YouTube Dusts Off Granular National Video Blocking To Assist YouTuber Feuding With Toei Animation
from the 'bout-time dept
Hopefully, you will recall our discussion about one YouTuber, Totally Not Mark, suddenly getting flooded with 150 copyright claims on his YouTube channel all at once from Toei Animation. Mark's channel is essentially a series of videos that discuss, critique, and review anime. Toei Animation produces anime, including the popular Dragon Ball series. While notable YouTuber PewDiePie weighed in with some heavy criticism over how YouTube protects its community in general from copyright claims, the real problem here was one of location. Matt is in Ireland, while Toei Animation is based out of Japan. Japan has terrible copyright laws when it comes to anything resembling fair use, whereas Ireland is governed by fair dealing laws. In other words, Matt's use was just fine in Ireland, where he lives, but would not be permitted in Japan. Since YouTube is a global site, takedowns have traditionally been global.
Well, Matt has updated the world to note that he was victorious in getting his videos restored and cleared, with a YouTube rep working directly with him on this.
But shortly after, as Fitzpatrick revealed in a new video providing an update on the legal saga, someone “high up at YouTube’’ who wished to remain anonymous, reached out to him via Discord. Fitzpatrick said the contact not only apologized for his situation not being addressed sooner, but divulged a prior conflict between YouTube and Toei regarding his videos fair use status.
“I’m not going to lie, hearing a human voice that felt both sincerely eager to help and understanding of this impossible situation felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders,” Fitzpatrick said.
Hey, Twitch folks, if you're reading this, this is how it is done. But it isn't the whole story. Before the videos were claimed and blocked, Toei had requested that YouTube manually take Matt's videos offline. YouTube pushed back on Toei, asking for more information on its requested takedowns, specifically asking if the company had considered fair use/fair dealing laws in its request. Alongside that, YouTube also asked Toei to provide more information as to what and why Matt's videos were infringing. Instead of complying, Toei utilized YouTube's automated tools to simply claim and block those 150 videos.
The following week, a game of phone tag ensued between Toei, the Japanese YouTube team, the American YouTube team, Fitzpatrick’s YouTube contact, and himself to reach “some sort of understanding” regarding his copyright situation. Toei ended up providing a new list of 86 videos of the original 150 or so that the company deemed should not remain on YouTube, a move Fitzpatrick described as “baffling” and “inconsistent.” Toei, he concludes, has no idea of the meaning of fair use or the rules the company wants creators to abide by.
“Contained in this list was frankly the most arbitrary assortment of videos that I had ever seen,” he said. “It honestly appeared as if someone chose videos at random as if chucking darts at a dart board.”
While Matt regained control of his videos thanks to his work alongside the YouTube rep, he was still in danger of Toei filing a lawsuit in Japan that he would almost certainly lose, given that country's laws. Fortunately, YouTube has a method for blocking videos based on copyright claims in certain countries for these types of disputes. The Kotaku post linked above suggests that this method is brand new for YouTube, but it isn't. It's been around for a while but, somewhat amazingly, it appears to have never been used specifically when it comes to copyright laws in specific countries.
YouTube’s new copyright rule allows owners like Toei to have videos removed from, say, Japan’s YouTube site, but said videos will remain up in other territories as long as they fall under the country’s fair use policies. To have videos removed from places with more allowances for fair use, companies would have to argue their cases following the copyright laws of those territories.
And so Matt's review videos remain up everywhere except in Japan. That isn't a perfect solution by any stretch, but it seems to be as happy a middle ground as we're likely to find given the circumstances. Those circumstances chiefly being that Toei Animation for some reason wants to go to war with a somewhat popular YouTuber who, whatever else you might want to say about his content, is certainly driving interest publicly in Toei's products, for good or bad. This is a YouTuber the company could have collaborated with in one form or another, but instead it is busy burning down bridges.
“Similarly to how video games have embraced the online sphere, I sincerely believe that a collaborative or symbiotic relationship between online creators and copyright owners is not only more than possible but would likely work extremely well for both sides if they are open to it,” Fitzpatrick said.
That Toei Animation is not open to it is the chief problem here.
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Filed Under: contentid, copyright, fair dealing, geoblocking, ireland, japan, matt fitzpatrick, reviews, takedowns, videos
Companies: toei animation, youtube
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I have an iota of sympathy for Toei here; after all, it’s doing what the law in Japan says it must for the sake of copyrights and such. But that iota is far outweighed by its heavy-handed attempt to wreck someone who wasn’t even targeting a Japanese audience with videos clearly covered by Fair Use/Dealing that were meant to inform people about (and thus promote) Toei’s works.
Copyright really is brain damage.
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'Scorched earth', not the best for positive PR
Bloody hell, you know something has gone completely nuts when YouTube is the good guy in the story...
One thing's for certain, Toei is absolutely on my 'Never buy from' list after this particular stunt, as bad as it looked from the original article this one really makes clear how they went above and beyond to screw the content creator who was providing free publicity for them and their products.
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No. Without the support of bad laws, Toei would just be another idiot whining on the internet. Copyright is the chief problem, and even "fair use" and "fair dealing" clearly don't mitigate its threat to free expression. Copyright started as an industrial regulation and should have been abolished or severely limited when it started affecting the lives of ordinary people.
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Toei... Nintendo... and for a while Sega (If you've remembered that whole Shining Force fiasco)....
I am beginning to think this is ... not a problem, but more of a conflict of cultural and legal issues between Japan and everyone else.
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"“I’m not going to lie, hearing a human voice that felt both sincerely eager to help and understanding of this impossible situation felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders,” Fitzpatrick said."
That is actually quite comforting to hear in many ways. There's 2 major issues with the typical situation. One is that it's set up in a way where YouTube essentially have to err on the side of the entity complaining - even they don't have the resources to individually evaluate each and every complaint they get, and despite all the horrible potential abuses we hear I'm sure that a majority are actually valid complaints. So, the automated response is always going to act as if the person filing what should be a complaint backed with the threat of perjury if they're lying is correct, no matter how flawed that assumption is.
But, the second major issue - that when a person is faced with a false complaint, or one that isn't a simple open and shut case, it can be very difficult to get someone at YouTube who isn't an algorithm or bot to examine the case and try and work something out. This hopefully indicates more resources at YouTube's end to deal with this, and in theory it should work to negotiate more granular approaches like this.
Let's see if this is a one off due to the publicity on this one case, or an actual change in the way they deal with complaints.
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Re:
It's is still a problem, it just means that it shifts the blame away from individual corporations doing something, and more of a problem with the expectation that the only true and valid way of dealing with copyright issues is the US one. If responses can allow more restrictive (and less restrictive) responses in regions that demand them while keeping the "default" response that a US corporation would use for US hosts intact, then that should lead to less friction. Although I still expect US corporations to continue to demand that US law applies everywhere.
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Re:
It's not brain damage so much as it fits into the same issues you come across with "zero tolerance", where things like nuance and common sense are not allowed to enter the discussion. No matter what Japanese law says, common sense should indicate that it doesn't apply globally, and that where it comes into conflict with the law of other countries, the sensible response is to block videos for Japanese viewers and not globally. We know granular response is possible due to all the videos blocked to German audiences and not elsewhere, so it should have been a no brainer to apply a block to Japan here. Not a problem unless you're trying to apply a "one size fits all" response to every issue, which again common sense would state is not really possible on a global scale.
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youtuber
The problem is picking a career that is completely dependent on YouTube when you have no service level agreement with them.
Google can remove anyone from YouTube whenever they want, section 230, remember?
This article is idiotic, anyone who tries to make a living off YouTube has to realise it can all be taken away at any point. If they haven't allowed for that eventuality then their business plan is not fit for purpose.
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Re: youtuber
We'll wait and see.
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natural resources
You people talk like YouTube is a natural resource, freely available like sunshine or mud.
That isn't how the internet works.
Good grief.....
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Re: youtuber
Ah good old blaming the victim, truly the masterclass of arguments...
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Re: we'll wait and see
That's not how this works. However this individual spat plays out, the fact is YouTube are protected by 230 and can remove your content from their service whenever they like.
By all means take that risk but you can't pretend it doesn't exist.
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Re: victim?
Of the free service that hosted all their content for nothing?
Or of their own hubris and stupidity?
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Uh… Mark, or Matt?
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Re: natural resources
Calm down, you're hallucinating again.
Nobody's saying any such thing. However, even though the smart money would be on not depending on using more than one supplier to grow your business, there's multiple other issues here. Such as - when 2 countries have vastly different laws surrounding copyright, and there's a dispute between opposing parties based in those countries, how should it be dealt with? How can a person affected by the law in a country they never visit nor intend their content to be viewed in avoid issues relating to that? How should a company deal with legal threats against its own user base when they've not broken any law where either the user or the company is based?
The issues here go way beyond YouTube, and pretending that people are saying different things to the actual word they typed won't help your cause.
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Re:
"Copyright really is brain damage."
Can't dismiss it that easily.
Copyright, like old heresy law, is just a means by which a small industry of gatekeeper middlemen retain market position by having the state apply the violence monopoly on their behalf.
The ones actually believing in it are the ones who are brain damaged.
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Re: 'Scorched earth', not the best for positive PR
"Bloody hell, you know something has gone completely nuts when YouTube is the good guy in the story..."
Does take moral relativity to the next level, doesn't it?
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Re:
Don't drag Japan down with the rest of them: Capcom and Arc System Works are awesome! Also, for a while, there was a huuuge toleration of Doujin works until copyright infringement became a criminal act, when it couldn't be ignored.
So Japan was once better than the US, but it has nothing to do with their corporate culture but if anything the copyright laws we oblige by treaty upon them.
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Stop him!!
Or we will shoot ourselves in the foot again!
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Obviously herd about this on TMME’s video
TheMysteriousMrEnter posted this video long ago:
https://youtu.be/jiSXoEbILhw
at 5:32-5:43 sums it all up. To post things online without breaking any laws in the world.
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Re:
I think this may be a case where Toei decided to punish the impertinent Gaikokujin (smelly hairy foreigner) for giving them some bad reviews.
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Re: Re: victim?
What the hell are you even going on about?
The content creator put his videos on Youtube, on the assumption that because they were covered under his country's laws they were fine. The greedy morons over at Toei decided that no, their country's laws are all that mattered and that rather than work with the platform/creator they'd take down all the videos simply because the system allowed them to at the time.
The fact that they could do that does not mean they weren't acting like goons when they did it or that they don't shoulder all the blame for their actions victimizing the content creator.
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An own-goal of epic proportions
Oh I dearly hope that was the motivation because if so talk about fixing a paper-cut by hacking your arm off with a chainsaw.
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Re: Re:
They could not implement Fair-use/Fair-dealing in the process of regularizing their laws to the treaty obligations?
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Re:
There is no "promotional or informative" fair use exception. Content creators, especially those on platforms they don't control, really need to understand what what fair use actually is and not what people want it to be if they want to avoid problems like this. My understand is that TNM had Toei's animation running in the background of his videos while he discussed it. This should be fine, as it's critiquing the animation, but in a lawsuit, Toei could claim that he wasn't critiquing the actual content he was showing, but rather just discussing the animation in general while using their work as background.
It's a tough distinction, and one that Toei obviously will never understand, but content creators absolutely need to be aware of it to make sure that if they do end up in a lawsuit, they are in the right.
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That's why The Copyright Cartel wants to Push for NO Fair Use in Trade Agreements. So this kind of stuff does not happen.
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Re: Re: Re:
They were got at by the MPA/RIAA, who hate fair use, and would extinguish it as that would simplify copyright enforcement it uses a bit of our content so pay us or take it down.
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Re: what the law in Japan says it must
I think you're implying that Japanese law says the if they don't pursue infringers Toei could lose the right to enforce their copyright.
If that's really the case, I also have some sympathy for them. But such a law is idiotic, needless, and ought to be changed immediately.
Any copyright owner ought to be able to say "we will permit unlicensed use in situation <x>", without losing rights to license in other situtations that are <not x>.
I don't see how even Hollywood executives could rationally oppose such a legal change.
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He made reviews for individual episodes, if I recall right. If he’s criticizing and critiquing the actual episode, I don’t see how Fair Use/Dealing would fail as a defense.
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Not so much that, as much as it is Toei sticking to the near-exact letter of the law out of deference to the Japanese legal system and Japanese culture in general. Japan has some weird media laws, regulations, and traditions; Fair Use/Dealing not being much of A Thing™ over there is apparently one of them.
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Re: Re:
Since you appear unaware, the youtube chanel was a review page, reviewing individual episodes. The mere presence of toei animation content is to be expected
However, the prof of the unreasonableness of the demands comes from the fact that several videos hit do not contain tori animation content (per the creator, as these were videos discussing dbz, but not reviewing content. Meaning, assuming he is representing his content accurately, he wasn’t using content when it wasn’t fair use. Youtube’s actions clearly state they believe all toei content use was in line with fair use - they assume a lawsuit in ireland can not succeed and risk liability if they are wrong, so you know Youtube’s expensive IP lawyers have weighed in on this.
We’ve all heard Leonard French lecturing Good Mythical Morning and his audiance about the meaning of criticism in copyright law. but you haven’t looked at any of the details which suggest that rant is out of place in this context.
But sure, i’m sure the person who hasn’t seen the content knows more about its fair use status than Youtube’s Copyright lawyers.
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Re:
I don’t have any sympathy. They are flexing their muscle on the international stage and have been for decades. Youtube pushes back on them in part because they keep butting heads with youtube creators. Worse this isn’t the first time they went after a creator whom they previously partnered with.
If they thought it was infringement, why did these partnerships happen? because Toei marketing recognizes the value in fan engagement. I have no sympathy for lawyers so up their own ass they sue sanctioned content creators.
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Re: Re: we'll wait and see
I can only come to the conclusion that you actually didn't read the article since section 230 had zero relevance to what happened.
That you think this article is idiotic while ranting about 230 is proof that the only idiotic thing here is your posts.
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Re: Re: we'll wait and see
If only S. 230 was relevant under Japanese law.
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Youtube Geoblocking
Now if only Youtube would make the geo-blocking feature available to creators as they uploaded their videos, people could manage their international copyright risk according to their own requirements.
Some pre-sets for countries that have fair-use/fair-dealing laws or countries like Japan where copyright is extremely restrictive would make it pretty easy for the average creator to filter out the countries where they (or their lawyer) think there is a risk of infringement BEFORE the shit hits the fan. Coupling the feature with filters on ContentID where the agencies submitting claims would have to specify the countries where they are authorized to submit claims would make ContentID significantly more accurate, too.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Yup. Pretty much that. The © industries pretty much said "If you don't get draconian © policy, you won't get our products". That's how they were able to defeat South Africa getting Fair Use on par with the US's protection, but they can't because they would otherwise be cut off by the MPA's and RIAA's products.
See here: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191031/00591143300/us-government-threatening-to-kill-free-trade- with-south-africa-after-hollywood-complained-it-was-adopting-american-fair-use.shtml
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Re: natural resources
It would be one thing if YouTube said "we don't do that here", but this is in fact a case of Toei using © law to tell an Irishman that "he can't do that anywhere".
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burning bridges
In this day and age, "blowing up bridges" is a more appropriate metaphor
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Re:
Such deference is part of Japanese culture, but, weirdly, so is doujin—i.e., fan works. I believe Techdirt's written about that. That subculture is huge in Japan, as evidenced by the Comiket picture on the linked page, and almost entirely illegal. Arguably, Japan is better positioned for copyright reform than any other country, were the public simply willing to stop bowing to lawmakers and corporations and stand up for their rights. ("Doujinshi creators who base their materials on other creators' works normally publish in small numbers to maintain a low profile so as to protect themselves against litigation"; "Doujinshi are considered shinkokuzai under Japanese copyright law, meaning that doujinshi creators cannot be [criminally] prosecuted unless a complaint is made by the holders of the copyrights they have violated.")
There's effectively no evidence that any form of fair use or fan fiction has ever harmed any copyright holder, or caused profits lower than would have otherwise occurred (some evidence suggests the opposite). Any limitation on freedom of speech should require very strong evidence of necessity before it is implemented, and on an ongoing basis till it's repealed.
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Re: natural resources
Shh honey, the adults are talking.
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Re:
It would in Japan. Japanese copyright law has no allowance for fair use or fair dealing.
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Re: Youtube Geoblocking
I'll admit my ignorance here as I've never uploaded anything to YouTube, but is that not already the case? I've certainly seen a number of things like, say, UK panel shows that are blocked in the UK but available elsewhere, and looking at the accounts involved I have doubts that they were official feeds.
The main problem here is that the average YouTuber doesn't really know anything about copyright and its vagaries. Most would understand that if they're uploading an entire unedited movie but they wouldn't necessarily understand the different issues even if you start talking about fair use and such. Most sure as hell won't have a lawyer anyway, at least not at first. The majority of YouTubers start out as hobbyists doing something they think is cool well before they start thinking about it as a business.
A feature for established or experienced YouTubers would help avoid issues with well-known pitfalls like anime and Japan, but it would most likely confuse anyone else and lead them to either massively restrict their audience without reason, or they pick the wrong option and get in trouble regardless.
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Re: Re: Youtube Geoblocking
Nope, by default; YT only provides geoblocking methods to those with large channels and MCN's (think your Game/Food/Film Theory, Channel Awesome, Pewds, LinusTechTips) and TV networks like BBC, NBC, CBC, Prime7, WIN/Nine Network, Ten/Southern Cross Media, and not to the smaller indie content creators like Suede, MysteriousMrEnter, TJOmega, RVT/ReViewTopia...
Hell, I've got a few channels (one for LP's, one for Tokusatusu (Power Rangers and its siblings) reviews, and a personal random junk), and been on YT since 2007 (even had access to AdSense at one point), but I've seen neither hide-nor-hair of a geoblocking system nor a red cent from AdSense (and considering how damn hard it is to get monetised on YT now; for someone like myself who does low-volume content production it's not worth trying to AdSense and instead look at being supported through Patreon & KoFi).
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Re: Re: Re: Youtube Geoblocking
OK so to give a concrete example, when I was in the UK for Christmas I happened to notice that the channel ozmartian was not available due to georestrictions, which do not occur when I'm at home in Spain. From what I can tell, the channel is not officially sanctioned and it largely exists to stream UK panel shows such as 8 Out Of 10 Cats, QI and Mock The Week. In the UK these are produced and broadcast by different networks, so I doubt there's an unannounced relationship behind the scenes, and the channel has around 55k subscribers - not small, but not large enough to get special treatment as far as I'm aware.
That's curious to me. It makes sense for the channel to be geoblocked as in the UK there's official streaming platforms like BBC iPlayer and Channel 4's All 4 service, which are only available in the UK. But, the existence of the block and lack of official sanctioning of the channel suggested to me that something must already exist. It's possible that there's a blanket agreement that simply picks up on the shows and automatically blocks them outside the UK, but then it's weird that what appears to be naked copyright infringement does not get blocked outright.
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Re: Re: what the law in Japan says it must
"Any copyright owner ought to be able to say "we will permit unlicensed use in situation <x>", without losing rights to license in other situtations that are <not x>. I don't see how even Hollywood executives could rationally oppose such a legal change."
The reason you don't see that is because you are trying to look at this from a common sense angle.
Here's the thing - neither copyright nor any of it's legislative extensions over the last century has been made according to good sense, good faith, or in good will. Bluntly put this legislation is from start to finish intended to screw people. The main beneficiaries of it being the middleman industry and a rapidly increasing cadre of legal counsels.
That's why you will find no easy solutions when it comes to copyright. Everything requires the involvement of high-priced legal counsel.
I'd argue that the industry of IP law counsel has been the biggest beneficiary of copyright legislation - beyond even the House of Mouse which now literally couldn't function without having as many lawyers on retainer as animators.
If japanese law requires stakeholders to actively pursue copyright enforcement or lose those copyrights then that framing is entirely by design. Just according to keikaku.
"But such a law is idiotic, needless, and ought to be changed immediately."
I would advise you to google "red flag act". This sort of shit isn't exactly new.
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That isn't a perfect solution by any stretch
Sidestepping the copyright-bad conversation: this appears to be the best solution.
This is exactly what every major video hosting platform does. And it’s a common thing to see on the internet.
“This content is not available in your…” whatever term the site uses.
I’d actually say despite the compartmentalising of the internet this is still a win for everyone on a legal level.
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Re: That isn't a perfect solution by any stretch
The question is who decision is with and how it's made, and how it's enforced. If you're expecting individual YouTubers to make the correct international decisions, you're asking for a lot of unnecessary lawsuits. If it's down to YouTube, there will be unnecessary blocking. Also there's the question of how well smaller sites can enforce such things since even if YT can do it, that doesn't mean everyone can.
"If something's illegal in Japan block it only in Japan" is a good step forward compared with a global block, but there's a lot of outstanding problems.
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Re: Re: That isn't a perfect solution by any stretch
Exactly. The starting point is (host) being reactionary in reactionary jurisdictions.
All too often things get blanket takedowns. Ideally you wait for a complaint and block an ip/cc range.
Which is exactly how DailyMotion Vnow etc all have done it.
I’m surprised it YouTube so long.
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Re: Re: Re: That isn't a perfect solution by any stretch
"Ideally you wait for a complaint and block an ip/cc range."
You do know how many complaints YT get, right? I think they get more daily takedown requests than some of those sites have overall daily viewers, and the reason for ContentID existing is because they got sued by Viacom for content that Viacom had uploaded themselves...
More granular filters are a good thing, but I doubt it's going to be productive overall if the uploader are expected to be a copyright guru or if ContentID is expected to accurately determine legal liability.
Also, honestly? If you depend on someone manually reading a complaint then blocking an IP range, your traffic is relatively trivial.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: That isn't a perfect solution by any stretch
I have no intention of that being on the uploaded. Google could do that just fine. As they did right here.
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