Content Moderation Case Studies: Copyright Claims On White Noise (2018)

from the white-noise-is-public-domain dept

Summary: Every platform hosting user generated content these days is pretty much required (usually by law) to have policies in place to deal with copyright-infringing material. However, not all content on these platforms is covered by copyright, and that can potentially lead to complications, since policies are often built off of the assumption that everything must be covered by some form of copyright.

Australia-based music technologist Sebastian Tomczak, who has a PhD in computer generated music, created from scratch a 10 hour “low level white noise” recording, which he placed on YouTube. He created the file himself, then made a video version of it, and posted it to YouTube. In early 2018, he discovered that there had been five separate copyright claims on the video from four separate copyright holders.

Each of the claims argued that other videos of white noise held the copyright on white noise, and that Tomczak’s video infringed on their own. Amusingly, each claim designates which short segment of the 10 hour video infringes on their own work -- even though the entire 10 hours is literally the same white noise.

None of the claims demanded that Tomczak’s video be taken down, but rather sought to “monetize” it under YouTube’s ContentID offering, which allows copyright holders to leave up videos they claim are infringing but divert any advertising revenue to the copyright holder.

Somewhat incredibly, one copyright holder claims that Tomczak’s video infringes on two separate videos of their own, both of which also offer white noise.

One company involved – Catapult Distribution – say that Tomczak’s composition infringes on the copyrights of “White Noise Sleep Therapy”, a client selling the title “Majestic Ocean Waves”. It also manages to do the same for the company’s “Soothing Baby Sleep” title. The other complaints come from Merlin Symphonic Distribution and Dig Dis for similar works .

It appears that all of the claims were automated claims, using various services that scan videos for similarities. However, it does not appear that any of those services first check if the originating videos actually involve a valid copyright in the first place. Instead, they often are based on an entire account, and just search for any similar videos, whether or not there is a valid copyright.

Decisions to be made by YouTube:

• Is white noise even covered by copyright?
• Should the platform allow users to claim the monetization rights on other similar videos in which there is no valid copyright?
• If there are multiple copyright claims (and monetization claims) on the same video, how is it determined who has the rights and who gets to monetize?
• Should automated systems be allowed to make copyright claims without any regard to actual copyright status?

Questions and policy implications to consider:

• If copyright laws and policies are built on the assumption that every piece of content is covered by copyright, how should internet websites deal with situations in which there does not appear to be a valid copyright?
• What are the long term implications of automated systems that do not involve any actual lawyers or experts reviewing either copyright takedown or monetization requests?

Resolution: Tomczak seemed to find the situation more amusing than anything else and noted that he’d received a few similar notices in the past. He expected that after contesting these claims, YouTube would likely drop them:

“In any of the cases where I think a given claim would be an issue, I would dispute it by saying I could either prove that I have made the work, have the original materials that generated the work, or could show enough of the components included in the work to prove originality. This has always been successful for me and I hope it will be in this case as well.”

Indeed, a few days after he contested the claims (and those claims received widespread press attention), YouTube did release all of the claims on the white noise video. Tomczak has separately argued that this case -- even with the final outcome -- suggests that parts of the system need to change.

"Hopefully cases like these with the white noise, which shows how sort of broken their copyright system is, can shed some light on it or get YouTube to think about changing their system," he said.

Originally posted on the Trust & Safety Foundation website.

Filed Under: content moderation, contentid, copyright, dmca, white noise
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