YouTube Alters Copyright Algorithms, Will 'Manually' Review Some Claims 71
thomst writes "David Kravets of Wired's Threat Level blog reports that Google's Thabet Alfishawi has announced YouTube will alter its algorithms 'that identify potentially invalid claims. We stop these claims from automatically affecting user videos and place them in a queue to be manually reviewed.' YouTube's Content ID algorithms have notably misfired in recent months, resulting in video streams as disparate as Curiosity's Mars landing and Michelle Obama's Democratic Convention speech being taken offline on specious copyright infringement grounds. Kravets states, 'Under the new rules announced Wednesday, however, if the uploader challenges the match, the alleged rights holder must abandon the claim or file an official takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.' (A false takedown claim under the DMCA can result in non-trivial legal liability.)"
Update: 10/05 11:24 GMT by S : Google has clarified its earlier comments. The user videos will be placed in a queue for manual review not by Google, but by the content owners.
Re:non-trivial legal liability? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, there was one case I remember, but it wasn't some random take down. It was about a designer initiating a take down on a youtube video because she felt the movie producer/aborigin artist was still owing her money for her design work. The designer lost big in court, especially because the movie producer/artist could prove that he was receiving real income from his art pieces and her take down had a real provable effect on his loss of income at the time.
Re:official takedown notice? (Score:5, Informative)
Because they don't have to. Since it is their property they can institute any rules or program that they want (provided obviously that it doesn't break the law) that will help them manage their service or please their partners. In this case they offered a content matching and content removal system to their corporate clients as a means to encourage them to use youtube heavily and stop suing them. The reason youtube is changing their policy is that it has been heavily abused and is starting to generate negative publicity and shift users elsewhere not because they have any obligation to.
They have always accepted DMCA notices but also allowed an alternative non-DMCA process too.
Re:official takedown notice? (Score:5, Informative)
Because if someone challenges the DMCA complaint and the DMCA complainer disappears, Google is the one who gets held liable.
That's absolutely untrue. The entire point of the DMCA is the safe harbor provisions for service providers. If you take an item down in response to a well formed DMCA complaint there is no valid cause against you, even if the DMCA complainer disappears.
Currently in Dispute with YouTube (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnI1QZfbRjs [youtube.com]
For anyone interested, here is the text of the "Disputed Claim" with the link to their Copyright Center. (links to the individual claim removed)
HEX