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YouTube revamps content ID, defaults to DMCA in case of unresolved disputes

Janko Roettgers — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:07:26 +0000

YouTube’s Content ID program, which allows rights holders to either monetize or take down their content, just received a significant tweak: The video hosting site added a more comprehensive appeals process that could help uploaders confronted with unjustified take-down notices. YouTube also said that it has improved its algorithms to detect false take-down notices, which could reduce the risk of automated mass take-downs.

From the blog post announcing the changes:

“Users have always had the ability to dispute Content ID claims on their videos if they believe those claims are invalid. Prior to today, if a content owner rejected that dispute, the user was left with no recourse for certain types of Content ID claims (e.g., monetize claims). Based upon feedback from our community, today we’re introducing an appeals process that gives eligible users a new choice when dealing with a rejected dispute. When the user files an appeal, a content owner has two options: release the claim or file a formal DMCA notification.”

Content ID is a program used by YouTube to automate the take-down process of unlicensed content. The program has been in place for four years, and YouTube said Wednesday that it has been used by more than 3,000 content owners, who have supplied the site with more than 300,000 reference files.

A reference file could, for example, be a copy of a song owned by a record label. Once the label uploads the song to YouTube, it can decide if it wants to take down videos that use the song without its permission or monetize that content by participating in YouTube’s advertising revenue.

Adding the DMCA to this set of tools could have two significant effects: It could help uploaders defend the use of third-party material when it is covered by fair-use exemptions – and it could help YouTube to convince more content owners to go down the path of monetization. After all, why chose the hard path when the easier one actually helps you to make money?

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What Should You Do If YouTube Takes Down Your Video?

Liz Shannon Miller — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:00:29 +0000

This morning it was observed that a number of videos using footage from the film Downfall to mock pop culture issues had been taken off YouTube for copyright reasons. But how do the creators of those videos go about challenging that decision, given that the meme clearly falls under fair use? Well, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has put together an awesome and exhaustive guide to how video makers can approach a takedown. But allow me to give you the Cliff’s Notes, along with some comments that pertain directly to today’s Downfall meme takedown.

First you have to figure out what kind of takedown you’re dealing with. In the case of today’s Downfall meme takedowns, both Corynne McSherry of the EFF and Ben Moskowitz of the Open Video Alliance believe that the videos were unavailable not because of a DMCA takedown notice, but because of YouTube’s Content ID matching program, which identified the Downfall footage being used and automatically took the videos offline.

There’s no clear way to determine what kind of takedown has happened to you, though, without carefully reading the language used on the takedown notice. So if the message on your video reads something like “This video contains content from [NAME OF COPYRIGHT HOLDER HERE], who has blocked it on copyright grounds,” then you’re dealing with a Content ID notice. You can also go to your YouTube account and look at your video listings — there’s a section that lists the videos which have been identified as Content ID Matches.

To dispute a Content ID removal with YouTube, click the View Copyright Info button for the video in the Content ID Match section or consult their help options. After some slightly terrifying legal language (“There are very few valid reasons for disputing a claim. Please review the information below, because submitting an invalid dispute could result in penalties against your account”), you will be asked to complete the below form.

~~Let’s say YouTube agrees that this was a wrongful takedown, and restores your video — but~~ According to a YouTube spokesperson, once a user files a dispute the video immediately goes back online — but let’s say that the content owner doesn’t agree with that decision. Well, that’s when the copyright holder will file a DMCA takedown against you. To dispute this claim, you have to file a counter-notification, which McSherry said, “says to the content owner ‘If you think this is infringing, you can sue me.’ It’s calling their bluff.” If the content owner doesn’t file suit against you in the 10-14 days following your counter-notification, then YouTube will restore your video online.

The DMCA counter-notification process is a lot more complicated than protesting a Content ID takedown, though, and must include, per the EFF:

“Your contact information, a signature, a statement under penalty of perjury that the “material was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification,” and your consent to the jurisdiction of your local federal court (if the copyright owner elects to sue you).

Which is why the EFF recommends consulting a qualified attorney before filing one.

On the surface, the Content ID system does provide YouTube a means of working with copyright holders to protect their content while also providing video producers with a less formal process to defend their work than the DMCA counter-notice. But according to McSherry, while someone who seeks to file a DMCA takedown has an obligation to consider fair use issues before sending the notice, the same doesn’t apply to Content ID takedowns — which means that the casual striking of content is becoming a lot more common, with just one recent example being the removal of audio from a lecture given by Lawrence Lessig last month.

“In [the case of Downfall], I’m not convinced Constantin Film consciously removed these parody videos. Maybe they are trying to stave off unauthorized views of their IP. But when the ContentID net is deployed, lots of dolphins get caught along with the tuna,” Moskowitz said.

McSherry meanwhile commented that the EFF has a Takedown Wall of Shame that celebrates the worst “bogus copyright and trademark complaints,” and that the Downfall parody removals would join it soon. “These videos are clearly fair use,” she said.

Despite the fact that all this and more information is out in the open, and available both via sites like the EFF and YouTube’s own help section, Moskowitz doesn’t believe that many people know what their options are when it comes to disputing takedowns. “To YouTube’s credit, the process of reinstating a video after a ContentID flagging is pretty straightforward and clear,” he said. “But users are easily discouraged, and maybe even frightened. It’s also worth noting that ContentID is a para-copyright enforcement regime. Once the videos are reinstated, copyright holders can return with a proper DMCA takedown and force videos offline again.”

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Will Three Strikes Laws Take the Field in U.S. Copyright Ballgame?

YouTube Silences, Then Restores Lessig Presentation

Janko Roettgers — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:49:30 +0000

YouTube briefly blocked the audio track of a presentation given by Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig yesterday, informing users that the clip contained audio material not authorized by a rights holder. The video in question was a talk about Fair Use Lessig had given late last week as part of a Wireside Chat organized by the Open Video Alliance.

Lessig immediately filed a counter-notice with YouTube, and the audio was restored earlier today. Open Video Alliance General Coordinator Ben Moskowitz called the incident “cosmic irony,” adding that problems like these wouldn’t be that much of an issue if the online video world wasn’t as centralized as it currently is.

Lessig was invited by the Open Video Alliance to talk about Fair Use and the politics of online video, and his talk got streamed in real time to some 40 public screenings across the U.S.. Part of Lessig’s talk dealt with examples for what Lessig has been calling the remix culture: YouTube users mashing up songs and videos to provide commentary and become part of Internet memes.

This practice is protected by Fair Use exemptions to U.S. copyright, but Lessig has pointed out that these rights are under attack – and YouTube involuntarily assisted him in making his point by taking down the audio section of the talk. The take-down was the work of YouTube Content ID system, a technology that scans videos for songs submitted by rights holders. Content ID currently contains over a million reference files, and one of those IDs related to a song owned by Warner Music that was used for a few seconds in Lessig’s video. Warner had instructed to take down any content with that song, and the site automatically disabled the audio of his talk as a result.

Moskowitz said that YouTube’s filters not detecting Fair Use in a talk about Fair Use is a great example of what’s wrong with online video. “Having a monolithic platform like YouTube at the center of the video web is like putting all one’s eggs in a basket”, he told me via email, adding that open source technologies and open networks could help to free video video makers from such constraints.

What’s interesting about the incident is that Warner didn’t even have to opt for taking down videos using its music in the first place. Rights holders can elect to monetize any video that contains their music through advertising, and we’ve been told by Google in the past that the majority of its Content ID partners actually opt for ads as supposed to take-downs. One such example is currently on display as part of the very video that triggered the take-down. Lessig also quoted a video that made use of a Diana Ross song, and Universal Music Group elected to monetize this through a link to iTunes and Amazon.

Related content on GigaOm Pro: Will Automated Rights Management Take Down Fair Use? (subscription required)

From Monitor to Monetize: The Evolution of YouTube Content ID

Liz Gannes — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:00:40 +0000

Two years ago, the launch of YouTube’s video fingerprinting scheme was viewed as an overdue attempt to appease copyright holders like Viacom, which had sued the site for more than $1 billion earlier in 2007. Content owners had to upload their entire libraries to YouTube, a company they weren’t sure if they trusted, in order to police its pages for infringing videos. But today, YouTube’s Content ID is a market standard, with every major U.S. network broadcaster, movie studio, and record label using it, including Viacom. More than 1,000 content owners have uploaded more than 1 million reference files to the system, and the majority of partners elect to leave infringing content up and try to monetize it by linking to official content or overlaying it with ads.

YouTube today is announcing it has tied together Content ID with its analytics tool, YouTube Insight. Now, content owners who choose to leave up YouTube user uploads of their content will be able to view stats about each video’s demographics, referrals and engagement. They’ll also be able to view stats about all their videos, official and unofficial, in one place. So for instance, Sony Music could see that the JK Wedding Entrance Dance is its eighth most popular music video on YouTube. No word yet on whether viewers of unofficial videos are demographically different than those who find the official ones — but perhaps the data will be instructive for Sony and UMG’s YouTube-powered Vevo music video site, set to launch in December

How else has Content ID evolved in the last two years? We visited YouTube HQ in San Bruno, Calif. last week, and spoke to Senior Product Manager David King to find out.

First of all, when the Content ID system launched, rights holders weren’t happy that it scanned videos shortly after they were posted to YouTube, not before. The delay was built in to avoid slowing down the upload process more than than necessary — users just want their videos to go live — and also, possibly, to protect YouTube from claims that it pre-screened videos, which could potentially make it more liable if they contained copyrighted content.

But content owners said they wanted all content fingerprinted before it ever got posted. “This was a religious point for some studios,” said King. And so, about nine months after Content ID launched, the entire YouTube infrastructure was migrated into the Google cloud “at great cost,” he said. Now, videos are checked for copyrighted content before they go live.

However, over the last two years, Content ID has been naturally migrating from an anti-piracy tool to a marketing and monetization tool. From the beginning, rights holders had the ability to leave unauthorized uploads up and monetize them with ads. The majority of partners now do so, said King. Those who leave user videos up have seen their overall views more than double.

On the flip side, Content ID is now being used to control videos on a more granular level. Content is increasingly geoblocked, said King, so for instance, something that was uploaded in France could potentially be unavailable there because of local rights issues, but viewable in the rest of world. Gets a little awkward when you were just hoping to show a video to your pals!

The other big infrastructure change YouTube has made is a fast-track reference system. As YouTube has grown, King’s team has actually decreased the amount of time it takes creates to create a match between uploaded content and a reference file. The site also has to constantly do legacy scans of its entire library as it intakes new reference files from rights holders. Where the underlying database used to be rebuilt three times a day, now it’s a RAM-based system instead of hard-disk based, and can be rebuilt entirely in under 30 minutes. That upgrade was done in advance of last year’s Beijing Olympics, when NBC took a particular interest in taking down content that had just aired live so it could drive the U.S. audience to its own site. “We’re continuing to focus on closing that live gap, and we will continue to have more announcements [about it],” said King.

So now that YouTube has put all this work into Content ID, would it want to license it out to other sites? “We’d be interested in opening it up to other people,” said King, but he didn’t have anything to announce yet.

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