Washing machine chime scandal shows how absurd YouTube copyright abuse can get

TL;DR: for a whole decade YouTube allowed a copyright troll to claim all the rights on a recording of a washing machine end cycle chime

The account of the copyright troll is still standing and it's not permanently banned

IMHO in this case YouTube should permanently ban at the first offense any copyright troll that maliciously claim as their property something that's in the public domain

Also: if it wasn't that it affected a big streamer with lots of followers, YouTube would have ignored the problem

19 comments

That's it! When I grow up I won't become an astronaut or firefighter. I'm going to become a copyright troll!
I recommend people to read the comments in that thread, too. A lot of them are rather insightful; they get it - the problem is not just Google being a cheapstake, but also the copyright laws themselves.
This one is IMO specially insightful:
... and that is the strategy, right? It is cheaper for them [YouTube] to have a botched process that most people will not even try to fight, then to become more sophisticated (i.e., involve more actual humans) in order to preempt complaints. Alphabet / Google / YouTube are so big they can literally just ignore their users and still get away with it.
- Yeah the DMCA really fucked things up for creative work. It’s way too easy to take down things you don’t like fraudulently.
  
  The DMCA process is pretty good. All you have to do is counterclaim and the host/platform can put your content back up unless the claimant actually files in court. Also, without the safe harbor protections, it would be almost impossible for sites to allow user content at all, because they'd potentially be liable for infringement of users.
  ContentID goes way past DMCA requirements and proactively allows copyright holders to have content automatically taken down, without a clear and fair process to appeal, and without due diligence that holders actually legitimately own the content they're claiming.
- Google also lost a court case and had this system forced onto them by the law. I believe it would literally take a change in the dmca (ideally just repeal it or strip all the anti consumer bs out of it) for them to be allowed to do anything different.
  
  The thing is that they're complying with the court case by letter, but not by spirit. Sure, there is a system to report and remove copyright infringement; but the system is 100% automated, full of fails that would require manual review, and Google can't be arsed to spend the money necessary to fix it.

Meanwhile, I am permanently banned from YouTube for uploading a 45 second clip of an episode of Star Wars Rebels as a private video to share with my kids, after we just (legally) watched it and they thought it was cool.
Such a good system.

In 2021, YouTube announced that it had invested "hundreds of millions of dollars" to create content management tools, of which Content ID quickly emerged as the platform's go-to solution to detect and remove copyrighted materials.
Content ID was introduced in 2021? Only 3 years ago? I thought it was significantly older.
Wikipedia says 2007.
Dunno if they meant something different or typoed the year.
- Or they just made an announcement in 2021 about their existing content management tools and how much they've spent on them over the years. That's how I read it anyway.
  
  Our water is now free of trans fats. “Wait you mean it had trans fats before??” Well… no.
- They announced it in 2021 but invested years earlier is how I read it.

What does someone have to do to prove to youtube they own it?
- From what I saw that you just need to claim it by stating that's yours, only risking to get sued by the original owner.
  
  Brb, claiming bird voices
- Say they do

This is the best summary I could come up with:
Albino, who is also a popular Twitch streamer, complained that his YouTube video playing through Fallout was demonetized because a Samsung washing machine randomly chimed to signal a laundry cycle had finished while he was streaming.
To Albino it was obvious that Audego didn't have any rights to the jingle, which Dexerto reported actually comes from the song "Die Forelle" ("The Trout") from Austrian composer Franz Schubert.
Albino suggested that YouTube had potentially allowed Audego to make invalid copyright claims for years without detecting the seemingly obvious abuse.
"Ah okay, yes, I'm sure they did this in good faith and will make the correct call, though it would be a shame if they simply clicked 'reject dispute,' took all the ad revenue money and forced me to risk having my channel terminated to appeal it!!
YouTube also acknowledged in 2021 that "just one invalid reference file in Content ID can impact thousands of videos and users, stripping them of monetization or blocking them altogether."
"That rings hollow," EFF reported in 2021, noting that "huge conglomerates have consistently pushed for more and more restrictions on the use of copyrighted material, at the expense of fair use and, as a result, free expression."
The original article contains 981 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

What they should do is properly DMCA - then the copyright trolls would be out an extensive amount of money, but no they'll keep on using this completely broke system because the billion dollar major licensing companies aren't negatively affected by any of it.

I wish this article would have delved into the details of the system because it's even more incoherent and insane than you think.

Stuff like YouTube's system (and will keep getting much worse as every company trips over themselves with AI in everything) is so fucking rigged with major companies getting shit auto-claimed. And then relies on more auto-rejecting the channel's disputes. And they get to claim that shit must work because most creators can't afford to risk fighting further. The only times shit gets really reviewed by people is when shit happens to a mega channel. Since those channels/companies have both special tools that 99% of creators don't have (or maybe know about), AND more crucially they have connections at YT.
I really want to move as much of the stuff I watch to other sites (made sure to add extensions to let me know if a channel/vid is also on Odysee/Lbry). If more services are able to get apps onto devices like Roku/consoles and/or the other boxes/TV OSes then it would be easier. I personally watch most YT stuff on my TV and not my phone or PC. Normies of course default to YT since it has been around so long and because it has apps on everything. Would be dope if services with P2P shared delivery to help reduce server loads (like PeerTube and Lbry) could work on stuff like Roku/consoles but would be more or less impossible due to lack of space and the locked-down nature.
Aside from options like PeerTube being much more complicated given both making accounts and learning curve in how federated instances work. The alts to YT also seem to fall victim to so much of the main page content (currently) being far-right and crypto scam/hype channels. If the services get the label of being "for" that stuff, then it is hard to get more mainstream users/creators. But we really really need something that isn't YT. The class divide of strikes and bans is beyond fucked.

19 comments