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For many years, Google-owned YouTube has been wrestling with the vast amounts of copyright-infringing content being uploaded by users to its platform.
The challenge is met by YouTube by taking down content for which copyright holders file a legitimate infringement complaint under the DMCA. It also operates a voluntary system known as Content ID, which allows larger rightsholders to settle disputes by either blocking contentious content automatically at the point of upload or monetizing it to generate revenue.
A class action lawsuit filed Thursday in a California court by Grammy award-winning musician Maria Schneider tears apart YouTube’s efforts. It claims that the video-sharing platform fails on a grand scale to protect “ordinary creators” who are “denied any meaningful opportunity to prevent YouTube’s public display of works that infringe their copyrights — no matter how many times their works have previously been pirated on the platform.”
The 44-page complaint leaves no stone unturned, slamming YouTube as a platform designed from the ground up to draw in users with the lure of a “vast library” of pirated content and incentivizing the posting of even more material. YouTube then reaps the rewards via advertising revenue and exploitation of personal data at the expense of copyright holders who never gave permission for their work to be uploaded.
The lawsuit further criticizes YouTube for not only preventing smaller artists from accessing its Content ID system but denouncing the fingerprinting system itself, describing it as a mechanism used by YouTube to prevent known infringing users from being terminated from the site under the repeat infringer requirements of the DMCA.
The full complaint can be obtained here (pdf)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jbWolf on Sunday July 05 2020, @06:24PM (6 children)
Hey, hey, hey! Don't lump me in with these jerks. We need something, though. I'm for a 10 year thing myself.
Keep in mind that there are many other options besides the "keep what we have" and "zero copyright" options.
www.jb-wolf.com [jb-wolf.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 05 2020, @06:37PM (5 children)
I'd go one step further and say that copyright protections are only available for works that are available for purchase or distribution in a particular region. If you won't voluntarily make your content available legally, it shouldn't be eligible for copyright protection. I'd also criminalize the use of DRM. This has been abused to distribute rootkits and renders content inaccessible when the DRM servers are taken offline. I'd go beyond civil liability for DRM and criminalize its use altogether.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by legont on Sunday July 05 2020, @07:22PM (1 child)
Yes, and that availability test should be agressive. The work has to be available in most typical forms and with comparable for similar works prices. Say for books, just an ondemand print for ridiculous money is not enough to satisfy eligibility for copyright. A movie should be available on most platforms. If they are "rare" people should be free to publish and distribute them for free for the sake of human knowledge.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday July 06 2020, @06:32PM
That is the idea behind compulsory licensing, to ensure access. It should be part and parcel to copyrights and patents so they can't be weaponized.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Sunday July 05 2020, @09:41PM (2 children)
I don't feel that DRM should be criminal, but it should prevent a work being eligible for copyright UNLESS it was deposited in non-DRM encoded form in various "libraries of deposit". (This is one of the few references I was able to locate quickly https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/our-work/legal-deposit [ox.ac.uk] ) The works would then become publicly copyable when the copyright expired. And there need to be multiple libraries of deposit in different legal jurisdictions. I'd also propose that if one of the libraries were to be destroyed, whether by fire, flood, earthquake, acts of war, or legal or financial means, copies of its works held in other libraries become immediately publicly available.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2020, @06:44AM
Ooopsie, we lost all of that sweet data, sorry for that!
(Score: 1) by wArlOrd on Monday July 06 2020, @11:19PM
Copyright extends enormous potential rewards and power to copyright holders (can anyone say statutory damages).
I think the prospective copyright applicants (yes, let's fix this part of Berne right now) should choose either:
1) Accept copyright and all it promises, or
2) Put your money on Digital Restrictions Management without copyright.
Your choice, but only one, and no backsies!
Then we can work towards restoring a sane length of copyright.