The Intellectual Dishonesty Of Those Supporting The Existing Text Of The EU Copyright Directive

from the ignorance-or-purposeful-misdirection dept

As the EU gets ready to vote (again) on various amendments for the EU Copyright Directive, there has been an incredibly dishonest push by supporters of the original directive (often incorrectly claiming they're thinking of creators' best interests), to argue that the warnings of those who think these proposals are dangerous are misleading. What they are doing is unfortunate, but it deserves to be called out -- because of just how dishonest it is. They usually involve misrepresenting the law and its impact in order to completely misrepresent what will happen.

There are numerous examples of this in practice, but I'll use this article in the German site FAZ as just one example of the kind of rhetoric being used, as it is an impressively intellectually bankrupt version of the argument I'm seeing quite a bit lately. It was written by a guy named Volker Rieck who has shown up in a bunch of places attacking critics of the EU Copyright Directive. He apparently runs some sort of anti-piracy organization, which perhaps shouldn't be surprising. But, that doesn't excuse the sheer dishonesty of his arguments.

Very early in the process, the only MEP from the Pirate Party, Julia Reda, began to fight the propositions. For her campaign, she made very strong use of distortion and simplification. The word "link tax"..., by way of which Reda wanted to stop Article 11 of the policy, may be catchy, but there is something unwittingly comical to the earnest suggestion that there is a tax, collected by the tax office, on using links to online pieces of writing.

This is... odd. The word "tax" is used in a variety of contexts to show excess costs of certain proposals. Nothing about it deliberately suggests a "tax office" will be involved. But the "link tax" is quite real. The whole point of Article 11 is to create a new form of license -- required for certain sites to have to pay for nearly every use of media content. Let's be clear, because it often gets lost in the discussion: all of this content is already covered by copyright. At issue is whether or not one can link to it and include a short summary of the contents without first having to pay a license above and beyond what they would have to pay to license the content itself. And this is not an ambiguous issue. In the latest draft of the proposal from MEP Axel Voss it's pretty explicit that the link tax is about "obtaining fair and proportionate remuneration for such uses." The following is directly from the text of Voss's proposed amendment (which is more or less the "default" plan for the Copyright Directive as he's the main MEP behind the Directive):

Online content sharing service providers perform an act of communication to the public and therefore are responsible for their content and should therefore conclude fair and appropriate licensing agreements with rightholders.

It is absolutely a tax to require a license for such uses. And while Voss has included this escape clause saying that this "does not extend to acts of hyperlinking with respect to press publications" it is left entirely vague as to how to distinguish when a link with some basic link text is allowed without a license and when it needs to be licensed. Indeed, Voss's only real limitation is that the rules "shall not extend to mere hyperlinks, which are accompanied by individual words." Individual words. What goes beyond "individual"? Considering that individual means "single" or "one," it seems clear that under Voss's definition, accompanying a link with two words, may now subject you to requiring a license to link. This is even worse than the awful German law, which only required licenses on something beyond "short" phrases (where even that was not clearly defined).

Back to the awful FAZ piece:

The polemical buzzword "upload filter", to oppose Article 13 of the policy, wasn't much better. Upload filters are not, and were never, part of the proposal, but the word works well in fueling fears. Indeed, Julia Reda managed to convince some of her supporters that if the policy on copyright law is passed, everything on the internet will be filtered, and memes – yes, those beloved memes – will be forbidden altogether.

The fact that the policy says something completely different was of no more than marginal interest. According to the actual proposal, web platforms – and only web platforms – would have been obliged to enter into license agreements with the individual right owners of user-uploaded content or the copyright collectives by which the content is maintained.

This is particularly galling in just how dishonest it is. Saying that this won't impact users, but merely platforms, is bullshit. How do most users communicate these days? On platforms. And saying that platforms then have to license all content, as if the "cost" of that is not then passed along to the users. And that "cost" isn't just in monetary terms. It will, undoubtedly be in terms of perfectly non-infringing works completely taken offline, either because of accidental identification or malicious takedown efforts.

Sure, some people could try to post content on their own sites, but how long will it take until those who support Article 13 move down the stack and argue that hosting companies who allow users to host their own websites are in the same classification as the platforms who are required to obtain licenses under the law?

It gets worse:

In this scenario, it’s the platforms who are responsible for license payments; users have nothing to do with it.

I mean, come on. The platforms are the arbiters of end-users speech in this case. Of course users have everything to do with it. If it's too costly, the platforms will default to blocking the content, rather than allowing it to happen. And, again, any costs will be passed on from the platforms to the users in some form or another.

It would simply have meant a duty for the platforms to be transparent in order to comprehensively account for the licensing and to correctly forward the payments to the respective right owners. If a platform didn’t want to enter such a license agreement, the EU policy would at least hold that platform responsible to keep its own website clean. How it achieves that is up to the platform itself, as long as it prevents copyright infringements.

This is also particularly dishonest. If a platform doesn't want to enter into such a license... they would be responsible for keeping their website clean. And how would they possibly do that? They'd be required to pay for an incredibly expensive (and ineffective) upload filter. So to claim that this isn't a proposal for upload filters is utter nonsense.

Also, the whole "it's up to the platform, as long as it prevents copyright infringement" is fantasy land thinking, as if there's some solution that magically stops all copyright infringement. Whoever wrote this is incredibly dishonest or ignorant of how the world works. There is no solution that prevents all copyright infringement -- other than not existing at all.

Unfortunately, though, many of those who have joined the discussion have refused to put in the intellectual effort to read the proposal in its updated form and understand its intention. This goes for everyone all the way from web associations of political parties to journalist Sascha Lobo, who wrote of "censorship machines"... in "der Spiegel". If only they had read what they publicly decry! Then maybe they would have realised that for the first time, users of platforms that don’t license content would have had substantial leverage, including a right to mediation in the case of the blocking of content. At that point, at the latest, it should have become clear that the term "censorship" misses the mark. Perhaps it was simply too complicated to get hold of and understand the current version of the document?

Leverage? What leverage? If the law requires you not to allow any infringement, you have no leverage at all. Second, the concern about censorship is not at all made up. We know it's real because we see it happen all the time under existing notice-and-takedown regimes, which are significantly less extreme and less draconian than what's required under Article 13. The censorship comes from platforms seeking to avoid significant liability (and costly trials). They are incentivized (heavily) into taking down content to avoid the risk and liability. And thus, they will take down lots and lots of content rather than risk it -- especially when held to ridiculous standards like preventing all infringement from appearing on their platforms.

The dishonesty continues:

But let’s talk about the platforms, since they are the ones affected by this. More specifically, let’s talk about one of the most successful platforms: Youtube. It’s exclusively platforms like Youtube that the policy addresses. Not start-ups, not online shops, and not open source platforms.

This is blatantly untrue. As we noted back in July, those behind the EU Copyright Directive explicitly said the opposite. Here's what they said:

Any platform is covered by Article 13 if one of their main purposes is to give access to copyright protected content to the public.

It cannot make any difference if it is a “small thief” or a “big thief” as it should be illegal in the first place.

Small platforms, even a one-person business, can cause as much damage to right holders as big companies, if their content is spread (first on this platform and possibly within seconds throughout the whole internet) without their consent.

That's from the Committee who voted on the Directive. So to say it only targets platforms like YouTube when the crafters of the law itself say that it applies to small platforms and even one-person businesses, shows just how dishonest supporters are concerning all of this. Separately, it's obvious that it doesn't just apply to YouTube because YouTube already complies with Article 13 via things like ContentID. To argue that the law is targeting them is ridiculous. Why write an entire new law to just say "that thing you're already doing, yeah, keep that up." The author of the FAZ piece then goes on to talk all sorts of nonsense about Content ID.

For years, Youtube has used a system called Content ID, which allows right owners who have uploaded their content to the platform to decide what happens to it if and when it’s used. This ranges from monetarisation – if, for instance, a user uploads a video which includes music, the right owner of that music receives a portion of the video’s ad revenue – to the blocking of the video. Above all else, it’s meant to prevent third parties from making money using other people’s content.

But it gets better still. A system called Copyright Match, which Youtube developed for its channel owners, is just now ready to be put into practice. It is, as it were, a "Content ID" light, and is mainly intended to assist Youtubers in reacting to identical videos. The user who uploaded the video first automatically receives a message and gets to decide what happens to the duplicate, including the possibility to block it.

Is there anybody out there who’d brand this "censorship"? Apparently not – after all, there have been no demonstrations against Content ID and Copyright Match. We haven’t seen public outrage against Youtube’s "censorship machine".

Anyone claiming that there hasn't been outrage over ContentID taking down all sorts of legitimate content simply has no legitimate argument for being part of this debate. There has been massive and sustained outrage over ContentID and how it takes down all sorts of legitimate content. We've had probably over a dozen posts on Techdirt alone of bogus takedowns via ContentID, and people have been highlighting the problems of ContentID leading to inappropriate censorship going back nearly a decade.

If someone is going to insist that (1) Article 13 only targets platforms like YouTube, even when the authors of the law insist that's not true, and (2) state that no one complains about ContentID takedowns, they have no business arguing that the attacks on the EU Copyright Directive are untruthful. They are ignorant or lying. Neither is a good look.

The rest of the article is out-and-out conspiracy theory talking, including (I kid you not) accusations of George Soros' involvement in fighting against the Copyright Directive. And yet, amazingly, some people are taking this shit seriously. It is not serious. It is blatantly dishonest and should be treated as such.

Filed Under: article 11, article 13, censorship, contentid, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, link tax, upload filters, volker rieck

How The EU May Be About To Kill The Public Domain: Copyright Filters Takedown Beethoven

from the ending-the-public-domain dept

Over in the EU Parliament, they're getting ready to vote yet again on the absolutely terrible Copyright Directive, which has serious problems for the future of the internet, including Article 13's mandatory censorship filters and Article 11's link tax. Regrading the mandatory filters, German music professor Ulrich Kaiser, has written about a a very disturbing experiment he ran on YouTube, in which he kept having public domain music he had uploaded for his students get taken down by ContentID copyright claims.

After exploring ways to teach his students Beethoven's music, and putting together a collection of public domain recordings, he encountered the following thanks to YouTube's filters:

The first video I uploaded to YouTube promoted the website where my digitized copies of public domain recordings are available to download. In this video, I explained my project, while examples of the music played in the background. Less than three minutes after uploading, I received a notification that there was a ContentID claim against my video. ContentID is a system, developed by YouTube, which checks user uploaded videos against databases of copyrighted content in order to curb copyright infringement. This system took millions of dollars to develop and is often pointed to as a working example of upload filters by rights holders and lawmakers who wish to make such technology mandatory for every website which hosts user content online. However, these claims ignore the widespread reports of its often flawed execution.

That inspired him to test this more thoroughly... and you'll absolutely guess what happened next:

I decided to open a different YouTube account “Labeltest” to share additional excerpts of copyright-free music. I quickly received ContentID notifications for copyright-free music by Bartok, Schubert, Puccini and Wagner. Again and again, YouTube told me that I was violating the copyright of these long-dead composers, despite all of my uploads existing in the public domain. I appealed each of these decisions, explaining that 1) the composers of these works had been dead for more than 70 years, 2) the recordings were first published before 1963, and 3) these takedown request did not provide justification in their property rights under the German Copyright Act.

I only received more notices, this time about a recording of Beethoven’s Symphony No.5, which was accompanied by the message: “Copyrighted content was found in your video. The claimant allows its content to be used in your YouTube video. However, advertisements may be displayed.” Once again, this was a mistaken notification. The recording was one by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Lorin Maazel, which was released in 1961 and is therefore in the public domain. Seeking help, I emailed YouTube, but their reply, “[…] thank you for contacting Google Inc. Please note that due to the large number of enquiries, e-mails received at this e-mail address support-de@google.com cannot be read and acknowledged” was less than reassuring.

And, again, this is in the strongest situation for filters to test themsevles. Google has spent more resources and money on ContentID than on any other filter. It's been tested much more thoroughly than just about any other filter out there. And music is one of the easiest cases to match. And yet, it still got it all wrong. And it caused significant collateral damage:

I wish I could tell you that the ending to this tale was wholly happy. It is true that many of my contestations of these copyright violations were successful, and the videos were not taken down from YouTube. However, I intended to release all of my videos under a free license, so that they could be used in the future for others to educate and inform students about these beautiful works. Even in cases where my defense to the ContentID claims were successful, the videos were not reverted to this free license, making it much more difficult for others to use and share these digitized works in the way I originally had intended.

Now expand this out to other kinds of content, which aren't as easy to match. Or companies who don't have $60 million to spend on filters. Or where companies don't have the time to review every disputed takedown. And what do you end up with? A serious impact on the public domain (not to mention fair use, parody and more).

And here's the thing: mandatory filters are totally unnecessary. Most large platforms already have invested in ContentID-like systems. It's the smaller sites and the upstarts who can't afford such a thing. So all Article 13 will really do is lock in YouTube/Google as the dominant player. And maybe that's what the RIAA and their friends really want: they believe that as long as there's just one other big company they can sit across a table and demand cash from, that'll somehow cover up for the fact that it sold its members a bill of goods about the internet for the past couple of decades. But, it will do enormous harm to creativity and content creators in the long run.

Filed Under: article 13, automated filters, beethoven, contentid, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, mandatory filters, public domain
Companies: google, youtube

French Political Party Voting For Mandatory Copyright Filters Is Furious That Its YouTube Channel Deleted By Filter

from the but-we-didn't-mean-for-US dept

It's been a long tradition here on Techdirt to show examples of politicians and political parties pushing for stricter, more draconian, copyright laws are often found violating those same laws. But the French Rassemblemant National (National Rally Point) party is taking this to new levels -- whining about the enforcement of internet filters, just as it's about to vote in favor of making such filters mandatory. Leaving aside that Rassemblemant National, which is the party headed by Marine Le Pen, is highly controversial, and was formerly known as Front National, it is still an extremely popular political party in France. And, boy, is it ever pissed off that YouTube took down its YouTube channel over automatically generated copyright strikes. Le Pen is particularly angry that YouTube's automatic filters were unable to recognize that they were just quoting other works:

Marine Le Pen was quoted as saying, “This measure is completely false; we can easily assert a right of quotation [to illustrate why the material was well within the law to broadcast]”.

Yes, but that's the nature of automated filters. They cannot tell what is "fair use" or what kinds of use are acceptable for commentary or criticism. They can just tell "was this work used?" and if so "take it down."

Given all that, and the fact that Le Pen complained that this was "arbitrary, political and unilateral," you have to think that her party is against the EU Copyright Directive proposal, which includes Article 13, which would make such algorithmic filters mandatory. Except... no. Within the EU Parliament, Rassemblemant National is in a coalition with a bunch of other anti-EU parties known as Europe of Nations and Freedoms or ENF. And how does ENF feel about Article 13? MEP Julia Reda has a handy dandy chart showing that ENF is very much in favor of Article 13 (and the Article 11 link tax).

So... we have a major political party in the EU, whose own YouTube channel has been shut down thanks to automated copyright filters in the form of YouTube's ContentID. And that party is complaining that ContentID, which is the most expensive and the most sophisticated of all the copyright filters out there, was unable to recognize that they were legally "quoting" another work... and their response is to order every other internet platform to install their own filters. Really?

Filed Under: article 13, automated filters, contentid, copyright, copyright directive, copyright filter, enf, eu, eu parliament, fair use, front national, marine le pen, national rally point, rassemblemant national, takedowns
Companies: youtube

White Noise On YouTube Gets FIVE Separate Copyright Claims From Other White Noise Providers

from the ad-absurdum dept

The implications of YouTube's ContentID system in an era of user-generated content can sometimes be quite muddy. It is widely known that ContentID is open to abuse, and that it is indeed abused on the regular. However, too many stories about that abuse play far in the margins of what the average person could look at and recognize as a very real problem.

This is not one of those stories.

Instead, the story of how one music professor's upload to YouTube of 10 hours of pure white noise was flagged five times for copyright infringement (FIVE TIMES!) operates as though someone somewhere is trying to bring a reductio ad absurdum argument into physicality.

That’s what’s happened to Australia-based music technologist Sebastian Tomczak, who uploaded a completely non-infringing work to YouTube and now faces five separate copyright complaints. One of Tomczak videos was a masterpiece entitled “10 Hours of Low Level White Noise” which features – wait for it – ten hours of low-level white noise.

“The white noise video was part of a number of videos I put online at the time. I was interested in listening to continuous sounds of various types, and how our perception of these kinds of sounds and our attention changes over longer periods – e.g. distracted, focused, sleeping, waking, working etc,” Tomczak says.

I could embed the video, which you can find on YouTube here, but I won't bother because the video is exactly as advertised: ten straight hours of white noise. Tomczak composed this white noise himself, in all of its beautifully non-creative glory, making the copyright claims all the more absurd. Remember, copyright only applies to new creative works. White noise would not qualify. Now, the video is still available despite the copyright claims because the four different entities filing these five complaints against it -- one, incredibly, filed twice for two different "compositions"-- chose to simply monetize Tomczak's video instead of having it taken down.

As seen from the image below, posted by Tomczak to his Twitter account, the five complaints came from four copyright holders, with one feeling the need to file two separate complaints while citing two different works.

As you will see, several of the complaints came from representatives of folks creating white noise compositions as sleep therapy or for other therapeutic effect. This, it should hardly need to be noted, does not somehow make Tomczak's independent composition that is equally devoid of creative output somehow infringing. White noise is white noise for a reason, after all. This isn't even a case of what to do about copyright in the event of independent creation of the same creative works. Judge Learned Hand's famous line on independent creation notes: "[I]f by some magic a man who had never known it were to compose anew Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,' he would be an 'author,' and if he copyrighted it, others might not copy that poem, though they might of course copy Keats's." But white noise is no "Ode on a Grecian Urn." There simply is no copyright here at all.

Still, the story is immensely useful in demonstrating just how vulnerable to abuse ContentID and copyright claiming systems can be on the internet. The original claim against this video dates back several years, which means that for some time others have been profiting from Tomczak's white noise, with nothing in the way of human intervention on YouTube's end that would take one look at this whole thing and proclaim the claims ridiculous. In this case, this all happened to someone, Tomczak, who seems to largely not care about the claims beyond being mildly amused by them.

Tomczak says that to him, automated copyright claims are largely an annoyance and if he was making enough money from YouTube, the system would be detrimental in the long run. He feels it’s something that YouTube should adjust, to ensure that false claims aren’t filed against uploads like his.

But that lax attitude doesn't change the absurdity of a reality in which ten hours of white noise can be flagged by four different outsiders as infringing, all the while the copyright industries scream that Google and YouTube aren't doing enough to clamp down on copyright infringement.

Filed Under: contentid, copyright, creativity, monetization, sebastian tomczak, white noise, youtube
Companies: google, youtube

YouTube Takes Down Ariana Grande's Manchester Benefit Concert On Copyright Grounds

from the because-of-course dept

At a time when Europe is pushing for much greater filtering and takedowns, it's worth a reminder that these kinds of systems pretty regularly takedown perfectly legitimate content -- either content that is fair use or that is licensed. Case in point: this past Sunday, Ariana Grande held a huge benefit concert in Manchester called One Love Manchester. As you no doubt know, a few weeks back there was a bombing at Grande's concert in Manchester, and her decision to put on a massive benefit concert right back in Manchester just a couple weeks later is impressive.

Except, for at least some period of time, the copyright gods didn't want you to see it. Grande streamed the whole thing via her YouTube account. And... the concert was then promptly shut down by by Warner Music and Sony Music, saying that the stream violated their copyrights.

Now, chances are these were simply ContentID matches that were automated -- rather than direct takedown notices as suggested in the tweet. And the video is now back, so some might argue this is no big deal. However, with the record labels demanding stronger and stronger filters, along with demands that content not just be taken down but then "stay down", stories like this would only get worse and worse, and more and more perfectly legitimate content would get blocked.

Filed Under: arian grande, contentid, copyright, dmca, filters, notice and staydown, one love manchester, takedown
Companies: sony music, warner music, youtube

Sketchy Copyright Takedown Kills Bad Lip Reading's Force Awakens Remix

from the transformative-works dept

If you haven't ever seen a Bad Lip Reading video, you've been missing out. For many years, they've posted a ton of videos taking footage from basically anywhere, and overlaying new audio, matching what people are saying/singing with, well, something else, that is plausible (but usually very, very funny). Here's one of the inauguration, a music video and one on the NFL. That gives you the basic idea. The last time we wrote about them was back in 2011, but it was (of course) about a silly DMCA takedown involving one of BLR's videos done by Universal Music.

And now, as spotted by Andy Baio, there's another BLR takedown, but it's a weird one. It's on a brand new video put up by BLR using Star Wars' The Force Awakens as the source material and (amazingly) getting Mark Hamill to voice Han Solo (wow!). Except, just after it went up, it went down... thanks to a copyright claim:

But... here's the weird part. It's not Disney/LucasFilm doing the takedown, as you might have expected, given the origination of the footage. Nope, it's from "Dramatists Play Service." As Baio explains:

You may be asking yourself, what does the Dramatists Play Service have to do with Star Wars?

As far as I can tell, absolutely nothing. They don’t appear to have any clear affiliation with the franchise at all.

But anyone can make a copyright claim against any video, with little consequence. YouTube “doesn’t mediate copyright disputes,” and while the DMCA allows for penalties for false claims, they rarely result in legal action.

Can't wait for the RIAA and MPAA to start making these takedowns permanent, huh?

At least for their part, Dramatists Play Service seems to be admitting to some sort of mistake:

That and all the attention appear to have worked, and the video has been put back up:

But, still, this is exactly the kind of First Amendment problem we've repeatedly discussed about copyright law: it's a shoot first, ask questions later, kind of setup, and that's not how the First Amendment is supposed to work.

Update: the folks over at Lumen Database not that I totally failed in not including a "Han shot first" joke to that final line above. My apologies. Won't happen again, etc. etc.

Filed Under: bad lip reading, contentid, copyright, dmca, force awakens, takedowns
Companies: dramatists play service, youtube

The EU's Proposed Copyright Directive Is Likely To Be A Wonderful Gift -- For US Internet Giants

from the law-of-unintended-consequences dept

A couple of weeks ago, Techdirt ran through the catalog of horrors that make up the EU's new Copyright Directive proposals, pointing out that they would be a general disaster in their current form. Of course, the misery would not be evenly spread: some would suffer more, some less. Indeed, an earlier open letter to the European Commission from a bunch of tech companies (including Techdirt), published on the Don't Wreck the Net site, pointed out one group who wouldn't have too much of a problem with the changes:

The largest companies have the resources and staff to deal with increased regulations and burdens. Startups do not.

That is, the big online companies can weather more or less anything: it's the smaller ones -- particularly startups -- that will have difficulties. That warning was issued before the details were known, and now Joe McNamee from the European digital rights group EDRi has penned a very similar analysis based on the newly-published plans:

There is a lot of noise in the press and among lobbyists about an alleged hostility of the EU towards big American internet companies. Reality is more nuanced and more surprising -- the policies appear to be hell-bent on giving Google new monopolies, to the detriment of European citizens and European internet companies.

The most astonishing of these policies is the proposal in the new Copyright Directive for mass, preventive filtering of information as it is being uploaded to the internet in Europe -- a policy so restrictive and absurd that even China or Russia would baulk at the notion. An anti-Google measure? Hardly. Google actively lobbied the Vice-President of the European Commission about the alleged virtues of its content identification system ("contentID"), even if they hadn’t expected the Great Firewall of Europe to be the result.

Even if the Copyright Directive manages to pass through the EU legislative system without any changes -- which seems unlikely -- Google would be in a strong position, because it already has the content ID technology in place that will allow it to comply. Although McNamee suggests that as a result Google would be "uniquely placed to license such software to European internet providers," it's more likely that it would keep it for its own exclusive use. However, the US company Audible Magic would doubtless be more than happy to license its widely-used content identification system as an alternative. And irrespective of whether it's based on technology from Google or from Audible Magic, it's hard to see how this outcome helps the European tech industry. Moreover, McNamee is certainly right about the likely outcome of bringing in an insane "ancillary copyright" in the EU, which would require Internet companies to pay a fee to use news snippets:

In Germany, where this policy has already been adopted, Google has the economic muscle to simply refuse to pay and suddenly it is not Google, but the publishers, who have a problem. Publishers put their content online in order for people to view it and to make money from advertising that is on their sites. They need Google News more than Google News needs them. So, the outcome is that everybody pays except Google. The Spanish government came up with a cunning plan, they passed a similar law to the one in Germany, but required Google News to pay. Result: Google News Spain shut down, to the detriment of smaller Spanish news outlets in particular and, again, everyone except Google loses.

The rest of the EDRi post points out other fundamental flaws in the proposed EU Copyright Directive. But the key point is that far from stimulating the European digital economy, the EU's deeply-flawed plans are likely to boost the power and the profits of the largest US Internet companies. That may be good news for them and their shareholders, but it isn't really the European Commission's job.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: contentid, copyright, copyright directive, eu, eu commission
Companies: google

EU Announces Absolutely Ridiculous Copyright Proposal That Will Chill Innovation, Harm Creativity

from the how-hard-did-they-work-to-make-it-this-bad? dept

This is not a surprise given the earlier leaks of what the EU Commission was cooking up for a copyright reform package, but the end result is here and it's a complete disaster for everyone. And I do mean everyone. Some will argue that it's a gift to Hollywood and legacy copyright interests -- and there's an argument that that's the case. But the reality is that this proposal is so bad that it will end up doing massive harm to everyone. It will clearly harm independent creators and the innovative platforms that they rely on. And, because those platforms have become so important to even the legacy entertainment industry, it will harm them too. And, worst of all, it will harm the public greatly. It's difficult to see how this proposal will benefit anyone, other than maybe some lawyers.

Not surprisingly, the EU Commission is playing up the fact that this package does knock down some geoblocking in setting up more of a "single market" for digital content, but after Hollywood started freaking out about it, that proposal got watered down so much that plenty of content will still be geo-blocked. And there's so much other stuff in here that's just really, really bad. As expected, it includes a ridiculous ancillary copyright scheme, which should really just be called the "Google tax" for linking to copyright-covered content.

The proposal does away with the liability limitations for platforms, effectively requiring any tech platform that allows user-generated/user-uploaded content to build or license their very own ContentID system. This is ridiculous. If the idea was to punish Google, this will do the opposite. Basically no startup will be able to afford this, and it will just lock in platforms like YouTube as the only option for content creators wishing to upload video. Protecting intermediary liability has been shown, time and time again, to enable new innovation and also to enable greater creativity and free speech -- and the EU Commission basically just tossed it in the garbage because some Hollywood interests think (incorrectly) that internet companies "abuse" the protections.

The EU Commission barely hides the fact that they're doing this to try to protect legacy industries while punishing innovative ones:

The Copyright Directive aims to reinforce the position of right holders to negotiate and be remunerated for the online exploitation of their content on video-sharing platforms such as YouTube or Dailymotion. Such platforms will have an obligation to deploy effective means such as technology to automatically detect songs or audiovisual works which right holders have identified and agreed with the platforms either to authorise or remove.

Newspapers, magazines and other press publications have benefited from the shift from print to digital and online services like social media and news aggregators. It has led to broader audiences, but it has also impacted advertising revenue and made the licensing and enforcement of the rights in these publications increasingly difficult.The Commission proposes to introduce a new related right for publishers, similar to the right that already exists under EU law for film producers, record (phonogram) producers and other players in the creative industries like broadcasters.

The new right recognises the important role press publishers play in investing in and creating quality journalistic content, which is essential for citizens' access to knowledge in our democratic societies. As they will be legally recognised as right holders for the very first time they will be in a better position when they negotiate the use of their content with online services using or enabling access to it, and better able to fight piracy. This approach will give all players a clear legal framework when licensing content for digital uses, and help the development of innovative business models for the benefit of consumers.

The proposal also includes a new "exception" for text and data mining -- which sounds like it could be a good thing, but even it was designed in a manner to "protect" legacy publishers, and which will seriously harm smaller innovators and researchers. The exception is only limited to those engaging in scientific research, meaning that any other kind of research that involves data mining is at risk in the EU. Basically, the EU just gave away that entire important and growing innovative industry. Almost all of the major work in AI and machine learning these days involves data mining, and the EU just told all those companies to go find a new home.

Just looking around at various European-based organizations, they're pretty much agreed that this is a complete disaster. Here's Communia, saying "this is not how you fix copyright."

Today’s proposal buries the hope for a more modern, technologically neutral and flexible copyright framework that the Commission had hinted at in its initial plans for the Digital Single Market. The proposal largely ignores crucial changes to copyright that would have benefitted consumers, users, educators, startups, and cultural heritage institutions. It also abandons the idea of a digital single market that allows all Europeans the same rights to access knowledge and culture. Finally, it completely ignores the importance of protecting and expanding the public domain.

And here's EDRi, saying that the proposal "fails at every level."

The European Commission has proposed a Copyright Directive that could not conceivably be worse. The text that was launched today includes a proposal to potentially filter all uploads to the Internet in Europe. The draft text would destroy users’ rights and legal certainty for European hosting companies. The new Directive’s proposal for a new 20-year “ancillary” copyright for “news” outlets repeats painful mistakes made in Germany and Spain, which hurt publishers and Internet users alike.

“We need a copyright reform to make Europe fit for the 21st century. We now have a proposal that is poison for European’s free speech, poison for European business and poison for creativity”, said Joe McNamee, Executive Director of European Digital Rights. “It could not conceivably be worse.”

And here's EU Parliament member Marietje Schaake, noting how wrong this approach is:

It lacks ambition and instead reads like a defence of old business models. We need a real copyright revolution instead. Publishers might have legitimate concerns about their decreasing revenues, but a retrograde reform of copyright law is not the solution.

So the EU Commission has taken the exact wrong approach. It's one that's almost entirely about looking backwards and "protecting" old ways of doing business, rather than looking forward, and looking at what benefits the public, creators and innovators the most. If this proposal actually gets traction, it will be a complete disaster for the EU innovative community. Hopefully, Europeans speak out, vocally, about what a complete disaster this would be.

Filed Under: ancillary copyright, contentid, copyright, eu, filtering, intermediary liability, link tax, text and data mining

Facebook's ContentID Clone Had A Vulnerability That Opened Up Ability For Users To Game Others' Videos

from the this-stuff-ain't-easy dept

Earlier this year, we noted that Facebook had launched its own ContentID clone, called Rights Manager, which was a response to a bunch of angry YouTubers who were annoyed at people "freebooting" popular YouTube videos onto Facebook. We noted that, like ContentID, we fully expected the system to be abused to take down content. While we haven't heard examples of that just yet, it does appear that Rights Manager had some serious vulnerabilities that enabled anyone else who was signed up for Rights Manager to manipulate the information and rules on any other video in the system (including, obviously, those claimed by other users).

Simply put, an imposter could easily wander into your anti-imposter pages without logging in first.

According to Muthiyah, pirates could actually have used Rights Manager to rip off their own copies of your reference copies, thus freebooting directly via the anti-freebooting interface

To its credit, Facebook fixed the problem and paid the researcher who found it a bug bounty of $4,000.

However, this does point out something rather important. Building these kinds of systems is really difficult. Beyond the problem of abuse that we frequently talk about, bugs and security flaws are a real risk as well. And yet, many in the film and recording industries still insist that it's "easy" to build a filtering system like this and that all sites should be legally required to do so. And, sure, Facebook and Google and the likes can afford to pay lots of money to build systems -- even buggy ones -- and then have bug bounties and such. But smaller companies aren't able to do so. Requiring them to do so basically wipes out the possibility of smaller startups entering the space and cedes the market, permanently, to the giant companies that everyone complains about.

Filed Under: contentid, copyright, filters, rights manager, security, videos
Companies: facebook

Even The Usual Defenders Of The RIAA Are Pointing Out They're Simply Lying About YouTube

from the look-at-that dept

Paul Resnikoff's Digital Music News site is a worthwhile read, often turning up some really interesting news. However, the site pretty consistently takes the legacy music industry's point of view in the various debates on copyright and music services. To me, it has a somewhat unfair bias against many of the new innovators and music platforms that have helped drag the industry (kicking and screaming all the way) into the internet era. But it's still well written and thoughtful, and I appreciate the work that Paul does, even if I don't always agree with his opinion. So consider it quite a surprise to see Resnikoff call out the RIAA on its completely bullshit attacks on YouTube over the past few months. Resnikoff isn't pulling any punches. He points out that basically all of the music video views on YouTube are licensed, and ContentID (for better or for worse) has basically made it easy for the labels to do a "notice and staydown" like they've been demanding for the past few years:

But new data not only shows that YouTube isn’t breaking the law, they aren’t even abusing existing copyright law. A recent report from music industry research group Midia revealed that just 2% of YouTube’s music video content is unauthorized. These are illegal UGC uploads of concerts, lyrics videos, the actual videos, or other material that rights owners didn’t green light beforehand. The rest, about 98%, are not only completely authorized, about 75% of them are high-quality and supplied by the labels themselves through Vevo, according to the same dataset.

So, if just 2% of music videos are unauthorized and can be taken down using DMCA procedures, what’s the problem here? The Recording Industry Association of America, an organization that represents the three major labels, has been leading the charge against widespread DMCA abuse by video giant. “YouTube takes advantage of the dysfunctional DMCA to do less about piracy than it could and pay unfairly low royalty rates,” RIAA chief executive Cary Sherman declared. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

But is that even true? Adding to the confusing is Content ID, a system created by YouTube to allow content owners to automatically flag their content if it appears on YouTube without permission. Once identified, the owner has the option to remove that content, monetize it, or even strip the audio out of it (for example, if paired with a group of people singing karaoke). YouTube says that system, part of a self-contained copyright ecosystem, makes the DMCA irrelevant in most situations. In other words, if you don’t want your video on YouTube, then you should just remove it.

To be clear, looking at the details from Midia itself, it's not saying that only 2% of the videos are unauthorized, but 2% of music video views on YouTube are of unauthorized videos. And that's still an important point. It suggests that, contrary to what the industry likes to claim, the kids these days aren't spending very much time at all using YouTube to watch unauthorized streams. It's almost non-existent. The same report also found that music represents just 12% of all YouTube viewing time. That kinda shows how the claims of the industry about how YouTube is supposedly only successful because of music uploads is complete hogwash.

He notes that most musicians themselves recognize the promotional value of YouTube as well, and they'd probably freak out if the labels removed their videos from YouTube (remember, for all the hype about Taylor Swift removing her music from Spotify and other streaming services... she kept her YouTube videos up). As Resnikoff points out, the labels are upset about the amount of money that YouTube pays, but it's pretty clear that the overall value that YouTube provides in terms of audience, exposure, marketing and, yes, some money, is clearly worth it:

It’s a simple economic calculation: YouTube offers more value than just a fractional penny rate, and artists and labels are making a calculation that it’s worth it. Otherwise, they would leave.

He goes on to point out that the RIAA's complaints make no sense other than as whining because they're upset that Google is so rich... and they're not.

In the end it's good to see this data. To hear some in the recording industry explain things, you'd think YouTube is entirely built off of pirated music. I've literally seen some musicians complain that YouTube deliberately allows piracy because that's the only thing that keeps the site afloat. That appears to be based on conspiracy theories, not reality.

Filed Under: authorized, cary sherman, contentid, paul resnikoff, unauthorized, videos, youtube
Companies: google, riaa, youtube