You’re a musician, and you write your own music. In order to reach a wide audience, you put your songs up on YouTube to reach a wide audience. You get a good number of daily views and are happy to see that people are buying your songs on iTunes, even! Suddenly, you go to your account and find that your videos have been flagged as violating copyright, and you’re no longer receiving the ad revenue. Instead, it’s going to someone you’ve never even heard of. Understandably, you’re confused.
You review games for a living and receive thousands, sometimes millions of views daily for your YouTube videos. Many people enjoy your videos and trust your judgment, sometimes buying a game simply because you played it. You make sure to receive explicit permission from game makers before reviewing. Suddenly, one of these companies has flagged your videos and took down the videos. Understandably, you’re angry.
These are false flags: ContentID incorrectly flagged videos as violating copyright. In the first, it’s because someone claimed ownership of someone else’s content. In the second, it’s because the system doesn’t know when someone other than the copyright holder has been given the right to use the material. How can we fix the system to stop this from happening?
For the first, there’s a preliminary check. You can make sure that the content doesn’t match anything already in the database. If it is in the database, you know one of the two doesn’t own the content. However, if you don’t know who does own the content, you have to make an assumption, and it’s normally first-come, first-served. The more comprehensive but painstaking process is requiring proof of copyright. This should be the way it works, as a DMCA Takedown Notice first requires proof of copyright or authority to file a claim. However, the process of verifying each individual claim is lengthy; there’s a reason an automated process was chosen.
For the second, you can upload proof of right to use the material. However, the verification process can be lengthy. Instead, the content holder can whitelist people: he can list those he gave right of use. However, this requires action on their part; if they do not whitelist, someone who gained the right to use the material will be assumed not to have it. In addition, if there is a large number to whitelist, the process becomes lengthy again.
The best solution against these false flags is to verify each content-holder individually. However, this has to be done manually, since automated systems cannot be presumed perfect. Many would assume this not worth the work, but if it’s done right, it could be very helpful. However, the time taken to confirm a claim is time during which that copyright could be infringed… What do you think? What else could be done? Even if the situation can’t be fixed entirely, can it be improved?
P.S. If you’re interested in looking around, there have been some really hilarious false claims. For instance, someone received a copyright violation flag for a video which only included sounds of nature. Whoops.