from the
giz
In July, Harry “hbomberguy” Brewis shared a video on his popular YouTube channel called “
RWBY Is Disappointing, And Here’s Why.” The two-and-half-hour video — a sharp, detailed critique of the cartoon
RWBY — was the result of a lot of work by Brewis and his producer, Kat Lo. It also took an extra week and a half of editing and $1,000 in legal fees just to get and keep the video up on YouTube. All because of YouTube’s copyright filter. And thanks to a
new proposed law by Sen. Thom Tillis, Brewis’ experience could become virtually everyone’s.
YouTube’s copyright filter is a labyrinthine nightmare called Content ID. Content ID works by scanning all the videos on YouTube and comparing them to a database of material submitted by copyright holders—often music labels and movie and TV studios—which have been given the ability to add things to the database by YouTube. Once Content ID matches a few seconds of an uploaded video to something in the database — regardless of context — a number of automatic penalties can be imposed. According to Google, most of the time the rights-holder chooses to just take the money generated by ads placed by Google on the video. If the original creator didn’t want any ads put on their video, too bad. But in other cases, the rights-holder can make something much worse happen: They can make sure no one sees the video at all.
The problem with filters like Content ID is that their restrictions have nothing to do with the law. The ability to use copyrighted material without permission or payment—especially short clips for purposes such as criticism, commentary, education, and so on—is protected by something called “fair use.” It’s easy to get into the weeds of fair use, but the important thing to note is that whether or not a use is fair depends on a lot of context. Context that Content ID simply can’t determine. All it does is determine is whether elements of a work match to its source, not what is actually being done with the material. For example, a movie review using a 14-second bit of a film to illustrate what is good or bad will trigger a Content ID match to the whole movie. As far as Content ID is concerned, those 14 seconds are no different from a complete copy of the film being uploaded. So while algorithms like this might be useful in flagging
potential infringement, the fact that Content ID automatically applies penalties, with no human review involved at all, is a problem.
Brewis’ situation is not unique. And it’s possible that it’s about to be the
best-case scenario for anyone trying to share videos, music, or art online. You may remember the overzealous
EU copyright directive that passed last year. We are seeing a call for new, faster, harsher penalties in the United States, too. In the giant spending and covid-19 relief package, there are two new copyright bills: the
CASE Act, which creates a weird quasi-court in the Copyright Office that can deal out $30,000 worth of “small claims” judgments with limited appeal options.
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