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Tag: Content ID

  • Cat Draws YouTube Copyright Claim with Its Derivative Purring

    Cat Draws YouTube Copyright Claim with Its Derivative Purring

    In this story, cats and lame copyright bullshit collide. It’s the perfect internet story.

    Have you ever heard a cat purring and thought, man this really sounds like that one song? Well, YouTube did. And it recently flagged one cat video with a copyright notice.

    In March of 2014, YouTube user Digihaven uploaded this hour-long video of his cat Phantom purring – you know, if you like that sort of thing for relaxation and such. The video existed on YouTube for nearly a year before Digihaven was hit with a copyright notice.

    According to TorrentFreak, Phantom’s looped purrs were deemed to have ripped off a musical track called “Focus”, which belongs to EMI Music Publishing and PRS.

    From TorrentFreak:

    The video was not removed by the false claim, but according to Digihaven monetization was disabled. Luckily he’s not going bankrupt due to the loss of income, but it’s baffling how easy it is to hijack legitimate videos.

    “I’m sure EMI/PRS made Phantom a sad kitty. It seems like companies such as EMI are pirating ads on people’s legit videos, so I’m wondering if they apologize to, or reimburse people for those false claims,” he tells TF.

    The claim has since been retracted.

    The real problem here is YouTube’s unreliable Content ID system, whose software can make musical connections where they don”t really exist. This causes quite the headache for YouTubers.

    We’ve seen YouTube flag videos in the past for musical copyright infringement and thought well that’s pretty dumb. But this is the first time we’ve seen a cat flagged.

    Godspeed, Phantom.

  • YouTube Content ID Puts Manual Review Process Into The Hands Of Content Owners

    Earlier this week, the YouTube team laid out the changes it will be making to site’s controversial Content ID system. The proposed changes inspired hope that YouTube wouldn’t remove videos due to false positives in the content matching system. There was a small correction today that may change all that.

    In the original blog post, the YouTube team said that potential false positives would be manually reviewed by YouTube themselves before action is taken. It was a great idea that would cut down on videos like the Democratic National Convention being taken down over bogus copyright claims. Google corrected themselves the next day to say that content owners will be the ones in charge of the manual review process.

    So, the process is still the same, but the party conducting the review has changed. What’s the big deal? The problem lies in the fact that the manual review process won’t be conducted by a neutral third party. Some content curators aren’t exactly bastions of free speech and expression. We’ve seen them take down videos that were in the public domain before.

    The new appeals process and improvements to content matching are welcome additions to YouTube’s Content ID system, but they may have potentially removed the bite out of the manual review process. Leaving it up to the content owners could prove troublesome. Of course, the content owners will still have to file a DMCA takedown notice if the video creator appeals the decision after the manual reviews process. This puts more power into the hands of the creator to prove that their video doesn’t infringe any copyright.

    YouTube creators will still have to be wary of big media breathing down their necks. Even so, the changes may make it easier for smaller content creators to prove their videos are allowable under the DMCA. The video site has proven to be a fountain of creativity that remixes the familiar into the unfamiliar. Here’s hoping it stays that way.

    [h/t: Wired]

  • YouTube Upgrades Its Content ID System

    YouTube’s Content ID system has drawn the ire from plenty of Internet users. Important moments in history have been ruined thanks to the trigger happy ID matching program that seems to serve content curators over users. This year alone has seen two embarrassing instances of the Content ID system being abused – the Mars Rover landing and the Democratic National Convention. YouTube hopefully has a few fixes so stuff like this doesn’t happen again.

    YouTube says that a lot of the problems with the Content ID system comes from the fact that the system has over 500,000 hours of reference files to pull from. A video that even remotely matches the content that copyright owners have uploaded will be taken down with extreme prejudice. That’s a problem, and YouTube has introduced a new appeals process to make things easier.

    Those who have their videos blocked on copyright grounds will now be able to appeal the decision. The new appeals process takes the fight directly to the content owner with two options – rescind the claim or file an actual DMCA takedown request. YouTube’s Content ID system was abused so much in the past because there was no actual DMCA requests involved. Requiring trolls to actually file a request should help cut down on illegitimate takedowns.

    YouTube is also introducing a manual review process for claims. Those 500,000 hours of reference material can sometimes unintentionally cause a video to be blocked. The YouTube team has improved the algorithm used in this process, but they will also manually review videos that have been flagged. The video in question won’t be taken offline until it’s been manually reviewed.

    Finally, YouTube has improved the matching technology that sits at the center of the Content ID system. Better algorithms are one part of the solution, but they will continue to build out their reference library to make sure that videos uploaded to YouTube aren’t affected by bogus claims.

    It will be interesting to see if the Content ID system actually improves over the coming weeks. YouTube has to build back trust with a public that doesn’t necessarily trust its system or those who seemingly abuse it. In the meantime, here’s hoping a bogus claim from CNN or Fox News doesn’t take down the first presidential debate streaming live on YouTube tonight.