, these allegations of fraud are mostly omitted from entertainment media reports. The same cannot be said of YouTube’s recent failure to have the entire legal action dismissed.

YouTube’s Motion to Dismiss Failed

The case presented in the class action is not only about access to Content ID, although access to the content recognition system may be its ultimate goal.

YouTube’s motion to dismiss the amended complaint failed on a number of fronts including those related to copyright infringement claims, correct registration and ownership of copyrighted works, and allegations that YouTube removed Copyright Management Information (CMI) from content uploaded to its platform.

While all of the allegations are potentially serious if proven, the court noted that the plausible inference from the CMI allegations is that YouTube removed management information from the plaintiffs’ works with the knowledge that carried a “substantial risk” of inducing infringement.

Removing CMI without permission from the copyright holder is a violation of the DMCA ( 17 U.S. Code § 1202 ). It’s also worth noting that when CMI is absent from a work hosted on YouTube, external anti-piracy tools tend not to have the capabilities of Content ID when it comes to identifying infringement.

Describing YouTube’s multiple arguments as “unavailing”, the court recently denied the video platform’s motion to dismiss. As a result, YouTube has just responded to the plaintiffs’ amended complaint, with renewed allegations of fraud back on the menu.

YouTube and Google’s Answer and Counterclaims

In a Monday filing at a California district court, the companies begin in a now familiar fashion. Not only does YouTube meet its legal obligations, it exceeds them too. Using “best-in-class” processes for removing allegedly infringing materials under the DMCA, its investments include more than $100m on copyright management tools such as Content ID.

Content ID is powerful, YouTube continues. It can automatically remove content from YouTube or block it from ever appearing. Placed in the wrong hands, Content ID could censor legitimate content, enable users to claim ownership of content that isn’t theirs, or even allow users to take revenue that rightly belongs to others. Given the potential for misuse, YouTube restricts access to Content ID.

“Plaintiffs complain that they have not been allowed access to Content ID. But Dismissed Plaintiff Pirate Monitor has clearly demonstrated why it cannot be trusted to use that tool properly,” YouTube’s answer reads.

“As set forth In YouTube’s Counterclaims, Pirate Monitor engaged in widespread abuse of the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown process, going so far as to upload hundreds of videos to YouTube under false pretenses only then to claim, through false DMCA notices, that those same videos were infringing.

“This was apparently a ruse to obtain access to Content ID, and when it failed Pirate Monitor responded with this lawsuit.”

What a proven allegation of fraud would mean for the rest of the lawsuit is unknown but boosting the perception of a moral high ground for artists seems an unlikely outcome. Equally, YouTube would have one less reason to make concessions on barriers to entry, even if it felt that way inclined. That being said, YouTube says that access to Content ID is already enjoyed by the plaintiffs.

Claims by Maria Schneider and plaintiff Uniglobe Entertainment that they have no access to Content ID are wrong, YouTube says. According to the Google-owned platform, agents acting for both used Content ID to generate revenue from their copyrighted works. As far as they claim entitlement to use Content ID, those claims are “badly misguided”.

YouTube denies the allegation “that Defendants and their business model and systems” routinely ignore Copyright Management Information, adding that a paragraph in the amended complaint does not accurately characterize Section 1202 of the DMCA.

YouTube denies allegations of direct copyright infringement, inducement of copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, and vicarious copyright infringement.

The company concludes with affirmative and other defenses, including failure to state a claim, safe harbor under the DMCA, fair use, contact provisions, estoppel, unclean hands, failure to mitigate, statute of limitations, plus substantial non-infringing use and de minimis use.

YouTube further objects to the lawsuit proceeding as a class action, citing Pirate Monitor as an obstructive example.

“Pirate Monitor would be subject to the defenses of unclean hands and copyright misuse based upon its fraudulent attempt to use copyrights — including those it did not even own — to leverage access to YouTube’s proprietary systems,” YouTube says.

“While Pirate Monitor has since dismissed its claims with prejudice and is now subject to counterclaims in this action, any other putative plaintiff could be subject to individualized defenses like these that would require considerable Plaintiff-specific discovery and litigation.”

YouTube’s answer and counterclaim, which includes extensive detail relating to Pirate Monitor, can be found here (pdf). The earlier motion to dismiss can be found here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

To protect copyright holders, YouTube regularly removes, disables, or demonetizes videos that allegedly contain infringing content.

For years, little was known about the scope of these copyright claims but that changed last December when the streaming platform published its first-ever transparency report .

YouTube Copyright Transparency

The report covered the first six months of 2021 and YouTube recently released the second edition, which means that we now have access to the full-year statistics. This confirms the earlier finding that the streaming platform handles a staggering number of copyright claims.

Before diving into the numbers it’s good to clarify that YouTube has three main copyright reporting tools. The most basic one is a DMCA webform through which anyone can report an infringement. The second option is the Copyright Match tool, which is open to roughly two million channel operators whose content is regularly reposted.

The third and perhaps most well-known option is the aforementioned Content ID program. This service is the most advanced and works with reference files uploaded by rightsholders. Little over 9,000 rightsholders are approved to use this tool but, despite this limitation, 98% of all copyright claims on YouTube are handled through the system.

1,482,189,768 Content ID Claims

YouTube reports that it processed 759,540,199 Content ID claims in the second half of 2021, which is a slight increase compared to the months before. This brings the total number of claims up to nearly 1.5 billion last year.

Interestingly, a relatively small number of rightsholders are responsible for these claims. Between July and December last year, 4,840 copyright holders used the Content ID system. For comparison, the publicly available DMCA takedown webform was used by 272,815 rightsholders in the same period.

The graph below clearly shows that the relatively small group of Content ID users is responsible for the vast majority, roughly 98%, of all copyright claims on YouTube. The webform and Copyright Match tool each represent less than 1% of the total takedown volume.

99% Automated

Another interesting finding is that nearly all of the Content ID claims (99%) are submitted automatically. In these cases, potentially infringing content is flagged based on fingerprinting technology with limited human oversight.

Automation saves YouTube and rightsholders a lot of resources. However, it is also a potential source of abuse and errors. This is one of the reasons why just a small group of verified and responsible rightsholders can join the program.

“This is especially important because claiming can happen automatically, and while one copyright request removal made from the webform impacts only one (or a handful) of videos, just one invalid reference file in Content ID can impact thousands of videos and users, stripping them of monetization or blocking them altogether,” YouTube reports.

Abuse

Even with these precautions abuse can’t be ruled out. YouTube is riddled with videos complaining about mistakenly reported content. Even worse, scammers have used the system to flag content they don’t own. Flagged videos are sometimes monetized, in one case generating millions of dollars in revenue.

This monetization option is not just popular among abusers. Legitimate rightsholders have also embraced it as a tool to generate income. Of all the videos that are appropriately flagged by Content ID, 90% remain online, diverting the revenue to the rightsholder. In other words, copyright claims have become a serious revenue stream.

The vast majority of the Content ID claims go unchallenged, however, with recipients filing a dispute in just 0.5% of cases. While this sounds like a tiny fraction it still translates to 3.8 million disputed claims in six months.

YouTubers have the option to challenge these claims, often with success, as 62% are resolved in favor of the uploader. If both parties fail to come to an agreement, the claim will leave the Content ID system, after which the rightsholder must submit a regular takedown request.

The data reported by YouTube give a good insight into the scope of YouTube’s copyright issues. Now that we have the first statistics for a full year, it will be interesting to see what trends develop over time.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

A class action lawsuit filed in 2020 by musician Maria Schneider against YouTube is showing no sign of a conclusion.

The complaint, which alleges mass infringement and serious deficiencies in YouTube’s copyright enforcement measures, has seen the exposure of fraud and calls from YouTube to have the whole case dismissed .

With the case now spanning three years, both sides are still willing to spend huge sums of money fighting their respective corners. Quite how the plaintiffs are able to match Google’s bottomless financial pit is unknown, but at times they are raising some interesting questions, some of which relate to YouTube’s DMCA safe harbor protections.

Documents Relating to YouTube’s ‘Autoplay’ Feature

Last month, counsel for Maria Schneider and the putative class filed a letter motion with US District Judge James Donato. In broad terms, it again claims that YouTube isn’t producing enough documents in a timely manner as part of discovery. Similar complaints have been made in the other direction too but this time around, the requests relate to an interesting legal theory.

The letter says that since October 2020, discovery requests relating to YouTube’s ‘Autoplay’ feature have resulted in the production of “less than a hundred” internal documents (including PowerPoint presentations) but no email or instant message communications. The plaintiffs want the court to compel the production of relevant documents since they relate to an important legal argument relating to YouTube’s liability for infringing content on its platform.

YouTube’s ‘Autoplay’ Feature and the DMCA’s Safe Harbor

In summary, the letter claims that when YouTube delivers videos to users that they did not specifically request, that undermines YouTube’s ‘safe harbor’ protections under the DMCA.

“Autoplay automatically plays videos for users without any affirmative acts by the user, i.e., no clicking of a link or selecting the next video to play, and is thus relevant to Plaintiffs’ claim that YouTube actively participates in copyright infringement and Defendants’ safe harbor defense under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (‘DMCA’), 17 U.S.C. § 512 ,” the letter reads.

“AutoPlay’s functionality establishes that YouTube algorithmically selects and controls a substantial portion of the views on its platform, including views of content that infringe on Plaintiffs’ and the putative class’s copyrights.”

The plaintiffs say that the ‘Autoplay’ documents are relevant to their direct, inducement, contributory, and vicarious infringement claims because they will show that when YouTube “actively selects and displays infringing videos”, the platform is more than a passive participant and benefits from the dissemination of infringing content.

The safe harbor provision of the DMCA requires a service provider to show that it does not “receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity” in cases where the service provider “has the right and ability to control such activity.”

The plaintiffs assert that since YouTube’s Autoplay has the ability to play infringing content, the “right and ability to control” aspect is established. Autoplay generates revenue for YouTube, so it “receives a financial benefit” too.

“The requested documents will thus show both Defendants’ participation in and control over infringing content on the YouTube platform and the extent to which Autoplay has financially benefitted YouTube through its advertising revenues,” the letter adds.

Discovery Dispute Hinged on a Single Word

According to the plaintiffs, an agreement was reached with YouTube for it to produce documents sufficient to show its policies concerning Autoplay, “including changes and proposed changes to Autoplay policies concerning copyright and revenue considerations.” (emphasis in original) .

They state that several months later YouTube reneged on the agreement, claiming that it had agreed to produce documents concerning changes to policies only to the extent that such changes were driven by copyright or revenue considerations, if any. On these terms, YouTube reported that it had failed to locate any such documents so could not produce them.

“In short, Defendants are wrongfully withholding documents that are undisputedly relevant to both Plaintiffs’ infringement claims and Defendants’ failure to qualify for DMCA safe harbor,” the letter concludes.

Plaintiffs’ letter to the court can be found here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.