As We Get Closer And Closer To The EU Requiring ContentID Everywhere, More Abuses Of ContentID Exposed

from the vast-shakedown-machine dept

EU member states are getting ready to implement Article 17 of the EU Copyright Directive, which will more or less force every platform that hosts any user-generated content, to either license every damn thing (impossible) or to put in place a tool like ContentID, that automatically spots and takes down "infringing" content. Despite the fact that Google spent over $100 million on its ContentID and competitive offerings (mainly Audible Magic) are quite expensive, defenders of this plan kept insisting that those filters work. Plenty of people have pointed out that they don't work very well at all, and it's even worse than just leading to legitimate content being taken down. Having such a tool, means that it will be abused.

CCN.com recently wrote up yet another article highlighting the problem of massive false flagging campaigns showing up for YouTube videos:

The latest problem surrounds mass false copyright claims. It turns out that false claiming someone’s video revenue as your own is so easy that companies can seemingly do it en masse. And these companies aren’t just going after subtle, small-time channels. They’ve hit some of YouTube’s biggest creators.

Much of the article focuses on a company called Studio 71, which is the one filing a bunch of these recent false claims. Lots of folks are online highlighting these bogus takedowns.

There are a lot more like that too.

The company behind all of these claimed that it was "a technical problem with YouTube that is out of our hands" but never quite explained what sort of problem it was.

To its (slight) credit, the company claimed that it released all of those claims, even ones not disputed. But still.

At least one person asked them to explain how it happened and how it can be prevented in the future... and got no answer.

Whether or not this was an overzealous individual, an automated system out of control, or some other failure, it doesn't change the basic fact that any such filter system will be regularly abused, on purpose or not, to takedown or claim the revenue on tons of content. This is exactly what we tried to tell people in the EU before they voted on the Copyright Directive... and they kept insisting it wouldn't possibly happen. After all, they said, they wrote into the law that it shouldn't be abused. I'm sure that will work out just great...

Filed Under: contentid, copyright directive, eu, false claims, false flags
Companies: google, studio 71, youtube