Early July, Grammy award-winning musician Maria Schneider teamed up with Virgin Islands-based Pirate Monitor Ltd in a class action lawsuit targeting YouTube.
Filed in a California court, the complaint centered on YouTube's alleged copyright failures, including the company's refusal to allow "ordinary creators" to have access to its copyright management tools known as Content ID.
[...] Schneider informed the court that a number of her songs had been posted to YouTube without her permission, noting that she had twice been refused access to Content ID and the "automatic and preemptive blocking" mechanisms that are available to larger rightsholders.
For its part, Pirate Monitor Ltd claimed that its content, including the movie Immigrants – Jóska menni Amerika, was illegally uploaded to YouTube hundreds of times. The company said that while YouTube responded to takedown notices, they often took too long to process. Access to YouTube's Content ID system was denied, Pirate Monitor added.
YouTube Responds to Complaint, Files Counterclaims
[...] Firstly, Pirate Monitor Ltd cannot be trusted since it has already engaged in fraudulent behavior in respect of Content ID. As for Schneider, not only is she suing YouTube over copyrighted music that she and her agents have already granted YouTube a license to use, her own agent has also used Content ID to generate revenue from those works on her behalf.
While the claim that Schneider licensed her content to YouTube and made money through Content ID is surprising, that pales into insignificance when compared to the allegations against Pirate Monitor Ltd.
[...] In addition to requesting damages to compensate for the harm caused by Pirate Monitor's actions, YouTube demands a punitive damages award to compensate for its "fraudulent conduct".
The video platform also seeks an injunction barring Pirate Monitor and its agents from submitting any further DMCA notices that wrongfully claim that material on the YouTube service infringes copyrights held (or are claimed to be held) by Pirate Monitor or anyone it claims to represent.
YouTube and Google's Answer and Counterclaims can be found here (pdf)
(Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Friday September 25 2020, @02:15AM
The lawyerpult [dilbert.com] has been fired [dilbert.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Booga1 on Friday September 25 2020, @02:20AM (2 children)
Youtube should open the Content ID system up to everyone, or it should go back to pure DMCA and standard copyright claims handling. This half-step that's outside the law is pretty much a pile of garbage. They know it, but since it's "above and beyond" what's legally required, they're using it as a shield for themselves, and handcuffs for everyone else.
Personally, I think Google's Content ID system is rather messed up, but the fact that only big players get to use it is what encourages this sort of tactic. For example: a small time musician isn't allowed to use the tool and dozens of people upload their music to Youtube. Meanwhile some RIAA member like BMI can automatically take down people's videos if anything they claim is playing in the background on a vid(like a TV commercial or something). So, to appear like they were some "big dog" suffering massive piracy, they did what it took to make themselves look big. They were stupid about it, too.
(Score: 5, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Friday September 25 2020, @02:29AM
is entirely the way IP laws have been designed.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @02:46AM
The dream of Capitalism, to become a member of the aristocracy.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @03:19AM (3 children)
The staff spammed this site from behind proxies, including posting fake APK posts, then used the spam to justify censorship.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @05:00AM (1 child)
More spam mod abuse. But the admins of this hellhole don't care. What a dump SN is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @08:27AM
So leave already.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday September 26 2020, @02:23AM
Why would we use proxies? Most of us could insert them directly into the db and bypass the headaches of dealing with the speedbumps the webserver puts up entirely. Try not to say things so bloody stupid, please.
And the Spam mod stands because you were offtopic, trolling, and getting repetitive.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by ThatIrritatingGuy on Friday September 25 2020, @01:43PM (2 children)
I've only skimmed YouTube filing, but two things raise an eyebrow:
They state this as a matter of fact, without providing any explanation as to how they know this. As their whole counterclaim depends on this to be true, I would expect more detail to be provided.
This sounds like uploading the content to YT yourself gives YT green light to accept others uploading the same content as permission to distribute the content has already been granted. As it stands, monetary compensation from ads going to a third party rather than original creator seems to be a small detail that YT does not care about. Of course unless you are a large corporation, in which case you get access to Content ID. If I understand this correctly, uploading anything to YT is a very bad idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 26 2020, @03:09PM
I think the way it works is if someone else uploads a copy of your content the monetary compensation will go to you.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday September 27 2020, @08:09AM
It's Google, of course they know this. They also know what you do in the bathroom at night with the lights off and the curtains drawn. Now stop criticising the all-seeing eye of Google or Photos will be Posted...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 26 2020, @03:19PM
This whole thing shows how one sided copy protection laws are.
The penalty structure is too one sided. The penalties for infringement are disproportionately greater than the penalties for false takedown attempts. The opposite should be true as the entity issuing the takedown is in a better position to know if they hold the copy protection privileges than the entity providing the platform (ie: Google/Youtube/Alphabet). The law puts undue burden on platforms to err on the side of take everything down first and figuring out who has protections to what later (shoot first, ask questions later) or else face really large potential penalties. Little burden is placed on those issuing false takedowns.
Copy protection lengths last way way too long.
Copy protection is opt out and not opt in. There is no requirement to register your works ahead of time and upload it to the LOC to ensure the public has free access to it once it hits the public domain.