YouTube blocks recording of public domain Schubert/Liszt composition • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube blocks recording of public domain Schubert/Liszt composition

#21

Post by wbhart » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 3:01 PM UTC

It's ironic that a system of rules (DMCA) that was designed to help performers not lose revenue is actually causing a performer to lose revenue. Rousseau is one of the most recognised pianists on YouTube. He works tirelessly to perform a new piece about every week. This must be incredibly tiring, and the skill required to be able to do that week in, week out, is absolutely breathtaking.

If anyone deserves to be made the poster child for the damage the DMCA and YouTube content ID is causing, it is Rousseau.

And how is it that an hour after this is reported, the problem still persists!? A million people are missing scheduled content. If this happened to a television station as often as it happens to YouTube there would be widespread, vocal, public complaints. Their competitors would also be having a field day.

Re: YouTube blocks recording of public domain Schubert/Liszt composition

#22

Post by crankylinuxuser » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 3:02 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #19

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The usual canard is: Google is a private Corp and can do whatever the hell they want. The real problem is that tech companies are monopolies and oligopolies and they hide behind "The people can just leave if they want". The end result is that monopolies beget and work with other monopolies to strengthen each other. So we see YouTube working with RIAA and MPAA on non-DMCA underhandedness and what is clearly fair use (…

I think the real problem is no one (or not enough people) want to pay for a service that hosts user uploaded video, filters each and every one accurately for illegal/copyrighted content, and then is able to serve it worldwide 24/7 instantaneously. That’s the reason I think no alternative service has sprouted up.

We had a policy for that built into the DMCA. It was a procedure that copyright holders could send an email and go through a process of attestation and rebuttal.

Google shortcutted that by working with music and movie studios and made a ML version that bypasses the DMCA. The harm is caused to everyone not represented by a major media company.

In the end, I have no due process afforded to me by the DMCA because Google bypassed it for cronyism.

Re: YouTube blocks recording of public domain Schubert/Liszt composition

#23

Post by quaquaqua1 » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 3:02 PM UTC

dpcan wrote: post #20

YouTube seems to be taking the brunt of the criticism when it's the repercussions of copyright infringement lawsuits that are the problem. I'm sure YouTube would love to be more lenient. If they could say "anything goes" they'd be thrilled, but we know they cannot because of the LAWS that are protecting IP owners. IP should be protected, but to what extent? And the bigger problem is the amount, and rate, of which con…

The US government has two options as I see them:

1) Reform the copyright system (unlikely due to powerful lobbyists and lawyers)

2) Eventually lose control over the industry to other countries as consumers vote with their feet.

Re: YouTube blocks recording of public domain Schubert/Liszt composition

#24

Post by crazygringo » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

Content ID is never going to be perfect (so there always needs to be an appeal mechanism).

But I'd always expected that false matches would be due to some kind of hash collision, not different recordings of the same piece.

Because YouTube doesn't know what the composition is, it only compares to other performances (which are under copyright).

And the fact that two different pianists could interpret and perform a work identically enough to generate the same signature Content ID uses is... astonishing to me, from my classical music background. If I'd had to guess, two musicians normally probably couldn't achieve that even if they tried.

So this seems to just be a crazy statistical fluke? Otherwise classical performances would be getting blocked left and right, given the hundreds/thousands of different performances of the same underlying music? Or is something more advanced that audio fingerprinting going on?

Re: YouTube blocks recording of public domain Schubert/Liszt composition

#25

Post by fireattack » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

jasonjayr wrote: post #5

https://twitter.com/hyperionrecords/status/11623845149849477... From @hyperionrecords regarding a recent unrelated incident. Hyperion's content is the one making the claim against Rousseau's video. They seem aware that ContentID often misidentifies claims, but there doesn't seem to be a public statement on what they proactively can or will do to help fix it.

I'm not sure what to fix.

Let's give the benefit of the doubt to Google and say they're constantly revising their algorithms; even then, due to the sheer amount of video uploaded to YouTube every day, there will be some of them that are misidentified, it's simply unavoidable IMHO.

I think the improvement can be made on the smoothness and speed of disputing/reviewing these claim, though. This process should be as short and painless as possible, for sure.

In OP's case, considering it only seems to be a couple of hours, I think everything is still OK-ish at this point.

Re: YouTube blocks recording of public domain Schubert/Liszt composition

#26

Post by degenerate » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

dpcan wrote: post #20

YouTube seems to be taking the brunt of the criticism when it's the repercussions of copyright infringement lawsuits that are the problem. I'm sure YouTube would love to be more lenient. If they could say "anything goes" they'd be thrilled, but we know they cannot because of the LAWS that are protecting IP owners. IP should be protected, but to what extent? And the bigger problem is the amount, and rate, of which con…

The problem with awarding only complete works is: bad people exist. Laws need to have enough flexibility so that truly devious people are covered by the law as well.

Example: I copy 99% of a popular song, but the first 3 seconds of my song = me playing a trumpet at full blast. Technically it's not a copy of the complete works, so I can argue in court that it's a sub-section of the original song. No judge/jury would agree with me, but my point is shown in this example. Even if you specify your definition sub-section to be The YouTube/AI issue is that loose/vague laws assume a certain degree of "common sense" among the population. When you try to give a loose task to a computer, it must make assumptions (either with AI, or pattern matching) and will invariably screw up. Computers are not human brains so they don't have "common sense"... yet.

Re: YouTube blocks recording of public domain Schubert/Liszt composition

#27

Post by onli » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

wbhart wrote: post #21

It's ironic that a system of rules (DMCA) that was designed to help performers not lose revenue is actually causing a performer to lose revenue. Rousseau is one of the most recognised pianists on YouTube. He works tirelessly to perform a new piece about every week. This must be incredibly tiring, and the skill required to be able to do that week in, week out, is absolutely breathtaking. If anyone deserves to be made…

Content ID is not the DMCA. Content ID got it wrong here, and that happens all the time. It's not a big deal for the claimer. Which is totally contrary to how DMCA works, if someone makes a wrong claim there it gets very expensive for them.

Youtube could easily copy that aspect of the DMCA and make it very expensive for mis-claimers, and easy to counteract automatic mis-classification. That they don't has nothing directly to do with laws, it's simply Youtube being a bad platform.

Re: YouTube blocks recording of public domain Schubert/Liszt composition

#28

Post by Znafon » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #17

The big problem with classical music is that the compositions are all in public domain, however most performances are not. Given the subtle differences between performances, algorithms are not smart enough to figure out the difference. In fact, even humans would have a hard time to distinguish between two performances of certain classical pieces.

Yes! And Kubrick knew this: for "2001: A Space Odyssey" he bought the right of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" directed by Böhm and replaced it at the last minute by the one directed by Karajan hoping no one would notice.

Re: YouTube blocks recording of public domain Schubert/Liszt composition

#29

Post by Marsymars » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

dpcan wrote: post #20

YouTube seems to be taking the brunt of the criticism when it's the repercussions of copyright infringement lawsuits that are the problem. I'm sure YouTube would love to be more lenient. If they could say "anything goes" they'd be thrilled, but we know they cannot because of the LAWS that are protecting IP owners. IP should be protected, but to what extent? And the bigger problem is the amount, and rate, of which con…

> Try naming a business. NOTHING is available. If you want to run a competing business in a saturated market, the naming options are almost non-existent, especially if you want to name your company something that embodies what your business does.

To be fair, this is only really a problem for a new tech-ish company. Most other companies are geographically limited and can operate just fine sharing an operating name with a different company. There are lots of different companies operating as "John the Plumber" (seriously, Google it), "Rose & Crown Pub", or "Pho Noodle House".

Re: YouTube blocks recording of public domain Schubert/Liszt composition

#30

Post by sdenton4 » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 3:11 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #24

Content ID is never going to be perfect (so there always needs to be an appeal mechanism). But I'd always expected that false matches would be due to some kind of hash collision, not different recordings of the same piece. Because YouTube doesn't know what the composition is, it only compares to other performances (which are under copyright). And the fact that two different pianists could interpret and perform a work…

Content ID is designed for flexibility as well: it has to catch a lot of transformative that might be applied to try to bypass it. Perhaps you've noticed that actually evasive material has increasingly terrible effects layered in as the years go on... (I remember recently finding a cartoon that looked like it was a zoomed in camcorder recording from a CRT... But emulated in effects layers.) I've also seen things subtly slowed down or sped up, strangely cropped, bordered, then given animated borders once that stopped working.

Between an incessant evasion arms race and a content generation industry all to happy to profit from false claims, I just think to myself, "this is why we can't have nice things."