SoylentNews

takyon writes:

A YouTube user has had enough with the service's flawed ContentID system for removing copyright-infringing material. Benjamin Ligeri has filed a lawsuit in Rhode Island against Google, Viacom, Lionsgate and another YouTube user:

Ligeri says that he has uploaded content to YouTube under the name BetterStream for purposes including "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and/or research," but never in breach of copyright. Nevertheless, he claims to have fallen foul of YouTube's automated anti-piracy systems.

One complaint details a video uploaded by Ligeri which he says was a parody of the film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It was present on YouTube for a year before a complaint was filed against it by a YouTube user called Egeda Pirateria. "Defendant Pirateria is not the rightful owner of the rights to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, nor did the Plaintiff's critique of it amount to copying or distribution of the movie," Ligeri writes. However, much to his disappointment, YouTube issued a copyright "strike" against Ligeri's account and refused to remove the warning, even on appeal. "YouTube, although Defendants Pirateria or Lion's Gate lacked any legal claim to any copyright to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, denied the Plaintiff's appeal pertaining to his account's copyright strike," the complaint reads. Ligeri says Viacom also got in on the action, filing a complaint against his "critique" of the 2014 remake of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

"Content ID is an opaque and proprietary system where the accuser can serve as the judge, jury and executioner," Ligeri continues. "Content ID allows individuals, including Defendants other than Google, to steal ad revenue from YouTube video creators en masse, with some companies claiming content they don't own deliberately or not. The inability to understand context and parody regularly leads to fair use videos getting blocked, muted or monetized."

Noting that YouTube exercises absolute power through its take-it-or-leave-it user agreement, Ligeri says the agreement and Content ID combined result in non-compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Ligeri says that rather than acting as a neutral party, YouTube favors larger copyright holders using Content ID over smaller creators who do not. "This software and YouTube's terms of use circumvent DMCA by creating a private arbitration mechanism. Further, a party claiming copyright infringement has no burden of proof under this private arbitration mechanism," he notes.

Is this a pie-in-the-sky attempt to win over $1 million in damages while standing up for the rights of disgruntled YouTube uploaders, or a publicity stunt to promote channels with less than a thousand subscribers and a million views? This is not Ligeri's first legal action against YouTube.