Content ID does more good than harm?

[Uncivilized Elk]

While Content ID is often bogus, I personally think it does far more good than harm. Imagine if there was no Content ID at all - that would basically be Dailymotion but with the view numbers of YT. There would be thousands of people uploading full movies and shows and trying to earn revenue off it, and not only would this dilute the traffic and make a lot of legit channels and videos even harder to find than now. Companies already cannot timely track down breaches of copyright right now despite Content ID, imagine how bad it could be completely without it. It's not a wonder why the process is animated, imagine the time and money sink required to have a human from a company personally file strikes for every single breach of copyright - that can become ridiculous fast.

And with how practically nobody actually gets taken to court or in trouble for these things, people scamming money by thieving content would be massively multiplied. There's already a lot of people doing this on Dailymotion right now, actually somewhat similar to how YT was before but even less regulated. Uploading full shows and films and monetizing the content. Piracy is one thing, but say what you want, at least for most cases of piracy nobody is earning huge bucks off sharing stolen content. On DM and YT it can be very different.

Say what you want about WTFU, and while they are valid points and do need to be addressed, actual companies and hence the creators they employ lose far more money by copyright theft than YT content creators do by false claims.

YT as of right now basically allows anybody to monetize, and without Content ID this would end up horrific. With CID, it's at least bearable.
Otherwise, YT would have to set up some further sort of account authentication to let people monetize. Right now a channel with zero videos can sign up with AdSense and be approved. Otherwise, a person might need a certain view count/sub count/video number, and then a human has to skim through these videos and affirm nothing is being violated before approving monetization.
That would severely detract people who try to profit via theft - and honestly I'm somewhat inclined that YT should set this system up alongside CID, where a minimum amount of videos and views are necessary before monetization is allowed (it used to be this way in the past).

I'm not too annoyed by piracy to be honest - it allows things to gain exposure, and a lot of the time people who pirate have no intentions of purchasing whatever they pirate to begin with. Those who like/love it often support the official content in legitimate means when they can.
But theft on video platforms on YT and DM does greatly annoy me because often somebody is trying to personally profit off blatant theft, which is a whole different ballpark.

 

[CramBeats]

i also think it's actually a good thing. I mean why should somebody on youtube get money for something he hasnt put work in except maybe downloading and uploading. It also keeps sure artists get their cut for their work..thats just fair

 

[TheBossman]

The problem comes with how much of a carpet ban it is. I did a video using music I had permission from that still got content id'd and therefore I lost my monetisation to it. By the time I had emailed the company I had permission to use it off and got a response it had been on a week and had got the majority of the views it was ever going to get. Really annoyed me. I know it wasn't a lot of money but it is the principal.

 

[Uncivilized Elk]

The problem comes with how much of a carpet ban it is. I did a video using music I had permission from that still got content id'd and therefore I lost my monetisation to it. By the time I had emailed the company I had permission to use it off and got a response it had been on a week and had got the majority of the views it was ever going to get. Really annoyed me. I know it wasn't a lot of money but it is the principal.

I'm sure the principal of "We don't want people illegally using our material" is the reason why Content ID is as ridiculous as it is now.

The monetary dumbness of YT definitely has to be revised, and I think it could easily be solved by diverting funds on claimed content to a temporary account and the winner of the dispute gets the funds at the end (easy in concept, dunno how easy it is to code and all that).

But personally, I also think if a video ever gets taken down and a copyright strike is given legitimately, that person owes the copyright holder ALL the money that video ever made. That also needs to happen, just as much as the change I wrote earlier. Imagine how many people would stop trying to scam their way by uploading somebody else's content if they end up having to pay all their earnings back? Especially since if a legal system can be set up for this, there can actually be a trail of money, meaning if these people pocketed it they can literally be sent payments for having a debt they owe to their homes, and this could even have interest on it. This would seriously dissuade people from theft via YT, which itself should put some ease on how rampant false claims are.

Again, the money flow needs a heavy revision. But not necessarily the Content ID itself. Though some big YTers seriously need to start suing companies for false claims, because that will ward off a lot of companies from going hog-wild with their claims. That would do more for fair use than complaining about it ever could.

I feel like I'd like to send a formal email to the people behind YT with these suggestions. They may have heard them already, but another voice won't hurt. Does anybody happen to know what the best way to contact YT would be in a manner where it could actually reach somebody that matters?

 

[TheBossman]

I'm sure the principal of "We don't want people illegally using our material" is the reason why Content ID is as ridiculous as it is now.

The monetary dumbness of YT definitely has to be revised, and I think it could easily be solved by diverting funds on claimed content to a temporary account and the winner of the dispute gets the funds at the end (easy in concept, dunno how easy it is to code and all that).

But personally, I also think if a video ever gets taken down and a copyright strike is given legitimately, that person owes the copyright holder ALL the money that video ever made. That also needs to happen, just as much as the change I wrote earlier. Imagine how many people would stop trying to scam their way by uploading somebody else's content if they end up having to pay all their earnings back? Especially since if a legal system can be set up for this, there can actually be a trail of money, meaning if these people pocketed it they can literally be sent payments for having a debt they owe to their homes, and this could even have interest on it. This would seriously dissuade people from theft via YT, which itself should put some ease on how rampant false claims are.

Again, the money flow needs a heavy revision. But not necessarily the Content ID itself. Though some big YTers seriously need to start suing companies for false claims, because that will ward off a lot of companies from going hog-wild with their claims. That would do more for fair use than complaining about it ever could.

I feel like I'd like to send a formal email to the people behind YT with these suggestions. They may have heard them already, but another voice won't hurt. Does anybody happen to know what the best way to contact YT would be in a manner where it could actually reach somebody that matters?

Youtube are supposedly pretty impossible to get hold of, the CEO is on Twitter though and supposedly she really cares about Youtube so tweet her. The middle man pot is something that is starting to be brought up a lot and really needs to get implemented to stop this happening though.

 

[stark]

The monetary dumbness of YT definitely has to be revised, and I think it could easily be solved by diverting funds on claimed content to a temporary account and the winner of the dispute gets the funds at the end (easy in concept, dunno how easy it is to code and all that).

That seems to be a no-brainer, a great way to improve the system by discouraging false claims.

But personally, I also think if a video ever gets taken down and a copyright strike is given legitimately, that person owes the copyright holder ALL the money that video ever made. That also needs to happen, just as much as the change I wrote earlier. Imagine how many people would stop trying to scam their way by uploading somebody else's content if they end up having to pay all their earnings back? Especially since if a legal system can be set up for this, there can actually be a trail of money, meaning if these people pocketed it they can literally be sent payments for having a debt they owe to their homes, and this could even have interest on it. This would seriously dissuade people from theft via YT, which itself should put some ease on how rampant false claims are.

I disagree strongly with that, it's a can of worms to try. Once the money has made it to the person breaching copyright, it's gone. A systematic breacher of copyright that does it for profit should be banned from yt and adsense, and it should be made as hard for them to start again as possible (like blacklisting any known bank accounts, phone numbers etc from being linked to an adsense account in the future). Even taking the money from the adsense balance is a minefield, what happens if there's not enough in the account? Does it end there with whatever they can get at the time, or do they garnish future adsense earnings until the full amount has been accounted for? Garnishing would only incentivise false claims all over again, and ten fold.

tl;dr: Drawing a line at when a claim is made and putting future earnings in escrow until resolved is an elegant solution, which would work much better than the current setup.

 

[Uncivilized Elk]

Once the money has made it to the person breaching copyright, it's gone.

Except there's a name, a bank account, and a verified address to boot. I don't even recall the other personal info needed to get payments, isn't an SS# in there too? There's no reason this person can't be treated like any other thief that stole content and resold it for personal gain - and hey, all their information is known.

Garnishing wouldn't even be an issue. If they can't pay it all back with funds already in their AdSense account, then halt monetization - the person has a strike already anyway.

That's the thing, YT is super lax when it comes to proper enforcement. Most people don't even lose their channels after dozens of copyright strikes. People scamming YT have no fear of repercussions, and rightfully so, YT does jack sh*t to dish out proper punishment for legitimate strikes. At the very least, people scamming the system need a fear that they've wasted all their time for nothing.


I guarantee if YT rarely had people on it actually breaching copyrighted content and it was nearly exclusively fair use, the copyright system would not be causing a headache for so many people that did nothing wrong. There's an initial layer of fear in all that deterrent lawyer talk from people trying to scam money, but most people do a simple google search and find out practically nobody has ever gotten into any real trouble or lost any money from theft.

 

[stark]

Except there's a name, a bank account, and a verified address to boot. I don't even recall the other personal info needed to get payments, isn't an SS# in there too? There's no reason this person can't be treated like any other thief that stole content and resold it for personal gain - and hey, all their information is known.

Massive hassle, setting precedents and expectations, legal issues. A hundred countries with different laws and levels of co-operation. Employing enough of the right people with the right skills to administer everything, a lot of people. Dealing with sectors unrelated to their core business (forming new relationships with third parties in areas they are unfamiliar, they'll need contractors to do the leg-work in each country). It's a money sink, and would put google in the precarious position of being very hands-on, which could bite them in the future. I can see why they want to be as hands-off as possible.

 

[KatyAdelson]

I think Content ID is great. It's one of the only things they could have done to easily track the use of copyrighted content on a massive scale. I just wish they would expand it (or perhaps create something else) to cover the original works from their own creators. They already have all the time stamps, metadata and actual file for every Youtube video, and a lot of people would find it helpful if they put an extra cross-check in for their own videos instead of just focusing on stuff from mainstream media. I've found some of my music used in several videos, which is fine by me (I've put most of it in the Creative Commons anyway) - I just wish that YouTube would force a link to my channel or something since a lot of people tend to forget it's the only requirement I have..

But what they have right now works fairly well, and I'm pretty happy with it. ^_^