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Facebook’s Piracy Problem

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Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#141

Post by Buge »

plorg wrote: post #97

I have a friend/acquaintance who had a similar experience on YouTube itself. He had created a large number of instructional videos on his YouTube channel, and from them he was deriving a significant passive income (admittedly from the overbearing amount of ads he enabled). One day he received a takedown notice suggesting that his videos were illicit copies. His investigations led him to believe that another YouTube u…

I had someone steal one of my videos on youtube. I reported it for infringement and it was taken down in 30 minutes. I found that pretty impressive.

A month ago one of my videos about a reported and fixed XSS vulnerability was taken down for violating some rules (it didn't say what rules exactly). I submitted an appeal and it was reinstated a few days later.

Several years ago one of my videos that used some public domain footage was taken down for copyright infringement. I appealed it saying the footage was in the public domain and they reinstated my video several days later.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#142

Post by GhotiFish »

nemothekid wrote: post #123
hackuser wrote: post #52

A radical idea: Maybe our model of intellectual property is wrong, or outdated. When IP was tied to a physical object, it made some sense to restrict and explicitly license each reproducer. Now we have incredible machines that can reproduce intellectual property almost infinitely, distribute it anywhere on Earth, and find it almost anywhere on Earth. Wow! Maybe we should embrace that innovation, and find a model that…

I always wince when I see statements like these. The implication that artists should be unpaid is completely absurd. How about, YOU, quick name a television/book/movie you enjoyed , where every artist went unpaid. There is a reason Netflix PAID people to create content. There is a reason that today YouTube still pays people to make content for YouTube. Quality content comes from smart people who if not paid to make m…

That post is stating that the way out society functions around the concept of data is incorrect.

You're right in that some works do require significant budgets to complete. Is there absolutely no other possible way that such works could get funded without an individual person buying only one individual copy of that work to post-hoc fund it in aggregate?

"No! Nothing but this system could ever possibly work. It's pointless to even speculate on anything else existing."

I don't think that's your position, but you sure couch it in those terms. You sure ended that dialog in those terms. Did you mean to?

I'd like to see real discussion around this topic, but before it even gets off the ground, the mere existence of such systems are assumed impossible and the seed of such a conversation is accused of what you accused the grandparent. I want to entertain the notion.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#143

Post by yzzxy »

habitue wrote: post #139

It seems like the major issue is that attribution was removed. The reposting stripped credit for the guy. I think everyone can agree that putting a movie up on the pirate bay, and putting a movie up on the pirate bay after stripping out the credits and putting your own name on it are two different kinds of things.

The major issue is the revenue stream to the creator was removed. Someone (facebook and/or the page) was profiting directly or indirectly from the work, and not the author. That's copyright infringement and theft. The removal of the attribution is insult added to injury, but far less immediately important.

I sometimes wonder if the tech startup crowd really believes "eyeballs," "exposure," and "active users" are inherently valuable. Maybe if you're shopping around to investors or patrons. Not if you're the other 99% of the population. For them, exposure is just a chance to grow the modest revenue stream they already have, or nothing at all. MAYBE you could get lucky and parlay it into a book deal or something, but probably not.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#144

Post by Swannie »

joeyaiello wrote: post #73
ritchiea wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably don't have anyone on staff whose responsibility is to do that but it seems it would be in their best interest to create a department that defends their top contributors with DMCA takedown notices.

If that's true, it feels like willful negligence. They have a video platform that has access to a billion people. These are views in the tens of millions. There's companies with order of magnitudes less traffic who have people fielding DMCA requests full-time. If FB doesn't, that's completely unacceptable, full stop.

The suggestions was the it could be in YouTube's interest to create a team that sends out DMCA notices on the behalf of their top contributors.

This would give YouTube a unique feature that would keep their content producers hosting content on their platform.

However, the mechanics would be somewhat tricky. I'd guess it would work something like the following: submit a URL for a Facebook post/Wordpress post, that prompted YouTube to ContentID against your existing videos, and if it found a match, it put your flagged violation in a queue for human verification, and subsequent automated DMCA takedown gets sent to the hoster, along with a report of if the content is still available. Of course, that becomes open to the sort of abuse mentioned elsewhere in the thread.

FaceBook certainly have a team responding to DMCA requests. They are just slow.

Ideally, someone like YouTube licenses their technology, and opens up their contentID DB to the licensee for consumption... But again, I can see many avenues for abuse by licensee's (for example, automated "content capture" of content not currently in the DB), that would need good policies to help prevent.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#145

Post by neotek »

viraptor wrote: post #129
plorg wrote: post #97

I have a friend/acquaintance who had a similar experience on YouTube itself. He had created a large number of instructional videos on his YouTube channel, and from them he was deriving a significant passive income (admittedly from the overbearing amount of ads he enabled). One day he received a takedown notice suggesting that his videos were illicit copies. His investigations led him to believe that another YouTube u…

I'd like to hear more of this story and what channels of communication were used exactly. DMCA is pretty clear on how this case should be handled and even if it's a stupid procedure that takes you down for a few days, I don't believe YT can legally refuse to act on the counter-claim. If they do and you relied on the income from those videos, you could sue them. So why did it take months? How were they blocked in the…

I'd put money on it being an abuse of YouTube's Content ID.

It's a common YouTube scam - find a video with a lot of views that's rising quickly, download it and reupload it to your own account and submit it to Content ID. YouTube will automatically scan its library for copies of "your" video, and gives you the option to either take the copies down, or monetise them via ads.

Because of the DMCA's stupid counter notification process, it takes YouTube two weeks before they'll release the copyright claim, by which time the video is no longer viral and the original content creator has missed out on the bulk of the video's revenue.

The thing is, YouTube isn't really to blame for all of this, it's the idiotic way the DMCA is written and applied. As a service provider, YouTube is obliged to immediately respond to DMCA claims, regardless of how spurious a claim might be, or risk losing its protection under the DMCA's safe harbour provisions.

If the person against whom the DMCA takedown was lodged wants to challenge its validity, they have to send a counter notice, which starts a two week timer. If the person who submitted the takedown doesn't start actual legal action by the end of that two week period, YouTube is allowed to reinstate the content... at which point the DMCA troll can submit another takedown request, starting the whole Kafkaesque process again.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#146

Post by jakejake »

Would there be any reason why the content creator couldn't sue Facebook and/or Zoo RIAA style using the same copyright laws? Unlike music sharing, this situation probably does have a specific, tangible amount of revenue losses to the videographer.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#147

Post by hackuser »

guscost wrote: post #122
hackuser wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that anyone's creative work is 'crap' or that I'm in position to judge it. I was referring to the'art' created only for the large payoff, such as a lot of pop music. But even that's an unfair stereotype.

Well come on, I'm not even being sarcastic or anything, my cynicism about art in general and my own in particular is very real and kind of a problem. But I get what you mean, sorry for having a bit of fun at your expense.

We're talking past each other - it's kind of funny, actually. My comment was a sincere apology and not a complaint at all. Obviously that wasn't clear, so thanks for your considerate response.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#148

Post by guscost »

hackuser wrote: post #147
guscost wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well come on, I'm not even being sarcastic or anything, my cynicism about art in general and my own in particular is very real and kind of a problem. But I get what you mean, sorry for having a bit of fun at your expense.

We're talking past each other - it's kind of funny, actually. My comment was a sincere apology and not a complaint at all. Obviously that wasn't clear, so thanks for your considerate response.

Ok, thanks.

I've long believed free is inevitably part of the future of the industry and largely agree with you about the technical argument.

And a funny anecdote, spam ad blogs had copies of my linked articles within minutes of posting that comment.

Re: Facebook’s Piracy Problem

#149

Post by BillyParadise »

So what Facebook needs to implement is an ultra simple content claiming mechanism.

Offending video: My Video (can include youtube/vimeo/other link):

No, not automatically scalable. Facebook started this, they're gonna have to staff up to handle the problems associated with it.

I see Facebook has only recently started allowing people to monetize their uploads, so the primary benefit the "freebooters" got was traffic to their site. Maybe Facebook should take a page from porn and link-skim an equivalent number of page views from the freebooter to the victim. Talk about restitution!

(incidentally, I've found Facebook far more responsive than Twitter. Imagine what happens when the big T gets into the video game in a big way)

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