Finally, RIAA Front Group Admits That Forcing YouTube To Police Site Doesn't Work Well
from the wasn't-expecting-that dept
Here’s one I certainly didn’t expect. A group known for spreading a bunch of bogus RIAA talking points about the evils of YouTube seems to be admitting two odd things: (1) that it’s impossible to expect YouTube to accurately police all the content on its site and (2) that sharing entire published news articles is clearly not copyright infringement. The group in question is the “Content Creators Coalition” — last seen around these parts whining about the DMCA’s safe harbors on a site that only exists because of them. And it seems that bizarre and self-contradictory publicity stunts are basically the norm for this group. They’ve specifically been whining about how one of their videos got taken down on YouTube over an apparent terms of service violation. They complained, and YouTube reviewed it, and put the video back up. But, the Content Creators Coalition is using this to argue… something about how YouTube is trying to censor criticism?
It really doesn’t make much sense, because it actually seems to be a pretty blatant admission by the Content Creators Coalition that their other bugaboo — about how YouTube doesn’t take down infringing content fast enough — is completely silly as well. Proactively policing the millions upon millions of videos uploaded to the site (for free, mind you) is nearly impossible to do correctly. The article itself (published by the Google-hating News Corp.-owned NY Post) tries to attack YouTube’s moderation features, but actually makes the perfect argument for why it’s silly to expect an open platform like YouTube to police everything:
While videos of ISIS beheadings somehow slipped past YouTube censors, the video streaming site didn?t have any problems finding a playful ad campaign by some indie musicians ? and promptly pulling the plug on it.
Right. Which is why it’s great that we can now add the Content Creators Coalition to those who think that forcing YouTube to police and filter content on its platform is silly and will lead to unnecessary and misguided takedowns. Glad to have them on board.
Now, the only reason I even know about this article is that it was sent to me by Eric Jotkoff at Law Media Group. If you don’t remember Law Media Group, they’re the secretive lobbying PR shop that seems to specialize in attacking Google with really sketchy practices, such as insisting that corn farmers will be hurt by Google partnering with Yahoo, or by publishing faked op-eds, such as one about how awful net neutrality was — but “written” by a guy who actually was in favor of net neutrality.
And when I say that Jotkoff and Law Media Group sent me that NY Post article, I do mean sent it to me. He sent me the entire article in an email. So that appears to be Law Media Group, on behalf of the Content Creators Coalition, admitting that sending around entire news articles is not infringing. Now, I’d argue that there’s a good fair use case to be made for sharing full articles via email in such situations. But I wouldn’t really expect a group like Law Media Group, which regularly sends me emails about the importance of stronger copyright on behalf of a whole bunch of groups that all seem to parrot the RIAA’s talking points (coincidence, I’m sure?), to basically admit that reposting full articles from companies like News Corp. is fair use.
I’ve asked Eric to confirm that this is the official stance of the organization, but, perhaps not too surprisingly, I have not heard back at the time of publication.
Filed Under: content moderation, fair use, filters, full articles, moderation, takedowns
Companies: content creators coalition, law media group, riaa
Comments on “Finally, RIAA Front Group Admits That Forcing YouTube To Police Site Doesn't Work Well”
fOR ALL THE gROUPS, LAWYERS...
I really have to wonder,
“HOW much it costs,
Lawyers
Paying off groups to Protest/lie for them
Paying off State/Federal Legislators
Who in the HELL gets to pay for all this..”
Is this TAX deductible? are they considered EMPLOYEES?
I will BET, that the Customer pays, AND the taxes are deducted..
For all the money SPENT FIGHTING..They could be getting SOME GREAT WAGES?>? and Improve the WHOLE system..
The only Way this even looks Fair and equitable, seems to be the LAWYERS get the money for the Law suits..Which CAN be a great payday.
Lol
What Google did by censoring that video was indefensible, yet you still try, eh Masnick?
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That’s sad even by your pathetic standards. Too tired from doing the Russians work for free, or too tired from weeping into your wank pillow all night? Which one is it?
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Enough people complained about a video, and YouTube pulled it. That’s how their system works. That’s how their system worked when CCC was wholly in favor of how it worked.
Isn’t it funny how working as intended looks like a bug in the system when it works against something you like?
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“Enough people complained”
Ahahahahaha yeah right.
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People, maybe not, but Google’s system is likely trained to notice a massive influx of reports. Reportbombing, regardless of who is doing it and how, is one way to make YouTube either mark a video as “sensitive” or pull the video altogether. And guess what? Google set up that system to work that way—likely because groups like CCC pushed Google to “improve” their system.
You can blame the system for being shit. Go right ahead. But take some time to blame the people who game that system, too.
"only exists because of them"
Saying that Vimeo exists only because of DMCA safe harbors is a huge exaggeration. Websites with user-generated content existed before the DMCA, and still exist in countries that don’t have an equivalent law. There was never a requirement that courts hold sites responsible for stuff other people post on them, and in non-DMCA countries it doesn’t generally happen; and even if it did, sites usually have indemnity clauses so they wouldn’t foot the bill.
Re: "only exists because of them"
Wow, that’s an amazing piece of propaganda you have there, AC. It’s spun so hard that I’m amazed it hasn’t taken flight yet under its own power.
Websites with user generated content did indeed exist before the badly-written law that made that content possibly illegal was passed, and continued to exist due to a safe harbor provision in that law that didn’t exist in the original draft but was hurriedly inserted into it — that Big Content has been pissing and moaning about ever since.
But that doesn’t mean they’d have continued to exist without that safe harbor, quite the opposite.
Re: Re: "only exists because of them"
Re: Re: Re: "only exists because of them"
Except that Megaupload isn’t a torrent site, and agreed to enforce DMCA terms and assist rightsholders with taking down content when requested.
Of course you knew all this, you just enjoy lying out your ass just to fail making a point.
Re: "only exists because of them"
Isn’t that kinda the point? Before the DMCA, no one would have even thought of user-generated content being a liability for the site it’s on. After the DMCA, basically everything seems to be potentially infringing unless specifically "allowed".
Holy Schnitzler, Masnick! Entirely backwards! You ARE certifiable.
1) “RIAA front group”? Prove that. In any event, it’s irrelevant: you’re just saying no one can agree with RIAA without being tainted, a two-fer of ad hom and guilt by association.
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2) Cannot believe blockquote that without appearing to grasp the sarcasm. The accusation is that Youtube is blatantly ignoring actual evils while focusing on trifles.
3) "Fair use" surely extends to whole article as an email inclusion to ONE person, for purposes of furthering discussion. — So long as NYPost doesn’t complain!
Clearly your biases are now so strong that you construe plain text as whatever you want it to say. I’m sure you’ll think this comment is support for you.
Apparently is a new restriction prevent using ITS name in the subject line: 4 failed tries, then again replying but with the name on the subject line failed. Draw your own concussion.
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That could be taken as an argumentum ad hominem, only guess where the article was published, and for which audience it was written? (Hint: Its and audience with a large prior understanding and consensus opinion about things like the RIAA.) It’s not about being tainted, it’s just that if you are agreeing with the RIAA, many (most?) here will disagree with you on that same point. Why would it matter who is making the point? Bad claims and ideas are bad whether it is the RIAA or anyone else promoting them.
But i find it odd that you didn’t make any claims of a bad argument due to guilt by association insinuations with respect to the law firm and the newspaper.
I can’t prove that CCC is literally a front group for the RIAA, but they certainly complain about everyone with respect to getting paid except the recording industry itself which literally cheats them. Or seeing how many of the members of whom we hear are bigger names, maybe they don’t care to notice the great masses of signed artists who never get paid squat because they only pay the big acts. I’m sorry but some guy using a clip of your music, or even YouTube itself, or radio stations, are not making the money that the recording industry and it’s useless royalty services and lobbying groups make off of artists. Maybe if they got paid reasonably by these groups which exist solely to leech off artists, they would have less to complain about. Then they might have a case v Google and other entrenched legacy industry wannabes. But blame them for their actual wrongs and failings, not made-up crap.
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You like that RIAA corporation-flavored cock, don’t you blue? Yes you do!
You like that DMCA, don’t you blue? Have a DMCA vote, there’s a good lapdog.
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This comment goes unreported, while others are censored for merely disagreeing with article’s premise. This site is such a joke.
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You forgot to add in a jab about falling Alexa rankings, sparky. And yet, here you are on a site you can’t stand. Now why is that?
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It was reported, you fucking lying dumbass. But since you decided to call it unreported, here’s the original:
“You like that RIAA corporation-flavored cock, don’t you blue? Yes you do!
You like that DMCA, don’t you blue? Have a DMCA vote, there’s a good lapdog.”
Streisand Effect, fucktard!
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You can agree with the RIAA, sure. But around people with a negative opinion of the RIAA—which, hey, not too hard to find around here!—your opinion will be seen as suspect because it agrees with the RIAA.
Maybe your opinion happens to align with that of the RIAA by coincidence. Not exactly impossible, of course. But when that opinion comes off as not just a repeat of the RIAA’s opinion, but a direct attack at people who disagree with you, that brings a little more suspicion upon you. In those cases, you would come off as either a corporate shill, someone who is trying to bitch about someone you hate, or someone looking to troll the comments section by being a contrarian without an actual argument. (Or a little from Columns A, B, and C.)
Instead of attacking the person making the argument, attack the argument instead. Point out its flaws, bring up relevant information, and use solid references that other people can verify as legitimate factual information. You want to complain about ad homs, but neither your comment nor its unnecessarily-separated follow-up contain anything remotely resembling a cogent, coherent, contextual argument against anything said in the article. It reeks of playground-level “nuh uh”-ing where you think either ignoring the actual points raised or stuffing straw in the other person’s mouth amounts to an argument.
If you want people to take your comments and your arguments seriously, try harder to take yourself seriously. Whatever you wanted to accomplish here—other than wasting both your time and mine—I can assure you that you have failed. Show yourself and your arguments some goddamned respect, and maybe everyone else here might do the same.
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Agree or disagree is pretty irrelevant here. Painting a guy with an extremist point of view as being part of a “front group” is pretty much off the farm, even for Mike.
Smacks of desperation, sort of like letting Karl run the fake AT&T “pay extra for sites” graphics. That’s sad stuff right there.
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Once again MyNameHere valiantly rushes to out_of_the_blue’s defense. Kindred spirits, you two are.
What an idiotic article built on nothing but assumptions and bias.
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Why thank you for your astute observation kind sir. I do believe next you’re going to tell us all about how when you put a plastic bag over your head for long enough you can see god.
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And if you could show us these assumptions, then argue against them with cited facts, maybe the average Techdirt commenter would not look upon your comment and laugh.
(Me? I prefer to facepalm.)
Title could be the following: “Finally, RIAA Front Group Admits That Forcing THE INTERNET To Police Site Doesn’t Work Well”
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*Simply Doesn’t Work