Mabster said:
Dr.Awkward said:
I don't think Google realizes yet that, even though it might be expensive, actual people would have better judgement and common sense in situations like this regardless how complex a content scanner can be coded.
According to Google's statistics "100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute" and "Content ID scans over 400 years of video every day."
Content ID needs to be an automated system and Google needs to protect itself from another Viacom situation, but the current state of things is obviously unfair and hostile to the content creators. Let's hope that something positive comes our of this whole mess.
That's why most people want a system that mixes an automated system and a human one. Content ID may scan that much in a day, but the amount that actually gets flagged is presumably a significantly smaller percentage. (although obviously not small enough) And given Google's resources, I think they can pay a thousand people to watch Youtube videos all day long and brief them on basic fair use policy. They don't exactly need to be lawyers, just intelligent enough to recognize that 15 seconds of parody in a 30 minute video doesn't warrant giving all the revenue of the video to the song owner. Just to weed out the more idiotic claims and the claims by companies that don't actually own the content.
I believe there's two parts to the solution of this problem:
First, get rid of this asinine "guilty until proven innocent" system. Currently all revenue the video makes as soon as the claim is made and during the entire appeals process is awarded to the party making the claim with no questions asked. This obviously leads to false parties making claims, as well as proper content owners making claims for content protected under fair use, all to make a quick buck, even if the appeal goes through and gives all the rights back to the video owner. This process can be drawn out for over two months without risk and during which time 100% of the money goes away from the guy who made the video, and I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that the first 2 months constitutes a vast majority of the views a video will receive. The clear solution here is to store the money the video makes until the claim is confirmed or appealed, providing the money to the winner of the dispute after it's completed.
Secondly, and this may be more related to copyright law itself more than YouTube policy, how is it right to give 100% of the money a video makes to the owner of content that consists of only 1% of the video. Using Angry Joe's example, and assuming that the song clip was not protected under fair use, lets examine this. He posted a review on Skyrim that was 30min long, and at one point parodies a song for 15 seconds. This song parody comprises less than 1% of the video, yet this policy suggests that the owner of this song deserves 100% of the video's revenue. Now, like I said this parody would be protected under fair use, but lets ignore that for now. For all intents and purposes, this video may as well have been uploaded by the owner of the song, after all, they're the ones making 100% of the money from it. But if we view it from that perspective, then aren't they making money from a property that is 99% not their work, and is the work of another person that is getting 0% of the credit. A far bigger crime in at least my book. Had the song company uploaded the video instead, it would be tagged for Joe and he would be given all the money from it. This is clearly paradoxical reasoning. The solution however is not so simple to see. The simplest thing to do would be to take down the video, requesting him to re-upload it without the infringing material, or to fine him for the rights to use the song. Another might be to simply give the song company, and thus any other claim holder, only a percentage of the profits equal to the percentage of the video that uses the claimer's material. It's unfair to me that just because a person used another's work, that the second person now gets credit for the 1st person's work; this is only punishing the crime by allowing another to commit it.
I'm not going to pretend that I'm a lawyer or that I completely understand the situation, but these solutions need to at least be directly addressed by YouTube & Google. Perhaps the first solution lends to the second. If all the money is stored until an agreement is reached, then a simple option would be to allow the parties to come to an agreement between the video owner and the claimer in terms of the what percentage is given to the claimer, if applicable. If an agreement can't be reached, then maybe just actually take it to court?
