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Accused public records terrorist, Carl Malamud recently suffered a "copyright strike" by WGBH of Boston for a public domain, government produced video he had posted to Youtube. Youtube's policy is that if a user gets a copyright strike, his account is crippled and if he gets more than a handful, his account is disabled.
Malamud thinks that what's good for the goose should be good for the gander and that any account filing erroneous copyright strikes, aka copyright fouls, should have reciprocal consequences. Since these copyright strikes are Youtube policy, not legal requirements, Youtube would be completely within their rights to implement a system of copyright fouls too.
Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, "I got mugged by a bunch of Boston hooligans. Readers of Boing Boing may be familiar with my FedFlix project which has resulted in 6,000 government videos getting posted to YouTube and the Internet Archive."
One of the films the government sent me to post is Energy - The American Experience, a 1976 film created by the Department of Energy (YouTube, the Internet Archive).
Well, somebody at WGBH saw the words "American Experience" in the title and went through the laborous process of issuing a formal Copyright Strike on YouTube. This is no casual process, they had to swear on a stack of affidavits that this really, really is their video. As a result, my account got a strike, I had to endure the humiliation that is "copyright school," and my account has many features disabled.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 23 2015, @06:07PM
No, what's required under penalty of perjury is that you don't pretend to be Disney when you're not. Pretending to own copy protection privileges that you don't own is no big deal, especially when compared to the punishment of infringement or a service provider not responding to a DMCA notice. This is why Youtube has a three strikes program but not a foul system for false takedowns. Under the current legal environment it's cheaper to ban repeat infringers than to keep policing their content and taking them down repeatedly but to ignore a takedown request could be disastrous for Youtube. This is why it's not YouTube's fault and simply going to another provider is not the solution. This is a problem with our legal system that applies to all service providers. While a three strikes system maybe optional it is encouraged by our legal system because our legal system makes alternatives much more expensive.